I saw this one pop up at my local theater for an early Thursday showing so I went in blind… only to be kind of baffled. It was only during the closing credits that I realized it was based on a manga I’ve never read. So if you are a fan of that property, maybe ignore this review?

<start hand waving>The flick is about how the goddess Athena was reborn… and how a cage fightin’ teen is chosen to protect her. He’s got “cosmo”… which means he has them there super powers and can summon cool toy-ready armor. But there are nebulously defined bad guys aligning against him.</end hand waving>

It’s not that the plot is complicated, it’s that it’s exposition is so slapdash with vaguely defined motivations, good guys, and bad guys. It feels like maybe it’s a sequel to something I had never seen… and that last time I had that feeling, it was while watching the Milla Jovovich vehicle Ultraviolet. This is at least better than that turkeyburger… but it still left me feeling untethered.

But, like I said above, it’s really because its based on a manga and I suspect they seriously condensed the material to fit an average length movie. Much in the same way The Last Airbender contracted a whole season of the show to absolutely nobody’s satisfaction.

The only thing good about it are some neat individual shots during the fight scenes that looked anime inspired. The fights themselves range from pretty decent to “are we still doing this?” <looks at watch>.

I didn’t recognize the younger cast but the film features Sean Bean (who surely survives to the end of the movie) and Famke Jansen (who surely thought “this can’t be sillier than those X-Men movies”). Nick Stahl and Mark Decascos are lurking about too. None of them add much to the movie… how could they with such simplistic dialog, little character, no wit, and no sense of humor?

This is a pretty bad film that I suspect will be bad for fans of the source material too. But I could be wrong. Maybe it’s a perfectly cromulent live action adaptation of that manga/anime. For the rest of us? May I suggest any random episode of the Power Rangers?

Score: 62