The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

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The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

Over the past few weeks I have seen some interesting debates about the quality of the Zeta Gundam and Double Zeta Gundam TV series on this site and this has prompted me to complete the what I would like to call the Zeta triangle with a thread about the Zeta Gundam Movie trilogy.

Simply put, what is your opinion about the Zeta Gundam Movie trilogy and if you can, how would you compare it to its original TV counterpart? To be honest I have never seen the movies besides some clips, though I have read the synopsis on this site and the general impression I get is that it's okay but really suffers from some editing and pacing issues specifically in the second movie. In the the past I have mainly heard from hardcore fans of the Zeta TV that the movies do a great injustice to the TV series, however I would like to like to hear from you all your opinions on the Movies whether or not you're a fan of the TV series.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

It's good for showing what happened to someone who doesn't want to sit through 50 episodes,but things just happen way to fast, and the finer details and character development suffers for the sake of packing everything together into such a small amount of time. The thing with Zeta, is that there really is'nt much in the way of throwaway pieces, everything is quite important all in all.The new animation mixed with old is'nt too bad but clearly noticeable.I originally watched the movies before the series and was pretty impressed initially, it was'nt till i watched the full series that my jaw was dropping.
Last edited by Ouroboric on Tue Oct 18, 2011 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I love the Zeta movies and would take them over the TV series any day. Since I felt the TV series dragged on to long with pointless episodes, the condensed movie makes for much easier watching. The new fight scenes are well done and very exciting compared to some of the boring ones in the TV series. I found the cast in the movie to be far less irritating and I love the scene where they eat cake together that shows that they actually can get along.

I think the changes made served to heighten my enjoyment and it didn't suck the life out of me with its grimdarkness like the TV series did.

So definitely give them a watch. There's really no reason to avoid them.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I would say that if extreme "grimdarkness" does suck the life out of you, and you want a bit more flashyness and accessibility, then the movies are definitely the way to go. Tomino is a happier man now, and the revised movies definitely show us that. It's probably a good thing that the two movies can help the series be approached at two different angles.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

Well, the movies are relatively less grim dark anyways. All of the major character deaths still happen, but the ending is definitely a lot more optimistic.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I am of the opinion that they should have reanimated every scene of the movies as opposed to doing so for certain, rather inconsequential ones.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

It didn't cut enough of Four's screentime, in my opinion.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I thought the trilogy could use more Four, in fact i wish the series even had a bit more Four, but her character really stimulates the sociologist/psychologist in me, looking at how memory and experience defines personality and a stable sense of "self". And yeah it was a bit of a cop out just adding a bit of new animation rather than actually re-drawing the whole thing.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I like Four well enough but it would have been nice if her and Camille's relationship was more than "Hi, nice to meet you, WE'RE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER!"

Talk about being strangled by the red string.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

That's one thing i think we can agree on DG, Four's purpose was effective, but her relationship with Camille would of been better if they had a few more meetings before she helped him get to space. Not to say she needed to exist from the beginning or anything, because the "instant connection" is a huge part of the Newtype thing, and carrying on ideas from MSG, but i think the actual relationship itself could of been developed better with just a bit more screen time.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

Destiny_Gundam wrote:I like Four well enough but it would have been nice if her and Camille's relationship was more than "Hi, nice to meet you, WE'RE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER!"

Talk about being strangled by the red string.
That's actually what bothers me the most about - to change the subject slightly - Amuro and Lalah. I'm going by the movies here because I never saw the full series, but they meet exactly once, for all of two minutes, before Solomon, and yet he acts like Char made him kill his own mother or something.
Seven years later he's still talking about it, though apparently he's over it. Then seven years after that he's got a bug up his arse about it again.

I mean, at least Kamille and Four met several times and there was actually meaningful interaction between the two, even if it was brief. Amuro and Lalah? zilch.
(The parallel between the two is fractionally less obvious in the movies, which kill off Four at the end of the Hong Kong arc, than in the series, where she returns during the Kilimanjaro arc only to die when *drumroll* the Psyco Gundam gets stabbed in the head when she takes an attack from Jerid aimed at Kamille.)

Either way though, the entire thing is a little farfetched and it always has been - almost. Some later examples have pulled it off better. But yeah, that's always been one of those little details that really stretch suspension of disbelief a little more than they should.

My main problem with the movies besides cutting that out was that the new footage is so different from the original stuff, which makes it extremely jarring when the film transitions between old and new, and IMO severely detracts from the overall enjoyment of the film
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

To their credit before the movies even came out the creators were saying how the transitions are extremely obvious and looked bad. But that really couldn't be helped. There was such a gap between when the TV series came out and when the movies did and so much had advanced since then. It's not like the First Gundam movies which came out in the same time period so the new animation matches the old.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

With the Lalah/Amuro /Camille/Four thing.I think the main point is that were an oldtype may take a long period of time to really connect and understand people, newtypes can understand each other in almost an instant.Just like we can see in ZZ with Haman and Judau, they can literally invade each others mind. In a time of extreme warfare, were the situation divides people so much, the Newtype powers were meant to be used a positive thing, that humans developed as an adaptation to being divided so far from each other in space, and the constant conflict of the Universal Century. When people's souls stop being "weighed down by gravity" they can learn to understand each other even in an instant, and a more productive and peaceful world could result from it. The kind of horrors like that incident, that keep repeating, helped Char realize that the earth would not change, and was essentially just going around in cycles without making any real progress.With the main storyline of uc 0079-0093 i think it's important to look at how the events shape the whole thing, and how things develop over time.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

The entire 'Newtype soulmate' concept is a narrative crutch. Instead of taking the time to develop a meaningful bond between two people, Tomino shouts "SPACE MAGIC!" and two people fall in love so one of them can inevitably wallow once the other bites it. It all feels like another grab at showing the tragedies of war, but it belabors the point when Tomino already peppers his series with more heartfelt, genuine moments like Ramba Ral's passing, the woman who found her husband's home was nothing more than a bomb crater, the Zeon pilot who cried out to his mother as he died, etc.

Had I seen the movies in the theater, I would have started clapping at Ben Wooder's headshot. Four had entirely too much screen time and too little character to justify that screen time. Rosamia's mind frag was a much more potent display of the ills of the Cyber Newtype, and she didn't come with a side of godawful romantic sub-plot.

All in all, I liked the movies more than the series, but a lot of that is based on how little I care for the show. With the trilogy, I only have to suffer through the worst aspects of the cast for a limited amount of time before I'm treated to another round of eyegasmic new animation. There are obviously cons to this format, as there is less time to dwell on everyone and their character arcs, but with a cast that grating, it's a mixed blessing. In essence, the Zeta trilogy epitomizes the ultimate silver lining of Gundam: Even if everything else in the show is awful, at least the robot action is cool.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

Lalah and Amuro were'nt in Romantic love though, they just had a deep connection. Same with Rosamia and Camille. Calling it a "narrative crutch" for a romance is a way to look at it i guess, but it seemed to really play into the big picture of things when looking at Newtypes and there place in the story. I do agree it would be MORE effective as a whole if they could of developed it longer and fleshed out the "soon to be dead newtype girl" more. But these are often teenagers,who get infatuated easily,and with the possibility of death at any moment, people tend to speed up things when it comes to relationships, and place more value on others then they would normally.So i dunno, it definitely is'nt "normal", but i never had an issue with the concept of the Newtype instant connection thing.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I don't think it's merely a "deep connection" -- it's pretty well implied that Amuro & Lalah are "soul mates", hence her "Why did I only meet you now?" And that's the sort of "complete understanding" that Newtypeness is supposed to promote, the good side of the sort of "newtype understanding" which leads Char to realize he can't work with Haman and Amuro that Char needs to be defeated (in CCA), which is the "darker" side of "complete newtype understanding".

So, yes, I side with the people who find the Amuro/Lalah romance to be extremely forced and the Newtype-generated aspect of it to be a massive narrative crutch.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

Being soulmates doesn't necessarily mean romantic/sexual love though, that is'nt necessarily the ultimate form of connection, many would argue that it is actually a lesser from compared to other kinds of deep understandings.I never found their relationship to be all that romantic, Char actually kissed her, and she choose to be with Char. But because Amuro was a stronger newtype they had a stronger connection of that sort, regardless of the fact that she had met Char and developed that romantic relationship with him before meeting Amuro.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I remember being surprised that Tomno had gone back to Zeta Gundam. It seemed like ha had done well enough the first time, and why change a hit just for the sake of changing it? (Meaningful sideways look at my Star Wars DVDs here.) But then, Tomino had submitted a Gundam Evolution sequence which altered a significant scene in Char's Counterattack. I really liked that one, since it would have taken a lot of the sting out of the film, which was also a bit of a surprise, since I has apparently mellowed some as a Gundam fan in recent years. (Used to be a really bloodthirsty anime fan in general, of Gundam in particular.) So, sure, I'd take the Zeta movies in stride.

I really did like the new animation scenes, which were basically Zeta + 20 years in anime tech. They looked great, usually added something to their scene, and generally showed how good the original was. Some of the more subtle changes were interesting, like the holograph pseudo-scenery in the Argama mess hall. The original animation did look, well, older in comparison, but it had been restored to a fine level, which pleased me a lot. The movies did keep all the essential story elements; I don't remember asking why such-and-such a scene had not been included. I would have liked some more of the Moon-related story to be included in the second movie, but I could deal with that. I missed Four at Kilimanjaro, but the revised end of the launch scene with Camille & her was also a good scene. Even as revision I couldn't bring myself to dislike it. :) As for the much ballyhooed revision concerning Camille at the end of Movie 3, well, like I said, I'm not into the blood and tears aspect of stories so much these days. He didn't change Emma and Yazan's fates though, so the old bastard didn't leave it all sunshine and lollipops at the end! :lol:

Afterward, the most intriguing part of the ending was Haman Karn's scene where she packed off Minerva to school in Europe, and pulled the Axis Fleet to Side 3. Giving AEUG some space and disowning the Titans like that cancelled out her bad decisions in Zeta and ZZ that helped contribute to her bad strategic position, despite having many advantages. It didn't consign ZZ to oblivion, but it suggested that the ZZ story would have a different focus. That was the biggest change for me, in the end.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

So i re-watched the last two movies last night, and i think they are a bit worse than i gave them credit for. They really take out too much development, making things like Reccoca's betrayal seem unnatural. And one thing that bothered me, that i think was in the TV series as well, after Heinken dies, Camille is talking to Emma, and ends up opening his visor in space, while talking to her,afterwards saying that he "lost consciousness" for a sec,but his eyes were open and he was still talking.My reaction was the same as Emma's with "what the hell are you doing?",i can rationalize quite a few reasons,but it really takes to much speculation, even for me.And i really don't need to see Jerid in 4+ mobile suits within the same hour and a half.The pacing in the movies is way too fast moving for things to have the desired effect.The battles were still awesome , but not all that different from the series save a more detailed and well drawn scene of dodging hear and there.
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Re: The Zeta Gundam Movie Trilogy: Good, Bad, or Just Okay

I liked the series better.

Firstly, the pacing in the first movie was way too fast and abrupt.

Also, I didn't really like the changes to the dialogue. Sure, it was MUCH easier to understand, but it lost a lot of the feel from the original. A lot of stuff that was more subtle in the series was just said outright in the movie version, making it feel dumbed down.

The new animation was fun, but it didn't really add anything to the series other than "Whoa! Sexy!"

The ending was also more fun in the original. The movie ending takes away from Kamille's true ending in ZZ, which was a lot more heartfelt because of all he'd been through.

Lastly, Saegusa's voice actor is one of my favourites, and for him to get such a big speaking role in the new ending was a treat for me. Although having watched ZZ, I couldn't help thinking...
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