Yu and I movie-marathoned the trilogy 20th Century Boys from last night (which was actually around 3am already) til this afternoon. It is the movie adaptation of the award-winning manga 20 Seiki Shounen or literally 20th Century Boys. The title was taken from a real song by T-Rex, 20th Century Boy. You can listen to the song on YouTube. (Side Comment: hide has a version too. :D It’s purely in Engrish though.)
The plot is something that young children would usually think of when playing with other kids: Good VS Evil, and there’s someone good, there’s someone bad. Good prevails in the end. But the plot that the kids had imagined becomes reality in the future. The end of the world and stuff like that. And…
I suck at writing summaries so please just check the links on this post. This post isn’t meant to be a review either. I just want to rant about it. Oh, and spoiler alert. Probably.
Some basics though:
The first movie, 20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End, jumps from 1969 to 2000. Kenji and friends tries to save the world from TOMODACHI but they fail.
The second movie, 20th Century Boys 2: The Last Hope, continues to 2015 with a teenage Kanna and a reigning TOMODACHI.
The last movie, 20th Century Boys 3: Redemption, comes 2 years later and TOMODACHI pretty much controls the world. Kenji and friends make a comeback and they kill TOMODACHI. TOMODACHI is revealed in this part.
A few questions…
WHY THE HELL didn’t the people ever question the “MASK” of TOMODACHI? It’s like he’s going around and people just nod and raise their finger. Pointer finger, I mean.
One thing I hated about the movie was how they kept on stalling on exposing TOMODACHI!!! aaargh! So even if I wasn’t quite interested in seeing the whole trilogy, I still kept on watching. The true identity of TOMODACHI doesn’t get exposed until like the last 10 minutes (or less) of the movie, credits included. Had I known, I would’ve jumped from first movie to the 3rd just to find that out.
In the first movie, the terrible twins were fat. In the second movie, they were lean. In the third movie, they were huger than ever. Did they read some lipozene reviews and magically gained weight after 2 years? Just wondering.
Kanna has ESP, because she bent a spoon and she was able to find her classmate that was kind of dragged by one of her uncle’s childhood classmates. She’s also called The Chosen One, and God’s Child among others. What is the purpose of this? After the ESP scenes that seemed forced, the idea got lost. I was hoping for more ESP action.
The people who seemed to be under TOMODACHI’s spell most of the time act like remote-controlled zombies, like when they tried to take baby Kanna and in the processions, etc. But when faced with a gun, they suddenly become … I can’t think of a good word for them, but it’s like unhumanly cowards… I guess that’s one of the few funny scenes of the story, but still, I found it ridiculous. If they’re zombified, they’re zombified. If they’re doing it because they’re scared, then they should look scared. Movie physics, I guess.
I’ve never read the manga so I’m not sure how much it stayed with the storyline of the manga version, but overall, I liked the story. Considering each movie lasted for almost two and a half hours each, and I watched them all, I did like it.
I’d give this 3.5 out of 5 stars!
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