Trailer Park: Attack on Titan's Teaser Trailer

In which I discuss the latest movie trailers.

Attack on Titan is probably the most intensely loved anime to come out in recent years.  It's a cross-continental hit that opened many naysayers' eyes to the dramatic possibility of "cartoons."  It should come as no surprise that a film adaptation of the series was quickly greenlit in the wake of its success, and we now have our first look into what that movie's going to look like.

I know that 33 seconds isn't all that much to go off of, but it went from an overseas curiosity to a must-see movie for me in that span of time, so clearly they're doing something right.  It seems to keep strong fidelity with the series, with virtually everything that we see taking place in the series' first episode.  That fidelity with the series suggests that the movie will attempt to cover all twenty-five episodes in its run-time: something that obviously didn't work out for The Last Airbender.

I sincerely hope that the movie opts to end with the events of "Primal Desire: The Struggle of Trost Part 9."  It's not too much content for one movie, provides a strong climax to cap it off with and covers the first half of the first season.  The second half should provide enough content for its own movie, ensuring that it avoids The Last Airbender's issue of glossing over important plot and character development that helped make the television series so beloved in the first place.

The only other option - cramming 12 1/2 hours of footage into about 90 minutes - mean that cuts need to be made unilaterally across the script.  If that's the case, expect to go straight from the events of episode 1 to episode 5 with maybe a training montage in between, then allocate about 30 minutes to the battle of Trost (9 episodes), 30 minutes to the first appearance of the Female Titan and the aftermath of her attack (6 episodes) and maybe as much as another 30 minutes devoted to the climactic showdown against the Female Titan.  If this is the direction that they choose to take, expect to see the fallout from the Wall Maria's fall, most of the Scouting Regiment's training, the military's distrust of Erin and Mikasa's back story cut down to virtually nothing.

Hopefully that won't be the case, however.  It would remove way too many details from the story and hopelessly rush it through its story.  There's no word on when it will see stateside release, but it's scheduled for a summer 2015 release in Japan.  We might see some version of it by the end of the year, but we'll most likely have to wait until 2016 to get our Attack on Titan fix taken care of.

So how do you think that the new Attack on Titan movie will handle its story?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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