YMMV / Elcano & Magellan: The First Voyage Around the World

• Americans Hate Tingle: Due to its portrayal of Humabon and Lapulapu as wild tribesmen with very un-Filipino imagery, the movie was controversial in Philippines, where people even asked for it to be banned (albeit other Filipino reviewers eventually found this a huge overreaction; the Rappler article even pointed out the double standards Filipinos had over Elcano in comparison to the faith-based biopic about Filipino saint Pedro Calungsod, where the Chamorro tribes depicted in Batang Martyr were depicted as barbaric savages, something which the Real Life Chamorro were none too pleased about).
• Angst? What Angst?: Magellan's death does carry some momentary gravitas, but it seems everybody in the expedition forgets about him pretty quickly. Even when the expedition returns to Spain, everybody in Seville is glad to see them, but nobody onscreen asks them where he is or what happened to him (or the rest of the fleet, really, given that most crewmen were still alive by the time the San Antonio returned).
• Audience-Alienating Premise: As with any other work set in the overseas expansion of the Spanish Empire, political controversy about its portrayal of the natives (in this case Filipinos) and their contact with the Spaniards would be as sure as the sun will rise every morning.
• Awesome Music: The movie's ending theme, "Confía en el viento (Trust the wind)" by La oreja de Van Gogh, is a beautiful, adventurous piece that embodies the feel of the movie. Even people who disliked the movie tend to acknowledge it gives a lot of epic points to its conclusion.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Even if you don't know history, it's pretty obvious, from his ugly character design, perpetual bad humor and enmity with Elcano, that Captain Juan de Cartagena is going to make a Face–Heel Turn at some point.
• Designated Hero: While the Portuguese are certainly in the wrong for sabotaging a Spanish expedition that was lawfully cruising through their side of the map, it cannot be ignored that Elcano and company are technically in the wrong too when they decide to keep advancing and return to Spain through Portuguese waters. True, their fleet had been destroyed and they only had one undermanned ship left to make the way longer and tougher travel back, but again, that's not the Portuguese's problem (and in fact, it was mostly not due to the aforementioned sabotage), so Da Costa had all the right to arrest them in Cabo Verde on having proof that they had trespassed their line.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Yeah, the expedition has discovered a new route Spain can use to reach the spice islands. Only a little note: in the process, unlike in real life, they have been caught blatantly breaking the Treaty of Tordesillas and have sunk a Portuguese ship captained by their very ambassador in front of everybody. Elcano has effectively caused a diplomatic disaster, and his superiors might perfectly opt to disavow him and hand him over to the Portuguese as a pirate, especially given that he already had a bad reputation in Seville.
• Genius Bonus: The movie portrays Antonio Pigafetta as a nice, friendly guy who nonetheless has a moment of offering himself to write the mutiny's version to save his skin. This might be unintentional, but if not, it reflects a certain, long-standing debate in Spanish academia about his true reliability. Some academics have considered Pigafetta an untrustworthy source, as his chronicle of the expedition, The First Voyage Around The World, is a rather strange work where he doesn't mention Elcano even once, confuses important names, and pictures an unfavorable view of the Spanish crewmembers, which fueled speculations that he clashed heads with Elcano and his men and attempted to screw them up in his text. Others, however, have noted that Pigafetta's original texts have been lost, and that what we actually have is a posterior, supposedly faithful version edited in France, a country that was in war against Spain at the time, suggesting it might have been tampered with in order to enforce anti-Spanish propaganda.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • As both Elcano and the movie's music theme claim, he will return to the sea to see Samar again. That's nice, although it might leave a sour taste to know that in in real life, Elcano would die of illness in this next travel.
  • The Portuguese Empire is here at its peak, with Magellan himself being a veteran of the millionaire Conquest of Portuguese India. Only a generation later, Spain would assimilate Portugal and accidentally run it to the ground by neglecting its defense during The Dutch-Portuguese War, which eventually caused Portugal's breakup from Spain again.
• Narm:
  • The Spanish Big Guy spouts an incredibly lame one-liner when shooting the decisive cannon shot at the final battle (it depends on the dub, but the original line was a Spanish idiom on the line of "that's it, so see you later"), which can deflate the scene's awesomeness quite a bit. Chances are that the scriptwriters were trying to come up with something badass and memorable, yet found themselves unable to do so and just put the first thing that popped up in their minds.
  • The whole characterization of Samar as the best navigator in the story, a point the other characters seem a bit too eager to remark, can amuse savvy viewers for being such a period piece of 2019 Spain and its local branches of the culture wars.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The movie is most well-known for causing a major uproar in the Philippines based on a poster that implied a negative portrayal of Lapulapu, who is considered one of their greatest national heroes.
• Spoiled by the Format: Less so given that the film is meant for children, who are likely not going to be familiar with the story of the Magellan expedition, but to any other viewer, that one of the title characters is going to be killed in action comes hardly as a twist.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: People noted the character designs resemble those of 2000 movie The Road to El Dorado a bit too much, with Elcano strongly resembling Tulio, Magellan looking just like a fatter Cortés, Humabón being a clone of Tannabok, and Samar reminding of Chel.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Common to many reviews, both good and bad, was the idea that this movie could have gained a lot, and still been child-friendly, by being more faithful to the real life history and not trying to be so black-and-white.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's undeniable that, for all of its low-budget CGI, the movie manages to give out some absolutely beautiful visuals.

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