What made G-Savior so bad?

[Krogoth255]

One of my pondering thoughts regrading the Gundam franchise is why G-Savior considered to be so terrible?

The acting may have be cheesy, but it was low-budget movie what else did you expect? The CGI animation and graphics were pretty design at the time it was made. I really dig G-Savior's own design.

The story was pretty decent. The collapse of the Earth Federation was an inevitable trend in UC. The food shortfall occurring due to lack of a centralized power. CONSENT = Neo-Titans are trying seize power. The good, old tensions between the colonies and earth is hardly new to UC.

It could be that G-Savior was another victim of "Gundam fatigue". It was overshadowed by "Turn A" for those want a decent story.

I think part of the problem was the fact G-Savior and its mecha weren't super flashy and didn't outpaced the suits of F91/Victory-era. The story makes that the reason quite clear. The collapse of the Earth Federation + food shortage and general unrest causes technological progress to be on the back burner. It is no surprise that a couple of technologies end-up getting "lost" during the years after events in Victory Gundam. UC in G-Savior was effectively in a Dark Age.

I think there are far worse stuff in the Gundam franchise than G-Savior. GSD is prehaps the best example that many Gundam fans can somewhat agree on. I think ZZ was worse in some areas than G-Savior, while Wing Gundam in other areas.

Comments?

Poll removed due to the options being too limited. - Wingnut

[Dark Duel]

For what it was, I think G-Saviour wasn't all that bad, and the G-Savior itself was a good design - as well as some of the other machines.
The CG was quite decent too.

I think the problem is that when G-Saviour came out, Gundam fans were expecting the live-action Gundam movie to be a "Hollywood Blockbuster", when in fact, it's a low-budget B-movie from a small Canadian studio.
It wasn't, so they automatically decided it sucked.

I'll agree, it's not as good as, say, 08th MS Team. But unlike any of the OVAs, which had decent-size budgets, G-Saviour is a low-budget B-movie.
That, and it was overshadowed, as you say, by Turn-A Gundam, which came out the previous year, and is (IMO) hands-down the best series in the entire franchise in terms of quality of story and character development.

There. That's my two-cents.

[mcred23]

I'm almost tempted to edit in another poll option that says "You do think everything about it is terrible.", because I know that's what I'd vote for.

To me, the acting I thought was horrid, low-budget movie or not. The characters are forgettable, often falling into sterotypical areas (For Gundam and basic action movies) and I found them to be unappealing and uninteresting.

The CGI in the movie was never impressive to me, that may be a fault of it's low budget but that doesn't fully excuse it to me. The CGI designs of the mecha looked terrible (Although, as lineart, I think they look much better), and I still don't fully understand (Or like) how the mecha all look like huge downgrades from what we see in Victory or F91 (Or hell, even CCA). Even for technology getting lost, it's way too much of a backslide for me to really believe or like.

The story was nothing special. Like Krogoth255 said, CONSENT is basically a Neo Titans, only without the great characters and personalities that largely made up Titans, and come off as nothing memorable, interesting, or overly appealing. Their not the worst depicted government/organization in Gundam (That's probably the EA in Destiny), but their effectively bland. The story itself is like the characters: forgettable and cliche.

All that said, G-Saviour easily remains the worst Gundam movie to date (As who knows how the eventual SEED movie will turn out) and one of the worst Gundam productions of all time. In my eyes, the film has no real saving grace (The only good thing connected to it is the standard lineart of the mecha) and low budget or not, I can't forgive how bad and disappointing it was and remains to be.

[MrMarch]

I like the motive of the first poll choice. You should become a politician

[justsomeguy]

Regardless of plot, acting, tech downgrades, characters, etc; I think this movie would have been better received if it had more action:

* Besides the title screen, we didn't see the G-Saviour until more than halfway through the movie, and in its first appearance it is used to clear space debris instead of kick ass.

* There were no MS battles (excluding the unseen one in the opening minutes) until long after the G-Saviour showed up.

* We see the I-Saviour for less than a minute

* We see the G-Saviour terrain mode for less than a minute.

[Crusader]

I didn't expect it to be that good, and it certainly isn't that bad. I only have one big issue with the poorly written love story. There wasn't much action, but it was still pretty good. At least thats what i think.

Being that I'm a lady Une fan, it was nice to see what her Voice actor looked like, who overall did the best job in the show.

The villians were another gripe for me, there wasn't much substance behind thier villainy and they came off very james bondish to me.

[Draco Starcloud]

It wasn't the worst movie I'd seen and I thought the CGI was actually pretty good.

I didn't think there was enough MS action though.

Also, I would love to see this made into an episode of MST3k even if MST3k will never have a new episode made again.

[Shinji103]

I definitely agree that it wasn't as bad as everyone makes it sound. For what it was it was pretty decent and even good, and I drooled over the CG MS battle.

I also thought the acting was pretty good for the budget too. I've seen way worse from bigger budget movies.

It was deinitely overshadowed by series-es like Turn A, too. I doubt it would have been taken as bad if we hadn't had our recent Turn A fix.

[Folken Fanel]

I used to dislike G-Saviour, but after seeing it again, I have to say I like it. Sure, it the acting isn';t great, there's not much action, and the CG isn't that great, but it's leagues better than any Saturday night Sci-fi movie, and that's enough for me.

[EZero8]

I'm not too keen on the movie itself. A lot of it was pretty bad, even for a low-budget movie. Acting was bland, the story wasnt exciting, and the technology looked like it regressed 100 years besides the beam shields. The lineart for the MS were nice, but despite the nice designs they just didnt fit for a Gundam show set in the UC 200's.

Of course, it isnt the worst movie ever made. Being a Gundam fan, I was bound to like it more than other movies. But to me, it doesnt come close to reaching the standards of a Gundam Production.

[Annon Kaies Zi]

I have seen the movie twice now, and it is easily (in my opinion) the worst filmed/animated/whatnot Gundam work by far. The acting was very poor, the story was so...not Universal Century it made it feel nothing like Gundam. The characters were your typical "we can't think of anything original" cast, which had zero development throughout the show. The CGI was, in my opinion, horrible. The actual 3D models were horrible, and looked nothing like the actually decent lineart. The animation was just terrible. Really, didn't even flow. Even the particle effects were bad. Just bad all around, in my opinion. A game of Quake III...no, Quake II was better looking. If not the original Quake. And people try to defend it saying it had a low budget...that doesn't make it better. It doesn't matter if it had a $10 budget or a $30,000,000 budget. That has nothing to do with how good the product turns out to be. It doesn't get extra points because it had a bad budget; that's just another thing that made it a bad movie. It is what it is, regardless of budget.

Now, some people make it out to be unwatchable, which it isn't. It's not good by any means, but it's not unwatchable. It just felt so choppy and nothing like Gundam. Didn't even say the word...neither was it in the title. Seems to me like it was something that was snagged by Sunrise half-way through production, and turned into something that was supposed to be Gundam. When it's very clear that hardly anything in the movie was Gundam-like. The mobile suits didn't even look very Universal Century-like...or like anything from the Gundam metaverse. It's only worth watching under two conditions: 1) It's free to watch, and you wanna make fun of how bad and non-Gundam it is, or 2) It's free to watch, and you try really hard to pretend it's not Gundam related, just another shitty sci-fi movie.

[swordoath]

I have to say, I personally really enjoyed G-Saviour for what it was. Though alot of the characters seemed bland, many of the actors really tried to give good performances despite what they were given (case in point for Blu Mankuma, who's one of the most recognizable faces/voices in Canadian entertainment - he was Tigatron!). The CG was a bit primitive but it looks reasonable for the time period. There are some really nice MS designs in it, not the least of which is the titular machine - which also pre-empted the Strike as far as semi-modular equipment went. They might have looked old-fashioned by comparison to Victory or F91, but I had always thought that they were designed that way to inject a little bit of the iconic Gundam styling into the mix.

Maybe I'm just proud that there's a Canadian-produced Gundam title, but I like G-Saviour. It's a fun movie, despite its flaws and the unrelenting flak it gets all the time.

[Kishiria]

I don't think G Saviour deserves all the hate it receives. It's limitations are there to be seen; low budget, small Canadian studio. I think that it was doomed to be hated by fans because--I hate to say this but it's true--fans are bound and determined to hate everything. Look at the reactions to Gundam Unicorn already.

I would have been much happier with it if we'd seen the mecha in action more than we did. Seeing a CGI Gundam made me very happy, so I'm glad there's more (and better) of the same in the games.

Lady Une's voice actor was really good in her part, I thought.

[wing zero alpha]

I don't think G Saviour deserves all the hate it receives. It's limitations are there to be seen; low budget, small Canadian studio. I think that it was doomed to be hated by fans because--I hate to say this but it's true--fans are bound and determined to hate everything. Look at the reactions to Gundam Unicorn already.

I thought Gundam Unicorn got a lot of positive reactions. In fact the only thing I've observed get bastardized is Full Frontal, and that's more because of his name than being "another Char".

But yeah, I agree with you otherwise, fans are determined to hate anything and everything new (looking at both SEEDs when they first came out and the latest Gundam 00). The fact G-Saviour was live action alone was enough for people to hate it, barring the low budget and the Canadian studio. Still though, you have to admit people have more than enough ground to dislike it on.

Lady Une's voice actor was really good in her part, I thought.

So did I. Her character was the only one I really liked.

[G.Squirrel]

It doesn't matter if it had a $10 budget or a $30,000,000 budget. That has nothing to do with how good the product turns out to be.

Uh, what? The budget is the largest factor in deciding on how good a product, in this case movie, will be. The budget determines how good a script writer the production will have, how good the editing will be, how good the CGI will be, how good the actors/actresses will be, etc. To simply write off the budget as a factor is just mind-boggling to me. It's like saying: If I make a live-action transforming robot movie with a budget of less than one hundred dollars then it will be on par with Transformers.


I have a question to those that have seen the movie: If you take the Gundam element out, as if you had no knowledge of what Gundam was, would it be less of a "travesty"? I would like to see how much fanboy-ism plays into the dislike of the movie.

[mcred23]

I have a question to those that have seen the movie: If you take the Gundam element out, as if you had no knowledge of what Gundam was, would it be less of a "travesty"? I would like to see how much fanboy-ism plays into the dislike of the movie.

IMO, not really. I first saw it when I knew very little about Gundam and still greatly disliked it. Taking the Gundam element out would remove only a few issues of it, but the biggest of the movies problems are still going to be present whether you've seen every Gundam series or have no clue what a mobile suit is.

[Annon Kaies Zi]

It doesn't matter if it had a $10 budget or a $30,000,000 budget. That has nothing to do with how good the product turns out to be.

Uh, what? The budget is the largest factor in deciding on how good a product, in this case movie, will be. The budget determines how good a script writer the production will have, how good the editing will be, how good the CGI will be, how good the actors/actresses will be, etc. To simply write off the budget as a factor is just mind-boggling to me. It's like saying: If I make a live-action transforming robot movie with a budget of less than one hundred dollars then it will be on par with Transformers.


I have a question to those that have seen the movie: If you take the Gundam element out, as if you had no knowledge of what Gundam was, would it be less of a "travesty"? I would like to see how much fanboy-ism plays into the dislike of the movie.

I'm sorry, as that sentence of mine was very poorly phrased. Reading the rest of my post clears it up. I don't mean that the budget of the movie doesn't affect the outcome of the movie, as that play possibly the biggest part in motion pictures. What I was trying to say is that if a movie is bad, it's bad. Just because it had a low budget, doesn't make the movie any better, or less bad. I think a lot of people say, "Oh, but it was a low budget movie, so it's not as bad as people say it is." What I'm trying to say is it doesn't matter what kind of a budget the movie had: you have to judge it for what the final outcome is. Whether the movie had a small or big budget doesn't matter when reviewing the movie. A movie doesn't get an extra two points because it had a low budget. It gets a review on the final product. That's all I was trying to say.

[Cybaster]

Starship Troopers Costumes. That is all.

[ParaParaJMo]

I suppose we have Gundam The War for Earth to fall back on =P

But the G-Saviour PS2 game wasn't too great either IMO.

[Chris]

I think that G-Saviour more than deserves all the hate it receives. It's biggest crime: the fact that it IS a B-movie. Why does it even exist? It's not like it was backed by some fly-by-night studio... this is Sunrise we're talking about. They certainly could've afforded to make it much better than they did. Clearly, what we see is that they just tossed around some money to make it a throwaway film. The actors are all pretty bland, except for Blu Mankuma and Enuka Okuma. The characters are horrible American sci-fi cliches: the regretful pilot, the bastard ex-commanding officer, the bitchy girlfriend, the evil general, etc. There could have been a decent story in there, but the writing, directing, etc just doesn't allow for it. I'm sure Bandai could've made a quality live action film if they wanted to, but it's clear they didn't want to. And now they've swept it under the rug, since it's gone out of print in Japan and America, and they went so far as to remove the American site, as if it never existed at all. It's an omission I can happily agree with.