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Yu-Gi-Oh! - The Movie Actors: Dan Green (III), Eric Stuart (III), Amy Birnbaum Director: Hatsuki Tsuji Number of Items: 1 Format: Animated, Color, Closed-captioned, Surround Sound, Full Screen Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Running Time: 90 minutes Studio: Warner Home Video Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-06-07 Buy from Amazon |
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From Amazon.com In their first theatrical feature, Yugi and his friends face their greatest challenge when their arch-rival Seto Kaiba obtains powerful cards from the now retired Maximillion Pegasus. More is at stake this time than a monster card championship, or even the rescue of Yugi's amateur-Egyptologist grandfather. Kaiba's challenge coincides with the discovery of the tomb of Anubis by a team of Egyptologists. The jackal-headed god is portrayed as an evil sorcerer whom the Pharaoh defeated 5,000 years ago. The resurrected wizard uses Kaiba as a pawn in his plan to destroy the world, with everything hinging on the card game between Yugi and Kaiba. The threat of world destruction is more than the premise of the series can sustain: Yugi may be a good sport, a loyal friend, and a champion player, but he's an unlikely candidate for saving the world. Neither Kaiba nor Yugi/Pharoah can play a card without screaming about the monster's power, and anyone not familiar with the game will be hopelessly lost. (MPAA rated PG: "scary combat and monster images") --Charles Solomon |
 "DIE!!!!!!"This movie made me wanna take the next plain to New York to punch every single stud at 4kidsentertainment!!!! Whoever made this movie should get shot!!!! Note: I'm not under 13.  "It was okay..."...but it's still 4Kids, and they make a mockery of Kazuki Takahashi's masterpiece every week, every episode, so... Actually, even though I don't like what 4Kids does with the anime, I still watched the movie with an open mind, so I found it quite enjoyable. The animation wasn't as crappy as it could have been, the ranting duelists weren't as bad as they were in Battle City, and Kaiba's voice-actor displays definite improvement. For those of you who don't know Jack 'bout Yu-Gi-Oh, don't start here. Walk into a bookstore, go to the manga graphic novel section, and pick up the Yu-Gi-Oh manga. As I write this, there are fifteen volumes available: Yu-Gi-Oh Vol. 1-7 which form the "Dark Beginnings" of the series and which are 90% Not There in the anime series we get in the States; Yu-Gi-Oh: Duelist Vol. 1-7 which form the bulk of Season One of said anime, in all its uncut glory; and Yu-Gi-Oh: Millennium World Vol. 1, which is a jump all the way up to the Final Season--I recommend you save that one for later. Just stand in the bookstore and flip through the pages, and if you feel even slightly interested in what you find, buy Vol. 1 of the first series, and if you like that, get Vol. 2, and so forth. If you don't like those, you'll hate this movie, period at the end. Myself, being a fan of not only the manga but the card game as well, found it quite enjoyable, but to follow the duels you have to know the rules... hence the need for familiarity with the series behind the movie. I won't waste time or space blabbing out the plot. I'll just give my verdict. It was closer to the original story of the series than most 4Kids rubbish, but only in the fact that the duel was a Shadow Game that leeched the very life from the players as they lost their points. (The manga games are generally dangerous and many of the early games did not involve the card game at all. In fact, throughout the first seven volumes, the cards only appear in one two-part story nine issues into the series and one two-volume story arc in which four issues are occupied by card dueling and most of the rest by various death-games.) The rest remains true to the English dub only, and the discrepency between the movie and Takahashi's original story become evident at the very beginning, where the completion of the Puzzle is re-written to exclude Ushio (see Vol. 1, issue 1) and include a pack of Duel Monsters card-monsters bursting from the Puzzle to devour Yugi. (Yami Yugi, the Pharoah's spirit contained in the Millennium Puzzle, promptly possesses Yugi and firmly orders the beasts to back off.) The villain, Anubis, was a paper cut-out. If I were to write this movie into a novelization, I could write Anubis out to be the terrifying, deep baddie he should have been, but in the movie, he's a Joke in a Cape. He has a very vague, shallow history, and there isn't much interesting to tell. As for the animation... it's somewhat better in the movie than many of the episodes (surprise, surprise--to be expected, actually), but not up to any real movie standards. The voice actors? Well, Kaiba's improved (as I said), and Pegasus is once again alive in living color... but other than that... well, the English dub is NOT famous for it's voice acting, right? Average at best. The duels? Well, from one who knows how to follow them, they're pretty good. Granted, if ol' Peggy had summoned Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon and Toon Summoned Skull BEFORE attacking Kaiba, he'd have won, and Kaiba could simply have used the effect of Pegasus's Ultimate Offering card (which works on both players) to bring out his Y-Dragon Head and Z-Metal Tank instead of doing that flashy Return from the Different Dimension combo, but I suppose that plot point had to be set up somehow (Return from the Different Dimension is an important card later on). But overall, good duels, good duels. The pacing was better, less ranting, and the cards aren't those idiotic blown-up parodies 4Kids uses in the television series--they're the real cards on display, just like in the Japanese version of the show. And the life-point counters were the same ones used in the Japanese version, too, a nice touch. There are quite a few little things an uncut fan like myself can appreciate. My advice: if you're not a Yu-Gi-Oh fan, or else a parent with kids to distract, pretend this movie doesn't exist. If you think Yu-Gi-Oh is just some stupid kiddie show already, read the first seven volumes of the manga, and if that don't disillusion you, nothing on Earth will. And now, I bid you all, faithful movieviewers, a fond farewell... "It's Brain Candy =) But Sometimes Candy is Good."I didn't go to see this in the theatre; I waited and got it as a DVD. I wasn't expecting great drama, and I didn't get it. What I DID get was a pleasant couple of hours' or so diversion, which is about what I expected. Yes, you can't deny the commercial tie-ins. Seems like the American market loves to go for that. But the characterizations were more or less correct, I don't mind the American voices (where I live it's very hard to get the Japanese versions for ANYthing) and the art wasn't quite as bad as it easily could've been. (Besides, it was a chance to see more of one of the classier anti-heros in the world, Maximilian Pegasus aka Pegasus J. Crawford. Darren Dunstan does a good job with his voice, and he really impressed me on the 'Music to Duel By' album by singing in key IN CHARACTER. That's not as easy as it sounds). I like to think of the movie as sort of a 'parallel universe' version of the original series. It has a certain similarity to the American TV dub (and thereby to the 'Yu-Gi-Oh' series in general), but it goes in an entirely different direction. I would DEFINITELY recommend that anyone really interested in Yu-Gi-Oh look into the manga if you want to get to know the full richness of the series. To me that's the 'purest' form since it was pretty much straight from the mind and hands of the characters' creator. I give the movie 3 stars because it's brain candy. Take the phone off the hook and put your higher processing centers on hold for a while. There's nothing here you're going to have to really think deeply about, but there are a heck of a lot worse ways to spend an afternoon. I don't think I'll make a lifetime out of watching it, but it's going into my stack of 'will watch again'. "WHY!!!!"this movie should be burried into the depths of HELL!!! Never to be found again. Or you could just recycle the damn thing. either way you should get rid of it. "dome movie dont rent or buy this movie "this is the worst movie ever made keep 20 yards away from it im a girl boys your going to sex me up and my boobs |
