Recensioni degli utenti

It is hard to write a coherent review of The Sky Crawlers without revealing major plot twists, but I will try. I advise you to see the movie without reading too much about it beforehand so that you can enjoy and think about what happens without bias. Do stick around for the epilog after the closing credits.

The Sky Crawlers is a thought-provoking alternate history that will appeal to literate science fiction fans. Mainstream audiences will undoubtedly be bored and confused by what happens in the film. The film examines weighty themes such as the meaning of war and the nature of memories. I was reminded of the recent death of famous amnesiac "HM" while watching The Sky Crawlers, as some of the characters suffer from a similar type of memory loss. Why they suffer this loss is one of the twists that will either spark heated discussion or bewilderment afterward. Like most good science fiction, The Sky Crawlers presents somewhat ambiguous characters and ideas. It is up to the viewer to interpret the meaning.

What worked: The CGI aerial combat sequences were amazing—dizzying and spectacular, with intricately designed air vehicles that spurred the imagination. The characters' emotional depths were thoroughly mined—although not always pleasantly so. The character design and art direction were top notch—the CGI segments were almost photo-realistic, and the 2D segments were beautifully drawn and lighted, too. The Basset Hound was cute.

What didn't work: The pacing was slow—this is a psychological drama, not an action adventure—and could have benefited from some judicious editing. Although I found the transitions from CGI to 2D and back to be perfectly fine, particularly after getting into the rhythm of the film, many viewers will likely find the transitions jarring.

If your tastes run more towards Blade Runner or A Clockwork Orange, you will probably appreciate The Sky Crawlers. If your tastes lean more towards Star Wars or The Incredibles, I advise you to see something else.

It's astonishing how much heart and soul writer Hiroshi Mori and Ghost In The Shell director Mamoru Oshii managed to incorporate in this gently told, unique story despite the remote, but at the same time also strangely deep nature of it's characters. The discreet use of the beautiful visuals serves the movie - not the other way round - and though pretty slow-paced and without major cataclysms Sky Crawlers manages to keep up a fascinating and unique atmosphere till the very end.

I think everyone with a heart and an open mind will recognize this one as a rare gem.

7/10

Just occasionally, you'll find a film where thew execution of drama over powers your awareness that the film is animated.

The Japanese style is arguable the most exploitative of animation, which is why Mamoru Oshii's rather minimal and refined approach which he brings to The Sky Crawlers is extraordinary in it way. The film is rather static with little physical movement, elongated cutting, wide open Kurosawa type shots, psychological use of color, light and shadow, and a haunting and mystic score. The film is kind of cold, but with a scene of mystery which makes it seductive. Even when we are up in the air with dozens of aircraft, gunfire, and spectacular balls of fire, the film maintains it's sense of calm. Oshiii handles it almost like a ballet. This is not a kids movie, and it's not for those with a short attention span. It it a deep slow psychological piece.

The ending is one that may divide an audience. Some will see it as giving The Sky Crawlers a sense of moral function, while others will argue that it makes the whole thing seem useless. I won't take either side. All I'll say is that I enjoyed the flight.

The Sky Crawlers: (Sukai Kurora):7 out of 10: This is an adult anime...In fact this is a very adult anime. No there isn’t copious amounts of fan service or blood. (In fact the film is rated PG-13 primarily for smoking.) Instead Sky Crawlers has a very quiet, reserved pacing. It’s a two hour anime that feels like it clocks in at over three hours. Not boring per se but very deliberately paced with adult conversations, adult music and an overall adult tone that reminds one of Before Sunrise with occasional airborne dogfight to break up the relationship introspection.

The plot is both light (I will reveal that here) and quite heavy (I will let the movie itself surprise you with its philosophical underpinnings). On the light side is there is a special group of teenagers who are pilots that never grow old. The movie refers to them as Kildren and much is made of how they are just kids; but if you drive, fly, have sex, drink, and smoke a pack every 10 minutes of screen time your are at best a teen and in reality a young adult.

These Kildren fight in retro WW2 style aircraft against each other in an air war with no winners and no other casualties all to apparently satiate the public’s need for conflict. (Think Star Trek’s “A Taste of Armageddon”). There is a new pilot, a wingman and a couple of androgynous love interests with deep secret pasts. There is even a Red Baron character rumored to be an adult and a constant source of tension and conversation in both the dogfights and on the ground.

The Animation is simply awe inspiring. The CGI work is better than many a Hollywood blockbuster and the 2 dimensional cell shaded characters fit both the pacing and the mood of the film. The attention to detail is quite amazing overall.

Overall the film is recommended for fans of adult drama and serious anime. I do confess I did wish for longer sky battles, more realistic violence and even some fan service. It is ironic that one of the most adult anime I have ever seen suffers from a lack of adult thrills with its PG-13 rating.

This movie is really quite good, especially the idea behind it all. If you are aware of Animes and Manga comics, then you might expect, the movie to be how it is. But if not, be prepared to get a whole lot of story. It might be too much for some audience members and you might not get everything with the first viewing. Now this either will get you hooked and you will watch the movie again or you will hate the movie and rate it badly.

Depending on what you think you can take, it should be up to you to decide if you want to watch it. If you do, you will be confronted with quite some interesting question (not all of which get an answer at all), that might inspire you to think some things over, that you take for granted.

The Sky Crawlers seem to live up to its name, that it really took its time to tell a story, but in doing so, allowed for the narrative to sink in. After all, it's brought to us by Mamoru Oshii, and as far as his filmography goes, this Japanese maestro's works is often deep, and have more than enough room for multiple viewings, each time allowing you to take away something different, or unnoticed from the previous time round.

Adapted by Chihiro Itou from Hiroshi Mori's story, you could see the themes that this movie had that would interest Oshii to be at the helm. They are nothing relatively new, as fans would see some similarities in the characters' struggle about their own existentialism, and what I enjoyed most, the connected thread between war and peace. It's like the notion of having to prepare for war that you get to enjoy some peace, and I guess every National Serviceman would have heard that at one point or another during their tour of duty.

While one can find some distinct parallels from Americanized films that pay homage or blatantly ripping off Oshii's earlier works, what I thought could have been toned down, was how toward the end, subtlety wasn't the rule of thumb, and almost every theory got explained verbatim. There were enough unanswered questions along the way to tickle your brain, leaving you guessing and drawing your own conclusions, but there were at least two crystal clear moments that decided to tell all and show all, taking away most of the fun. So in a way, you have less room to maneuver your thoughts during that after-movie discussion with friends.

I could imagine and understand any kid sitting inside a theatre hall having absolutely no patience for this masterpiece. Except for the opening sequence which had packed in the action at Top Gun pace, one's notion that this was going to be a war-action movie gets thrown out the window within 10 minutes. Naturally it has the potential to go in that direction by playing up and extending the aerial dogfights, but to do so would be to dumb this film down a lot of notches.

Granted its characters are pilots, and kid pilots at that, "Kildren" (I would like to think of it as Killer-Children) who don't seem to grow up, get careers in Corporations that seem to be waging war on behalf of nations, and pilot propeller-powered warplanes to engage their enemy in attacking and defending routines. Heck, there's even a Red Baron equivalent as the resident bogeyman too! They smoke, they kill (up in the air) and they make love, with nary an adult batting an eyelid, that you would deem them all turning a blind eye to their kids' shenanigans (of course there's a reason for this). Imagine the adults being quite nonchalant, and some even supportive, of kids fighting wars while they go about their daily lives, being quite unaffected other than being a feature in news bulletins.

So we follow the adventures, and mysteries weaved amongst the characters of Kannami Yuichi (voiced by Ryo Kase), base commander Kusanagi (Rinko Kikuchi of Babel fame, who had also collaborated in Oshii's omnibus movie Kill under the segment Assault Girl 2). The remaining supporting characters serve out their primary purpose, such as Tokino (Shosuke Tanihara) as the wingman/buddy, and Mitsuya (Chiaki Kruiyama, Kill Bill's Gogo Yubari) as the tell-all mouthpiece, which I thought that even without, the coda after the end credits roll would have summed it all up nicely.

This is Japanese anime, so its quality is excellent, with some really photo-realistic moments, and aerial dogfights that look as real as if they really built those planes and shot them in mid air. John Woo would also be proud at how balletic the shoot-em-ups can get, pulling back its punches as well to avoid any explicitness in its violence. The main theme of the soundtrack is extremely hypnotic and would linger on you for some time after the end credits roll. After all, it's by Kenji Kawai.

This is not an action movie, period. If that's the kind of movie you're expecting, then my advice would be to save your ticket money. If you're looking toward something that's more contemplative, and dealing with themes that would make you think along the way (until the two mentioned moments where the hints get more obvious), and maybe even appreciate life a little more, then march up to the box office when this opens next week. Highly recommended, and definitely a contender when I compile the top ten list for the year!

I found the view of wars as an instrument to remind us of what it means to be peaceful to be an interesting idea. The concept of Killdre who can't (won't?) become adults were also quite interesting, but I felt they could've done much more with this story.

Throughout the film, the main character repeated that there were no reason to become adults, but what was the real difference between childhood and adulthood? Children and their immaturity come from inexperience. Even if their bodies never grew up, wouldn't their minds continue to grow into an adult? I wish they had explained this more because the Killdre pilots in this movie didn't behave that different compared to adult pilots. To me, it seemed like being children had no real advantages other than better reflexes and lighter weight for the planes.

They did a fine job with the revival problems of Killdre, that they can't escape the war even through death, but I wished they focused more on the subject.

Animation on this was quite disastrous in my opinion. In this day and age, many anime series mix 3D-CGI and traditional cel animation. This style of animation never worked for me, since the hand-drawn cel animation seems like laziness behind 3D backgrounds, especially since there were many 'frozen' frames where a character don't move for about 5 seconds. Such wide gap in animation quality within an anime movie seems unnatural, and I believe the CG technology in Japan has not reached a convincing level in anime yet. Some plane fight scenes were quite cool, but the following cel animation in the base always seemed awkward afterwards.

Truly great animated films in recent years like "Byousoku 5cm" and reputable anime studios like Ghibli and Mad House still use computer graphics only to assist the hand-drawn special effects without using protrusive 3D-CGI in 2-dimensional background or characters. Japanese anime creators need to wait until they have enough budget and technology to match current Pixar films before using CGI in their anime films.

I really liked the character development in this movie, but I believe this film had a lot of space for improvements.

"The Sky Crawlers" is directed by Mamoru Oshii, the 56-year-old genius director. He lets go of the screenplay this time and presents a fresh front by introducing a new scriptwriter, Chihiro Ito.

The most anticipated aspect of this film for fans of Hiroshi Mori, the author of the original novel, is how the director has translated the original into the medium of film. The original is like a poem where you can clearly see his vision with a lots of space in the sentences. It's also a challenge to decide on what extend the truth of the story is to be visible which was less clear in the original novel.

KillDren - Living weapons which never grew up, kept as adolescents their entire lives and created to show people a performance called a "war".

Once again, the film treats the dominant theme of the conflict between "humans" and "AI made by humans". However, the story has an appeal which is different from "Ghost In The Shell" or "Innocence".

Humans who do not know about wars; breeding, killing people, depriving family, or being full of hatred. They wish for peace, and exhausted by all the efforts which end in endless tragedy and death. The wars as a form of entertainment is a way to look directly at such concepts, and is a way to create a distance from such tragedies. The wars what make them recognise once more what they are truly happy about, by peeping at this extreme hopelessness.

Certainly, humans are greedy creatures and they expect that the safe and peaceful situation will continue and this would be fine without knowing whether they are truly happy. They still want to their further happiness because they are not satisfied with this situation. It is the moment that they realise they are actually happy, by recognising the position where they stand at the hierarchy of the society they live in and comparing it with others. It is through having wars as entertainment that people venture to create.

Meanwhile, there are girls and boys who only find their lives worth living in the sky, laughing in the sky, crying in the sky and killing other people using their right hands as Living weapons. KillDren, who love people, become puzzled with the truth, have some self confidence and sometimes are fragile. It is the same life as normal adolescent girls and boys, except they are weapons and never grow.

This is a story which tells us about what the truly important things in life are, and to see them living in our world and time.

Notes: Please watch till the end of the story even after the ending credit starts. The last scene will give you a hint to the secret of the story.

I would always see this film on the shelf of the ANIME section of my local BLOCKBUSTER store. When they had their OUT OF BUSINESS sale, I figured buying it at a discount couldn't hurt. It would be a month and a half until I would finally sit and watch it. Please bear with me, this is my first written review. The story follows a young fighter pilot named Yukito who has just transferred to a new base. He is puzzled by feelings of Deja vú and by the fact that nobody will answer him about the pilot he is replacing. One thing viewers should keep I mind is that this isn't the action packs spectacle the cover makes it appear to be. Don't get me wrong, there are some stunning dogfights in this movie, but they are few and far in between. Most of the movie's time is spent following Yukito as he tries to unravel the mystery of his predecessor, of his superior, Kusenagi, and his own past. And honestly, I found it thoroughly engrossing. Almost as much as the battles which got a tad bit confusing because all the planes look similar. The movie goes for a more philosophical approach on the topic of war and peace, poses questions about the choices we make as humans. The movie however did get a tad cliché near the end, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't see a lot of the plot twists coming a mile away. But it still holds interest, builds up suspense, creates a certain atmosphere, and brings new ideas that will have you mulling over for a couple hours after viewing. Just know that this movie takes a slower pace and isn't as much about the fighting as it is the who and why.

I was enchanted by the very first air battle scene and then Kenji Kawai's peaceful and stunning score. It was something. And the music somehow made the film deeper maybe than it was.

The Sky Crawlers is a mixture of stories about war, love and self searching and living forever. The story is set somewhere in future where wars are not waged between countries but big enterprises. And the pilots are actually children who never grow up. And it's actually pretty intriguing. Almost like forced Peter Pans fighting each other (maybe not exactly the right comparison). Only difference between Peter Pan and kildren were that Peter didn't want to grow old the kildren didn't have to grow old because they supposed to die in the battle anyway. That kind of makes The Sky Crawlers a twisted tale of Peter Pan. There are many allegories in this film that I don't care about. It was visually stunning film.

The Sky Crawlers is somehow one of the most beautiful war movies (if you can call it a war movie) I have ever seen.

7,5 out of 10

As another reviewer wrote earlier, I have little doubt that the film's mediocre rating is due to its slowness in developing the thesis that Mamoru Oshii hides behind the plot. It is a film that demands patience, so much in fact, that I find it directly to blame for the negative reviews. It is not a viewer's fault to lose interest when they have already seen more than half of a film and the fog that shrouds the plot remains as dense as it was at the beginning.

Nevertheless, with proper time, the doubts and issues that may have seemed incoherent are explained with efficiency and appeal. What initially looks inconsistent, once the viewer is given the background information, makes complete sense. The characters' erratic behavior, the anachronistic war machines, the nonsensical dialogues: it all makes sense in just a few minutes through an almost epiphany.

The film, very much in Oshii's style, raises philosophical questions revolving around existentialism and the ontology of human beings: what is the role of war in society, are our memories what make us what we are, what is the point of continuing to live day by day? All these questions are treated by the director in a plot that is unnecessarily slow, but still fascinating.

The Sky Crawlers forced me to reexamine the mindset I have when I watch an anime film. When I sit down to watch these types of works, I expect clichéd characters, fantastically absurd plots and flat thoughts that pretend to have depth. While there are plenty of exceptions, it is undeniable that many anime productions use characters and formulas as predictable as Hollywood blockbusters. The Sky Crawlers, to a prejudiced viewer like me, may at first seem like just another film in the long line of those Japanese animated features that rely more on the beauty of their art than their content. This is not the case. This is a deep and thoughtful work that, sadly, moves at a slower pace than what contemporary moviegoers are used to. I insist: the plot is spectacular and not overly complex, it is just slow.

The Kildren, a group of eternally young fighter pilots, experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds.

The move does have a good dub, Troy Baker, Stephanie and Michael Sinterniklaas anyone?

The art style and soundtrack is great as well.

Unbelievably dull anime from the director of Ghost in the Shell. That movie was pretty ponderous, but this one takes ponderousness and pretentiousness to a whole new level. The story is about a bunch of unaging teenage pilots who are fighting some sort of sky war. Most of the movie is spent with the zombie-like characters pregnantly pausing, staring into space for minutes at a time. The artwork is ugly as Hell. All the characters look pretty much identical and are drawn very simply. The airplanes are done in a really ancient-looking CGI, and the backgrounds look kind of like rotoscope. This film is nearly unbearable, and it elicited cheers from me and my two friends when the credits started to roll (apparently there's another sequence post-credits, but I'm not sorry I missed it). Folk star Joanna Newsom apparently voices one of the characters in the English dub, but I watched it in Japanese, so I missed one of the only things that makes this possibly worth sitting through.

I'll admit, it was difficult to get into the right mood to watch "Sky Crawlers." I was expecting one thing, a war film, and while there were moments of that, I found myself confronted with a world full of characters with human concerns, and a strict atmosphere that called upon the audience to pay attention to the details.

Having watched and enjoyed other films by Oshii (this one most resembling "Avalon" in tone and theme), I knew that I'd be in for something demanding and stoic, but I was also surprised by just how initially uncharismatic the two main characters were. However, as the film progressed, I found myself drawn in by their mysterious histories, and eventually deeply sympathizing with their tragedy.

To explain the nature of the pilots is to spoil the film, but rest assured, every frustration and question you have concerning the characters is answered by the end –just make sure you sit through the end of the credits! However, whether or not you are satisfied in the end is another question entirely. While the chaotic, crowd-pleasing dogfights and strikingly rendered landscapes are sure to get a rise out of any audience, the mystery of the characters themselves is initially impenetrable and unwelcoming.

On the other hand, Oshii's depiction of emotionally mature, personally tortured characters is a unique landmark in animation. While there have been other animated films concerned with serious character drama, few of them have chosen to completely eschew melodrama with the exacting discipline of this film.

The film strikes a strange balance between frenetic action scenes and serious character exploration. It won't please everyone. But if you enter "Sky Crawlers" with an open mind, you may find something exciting, brutal, and heartbreaking here.

And by " bad ", I don't mean - " No, I didn't like it. ", I mean it's a bad movie. Objectively. It's the embodiment of the concept " failure ".

Before anyone pulls out their dummy guns and accuse me of being a simpleton, let me say I like complicated movies. I like challenging movies. I like un-orthodox movies. In fact, I just came out of a screening of New York, Synecdoche and loved it.

This is not such a situation. Sky Crawlers is a movie which you will not understand anything unless, I'm guessing, you have read the novel which it is based on. It's as if Oshii shot the film as an action blockbuster and then found out the product is quite lame, so he cut out some scenes just to make the whole thing more incomprehensible in order to sell it to the festival crowd under the guise of an " art " film.

Oshii was never one to make a straight-forward film, but he always knew how to infuse humanity and emotion into the scenes, even if it got confusing there was always something true on the screen. It is not the case here.

As to how this film won anything and/or got nominated for anything is a testament to the utter confusion the artistic community faces when it is presented with something so void and empty.

Why am I not giving this one star? Because it had a nice soundtrack and the CGI sequences looked good.

Aside from that, avoid this film at all costs. And if you did not heed my advice and went into the cinema and watched the first ten minutes and said - oh boy, this is bad... but I'll stay, maybe it's gonna get better...

It doesn't.

I have to try to write a short review to avoid spilling out any beans But all I wanted to say is, this movie is like a bible - its hidden meaning is totally unlike what it seems from merely its outer appearance. If you cannot think outside the box or if you cannot treat this anime as coming from a surreal genre that requires a high level of intellectual thought to peel off its layers, then you are not prepared to embrace its true power.

For those of you who are ready, just think of the Children and keep this thought throughout while watching this movie (which is understandably made at an ultra-slow pace). It forms the basis of the link between things happening in the movie against something that is already apparent in real life. If you need more clues, please read Oshii's interviews online on his intention of making this movie.

Otherwise, if you get any of the mind-blowing revelation, once you uncovered something along those lines, that caught me off-guard like a plane shooting up sky-high, you will probably feel that 10 stars are not enough for this masterpiece either.

Locked in a long time battle, two waring factions look to gain the upper hand on one another. Kildren, eternally young pilots put their lives on the line for a conflict they don't understand to begin with.

The Sky Crawlers is a deep film that draws you in with it's stunning aerial battles and complex characters. I immediately liked the main characters, if for no other reason than that they broke away from typical Japanese character clichés. They're layered and have back stories that propel them forward in the story and brings the viewer into their world.

The animation is amazing throughout. The art is gorgeous. The plane fights were amazing. Each time a dogfight began, my heart would be racing and i'd be concerned for the characters involved. The music is very Mamoru Oshii. It felt a little odd, but did seem to fit well enough that it didn't distract me from what i saw.

The pacing was skewed wrong. At times it felt subtle, slow and decisive with the characters, which is fine in it's own right, but when you open with an explosive dogfight, you leave the subtle approach coming off as sluggish. I would have preferred the character scenes to move a little faster and to be presented more aggressively.

The ending is left me disjointed, however it fits the mood of the film so i won't count that against it.

The Sky Crawlers is a beautiful and touching experience that's among the best of the year. My highest recommendation