The bad - Half finished animation. Did they run out of money? Were they teaching themselves how to use the newly purchased software on the job? There was a lot of good world building and character design, but a substantial amount of it look half finished and amateurish.
- The sound mix and the music. The orchestral score was fine, if averagely mixed, but the modern pop songs shoehorned into the film were jarring and really bad. They damaged the world building significantly and were a poor decision.
- Huxley. Wasn't a great character idea or that well played. I can see what they were going for but for the bio part of it he could have been better than a dumb teenager in a misshapen frankestein's monster body.
The Good
- Tesla. She was pretty good, the best looking of the animated characters, and interestingly voice.
-The world building. It was a pretty solid idea for a film, tech verse bio in a steam punk setting. Heavily influenced by iconic characters from history but not in a bad way apart from the clockwork orange droogs who had no reason to be in this world apart from the word clockwork in their source film title.
The plague mask characters were suitably creepy, and the castle in the sky was interesting too. The Hals moving castle flapping flying machines were nicked but some of the other designs were original and interesting.
Although it was half finished the city design and some of the locations were good.
I think the animators over-reached their ability. There were some exciting camera angles attempted, but failed at. Just because you can move in a 3d way doesn't mean it looks cinematic. A more experienced team would know how to pull off the moves without it looking cheap.
Obviously a lot of work went into making this film once you look past the lackluster parts. There's a lot of detail in there amongst the poorly rendered and badly moved animation. The next one will be better I'm sure.
They wisely got some decent voice talent on board and they mostly delivered.
I can see why people are jarringly shocked by the movie, but it isn't a one star effort, but it's not a 10 either. It's a generous 6-7. Please do better next time as the material deserves it.
