Watch Astro Boy For Free

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Brilliant and touching

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I like the Astro Boy series (60s, 80s, and 00s), all of which are a little different from each other, but with a lot of the same heart. So when I watched the movie, well it left me feeling a bit...weird.Now a lot of people like to complain about the voice acting, and character designs, and the art and animation style. I don't have any problem with those things though. The character designs are faithful to the source material, but with it's own CGI twist; just like each series had it's own little art twist based on the capabilities and budget at the time. Each series also had it's own voice actors, and the VAs in this movie did a good job at bringing their character's life.With that being said, this is like a 10 act story, with a couple acts cut out. There's the establishing act with Toby's death and Astro being created; the next act is Tenma trying to use Astro to replace Toby, but then finding that he can't so easily replace his dead son; the next act follows Astro making friends and trying to come to find his place in the world (robot or human), only to have the world (the surface) kind of reject who he is and instead thrust their own idea of who he should be onto him; and then we just jump to the final act where the villain's monster becomes too powerful and now Astro has to save the day (which has many "self discovery of powers" elements that should be reserved for middle "figure out your powers" act, not "final climax battle").If you ask me, this should have been a TV series. It has all the potential to be another great incarnation of Astro Boy; Astro Boy origin, figuring out how Astro fits into the world, and characters that have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, a lot of elements that should have gotten their own episode (metro city's trash culture, the robot resistance, the girl's parents, Astro pretending to be human with the surface dwellers, the robot games, fixing up ZOG, competing in the robot games and his new friends coming to grips with what he is, the government trying to shut him down, why the president wants to harness the power of the red/blue core, etc.) were just kind of rushed through.I enjoy the movie, but I just feel wanting more.

Toby Tenma is a boy living in the futuristic floating citystate Metro City. It's a world of robots spearheaded by Toby's often-absent father Dr. Tenma, the famous roboticist head of the Ministry of Science. Toby is smart, overconfident and inquisitive. Dr. Elefun discovers a new power source from space called the Blue Core. By developing it, its opposite of chaotic violent energy Red Core is created. Dr. Tenma's weapons test get hijacked by incompetent leader President Stone who installs the Red Core. Toby sneaks in and gets killed by the military robot the Peacekeeper. Suffering from grief, Dr. Tenma creates a robot replacement with Toby's memories and the Blue Core. However he doesn't live up to expectations and Tenma rejects him. President Stone tries to recover the Blue Core but Astro Boy tumbles off the city onto the surface. He finds discarded robots and a bunch of orphans led by Cora and adult Hamegg who thinks that Astro is actually a boy. Hamegg accidentally scans Astro and realizes that he's a robot. Hamegg forces Astro to fight in gladiator bouts with other robots.The biggest problem is that the movie introduces the boy and then kills him off 10 minutes later. They should make Toby a memory instead. This should be only about Astro Boy anyways. Also killing off a boy is something I wouldn't do in a kiddie movie. It's a real bummer. The story owes a lot to Pinocchio and feels unoriginal because of it. The animation is colorful and fun. I'm sure kids could enjoy the energetic visuals. Once Astro Boy gets on the surface, the movie is fine. However this does feel schizophrenic with one part kiddie movie and the other part something more serious.

I must confess I am not an expert when it comes to the "Astro Boy" universe - I've only seen a few episodes of the animated television show, and I have only looked at a few pages of the original manga. So I don't know how close this movie is to the original creation of "Astro Boy". Anyway, I'll start with what I found positive about this movie. First, the animation is pretty good. Maybe not up to Pixar, but it's bright, colorful, and catches your eye. Also, the movie moves along at a brisk clip, never becoming boring at any moment.But at the same time, I felt something was lacking with this movie. I thought about why this was for some time, and I came up with two possible reasons. First, when it comes to the HUMAN side of the movie, often the movie comes short. For example, the death of a key character in the beginning of the movie does not provoke the appropriate emotional response from others. Elsewhere, there were plenty of moments when the characters didn't seem fleshed out enough. The second problem was that the movie doesn't seem to have one clear vision. This probably comes from the fact that the movie was a Hong Kong-Japan-USA co-production. Often, as a result of so many cooks on this project, the movie seems a mix of different sensibilities.If you're interested in computer animation, and/or you're a kid, you'll probably find enough here to entertain you. If you're not, you should probably not go out of your way to watch this. It's not an awful movie, but you will see it could have been a lot better.

Honestly, I didn't actually watch the famous anime series, but I understand that the franchise was pretty popular alongside the likes of Pokemon and Dragonball. When this movie came out, I was surprised because Astro Boy hasn't been talked about that much in recent times, so I checked it out and found myself entertained.Plot: When a weapons test accidentally kills his son Toby, Dr. Bill Tenma (Nicolas Cage), with the help of fellow scientist Professor Elefun (Bill Nighy), builds a robotic copy with advanced weaponry later named Astro. After soon being rejected by his father and chased by an ego maniacal, war-mongering president who desires his power source, Astro runs away from the floating Metro City and makes new friends on the surface, but he'll soon realize that he can't run away from his destiny as Earth's new robotic hero.This movie delivers cool action scenes, good story, and nice graphics. The voice cast is great, from Nicolas Cage to Bill Nighy to even Nathan Lane from "Lion King." My only problems are a few lame jokes and some minor characters that are rather pointless.Overall, this film is nicely done with very few things things to nitpick. It's at least worth a watch. Onward and upward!