Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)

The 2017 live-action adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist arrives with the solemn duty of compressing twenty-seven volumes of manga into a single sitting, and it does so with the grim efficiency of a state alchemist filing paperwork. Fumihiko Sori directs with evident reverence for Hiromu Arakawa's source material. Two brothers, a forbidden transmutation, a dead mother, a quest for a stone that costs human lives. The machinery of shounen adventure turns over reliably enough, and the CG armor of Alphonse clanks through the proceedings with a certain charm.

The survey of progressive content is brief. The cast is uniformly Japanese, a decision the director defended by saying the film represents no specific race or country, which is a stance about aesthetics, not a thesis about equity. Winry Rockbell wields a wrench and little else. The automail prosthetics are functional equipment, not a statement about bodies. The military's manufacture of Philosopher's Stones from human captives is a moral horror, and it stays a moral horror, never curdling into an indictment of markets or capital. No LGBTQ characters, no climate anxiety, no neurodivergent arc, no revisionist history, no lecture. Amestris is a fictional nation and the film has no interest in our own.

Left standing is a brisk fantasy action picture that delivers plot and homunculi and little sermonizing. It is, by the standards of the ledger, a clean sheet. The cultural awareness here is nil, and the film seems content with that. Sori wanted to tell the truth of living, and he told it in two hours with a talking chimera. The classification is straightforward, and the sommelier's note is short: a dry vintage, no finish.