The Knights of the Zodiac review
Director: Thomas Baginski | Script: Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken, Kiel Murray | Cast: Mackenyu (Seiya), Famke Janssen (Grad), Sean Bean (German Kido), Mark Dacascos (Mylock), Madison Iseman (Sienna), ea | Time to play: 112 minutes | Year: 2023
seeing Return to the future everyone hopes that Marty can travel back to his own time. Developments around the characters. American Beauty they are so juicy and intriguing that everyone will eagerly follow the story to see where it leads. Every good movie generates involvement. Even bad movies can do this. If that doesn’t work, then it’s a failed production. Knights of the Zodiac is a good example of that, but it didn’t have to be.
Seiya is alone in life. In particular, he has carried the loss of his sister with him since he was a child. He nowadays earns some extra money as a wrestler in a club’s wrestling circle. One night, he accidentally taps into an inner strength that makes him many times stronger. That also attracts the attention of people who want to help him and people who want to steal power from him. Seiya learns that a real battle is taking place around a young woman who is an incarnation of Pallas Athene. He feels that he must protect her in order to save the world.
That sounds epic, and it behaves there Knights of the Zodiac to. The problem, however, is that you can’t agree with that at all. It’s like watching another part of a superhero movie without knowing what happened before. As a result, everything leaves you completely cold. In a movie that revolves around saving the world, that’s not convenient.
What is that world anyway? No idea. It begins with a short and quick introduction to how there was once a battle between the gods. But then everyone seems to live in today’s society as we all know it. And yet, apparently a spaceship-like vehicle can fly without attracting attention. Or yes, but shocked passers-by and hysterical news are not visible. Outside of fight club, there are some extras that can be seen anyway.
Everything is not clear. The movie is based on a Japanese manga and prior knowledge seems to be a requirement. For others, it’s a chaotic mess. It is not clear why the creators decided to fall in the middle. Especially if it later turns out that this should be the first part of a series. The story lends itself well to a quiet start.
The story begins towards the end of a long battle between two people that Seiya gets involved in. He meets Sienna, who knows that her fate is for her consciousness to finally disappear and Athena to take over. Her and Seiya’s power is called ‘cosmos’, but the use of this word in the context of the movie is laughable.
On top of all this, it’s also poorly written. Sienna carries Seiya on the back of the bike because she wants to show him something that explains something. She drives to a port, stops the engine, and walks to a dock. As soon as Seiya stops her, she begins to tell a story. So it’s about what she wants to say, not the location. So why does she take him to the port and walk to that pier? Because she likes to keep her monologue in a picturesque location (where again there is no one in sight)?
The acting isn’t much better. You can still detect a slight enthusiasm in Sean Bean, Famke Janssen relies on his natural RBF as she delivers his lines, and lead Mackenyu has the charisma of a lunchbox. Only Mark Dacascos (double dragon) seems to understand that he’s on the set of a B-movie – after all, he was cast, that says it all – and that you just have to have fun there. However, the creators abandon it in the middle of a battle scene switching to a long conversation between Bean and Janssen in another part of the same house.
Knights of the Zodiac offers a lot, because the very existence of the earth is at stake. It doesn’t really matter, because a decent bridge has never been built between the film and the viewer. It is as if you are observing what is happening in the distance on the other side of a great abyss; it’s visibly exciting and for a reason, but you’re not involved. Perhaps the filmmakers think it’s written in the zodiac that this movie will be a hit, but it really takes more than that.