Fullmetal Alchemist: Final Training (2022)

Highly confusing and disappointing

The second movie left me quite excited for the final part and I sat down happily with my tablet in my hand when it finally came out today. I wish I hadn't expected so much from it!
Throughout the whole movie I couldn't stop thinking about how much I don't understand the story and how pathetically confused I am. It felt as if someone took the interesting parts of the story (and a bunch of incredibly talented actors like Ryosuke, Mackenyu and Keisuke), left the 'boring' scenes out and made a trilogy matching their personal taste. I'm certain that viewers weren't imparted numerous important information which would have been cruical in order to understand the story. I was utterly disappointed because no matter how hard I tried to puzzle out what was going on, I ultimately failed on multiple occasions. I got into a huge maze in the first movie and it got more and more complicated the more time I spent watching the trilogy.
I also must say a few words about the must-romantic interests. Action movies and thrillers would happily survive without these forced cringe romantic elements that make my skin crawl, to be frank. In my eyes, Winry was an absolutely useless and incredibly annoying character, she shouldn't have been given another role than being the one working on Ed's artificial limbs. It simply felt forced from Ed's side, the romantic feelings. As if they just had to exist because the writers thought love must be in the air. It was completely unnecessary and it very much ruined the movie experience. The other romantic couples should have stayed in the friend zone too, if they couldn't make it look and feel natural.
And one last thing I can't leave unspoken is Envy and Greed's death, they had much more potential, I was hoping to see more of them. The Homunculi became too easy to kill by the end of the last movie, I must say.
To sum it up, it's an entertaining movie trilogy but I doubt I could ever sit down again to watch it, maybe the second movie... too bad we didn't get to see Alphonse in his human body in an extra scene in the end, I would have appreciated it, haha.

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A great adaptation from anime

When watching the 3 movies of Fullmetal Alchemist, I didn’t know that they were live-action (adaption from anime) so I can’t tell how good they are as compared to the anime. However, in my point of view the 3 movies are the best Japanese live-action that I have ever seen. The cast not only portray their roles pretty well but also good looking. I was impressed with Yamada Ryosuke in the role of Edward the most. The plots are interesting and surprise me at some points. The CGI, costumes and styling are great and attractive. I enjoyed watching this live action and have re-watched it a few times.

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They could have done better... but I kinda liked it

A big disclaimer before starting to watch the movies that you should remember.
It's a live-action. It means that the actors are humans and that it's impossible to recreate the same exact effects of the anime (or manga). I accepted this truth and the whole experience became way more pleasing.

POSITIVE POINTS
-they really worked hard to try to recreate the characters in all their physical details (apart from Winry, I honestly don't understand why she's the only one without blonde hair. WELL). If we ignore the fact that the original characters don't have "asian features" (at least not all of them), I think they managed to represent everyone at their best. Even the characters that appeared for a few scenes were as close to the original as possible.
-the acting was kind of cringe in some parts, especially when they tried to recreate the comical scenes, but apart from this, all the actors did a good job recreating their characters.
-the music was okay, but nothing will ever win against the anime OSTs.
-CGI/Special effects. Yes, I liked them. They weren't super realistic, but I mean the point of this story is not being realistic. They were pretty similar to the anime and they worked pretty well.

NEGATIVE POINTS
-WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PLOT? I don't know what they were thinking when they were making the script for the movies, but they surely got lost somewhere. They had a solid plot to start with and I understand that you cannot fill EVERYTHING in three movies, but there were some parts that were essential. Also, for some reason, they mixed some parts and changed the order of the timeline. For some scenes, it wasn't that bad, but knowing how it was supposed to go just made everything so confusing. And if it was confusing for someone who knew what the story wanted to tell, I can't imagine what people can understand without the anime/manga background.
This was the biggest flaw of all three movies and I was kinda disappointed because they already had a story to work with.
-Another negative point was some important missing characters. Where is Dr. Marcho??? He is super important for the whole plot...

At the end, I gave a high mark because I truly enjoy this story and I despite everything I also enjoyed the movies. They could have done better, yes. But if you are a fan of FMA they are a nice way to spend a rainy weekend. And to remind you why FMA is such an amazing masterpiece.

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