The third and final installment of the 20th Century Boys films based on Naoki Urasawa's popular
manga was theatrically released in Japan this year. However, the first installment, 20th Century Boys 1: The Beginning, only recently washed up on North American shores courtesy of Viz. The Beginning is an ambitious but messy film whose faithfulness to its source material will please fans and leave most others befuddled.
The film begins when a grade school kid named Kenji and his friends write a fictional text called The Book of Prophecy. This book of childhood fantasy details a future in which the kids fight an evil cult that tries to bring about the end of the world. Once the kids grow up, the games are forgotten until the events detailed in the Book of Prophecy begin to come true. Suspiciously, the countdown to disaster occurs in tandem with the emergence of a cult led by someone only known as Friend. Only Kenji and friends know about The Book so they unite in an effort to stop the escalating threat.
The 20th Century Boys manga juggles dozens of characters within the context of a multi-decade time line rendered in flashbacks and flashforwards. Although the material was changed a bit for the film, the writing team, which included Naoki Urasawa, took the plot, characters, dialogue, and scenes for The Beginning directly from the first five issues of the manga. In other words, the comic book was a storyboard that transformed panels into shots and lined them up in order to form scenes. The problem is that what is interesting as a series of panels, which are specifically organized on a page for visual flow and continuity, isn't necessarily interesting on screen. The consistent shuttling between past, present and future tends to obscure the arc of the narrative and robs the film of a much needed sense of momentum. There is also a flatness to the scenes that derive from a combination of performances and fidelity to the source; the young actors in numerous grade school flashbacks look exactly the manga characters but their performances are uneven.
20th Century Boys 1: The Beginning plays like a 142 minute set up for the rest of the series. Perhaps one needs to see the other two films before making a final assessment. If that is the case, The Beginning doesn't bode well for the end.
The film begins when a grade school kid named Kenji and his friends write a fictional text called The Book of Prophecy. This book of childhood fantasy details a future in which the kids fight an evil cult that tries to bring about the end of the world. Once the kids grow up, the games are forgotten until the events detailed in the Book of Prophecy begin to come true. Suspiciously, the countdown to disaster occurs in tandem with the emergence of a cult led by someone only known as Friend. Only Kenji and friends know about The Book so they unite in an effort to stop the escalating threat.
The 20th Century Boys manga juggles dozens of characters within the context of a multi-decade time line rendered in flashbacks and flashforwards. Although the material was changed a bit for the film, the writing team, which included Naoki Urasawa, took the plot, characters, dialogue, and scenes for The Beginning directly from the first five issues of the manga. In other words, the comic book was a storyboard that transformed panels into shots and lined them up in order to form scenes. The problem is that what is interesting as a series of panels, which are specifically organized on a page for visual flow and continuity, isn't necessarily interesting on screen. The consistent shuttling between past, present and future tends to obscure the arc of the narrative and robs the film of a much needed sense of momentum. There is also a flatness to the scenes that derive from a combination of performances and fidelity to the source; the young actors in numerous grade school flashbacks look exactly the manga characters but their performances are uneven.
20th Century Boys 1: The Beginning plays like a 142 minute set up for the rest of the series. Perhaps one needs to see the other two films before making a final assessment. If that is the case, The Beginning doesn't bode well for the end.
Any idea when chapter 3 will be released anywhere?
This is a decent movie review. But, without addressing the following...
1 - Picture quality;
2 - Available audio tracks and the quality thereof;
3 - Available subtitle tracks and the quality thereof;
4 - Whether or not the version of the film presented is complete;
5 - Quantity/quality of special features, if any;
...it's difficult to really justify calling it a DVD review; it's a review of a movie which happens to have been viewed on DVD. Point 4 is, to be fair, sort-of-addressed by giving the running time.
I've just been burned too many times with screwed up US DVDs of Asian films.