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REVIEW: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED FREEDOM

tl;dr:

An okay start, but the story was never strong, and the lack of strength in the narrative threads meant everything pulled itself apart by the end. Could have been significantly better as a mini-series.

Full review under the cut (Spoilers):

'Freedom' started off better than expected, but immediately began falling victim to the exact same issues as 'Destiny' did, which feels even worse considering this movie was released just shy of a full 20 years after the end of 'Destiny'.

Many of the concepts, such as genetic determinism, were written and implemented like a complete rehash of the original 2 series. Many of the new characters were unimaginative derivatives of their originals. As an example, the antagonist faction used 6 "shonen villain teens" with brightly coloured hair who are all angry and irrational. This is the 3rd time the 'SEED' series has used this exact concept, and they acted the same as each of the iterations before them, without any added depth or growth in the concept.

But even then, the primary antagonist faction had an interesting core concept behind them; what happens when the humans designed to be the "Genetic Future" of humanity become 'outdated'? The root of the conflict in 'SEED' was always this rift between the Naturals and the Coordinators, and so what would happen if the Coordinators suddenly became less-than? However this was barely explored beyond the surface, other than lines from the villain like "Shouldn't you be happy when your inferiors listen to you?".

As far as the protagonists go, there's also very little growth there. In fact, most of 'Freedom' feels like a callback (very nearly with winking included), rather than a natural continuation of the Cosmic Era. The characters are almost entirely the same, the mobile suits are almost entirely the same. They blow up some ships, and they keep others for no real reason.

And with all of that said, the story would have benefited an incredible amount from adding a significant time gap between the end of 'Destiny' and the entirety of 'Freedom'. Less than a year divides these two parts of the CE timeline, and the entire franchise has taken place over the course of 5 years. This opens too many questions for the film to answer in 2 hours of run time, and it chooses instead to answer almost none of them except with a few handwaves and references to 'Destiny' and the original 'SEED'.

Where did Kingdom of Foundation come from? How did they amass this huge glut of resources in a single year? There are story beats that indicate to some degree that the antagonists were part of a parallel/back-up plan from the primary antagonist of 'Destiny'. But even if that were true, how did Foundation get the mobile suits, warships, personnel, AND the primary superweapon that was supposedly destroyed at the end of 'Destiny', all into working order on a scale large enough to go toe-to-toe with the primary factions of the series?

It's also important to mention that if the last 30ish minutes of the movie had never happened, I could have given this movie a 6 or even a 6.5 out of 10 on a nice day. However the the last quarter of the movie was just very bad fanservice that spits in the face of the rest of the movie. Lacus Clyne, a dignified woman who is a core part of the narrative and has been striving for peace her entire life is fitted into a skintight "spacesuit" complete with individual boob AND ass socks, a trampstamp design on the back. Her boobs are animated with jiggle-physics.

Other characters suddenly gain immense powerups (like full-psychic communication from the Moon to Earth) without build-up that makes any sense. And many mobile suits are just given things that seem like someone said "that would be cool" and just added it to the final fights without any thought or attempt to make a part of the story.

Frankly the entire movie is missing significant emotional weight. The horrifying use of the Requiem superweapon on the city of Moscow (resulting in it's obliteraion), and even some nuclear cruise missiles, are barely a footnote. Even the emotional conflict between characters is contrived, and feels meaningless.

The threads it was trying to use to weave this story tore apart before anything worthwhile was made, and then it just threw it all away anyways.

2.5/10