This review will contain marked sections with minor spoilers, mainly to illustrate certain points that contributed to the overall stale taste that the movie left in my mouth.
The story itself is pretty interesting. A clan of near immortal beings, weaving history into pieces of cloth. A neighboring empire that, when their power fades, tries to obtain that longevity to regain its foothold. A young girl, that gets caught up in that conflict, is driven from her home and has to find a new place to belong in an everchanging world.
The world design is fantastic. It feels like an actual place, not a set piece. It is well thought out, colorful and an overall joy to see unfold. I found the character design beautiful, though I know that is up to individual taste. The occasional CG used for the dragons is forgivable.
It’s a real shame that despite its stunning visuals and sweeping orchestral music, the movie is lacking relatable characters and a cohesive script.
Maquia is kind of meek, cries a lot and is shown to be burdened by her loneliness. This doesn’t fundamentally change throughout the movie.
Ariel, her adoptive son, is aged up through time jumps so sudden and inconsistent, that it is incredibly hard to grasp his personality or motivation. Some of his actions really came out of nowhere for me and were hardly ever explained.
The bond between mother and son is the main focus of the movie, but with the few glimpses of their relationship shown between the time jumps, it doesn’t feel like they have actually gone through anything together. It’s more of a laundry list of events that gets checked off as the story rushes on.
Mild spoilers in the next paragraph: Neither of the two main characters felt relatable, mainly because their actions often didn’t make sense in the context of the story. Maquia never once tries to go back and find out what exactly happened to her home and her people, which bothered me immensely. Important parts that could have defined their relationship and help the viewer understand Ariels feelings and motivations, like him finding out he is adopted and what Maquia really is, are glossed over quickly. Also, his behavior changes dramatically after the time jump into early adulthood, with his reasoning for lashing out towards his adoptive mother being questionable at best.
The backdrop of the story, more precisely the conflict between multiple nations (which were non-descriptive at best and cartoonishly evil at worst), should have been more important. With all the focus on Maquia and Ariel, the surrounding events that had a lot of potential just got used as a facilitator for an underwhelming finale.
Also, beautiful as the world and the multiple locations shown in the movie are, there is a definitive lack of explanation as to where everything is in relation to each other. People are transported from place to place without establishing from where to where the journey leads, sometimes in between time jumps, so the viewer just gets utterly confused as to how they ended up there – or where “there” is. This becomes worse leading up to the final conflict.
A lot of lore is touched on, but never properly explained or given context. The plot is rushed so much that the whole thing falls flat in the end, since it was – at least for me – hard to become attached to any of the characters.
I think the story would have made a great series instead, with 12 or more episodes to flesh out the characters and their relationships, establish the geography of the world and to give equal importance to the overarching plot of the conflict between the warring nations.
It’s not an awful movie by any means, but it is one with a lot of wasted potential, which sadly leaves it at an average level.
