Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-26331236-20150421231439/@comment-24407809-20150607002545

Manuel de la Fuente wrote: Yeah, many things are changed. Armin has black hair, and so far the only characters from the series revealed in the cast are him, Eren, Mikasa, Jean, Sasha and Hange; all the others are absent and/or were replaced by original characters.

Levi specifically was replaced by a new character called Shikishima (you can see him in the gallery), who holds his title of the strongest soldier.

This movie is just intended to be based in the series, not to be a faithful adaptation. I understand that the movie is only meant to be an adaptation, but if they intended to change so much then they should have just written a new story with new characters entirely. From what I've seen in trailers, not only have the ethnicities of all of the characters been changed, the movie has also moved the setting of the story to somewhere in Japan (as opposed to an undisclosed place), and you can see in the image released for Hange that she is holding what appears to be an RPG.

All of this, character ethnicities, setting, technology and weapons, etc. more closely resembles Shingeki no Kyojin: Chapter 0 (starring Private Murakumo), rather than the actual series (starring Eren Yeager). In all honesty, I think that if they were planning on changing so much, then the movie should just be changed to an original story set in Isayama's post-apocalyptic world (and, in all honesty, I would absolutely LOVE to see more of Murakumo, and would really love to see him take center stage in his own series/spin-off/movie).