#Fullmetal Alchemist the live action movie

[humming-fly]

shoutout to the live action films for making the executive decision to nuke greed’s backstory and instead just have him repeatedly show up unannounced with no explanation, making him the funniest character in the whole movie 

Bonus:

#for real greedling fans made out like bandits in those movies #like of all the things they could've fucked up instead they just decided to make him Hilarious #also greed leaving Immediately means he found that vest and horrible pants Somewhere Else and now i'm laughing at that too #fma #fmab #fullmetal alchemist #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #greed #greedling #ling yao #fu #father #envy #fullmetal alchemist live action #my art #doodles #comic #the coat thing fucking killed me as soon as i noticed it #he really did just take a minute to take off his fucking jacket for No Reason before running to help fu #really was just getting too hot in the sun had to remove some layers #there's actually one more shitpost i made but it was getting crowded so it'll the the next bonus i guess lol #it's been a hot sec since i made some nonsense hasn't it lol

[fairyprince7]

little cute screenshot I collected to celebrate me finishing the worst movie trilogy I've ever seen (very affectionate, these are delightfully bad movies)

#except the first one. the first movie was just boring and not interesting at all. it tried too hard to be dark and grim #talk #fmaposting #this is about the movie #fullmetal alchemist #edward elric #fma live action

[roberrtphilip]

My only clue is that Dad said he was going to Liore. I wonder if I’ll be able to find him.

#van hohenheim #alphonse elric #fullmetal alchemist #fma live action #fullmetal alchemist live action #fmaedit #fmala #fullmetal alchemist the final alchemy #seiyō uchino #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fma brotherhood #rucksack* #there's so many hohenheim scenes i wanna gif he's so silly in this movie :3

[movielosophy]

Fullmetal Alchemist: Revenge Scar (2022) ~ two chibis

#😆 #Fullmetal Alchemist: Revenge Scar (2022) #FMA #Fullmetal Alchemist #live action #movie #yamada ryosuke #character: edward elric #terada kokoro #character: selim bradley #tachi hiroshi #character: king bradley

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

#fullmetal alchemist #solf j kimblee #fma live action #jamie campbell bower #Robert James collier #tom hiddleston #Jason isaacs #James norton #David tennant #I kind of hate the patriot but Jason Isaacs' character in that movie is the most live action Kimble lookin mfer I've ever seen #currently obsessed with James Norton a lil bit #just finished happy valley and his performance as Tommy lee Royce is hands down one of the best villain portrayals in all of television

[novelmonger]

I watched FMA: The Revenge of Scar on FMA Day and am only now talking about it shush leave me alone I was busy okay.

Both before and after watching it, I've come across a fair share of posts sharing their excitement about it, talking about it as something they enjoyed. And there's only one thought that comes to mind when I see them:

....Why?

I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade or anything; I'm just genuinely confused. If you like these movies, what do you like about them? If you watched the first one and were excited when the sequel was announced, why? I'm just really confused, because I've watched two of these movies now, and...sorry to be blunt, but I thought both were a pile of crap ^^'

Am I just somehow missing everyone who's complaining about the movies? Or am I completely misunderstanding people who are trying to make the best of things? Because right now, I feel like I'm either left out of a huge, fandom-wide joke, or I've gone utterly insane.

I mean, I have sooooo many complaints against these movies, such as:

very fake-looking wigs and costumes (admittedly, they were a bit better in the second one)

Ed and Al were the only ones who could act their way out of a paper bag (I've only seen the sub, so can't speak to dub performances)

the CG looked so fake and ugly

even I noticed the awful greenscreen and masking lines

the transmutations were way too slow; I had horrible flashbacks to The Last Airbender x.x

terrible pacing, so both dramatic and comedic moments fall flat (which makes me want to cry, because Arakawa-san has such impeccable timing for both T^T)

nonsensical switching around of the timeline, creating problems for themselves they then have to scramble to solve in the most haphazard ways (like Ed's motivation to go to the ruins of Xerxes, which makes no sense now because they didn't have Ross go into hiding, so he had no reason to go into the desert; he just kind of...heard the word "ruins" and teleported to the desert)

WHAT ON EARTH WENT WRONG WITH ARMSTRONG WHY DID THEY GIVE HIM A PROSTHETIC SCALP JUST FIND AN ACTOR WHO LOOKS GOOD WITH A SHAVED HEAD GOODNESS GRACIOUS D:

Mei is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old

the soundtrack is utterly forgettable, which is a huge shame when you compare it to the masterpieces of Michiru Oshima and Akira Senju that came before it

Envy's true form is nowhere near big enough

maybe a minor gripe, but the clapping and snapping for alchemy just...doesn't sound cool like it does in both animes :/ More realistic, I guess, but um...this is fantasy, you can let such things have big dramatic sound effects just because they sound cool....

why on earth does Winry have dark hair????? Why does everybody else have to wear awful wigs but she keeps her natural hair color???? aldkfjsa;kfljsdlfkjslkj;lkjsf

I was bored all the way through both movies and kept checking the time to see how much was left. Let me repeat that: I was BORED. In Full Metal Alchemist!

On the positive side, um.....

Ryosuke Yamada was basically the perfect choice to play Ed. He really nailed the character, and had some great expressions and deliveries that brought out Ed's personality without making it too cartoony and over-the-top (and I'm pretty sure that the problems I have with timing are more a fault of the director, rather than the actor)

I actually really enjoyed the scene where Ed and Al have their little confrontation about Al's soul being fake; it was new material, but 100% in-character, and full of the brotherly love that is at the heart of FMA

Nina is adooooorable :'3

Selim is also possibly the cutest little boy I've ever seen in my life; super hard to imagine him as a Homunculus, but that's kind of the point

props to them for the attention to detail required to recreate some scenes with even the same framing and angles as the manga now if only they'd also managed to recreate the pacing and emotional depth

Uh...yeah, that's all I've got. It really doesn't weigh out the negative side.

Again, if you liked the movies...please, I'm begging you, tell me why! I really want to understand ;_;

#fma #full metal alchemist #fullmetal alchemist #fma live action #you have no idea how much i wanted to love these movies #and i just...can't #they weren't even so-bad-they're-good #i was just disappointed and bored and annoyed #but i honestly want to understand what people see in them! #please share your thoughts!

[just-trying-my-best-everyday]

I was watching some FMA live action clips because I can't find the second movie yet (as one does) and Ling literally slid into a room.

Like I shit you not, this is Something That Happened and somehow it's the most FMA-accurate thing to happen thus far.

#like yes give me dork ling i luv him #but also this was so unnecessary #these movies are just #comedy gold #watch them deattached from everything you know and love and you'll laugh out loud #like fr they're so silly #altho so far my favorite scene is when bradley strikes lan fan and ling just #stands there #he legit just looks at her fall #(in a very boring fight scene too) #and looks mildly inconvenienced #oh look the bodyguard went down... ig.... #welp the script says i care about her time to fight #it would be infuriating if it weren't so fucking funny #fma live action #fullmetal alchemist live action #fma #fullmetal alchemist

[natdocx]

WAIT. There's ANOTHER fullmetal alchemist live action movie???????

#khdfhkadgjs #do i think these movies are good? no. do i enjoy the mindless entertainment they bring me nonetheless? yeah. #fma #fma live action #fullmetal alchemist

[livuvur]

Every time I see someone real mad and complaining about the fma live action movies it kinda throws me off because it's all coming from the prospect that we are suppossed to take these movies seriously in the first place.

#the movie gives me ryosuke yamada looking at tsubasa honda like a fucking lovestruck idiot everytime?? yes thank you very much #we aren't here to witness the fantastic retelling of an iconic unforgettable story that we know is very important #like yeah appreciate fma in all its depth and glory #but sometimes one just wants fanservice #and guess what #that is ok #all of these 3 movies fucking sucked but l mean.. theyre gonna be forgotten by the fandom anyways so like just take what you can and run #fullmetal alchemist #fma live action

[girlcraft2003]

fma the revenge of shit

I just finished watching the second fma live-action movie on Netflix and OH MY GOD IT IS JUST AS BAD AS THE FIRST IF NOT MORE SO

They do so much but so little. Even better it just RANDOMLY slows down in the middle for no reason and JUST LIKE THE FIRST put random plots together and just said "yea this will work :)"

#fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood #fullmetal alchemist #fma live action #please spare yourself dont watch this movie #I ended up on my phone for half of it

[roberrtphilip]

How can you call your own father a bastard?

#van hohenheim #fullmetal alchemist #fmaedit #fullmetal alchemist live action #fma live action #seiyō uchino #fmala #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #rucksack* #i really wanna gif his scene with the family photo but apparently this movie doesn't believe in using lights #anyway. he was only here for five minutes but he stole the show. king <3

[movielosophy]

Fullmetal Alchemist: Revenge Scar (2022) ~ I’d be happy to see Col. Mustang, Ed.

#FMA #Fullmetal Alchemist #Fullmetal Alchemist: Revenge Scar (2022) #live action #movie #dean fujioka #character: roy mustang #yamada ryosuke #character: edward elric #HSJ #renbutsu misako #character: riza hawkeye #mizuishi atom #character: alphonse elric

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

I love how the solution to almost all sucky adaptations of things I love not being sucky is “this should have been directed by Guillermo Del Toro”

#guillermo del toro #movies #why didn’t he direct phantom of the opera #why didn’t he direct the live action fullmetal alchemist #come on y’all know those would have slapped

[suzannahnatters]

A while back I realised that there's one specific fictional thing that is catnip to me, and that is vulnerability. People accuse me of liking dire things in stories, but it's not so much that I love it when fictional people are suffering. It's that I kind of crave vulnerability in my protagonists.

I would define vulnerability as the opposite of agency. At its core, it involves a denial or a willing sacrifice of agency, and while writers talk about agency a lot, I don't think we spend anywhere near enough time discussing vulnerability.

Vulnerability is incredibly powerful in building empathy with a character, but it also forces the character into dire choices that reveal their true nature, and it makes the antagonistic forces seem a lot more powerful and scary. Vulnerability is why whump is appealing. It's one of the reasons we all care so much about out good fried Jonathan Harker, utterly at Dracula's mercy. It's why the myth of the voluntarily dying god is so powerful, even if you aren't a Christian.

More recently, I've been thinking a whole lot about how important vulnerability is in constructing a believable romance. In a believable romance, the characters will be emotionally vulnerable to, and on behalf of, one another. The "if you dare touch her" trope where the love interest comes unhinged at the sight of a loved one's suffering is vulnerability. Enemies to lovers is delicious because it asks what might happen if the person to whom you're most vulnerable was also the one with the greatest interest in exploiting that vulnerability. As I've written before, romance is about trust; and the corollary is that no romance can live without that heartstopping moment when one character takes the risk of putting themselves helplessly into the power of the other.

But I think that a lot of storytellers these days are prioritising agency at the cost of vulnerability. Disney's attempts at feminism are a great example of this. While the animated MULAN is outed as a woman in a moment of vulnerability that was the most powerful thing in the movie for me, in the live action Mulan's unmasking becomes a expression of agency that in my opinion guts the story of feeling. On the other hand, in the cdrama I'm currently watching (GOODBYE, MY PRINCESS) the male lead is SO averse to letting himself be vulnerable in any way at all that I simply can't find any romance in his interactions with the heroine. I love to see stories that foreground marginalised people, but too often those stories focus on giving the protagonist agency at the cost of letting the antagonist land any hits at all. The result, imo, is a perfectly soulless story.

Of course, agency is a sine qua non of a good protagonist. But so is vulnerability, and there are so many amazing stories you can write about a vulnerable protagonist. W R Gingell's CITY BETWEEN series, for instance, is the story of a desperately vulnerable protagonist fighting to claim some agency in her own life and it's GLORIOUS. And beyond that, I would say that moments of vulnerability are indispensable even to very strong protagonists. One of the reasons FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST worked so gorgeously as a story for me, for instance, was the gutpunch moments of vulnerability that happened both at the very start and then with increasing tempo toward the end.

Vulnerability can be something a protagonist constantly struggles with, or something that unexpectedly blindsides someone who seemed to be invincible, or something a character does willingly for the sake of the people they love. It can be romantic, or not at all. But either way it's the interplay of agency and vulnerability that really MAKES a story for me. You HAVE to have both.

#writing #writing advice #writing tip #jonathan harker #dracula #mulan #disney remakes #the city between #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #goodbye my princess

[olderthannetfic]

I know about the origins of the Bechdel Test, but I do think it's inaccurate to say it's not meant as a criticism of movies that don't do that. I think that when people stop thinking in binary terms of "is this feminist?" or "is this anti-feminist?" and instead look at things more holistically, that you can recognize both that a character like Mako Mori is great, a step in the right direction for female characters in action movies and especially WOC, go forth and stan her and write all the fanfic you want.... but yeah, it is also a valid criticism of the movie (and many others like it) that she doesn't talk to or have relationships with any other woman in the film.

I think one thing to help people realize just HOW much of women's lives are being left out of media representation when we never talk to other named women about something other than a man in movies, is to just think about your own life. I talk to my mom every day, and if we are not talking about my stepdad or my brother-in-law (and I don't think we've ever had a conversation that wasn't at least IN PART not about them or another man), then it passes the test. I'm a professor and when I talk to a female student about her homework or project (which is, again, something that happens pretty much every day I teach), that's passing the test. If I order food from a female cashier and she has a name tag, that's passing the Bechdel Test! It's literally just constant for the vast majority of women on the planet, and that's what's being left out of our stories.

Like, I like the takes I've seen about how part of the joke in Dykes to Watch Out For is that this is *particularly* alienating to lesbians - as a lesbian myself I agree - but I also think it should be frustrating to straight and bi and ace women as well, because like unless you are like exclusively interacting with your husband or male relatives every single day + you work in a workplace where you are literally the only woman, you are almost certainly passing the test constantly. That's a pretty big part of women's lives that Hollywood is leaving out!

But I think it's important to view it as just one piece of the discussion about feminism and women's representation in film, not the final judge on if a film is feminist or not. Which it wasn't intended to be - as you said, it was mostly a joke on the extreme maleness of 80s action movies. Honestly, I do not miss those days on Tumblr where people were obsessed with declaring certain movies/TV shows/other fandoms they liked as "feminist" or "anti-feminist" and the really bizarre granular discussions people would have between two works that BOTH had a long way to go in terms of representing women. I remember people in the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom would use this to argue about if the original anime or Brotherhood/the manga was better - when both have some fantastic female supporting characters, but are ultimately male-centered stories where even a lot of those women's lives and stories are centered around their male love interests and family members. It's better than a lot of shounen, but if that's your bar for feminism - either version - you have a long way to go (and need to watch WAY more anime because there's sooooo much of it that is female-centric). I also remember people coming up with other tests that were blatantly silly: like I thought the Mako Mori test about "if a woman has a motivation/story that isn't centered on a man" was fair because it did point out a legitimate criticism, but there was that ridiculous "Tauriel Test" where it was "a woman who is good at her job." And it was entirely about someone just disliking that movie critics and feminist commentators alike were down on the Hobbit movie trilogy, which a) were bad movies, sorry you have bad taste, b) are absolutely not where you should focus your attention if you're so concerned about women's representation in film, Tolkein has always been a sausage fest! And her big thing was being mad that people thought Judi Dench's M in Skyfall was a better female character, and so she arbitrarily decided she was "bad at her job" and Tauriel was "good at her job" even though that's completely subjective and can be challenged in both cases.... but also, once again, why are you looking to the fucking JAMES BOND franchise for movie feminism! There's nothing like comparing the relative "feminism levels" of JAMES BOND and LOTR to make it obvious that this is 100% about validating your subjective taste preferences by giving it a "progressive" excuse, not actually about feminism and not actually caring about women's representation beyond how it makes you look good. And yet SO many people took that transparently stupid post seriously. I'd see professional articles mention the Tauriel Test as "one of the new tests" like there was anything serious about it.

And then on the flip side, over-reliance on the Bechdel Test alone led to some clueless conclusions especially in anime fandom, given that anime has an abundance of shows that exclusively feature female characters in school clubs being cute, where those characters are nonetheless two-dimensional archetypes designed for the male gaze. Someone like fandomsandfeminism did a presentation at an anime con that called one of those types of shows "feminist" and some Japanese user eviscerated it, but that just led to the equally shallow fandom analysis of "everything a Japanese person says about anime is automatically more valid" and "any Westerner who wants to criticize anime on feminist/progressive grounds is culturally appropriating and ultimately coming from a place of ignorance, even if they literally have a degree in Asian studies."

Wow, this turned into a rant about the history of bad "feminist media criticism" on this website. Sorry about that, I think I had a point in here somewhere. I guess that the Bechdel Test is indeed a joke and those origins should be understood, but also, I don't think it's wrong to say that it identifies a real problem and one that people could probably take MORE seriously than they do - but as just one part of the conversation, not the Feminism Litmus Test, and certainly not as a dick-measuring contest about whose fandom gets them more progressive brownie points.

--

I think as long as we grasp that the joke is "The bar is so far under the ground that we might as well go home and eat popcorn there", it's fine.

The real issue with the test is that people started thinking a pass was meaningful.

If you say something like "X% of 2020s movies can't even manage this weaksauce level of women existing", that's a meaningful statistic. Even if you got a couple of data points wrong, you're not factually wrong enough for it to matter because X is going to be some massive, massive percentage, and the overall trend is so clear.

But a pass is nothing to celebrate, and that's where we went wrong.

Like you say, litigating which of two big franchises that barely do anything with women wins on tumblr points is idiocy.

I think people are so unaware of what media that genuinely centers women even looks like that it's hard for them to even begin having a discussion.

I personally have been a massive fujoshi type from adolescence, and media that centers female characters isn't actually what I typically want. (Though media that is by and for women and that doesn't give a fuck what men think of this is.) I am also not much of a fan of slice of life in general...

But when I was coming out and figuring my shit out, being able to go buy collections of Dykes to Watch Out For was incredibly valuable to me.

Ditto the other lesbian comic books that were just sitting there in the bookstore. I'm sure if I went back and reread them all now, I could find things to nitpick or ways they were more for lesbians and less for me as a bi girl, but the really distinctive thing they did was let me exist in a world where media isn't all 80s sausagefest action movies where women are not people.

In fact, they were a world where men don't matter terribly much—not because they're dramatically rejecting men in some facile and reactionary way but because... who cares? They just had other priorities... and this was normal.

It feels like people who've never taken a vacation from really mainstream media just have no concept of what it would feel like to exist in some other space.

And I think that's a pity even if, like me, they later choose to go read mostly BL later instead of focusing on female characters or they genuinely love trash 80s action movies despite everything wrong with them. It's not just sexist media that's the issue: it's that feeling like the fish can't see the water it's swimming in.

[seth-the-giggle-fish]

💛Cozy Things Tag Game

Tagged by: @leechysmile

Comfort Food(s): Stuffing (I actually loose my appetite very easily and it's easy enough to eat)

Comfort Drink(s): Tea, ICEE's, hot chocolate

Comfort Movie(s): The Batman (2022), The Sound of Music, Baahubali 1 and 2 (with subs because the english dub isn't great), Detroit Evolution

Comfort Show(s): Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Fruits Basket (it helps me cry and actually process my emotions), YuYu Hakusho (the anime, haven't finished the new live action), and Welcome to Night Vale (it's a podcast but it's also a show)

Comfort Clothing: I've got a green carhartt hoodie that I picked up from a thrift store years ago and the cuffs were so worn out I just cut them off, also knit hats

Comfort Song(s): Stuff from middle school and high school, Three Days Grace, Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Green Day, Most of The Vice Quadrant album by Steam Powered Giraffe

Comfort Book(s): Good Omens, It Devours, Mostly Void Partially Stars, and The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

Comfort Game(s): Resident Evil 4 (2004), Detroit: Become Human, Tetris, sudoku

Tagging: @oswaldofcourse, @sailabovethis, @citricfox, @alastair-made-me-undo-it, @the-autistic-system, @angelgirl768, @ramenwithbroccoli, and anyone else who wants to try if they see this <3

(only respond if you want to! No pressure to join in)

#dash game #tag meme