Reviews

The movie evokes comparisons to Princess Mononoke, but falls short of it in virtually every measure. There's both too much going on to get a good grip of why things are happening (there are a lot of conflicting interests at play among the bigger groups as well as among a small number of more independent players), and too little that's all that interesting or unpredictable. I had trouble following why many of the people in this movie acted as they did and, based on what I've heard of the source material, it's because they cut quite a bit of it out. I had little trouble figuring out some of the central mysteries of the movie, which isn't a great sign, and the central characters are pretty bland. There are some decently cool visuals, the world seems decently interesting (wish we'd gotten to explore it more), and there are some decent battle scenes, but nothing really connected with me and the whole experience felt more confusing than it should. I keep reusing the word "decent," which is really all I can say about it. I give it props for the ambition of it, but it didn't really work for me.