Rod Morgan
No, you will not mistake the characters for human actors, but the visualization of the faces is remarkable, familiar and engaging. The plot is okay, but the reason to watch is to treat your tired eyes to the marvelous beauty of almost every scene. It must be fun to be able to call upon international Shakespearean theatre actors to bring words to life and then put musicians together for the orchestral score. The performances in English work closely enough with the mouths and enhance the verisimilitude being accomplished. Captivating and fun; can we have more like this, please???
mgruebel
The Japanese are masters of anime, and that includes 3-D anime. Yet a film can only be as good as its story, no matter how beautiful the visuals.Mankind is in decline, the Earth is a burnt husk hidden behind a hologram, used by the emperor of the Gaia Coalition as a promised land to keep the masses under control. The pirate Harlock is responsible for this devastation, when he learned in a great war 100 years earlier that the huddling masses were not going to be allowed back on Earth, only the elite. In the present of the film, Harlock fools a band of pirates, including the emperor's son Logan sent to spy on him, into planting mines to "start over again." The pirates mistakenly believe that Harlock means "start over on Earth," but he means "Big Bang" by destroying the very fabric of the universe. The Emperor's others son Ezra tries to foil this plot and keep the illusion of Earth and stability intact. The brothers, at odds since the day Logan accidentally made Ezra lame and all but killed their beloved sister, finally come to blows, while Harlock realizes his error. Rather than destroying the universe, the pirates destroy the hologrammatic illusion of Earth so humankind can know the truth, yet also reveal a new hope: for life is beginning to grow again on the devastated home planet. Ezra dies, having seen the flowers that symbolize regrowth and were made possible by his sister, as Logan and the pirates take off in the only home they know, their invincible dark matter space ship.Don't worry that the above paragraph gives the whole plot away. It's byzantine enough that reading it once you won't remember the details, and simplistic enough that the film is easy to follow and often boring. There are many problems with the plot and the characters. Warlock himself is pitiful, for destroying a planet when he could not have it, and then trying to destroy the universe so everything can start all over again. Talking about two wrongs not making a right! Even worse, the film is overly long. When the characters could have uncovered the truth the first time they arrive at Earth, they are captured after a battle with a gigantic weapon, conveniently "to be executed on board of their ship" with many bureaucratic delays. Of course they escape, only to battle with an even more gargantuesque weapon, and then finally get back to the business of the plot. The film also suffers from other typical problems of B-grade SF: a pirate spaceship of matter so impenetrable, that it can just crash through Gaia space ships without damage; but grappling tubes fired from Gaia ships easily penetrate the dark matter hull so Gaia soldiers (styled like storm troopers in Star Wars) can invade. Most of the characters are trite stock, with contrived backstories or none at all. The music is the bombastic pseudo-classical stuff of video games. A planet-size weapon (Death Star, anyone) that misfires the first time and is not directed at the right target (Earth) the second time, but mysteriously tracks the pirate ship (who cares), which Ezra pushes out of the way. And so on with major and minor plot holes.Why still a 5 then, if the plot and character development are so disappointing? The film is visually beautiful. It pits steam punk piracy against clean whites of Gaia. It is full of ominous clouds, interiors that exceed the complexity of most real-world movie sets, carefully sculpted characters. The laws of physics are upheld better than in most CGI (starting with the fact that it takes a while for the death beam from Jupiter to reach Earth; light only travels at 186,000 miles/second). Frankly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I turned off the soundtrack, forgot about the lame plot, and just took in the vistas. It's an 8 for imagery and a 2 for plot and character development, averaging to a 5.The film reminds me in many ways of "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within," which was the first photorealistic CGI SF film. Like its predecessor, "Harlock" pulls all the stops when it comes to visuals, but the writing and character development are ultimately simplistic. In a video game, the player drives the action and provides the richness in his or her own mind. But film is a receiving-only form of entertainment. What makes a great game is not sufficient for a great film, and vice versa. Go see Disney's "Treasure Planet" instead. It features a similar space SHIP, but Robert Louis Stevenson was a much better writer than Meiji Matsumoto, and Disney stuck close to the original in this one.
silverred999
This has none of the gorgeous ethereal technologies that Matsumoto is known for. The characters are bland and boring and it is in my opinion not a space opera but a simple action movie. The CG is boring,the ship design is awful, looks like a a failed attempt to create a great , big pirate ship .The characters look as if they're imported from a generic ps3 title, especially the female characters, who have ridiculous formfitting armour, because we need to show boobs at all times.This is a mess of a movie. The plot makes no sense. The protagonist is blander than a bowl of leafs.
