Robotech: Shadow Chronicles
Saw this last night and all I can say is awful, awful, AWFUL. Holy crap this was bad. Robotech was one of my introductions to anime along with Lensman which I actually watched on Spanish TV under the title “Hombre Lente.” Although the Robotech series as Americans know it was mainly a butchered version of the Macross anime with additional completely different series tacked on for additional “generations”, this movie tries to reconcile all that plus the Sentinals stories which I don’t think ever were completely animated. But none of that matters, because this movie is just too terrible for words.
I should remember to at least look into movies a little before buying my tickets. Additionally, I should remember that the sound system at The ImaginAsian Theater sucks terribly.
(Update: Well, looks like the sound system was not to blame. Thanks for the heads up ImaginAsian! Now if only there’s a way for people to know beforehand whether they’ll be able to experience the full force of the ImaginAsian sound system… )
January 9th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Can’t speak for Robotech, but I can for the sound system at The ImaginAsian- we actually have a new Academy-calibrated Dolby Digital Surround EX system installed.
Unfortunately, most anime releases come on DigiBeta, not on film, meaning the sound is only in stereo. Drop by for a 35mm movie and you’ll see what we mean…
January 11th, 2007 at 9:28 am
I saw Shadow Chronicals at MechaCon and I thought it was very good. Frankly, I am more inclined to believe the theater was the issue. Let me put it this way….
From ImaginAsian’s comment…
“Drop by for a 35mm movie and you’ll see what we mean…”
What this tells me is that ImaginAsian’s theater is set up for old style 35mm film. The problem with this is that it is out dated technology. The film industry is converting to all digital for many reasons. Theaters not properly equipped to handle HG Digital will not be able to show those movies very well and by ImaginAsian’s comment, we can see they are equipped for 35mm film, not digital. ImaginAsian needs to get out of the stone age and face reality, digital format is the way things are going.
Now, as I said, I saw the movie at MechaCon. The setup there was fully digital. The sound was awsome, the music was great. The story was face paced and really action packed. I’ll grant that I wished they could have spent more time on all the characters, so we could have developed more of an emotional attachment, but what do you expect in 88 minutes?! We have 85 30 minute episodes of Robotech to become attached to characters. Shadow Chronicals, the movie, is only 88 minutes. So they had to do more with less. Overall, I think they did an awsome job and I can’t wait to find out which way the series is going to be continued. One other important note here. The movie is a pilot for the rest of the Shadow Chronicals series. How good would “Boobytrap” have been if it was all you saw of Robotech?! To me, the first episode of Robotech was really boring and bad, but when taken with the rest of the series, it rules.
In short, I think your complaining to complain.
January 11th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I didn’t like it either. I wouldn’t say it was crap from beginning to end, however. It had a few, very few, moments. The music was good, for one. Besides that, I didn’t like the boobfest. The characters weren’t likeable, specially whinny Marcus. Janice is very annoying too. I had to laugh when she went all crazy-ninja against the haydonite… Maia was plain, she didn’t have the strenght of her mother nor the mellowness of her father. She was boring. The way they changed the events in New Generation was very annoying to me too. If only a little stretch of the imagination had sufficed to accept the changes and bridge the movie with the series, that would’ve been okay. But too much was required. It irked me that Scott was in his alpha when Corg shot it down at the end of the original series. He was in his Beta when the Regess left Earth! Not to mention how things at the hive happened in a completely different way. There were many other annoying things, like crappy CGI, but it isn’t worth describing them all here.
January 11th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
To be honest the movie really did suck I think they should get a better director.
January 11th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Rhade…
You are confusing digital projection with digital sound. 35mm film prints do have digital sound, and that is pretty much standard in most theaters now. From what the ImaginAsian post says it sounds like they are equipped to handle the digital sound that comes with almost every 35mm film today (After all it said they have a Dolby Digital Surround EX system), but this film was delivered on DigiBeta, which is a form of digital video tape, and that tape only had stereo sound on it. They must have presented that tape via a video projector. What they are saying is that if he came to see a film that was presented via their 35mm projector, and actually had a digital surround sound soundtrack, he would know that their sound system is not as bad as he experienced with this film. In other words no matter how good of a system they have it will only be as good as what is given to them to present, and that this Robotech film didn’t come with a soundtrack that could take advantage of their system. It doesn’t surprise me either. You can’t expect the equivalent of playing a DVD in a full sized theater to sound as good as a true 35mm print with sound intended for a theater. I’ve seen plenty of showings in film festivals that were on DVD, and they never sound even close to as good as an actual 35mm release does.
It’s actually quite common for extremely low release films, and film festival showings to be on video. Funimation obviously didn’t think that such a small theatrical release of this film warranted spending a lot of money on 35mm prints. These showings are mainly just publicity for the DVD release anyway. DVD and the inevitable TV showings are where the film will really make money for them.
And you are right that digital is the way of the future, but it is the distant future. The complete digital projection and sound package is years, if not decades off. With thousands of theaters needing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of conversion work it will be a slow crawl to where digital projection is even common, let alone the norm. A new giant state of the art multiplex is being built a few miles away from me right now, and as far as I know there isn’t a single digitally projected theater in the whole complex. And this is a brand new multi million dollar theater being built from the ground up by the largest chain in my region. If they thought that 35mm projection would be even close to obsolete anytime soon they would be putting all digital projection in. But 35mm is here to stay for the foreseeable future, no matter how much people like George Lucas want to dream about digital projection.
January 12th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
i seen it at the same theather. my problem was it was to hot and i didnt like the seats. but after 20 years i was happy to just see some new robotech. my only complaint about the movie was it was to hard to follow the space battles. they need more lite.
January 14th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I was kind of dissapointed by the film. They should bring back uncle Carl.
January 14th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
The movie is boring, Janice is like crack addict hooker, look elsewhere and don’t buy the hype of Harmony Gold, which desperately tries to revive interest in its pathetic products, in an attempt to cash in on the worldwide resurgence of interest in Macross. The movie is simply a bait and a trap to cash in on the macross franchise.
February 5th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
rleoy: How exactly is this trying to cash in some worldwide Macross resurgence when all the story elements connect to the Mospeada part of Robotech and not the Macross part? The only Macross bit was Rick Hunter. It was all Mospeada robots, Mospeada style, and Mospeada characters. Okay, there’s a couple of Sentinels characters and one Southern Cross character, but come on it. It’s like they were flying Valkyries in this.