Saint Seiya (聖闘士星矢セイントセイヤ), or Knights of the Zodiac as it's known, was an anime series that premiered on Japanese TV in October 1986 and later garnered fans worldwide. Based on the manga series of the same name, the story follows a group of young warriors known as the Knights of the Zodiac, who have sworn to protect the goddess Athena and fight against the forces of evil. This series proved enchanting to fans, giving rise to a lucrative franchise with numerous licensed products and countless adaptations for the cinema. The Knights have withstood the test of time, etching themselves into the hearts of fans.
And the proof of this is that in 2020, the anime received a new version in an adaptation for Netflix, and more recently, Sony decided to ride the wave and produced a live-action version of Knights of the Zodiac. However, what can be said about these and other adaptations of stories from the 80s and 90s, which seem to have become a trend recently, like Paramount's Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Netflix's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always in 2023?
Well, in the case of Dungeons & Dragons, I believe Paramount did their homework and hit the mark by exploring another aspect of that universe, one that hadn't been explored and wasn't well-known to fans. In the case of Netflix's Power Rangers, although the production is definitely not a masterpiece and leaves much to be desired, as I explained in the post linked at the end of this, they managed to win over nostalgia by including various references to the old TV series.
However, when it comes to making a new adaptation of Knights of the Zodiac that lives up to the original series, everyone has failed miserably so far. The animated series on Netflix, with its excessive use of technology and overly exaggerated armor, fell far short of pleasing the fans. But we, the fans (and I include myself), didn't know that the day would come when even the seemingly awful Netflix adaptation would seem good. However, that day arrived when Sony released this live-action bomb.
I don't even know where to begin explaining how outraged I am with Knights of the Zodiac: The Beginning, the Sony live-action film released, believe it or not, also in April 2023, in cinemas worldwide. I had the displeasure and disappointment of watching it just now. It brings to the screen a story so weak and generic that it seems as if the producers, when shooting the film, mixed up the scripts on the table and sent the unfinished draft to production instead of the final material.
It's impossible that what we saw in nearly two hours of the film is actually what they envisioned for the project. I can't believe that a studio as experienced as Sony would spend a considerable amount, $60 million, to produce something so poorly made.
Seriously, in my posts, I usually provide a brief summary of the films, highlighting the parts I didn't like and explaining why those parts don't make sense to me. In the case of this live action, it's hard to pinpoint one or two parts, as there's nothing worth salvaging.
However, I'll try to be professional here and point out things that don't make sense to me. The first point is precisely the film's title: Knights of the Zodiac: The Beginning. If the name suggests that the film would tackle the beginning of the Knights, it would be more coherent for it to portray Seiya's childhood and the competition among the Knights for their armors. They destroyed all the heroism in Seiya's story, giving him an almost magical gift that led him to a luxurious mansion on some paradisiacal island. There, he encountered a completely bipolar Athena, who one moment treated him arrogantly and indifferently, and the next moment gave him a lunchbox for the journey. This cliché of “enemies becoming lovers” in the middle of a Knights of the Zodiac film simply doesn't work.
Not to mention the awkward way Saori manifests her cosmos. It's as if she's channeling a spirit in a horror movie. And that part where she says, “That's why I have to stay here"—honestly, the original Saori is much more aware of her mission and is more mature. Here, she's just one drama after another.
Next, we have Seiya meeting Marin, and guess what? More conveniences, some little training sessions, catchy phrases, dance steps, and voilà, Seiya can unlock his armor. How is that even possible? There was no battle, no sacrifice, no real sense of earning it—nothing. Moreover, Seiya remembers that Alman Kiddo was among those who took his sister, and he almost ruins everything with his fit of anger and immature stance. But who cares? The story needs to progress to its catastrophic ending.
All that part about Vander Guraad turning Cassios into a generic Robocop project to try to defeat Seiya doesn't make any sense at all, especially because she has Phoenix Ikki by her side the whole time. The original Cassios himself was strong and determined to become a knight. He fought valiantly with Seiya, but unable to manifest his cosmos, he was defeated. In the film, Cassios is reduced to someone who senselessly dislikes Seiya. After losing a fight to him, he becomes an envious individual obsessed with killing him. That makes no sense at all.
The sequence of things that don't make the slightest sense doesn't stop there because in the sequel we have Seya arriving all angry and Saiori, who in the original story is so centered and sensible, here simply forgets all the rules and her safety and just goes on a totally senseless escape, just to be able to sit with Seya by the sea and explain to him that his father left his sister behind because he needed to protect her, guy she couldn't have talked to him right there in the fortress, needed that whole scene frankly.
But the worst thing here is Alman Kiddo and Mylock (Tatsumi) who don't even try to stop Saiori from leaving, what's the point of having an overprotected fortress if when the person for whom all that protection is intended walks out of the door, without being stopped or followed.
But the sequence of nonsensical things doesn't stop there. When Vander Guraad invades the fortress and goes to confront Kiddo about their past, it looks more like a mother coming home late and tired from work, arguing with the father about the kids. Too cringe-worthy! They turned a strong and cruel character into a confused mother with issues of motherhood acceptance.
And to top it all off, Alman Kiddo decides to blow up the fortress in a scene that makes no sense whatsoever. What was he trying to achieve with that explosion? Kill everyone, including Saori, whom he wanted to protect? That left me confused.
In the villains' headquarters, Muraad approaches Saori with all sorts of sweet talk. How is that even possible? This doesn't make any sense, considering that a moment before, she was trying to kill the girl, and a moment later, she would continue trying. This whole conversation is illogical. At this point, I can only think like Phoenix Ikki: "What the hell is this?" What does this woman want? "Did she think Saori would smile and thank Muraad for trying to kill her?"
Almost magically, Seiya, who in the previous scene couldn't even activate his cosmos, can now fly. This completely diminishes the charm that existed in the anime, where he needed to get beaten up and be on the brink of death to finally reconnect with his cosmos and activate his armor. In the anime, it was like a last-minute turnaround in the game, where the home team makes a comeback. Here, the anticlimax is complete, with a few catchphrases from Marin doing all the work.
To complete the circus show that is this film, there isn't even a fight between Seiya and Cassios, as the technological Cassios falls with a punch from Seiya. And Muraad, who didn't know his pupil was also a knight, how she thinks he can sense the cosmos of others. What nonsense is this?
And then, Saori finally transforms into Athena, only for us to realize another glaring mistake in the film. They could never drain all of her cosmos. Even before Muraad acts like a repentant Magdalene and tries to pull the wires to shut down the machine, the machine was almost collapsing anyway. And the most hilarious thing in this sequence was Ikki trying to destroy it and having his armor torn to pieces. Dude, did you really think you could stand up to a goddess?
But what makes even less sense comes next, when Seiya, who just met Saori, seems to already have a deep emotional connection with her. So much so that with a few words of motivation, he manages to get Saori, without training or preparation, to master her powers, almost like magic. That's incredible, but not in a good way.
The best (or worst) part comes at the end, when the spaceship that brought Seiya remains intact after all that explosion, ready to take them back home. That was just too much for me.
And it all ends with Athena (Saori) leaving a hook for the next film, saying that now they need to start gathering the Knights of the Zodiac. This shows those who haven't realized yet that they simply tossed the original story in the trash and are building their own fan fiction. Everything indicates that this will be a poorly made rendition of our childhood masterpiece.
How can they gather the knights? They should already be gathered because it's all the Knights together who save Saori, not just a clearly in friend-zone Seiya. And Saori, even after stating that a great war of the gods is approaching, says she'll help her crush find his lost sister first. This should be a teenage romance?
In short, they managed to reduce one of the most exciting anime of all time to a mere teenage soap opera with crushes, parental conflicts, rivals, and bullying. This is to the complete despair and disappointment of fans, who had to stomach that ridiculous armor of Seiya's, which looks more like a carnival costume.
For not to say that nothing is salvageable in this film, the conflict in Seiya between being a knight and his loyalty to his sister was well portrayed. The fight between him and Phoenix Ikki also gave a taste of what all the fights and training should have been like in this film. However, after building up so many expectations among the fans of the series, all they managed to do was disappoint.
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