Mortal Kombat meets Power Rangers in the undercooked and over-the-top Knights of the Zodiac, a live-action adaptation of the Japanese anime series, Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya, and the manga Saint Seiya by Masami Kurumada. Kurumada has always wanted to adapt his manga while he worked on it, and you can see why in the opening narration.
Knights of the Zodiac benefits from the work of martial arts choreographer Andy Cheng and director Bagiński's commitment to the action. The fight scenes are visible, with a sound design befitting the over-the-top, gravity-defying moves. The camera work is deliberate and puts us right into the fights. In some instances, the action is pretty seamless and engaging.
Knights of the Zodiac is also very faithful to the anime, to a fault. Still, anime lovers will enjoy the melodramatic dialogue and characters, the clear stylistic division between the good and bad, and the obvious narrative choices. There is a great sense of reverence to the source material as the film is wholly dependent on it and the fandom that comes with it. The cast, however, is less committed to the shtick than the creative team behind the camera.
Overall, Knights of the Zodiac is predictably bland on paper, but it's quite the feat visually. With so much anime live-action adaptations flopping, this is a rare case of an adaptation faithfully and earnestly adapting the source material and still flopping at the box office. The film flounders when it can't make the intermediate scenes enjoyable with witty dialogue or interesting character development.
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