The Sky Crawlers amine movie was based on s a Japanese novel series by Hiroshi Mori. spanning five books. It follows a group of young fighter pilots involved in dogfight warfare, and is set during an alternate historical period.
Though it seems to be set in Europe possibly during WWII, it’s somewhat clear that there has been a divergence event somewhere in the early 20th or possibly earlier because land masses are not easily identifiable. Also there has been several technological advancement in places like aeronautics and medicine / DNA. In planes, many of the designs that were abandoned in our time line exist right along side what we consider more conventional airframes.
>The strangest and the part of the movie that is danced around the most is the pilots themselves. They appear to be little more than children...mid to late teens. They do not appear to age but apparently can be “killed “ in combat. Something very strange is happening to the pilots. As the movie proceeds, it becomes clearer to you if not the pilots themselves.
Next there is this war. There are hints throughout that this conflict has been going on for some time . There is an enemy named but its never anything more than that.
The overall effect is one of quiet desperation and fatalism.
The blu-ray format is somewhat wasted on this animated selection. The the detail is sharp and the colors accurate one has to hope that the extras live up to the billing. There are many many short of the making of virtually every part of the movie. One really big surprise was that the sound design came from Skywalker Ranch and it shows, some of the music and of course the Sony BD Live which again is so totally wasted. LONG load times, minimal content unless your a wide eyed collector and love to catalog you disk...this feature needs to be stripped and rethought or pass off into digital heaven.
I am not a great fan of the alternate what if genre but I am not going to base my review on taste. The movie is slow and melancholy but if you are into planes, the detail is stunning. I loved seeing the pusher prop, swept forward wings and front canard planes fly. so I will give the movie a 8 and as for extras...waste of time for the most part 5 so that gives us a somewhat high 6 which is a bit harsh, but it means, if you like the alternate type stories, go for it, otherwise..you might want to pass. But I can tell you to not bomb out on the movie at the credits. I did the first time through and when I re-watched the last part of the movie and credits, I gave the movie another point just for thinking it through to the end. Yes it IS an alternate reality movie but there is a strong science fiction element past this.
2 comments:
This post has no text--or the text is white on white and we can't see it.
Jay, thanks for the heads up. It looked ok in the editor but one of the links much have had an overlay that blanked out the text. I went in and erased the html links and it came up in view.
Thanks Jay
Paul
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