The Fullmetal Alchemist Movie and it's weird love for obscured characters

 

So did you guys see the Cowboy Bebop show on Netflix? Seems most people have different opinions on it. I was halfway done binging the show and then I heard the news of it's cancellation. I liked most of it but I hated how lame Vicious was. Instead of the cold quiet stoic man, we got this overemotional manchild. 

Look at this manchild's big expressive eyes

There's been a dozen live-action adaptations of popular anime from both sides of the ocean and alot of them aren't great. There are some that are like don't resemble the source material or vaguely resemble (US Death Note/Dragonball)

There are some that follow through to a point but change too much like Attack on Titan

Mikasa being lovers with her cousin, FakeLevi who is in love with her adopted bro, Eren. Also FakeLevi happens to also be Eren's long lost bro. Meaning this is one messed up incest family.

(Yes, I know Levi and Misaka being related wasn't reveal till way later on and he's not exactly Levi)

It's funny that Eren's evil bro happened years before we got major revelations about Eren's family in the canon material.

The Fullmetal movie is faithfully adapted, the problem however is it shoves way too much material. We have the storylines of the origin, Father Cornello, Nina, Meeting Dr. Marcoh for the 1st time, Hughes' death, Lab 5, Al's existential crisis, the Mannequin Soldiers, Roy killing Lust, Envy reduced to a tiny parasite, as well as Ed seeing Al's body at the gate. All this within a 2 hour movie. I mean gosh. Go watch Rurouni Kenshin, Bleach, or the 1st two Japanese Death Note movies if you want to watch actually good adaptations that perfectly cover one little arc in one or two-part film.

Also guess whose one of the main villains...

Besides the scumbag who fused his daughter with his dog for science or the three Homunculus based on 3 of the 7 sins.

No, it's Major General Halcrow

Yeah, they made this guy the main baddie.

To explain Halcrow, well this is going to be tricky. There are two separate Fullmetal Alchemist shows that were both adapted from the manga(comic). The 1st show quickly caught up to the manga material and diverted from it's source and created a whole new story. The 2nd show, Brotherhood didn't get caught up and stayed faithful to the it's source to the very end. However, due to the 1st' FMA show was still fresh in everyone's heads, the 2nd show's 1st 13 episodes were sort of ran on super recap mode and quickly told most stories in rapid pace and skipped over some stories that weren't too important, like Halcrow's 1st appearance.

The 1st show(and manga) had Ed and Al on a train and met with a another member of the military, Halcrow and his family. Train got attacked by a terrorist, he threaten the dude's family, shot him in the ear. The good guys overcome the villain. blah blah blah

Due to the rushed pacing of the 1st 13 episodes. The 2nd show skipped all this.

He did appear very late in the 2nd show(and manga) where he warned King Bradley about Roy's coup d'état. He was out of the loop whose the good guys and bad guys and just simply serving his orders.  That's all his appearances for a guy they chose for the main villain for the movie.

Now since the 1st show did divert from the manga. Halcrow did somewhat had a little bit of more screentime.

The show started with an evil cult leader in the city of Reole, feeding lies about his miracles. Much later when Ed and Al weren't looking, a civil war happened about the false man of the faith. The military came in to bring order and not caring who shot first.

Halcrow made his 2nd appearance as he interrogate poor Rose. She was part of group rebelling group against the cult leader but Halcrow didn't care and told his men to deal with her.

And the next time we saw her, she was mute from her experience and already have a baby from the event.

He is more villain-like than his manga/2nd show counterpart that his men caused this poor girl to get raped. Still, it's still weird he ended up as one of the main villains despite he had a very limited amount of appearances in any adaptation of FMA.