Surrounded by a lot of distrust on the part of the fans, the film Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya – The Beginning won official premiere date in Brazil. The film, which will bring a live-action version of the classic anime to the screens, will premiere on April 27th and had a national trailer and poster released, as well as the start of ticket pre-sales.
According to Sony Pictures, responsible for launching the production in the country, fans of Defenders of Athena will be able to purchase tickets in advance from the next April 12th.
The promotional material made available focuses mainly on what Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya – The Beginning has in relation to the cartoon that was successful in Brazil in the early 1990s. The poster, for example, focuses on the updated look of the armor worn by the hero Seiya (Mackenyu), while the trailer highlights the adaptations of the plot that needed to be made to bring the classic to the big screen.
And that’s where the distrust on the part of the public that grew up with Knights of the Zodiac. From what is suggested, the film should adapt only the phase of the Galactic War, focusing mainly on the discovery of the Cosmos by Seiya, his training in Greece and the fight for the Golden Cloth.
The point is that while all of this is in the source material, the movie makes several significant changes. The main one is that, apparently, the whole plot will only revolve around Seiya and the Phoenix Knight (Diego Tinoco), who will emerge as the plot’s great villain. At a certain point in the trailer, he even makes fun of the fact that Seiya believes he is the only Saint in existence, indicating that we shouldn’t have Shiryu, Hyoga and Shun appearing.
The scenes released so far also suggest a greater role for the character who appears to be Marin, played here by Famke Janssen (X-Men). Seiya’s trainer appears outside of Greece in what appears to be a hunt for someone and it is not clear if it is Pegasus himself or the Phoenix Saint. Either way, she arrives with a small, heavily armed army, which never existed in the source material.
At the same time, the official synopsis of Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya – The Beginning points to an adaptation that maintains the essence of the anime well. She says:
Based on the anime that is an international phenomenon, Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya – The Beginning brings the saga of Saint Seiya to the big screen in live-action for the first time. Seiya (Mackenyu), is a headstrong young man who spends his time fighting for money while looking for his kidnapped sister. When one of his fights inadvertently taps into mystical powers he never knew he had, Seiya finds himself thrust into a world of warriors, ancient magical training, and a reincarnated goddess in need of his protection. If he wants to survive, he will need to embrace his destiny and sacrifice everything to take his rightful place among the Knights of the Zodiac.
The dubbed trailer even brings two curious details. The first is that the name Saori was kept for Madison Iseman’s character (Jumanji: The Next Level), which is called Siena in the original version. In addition, some fans may find it strange to see the classic characters with different voices than usual. That’s because, after almost 30 playing the characters, the cast that dubbed the anime does not return for the feature.
