Knights of the Zodiac (2023)

Knights of the Zodiac is a 2023 live-action adaptation of Saint Seiya, the manga that has kept Masami Kurumada employed and his readers devoted for decades. The fans waited. The film grossed seven million dollars and vanished. What remains is a polyglot curiosity: Mackenyu, a Japanese actor, anchors a cast that includes Latino, Filipino, and white performers, a configuration that follows naturally from the source material's own international pantheon. No representational argument is being made. The diversity simply exists, unremarked, which is either a quiet virtue or an accident of casting logistics. The film declines to tell us which.

Women populate the story with some prominence. Famke Janssen's Guraad is a villain with a grievance and a failing body. Madison Iseman's Sienna is a goddess learning to hold her power. Caitlin Hutson's Marin trains the hero on a mountain and does not smile. These figures are capable and central, yet the screenplay never converts their presence into an argument about gender. It has other business: armor, destiny, a kidnapped sister. The same restraint applies across the board. There is no racial commentary, no environmental sermon, no economic critique, no body-positive messaging, no neurodivergent characterization, and no revisionist reading of history. Greek gods and manga knights do not lend themselves to such projects.

The dialogue runs on destiny and duty, standard fantasy fuel, and it never stops to instruct the audience on how to live. In 2023 that is nearly a novelty. The film is loud, visually thin, and narratively waterlogged, and the critics were unkind. But it commits no ideological offenses because it commits to almost nothing at all. A movie this empty is, in its way, restful.