Epic is an utterly beautifully crafted film - the animation is stellar, the voice acting solid, and the soundtrack lovely. The plot, however, leaves plenty to be desired, and to put it bluntly: all the reviews that compared it to Fern Gully and Film/Avatar were correct - it tackles all-too-familiar themes, but unlike those films it fails to bring anything new to the whole eco-battle Balance Between Good And Evil schtick. Not only that, its archetypes are familiar as well: standard Plucky Girl heroine, absentminded dad, dashing Love Interest, cardboard evil villains, and Plucky Comic ReliefThose Two Guys (who were horribly unfunny). This wouldn't be so bad by itself, but perhaps the reason I failed to form any emotional connection with those characters was precisely because I've seen them all before many, many times. Personally, my favorite part of the movie was Tara and Ronin, but we all know how well that went.
It suffered some pacing issues, as well - MK and Nod's romance was too rushed to feel genuine, and Steven Tyler's musical number as Nim Galuu felt a lot like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. The villains get no development besides RAWR TAKE OVER FOREST. In the end, there wasn't even enough to make me stay past the final fadeout.
It might just be that the movie isn't geared towards my demographic, but I find the combination of all of the above to be a generic, predictable movie, with a lot of wasted potential that went nowhere.
Not as Epic as the title promised.
Epic is an utterly beautifully crafted film - the animation is stellar, the voice acting solid, and the soundtrack lovely. The plot, however, leaves plenty to be desired, and to put it bluntly: all the reviews that compared it to Fern Gully and Film/Avatar were correct - it tackles all-too-familiar themes, but unlike those films it fails to bring anything new to the whole eco-battle Balance Between Good And Evil schtick. Not only that, its archetypes are familiar as well: standard Plucky Girl heroine, absentminded dad, dashing Love Interest, cardboard evil villains, and Plucky Comic Relief Those Two Guys (who were horribly unfunny). This wouldn't be so bad by itself, but perhaps the reason I failed to form any emotional connection with those characters was precisely because I've seen them all before many, many times. Personally, my favorite part of the movie was Tara and Ronin, but we all know how well that went.
It suffered some pacing issues, as well - MK and Nod's romance was too rushed to feel genuine, and Steven Tyler's musical number as Nim Galuu felt a lot like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. The villains get no development besides RAWR TAKE OVER FOREST. In the end, there wasn't even enough to make me stay past the final fadeout.
It might just be that the movie isn't geared towards my demographic, but I find the combination of all of the above to be a generic, predictable movie, with a lot of wasted potential that went nowhere.