Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is a movie of the category “glorified episode”, and it’s an excellent example of how to do such a movie right. It’s got a strong villain, interesting story, a varied scenario, gorgeous animation, makes good use of its airtime and pretty much delivers on all that it attempts. It doesn’t really add anything to the Cowboy Bebop Universe, but it’s still an excellent watch.
The movie has great action, not to mention that all of the action scenes are completely different from each other. The creators had more than enough experience for this movie, and this this leads to a number of amazing action scenes that actually are animated even better than the TV-series was. Like the TV-series, this movie is fun one moment, and incredibly tense the next.
The main villain is completely new, but the movie does a good job of making him into a threat. Careful attention has been put into his background and motivation, and yet these are delivered with as little words as possible. The subtlety of the TV-series also returns with some really good results in this movie, and the acting is wonderful again as well.
Now, I would not label this movie amongst the best episodes of the TV-series, though. Those episodes were masterful in telling a short story in a very short amount of time (just one or two episodes), while this movie does feel a bit too long compared to them. Obviously this is comparing it against a very high standards. Again: it may not add anything to the main characters, it’s still a very fun movie to watch.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 – Subtle, yet very well told. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Good villain, great acting. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Gorgeous action scenes and life-like animation. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – Not the most interesting backstory of the TV-series, but still quite interesting and detailed. |
Suggestions:
– Trigun – Badlands Rumble
– Mobile Police Patlabor Movie 1
– xxxHolic Movie (Warning: the review I wrote about this one is terrible)
Glad you liked this one. I share your sentiment that it really is just a glorified episode with a boost in animation and budget. Nevertheless, I still cherish this movie, as it gave me more of the antics of the Bebop crew to savour after I finished the tv series, and that is more than enough for me. I’m not bothered at all that it didn’t add anything new to the Bebop universe. I thought that the tv series had wrapped up the major plot points really well already, that I certainly wouldn’t like the movie as much if it ruined that perfect ending just because it wanted to continue the story.
The janitor scene gets me every time…
You forgot to mention how delectable the music was in Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.
wait when it says warning, does it mean that the movie was terrible or your written review?
some loser: the written review. The movie was actually very good.
Thing that bugs me about this movie is when the bad guy cut Fayes shirt open, yet it magically stays in place the whole time. Talk about a tease… they might as well have not even bothered with it at all!