‘Berserk: Egg of the King’ review
By Adam Tatelman, Staff Writer
1/5
Berserk began its life as a medieval fantasy manga penned by Kentaro Miura. Through its 20-year history, its stories have been adapted into an anime series, two video games, and, most recently, a feature film by Studio 4°C. Berserk: Egg of the King was my introduction to the franchise. Sadly, I couldn’t have picked a worse jumping-on point if I tried.
I can hear your cries of disbelief. Berserk: Egg of the King has war and fantasy, which I like. But ithas little else beyond that. It suffers from setup syndrome since it’s the first film of a trilogy. It spends a lot of time introducing characters who become relevant only much later on. Even the climax of the movie is used to introduce a new character. As such, it feels like the story happens almost at random.
There is a plot, of course. After sustaining mortal injuries, mercenary Guts is forced into the service of Griffith, a charismatic warlord. As Guts helps Griffith’s mercenary group the Band of the Hawk achieve major victories, Griffith angles to get political power within the kingdom he serves even as his mercenaries help that kingdom expand. There is some ominous stuff about Guts being pursued by demons, but there’s not much payoff since, once again, this is only the first chapter.
The most memorable moment of Berserk: Egg of the King comes right at the beginning when a placid view of a blue sky is marred by catapult fire, showing an ancient battlefield from the perspective of the dead. It’s a strong opening for Guts that is darkly poetic: he’s a dead man walking without friends or family. For a moment I was drawn in, but the following sloppily animated siege sequence with its badly textured 3D animation failed entirely to advance my interest.
Don’t get me wrong—Berserk: Egg of the King’s traditional 2D animation is beautiful, fluid, and detailed. But whenever the action happens, the film uses inexplicably bad 3D. It’s not ReBoot levels of awful, but it looks like someone wrapped simple 2D textures around stilted 3D models. I was reminded of an early cel shaded Nintendo Wiititle.
An even bigger problem with Berserk: Egg of the King is its pacing. The runtime is only 70 minutes, but the film feels longer than The Dark Knight trilogy. The unconvincing action climax comes about 20 minutes before the end credits, leaving a bunch of plodding setup that should have been relegated to the opening of the inevitable second film. There is some blunt foreshadowing for Griffith’s obvious future betrayal, but it fails as an emotional climax because his character arc is revealed from the moment he first appears. As a result, the film doesn’t end so much as it runs out of gas. Between the bad pacing, poor CGI effects, overblown battle scenes and unsatisfying ending, I felt like I was watching a freakish hybrid of the Hobbit trilogy and Evangelion 1.0.
Fans will probably say I disliked the movie because I’m not invested in Berserk. They’ll say the series is better. They’ll insist that the manga will blow me away. But it doesn’t matter if the source material is better, because this was Studio 4°C’s chance to get me invested in Guts’ journey, and they failed.
