YMMV / Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)

• Complete Monster:
  • Original 2017 film:
    • Shou Tucker, the Sewing-Life Alchemist, is revealed to have fused his own wife with a dog to turn her into a chimera, a twisted parody of life that suffers in perpetual pain. Later performing the same treatment with his own daughter, Tucker defends his actions by claiming it is completely natural to perform unethical experiments solely on the basis of being able to. Being beaten and imprisoned by Edward Elric, Tucker later joins a military coup where he helps to create countless Mannequin Soldiers to unleash upon the civilian populace solely to spite Ed, without a single care for the lives that will be lost.
    • Major General Hakuro is a ruthless military officer seeking a military coup. Manipulating conflict, death and murder across Amestris, Hakuro recruits Tucker and reveals the truth of the Philosopher's Stones as the amalgam of fused human souls and lives, flashbacks showing that Hakuro had thousands of prisoners and innocents painfully melted down to create thousands and thousands of stones. Upon confronting Edward, Hakuro plans to unleash the cannibalistic Mannequin Soldiers on Amestris to kill until Hakuro can seize control of the country, driven by nothing but a hunger for power.
  • The Last Transmutation: Father is the true villain working from behind the scenes. Brought to life with Van Hohenheim's blood centuries years ago in Xerxes, Father tricked the greedy king into performing a ritual granting himself and Hohenheim all the souls in the nation. Intent on attaining godhood, Father removes all his vices to become his Homunculi "children", plotting for centuries to devour all the souls in his newfound country of Amestris to empower himself. Sponsoring a coup through his daughter Lust, Father allows General Hakuro to sow chaos before having him disposed of. Enacting his ritual, Father consumes God at the cost of all the lives in Amestris, and when Hohenheim manages to revive them, aims to kill and consume all he can to contain the power of God.
• Continuity Lockout: As noted by many critics, this is a major problem of the film, due to it mainly consisting of major events from the source material that will only make sense or be in anyway meaningful if you've seen or care about the original.
• Franchise Original Sin: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood rearranged a few of the first arcs and streamlined them, likely to avoid retreading ground covered by the 2003 series too much, which some fans didn't care for, but others felt that it worked as a jumping-on point for newer fans of the property, and that seeing the events of the first arcs in a different order and context was interesting for older fans. The live-action films' attempt to fit several arcs into a two-hour timeframe, however, became one of the biggest sticking points against them, with it resulting in numerous important character moments in the source material being skipped, the choice of arcs rearranged seeming random (with the first movie featuring an adaptation of the Mannequin Soldiers, who don't appear until the tail-end of the manga), and unlike Brotherhood, seems to rely on viewers being familiar with prior adaptations, resulting in the film being confusing to newcomers.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ryosuka Yamada, Edward's actor, previously portrayed Nagisa Shiota in the live-action Assassination Classroom movie, which was criticized for subjecting Nagisa to an Adaptation Dye-Job that made him look unrecognizable. Here, Yamada actually wears a wig that resembles the character he's playing, but this time, one of the criticisms for it is that his wig looks like it could be used for cosplay.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Detractors of this film often point out that it's basically a live action mash-up of various arcs and moments from the manga done much less competently with no real originality or vision. Said elements include the Mannequin Soldiers and Gluttony's gate power, which are treated with much less menace and seem to be just thrown in there to grab fans' attention.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Original 2017 film: Lust is the acting leader of the Homunculi trio seen. Having Envy take the place of a priest they had been manipulating to rile up his followers, Lust also works to ensure no humans catch wind of their plans, killing a doctor and ordering a pursuer murdered to frame Roy Mustang for this purpose. Professing her disgust at her two human collaborators, Lust also shows her positive qualities in combat with the heroes, stating her care for her creator and protecting the injured Envy from Mustang.
  • The Revenge of Scar & The Last Transmutation:
    • Lin(g) Yao, 12th Prince of the Xingese Empire, is far more ruthless but no less charming than his original incarnation. Meeting the Elric brothers on a train being hijacked, Lin prevents them from saving the passengers, even having his bodyguard throw grenades at them, in the hopes to force them to teach him the secrets of immortality. Planning a coup to take power from his father, Lin allows himself to become a vessel for the Homunculus Greed and persuades Greed to help him, stopping the plans of the Homunculi leader and returning to Xing with a Philosopher's Stone.
    • The Ishvalan known as "Scar" is a brutal but Sympathetic Murderer. Hating the State Alchemists for their genocide of his people, Scar outwits and kills several of them before facing down with Ed. During the second film's climax, Scar nearly tricks and escapes from the Elrics before being caught. Coming to understand the heroes, Scar joins them and uses his brother's research notes to aid in stopping the Homunculi, personally killing Wrath and ending the series ready to help build a new Amestris.
• Mis-blamed: Unlike Death Note (2017), Netflix only licensed the movie in the US, UK, and Sweden, and had no involvement in its production, which was done entirely in Japan.
• Narm:
  • The way Al loses his body in the movie is hilariously over the top. Rather then disappearing in a flash of lightning, the transmutation creates a tornado that tears up the house; Al is then seen riding on a (somehow still flat) piece of debris for several seconds as he calls out to Ed.
  • Maes Hughes' death is another powerful moment in the manga turned unintentionally hilarious. Pursued by the homunculi, the picture of his wife drops out of his pocket, which Envy sees. In the manga, Envy turns into Hughes' wife to catch him off guard and shoot him. When this plays out in the film, the picture dropping to the floor is followed by Envy turning into Roy Mustang. To someone familiar with the original scene, the oddity of this change can come across as a borderline-parody of the source material. Granted, the manga version of the scene is played later as a flashback, but at that point the damage has been done.
  • Gluttony's first on-screen transformation, with rather cheap "fang" props that wiggle.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The manga version of what Ed and Al brought back in place of their mother was bad enough, but the film version is terrifying. There's also something incredibly unsettling about the dummies General Hakuro has made as they come to life, particularly how their jaws stretch open far wider than physically possible, and the way they get up after crashing to the ground in impossible contortions.
  • The Nina Tucker chimera scene is still as unsettling as ever in live-action. The CGI for the chimera actually makes it even more creepy looking, especially when in a room with two human actors.
• Special Effects Failure: This was an ambitious candidate for live-action:
  • Ryosuke Yamada actually dyed his natural hair (and added a braid extension) to mimic Ed's, but viewers often mistake it for a wig.
  • Gluttony's practical effects look pretty good, until he starts moving and it becomes obvious that the he's wearing a hollow fat suit. The CGI of his full-body mouth is also poor for a feature film in 2017.
  • The CGI shot of the first immortal solder's eye and mouth appearing looks like it stepped right out of an early Pixar movie. The forming mouth in particular looks like a 2D image wrapped around a 3D space rather than an actual object/substance with dimension.
  • The rain effects are done with CGI, which has the incredibly jarring effect of having the rain appear like it doesn't quite occupy the same plane of existence as the rest of the environment. Even more jarring is the fact that while Al looks somewhat realistically wet, because he is created with CGI and therefore it is possible to animate the raindrops on his armor, every other character, which are live actors, doesn't have any visible water rolling off of them (in fact, the only visible indication that they are supposed to stand outside in rain is from the fact that their clothes and hair has been ever so slightly moistened), resulting in Al also looking conspicuously out of place.
• Superlative Dubbing: The Latin American Spanish dub deserves a special mention here: Unlike the Venezuelan dubs of both animated adaptations, when the final result is extremely divisive even to this date, especially regarding with the dub of Brotherhood, the film was dubbed in Mexico with much better results, to the grade many fans are asking Netflix to redub the animated adaptions with the Mexican cast of the film.
• Unexpected Character: The Mannequin Soldiers, who are from very late in the manga, show up in this film, which predominantly adapts the first few storylines.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Al looks convincing as CG armor for the most part, and perfectly matches his design from the manga. The CG 'Truth' is also impressive. As is the Nina-Alexander Chimera, which is every bit as disturbing as its previous incarnations, if not moreso.