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Pretty Good

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

The film had an intriguing idea and story-line. But unfortunately they have produced a lack luster effort. With a quite unfocused story and slowly paced.The story is set 300 years in the future, in a i would say post - apocalyptic landscape. A young boy/man Agito comes upon a girl frozen in time Tula wakes her up, which could tip the balance in an ongoing war between two factions. One whom wants to live peacefully with the forest and one that wants to bring the earth back, to the way it was. just by typing up the synopsis here, again gives me the feeling of a good idea gone to waist. One of the main things that bothered me were the way the two factions were put across, as the people who want to destroy the forest are obviously the bad guys, which is the obvious environmental message the film wants to put across and showed no subtlety while it slapped you across the face with this message, but the forest which has some mythical druids protecting it, come across to me as quite like a dictatorship holding the power over human kind. The pacing of the film was very slow with some action scenes you would hope lift the momentum for the picture which actually turned out quite bland and predictable.The film is beautifully drawn with the huge landscapes being absolutely stunning and competing with Studio Ghibli on that front. The dubbing was pretty good and the musical score was not disappointing.Overall an OK film, with decent elements, and an idea there that could work very well but not quite on this movie.

Origin: Spirits Of The Past is an animated Japanese movie. Set in a future after apocalyptic events, it shows humans living in ruined civilisation with encroaching plant growth. Young Agito is slightly rebellious and, while adventuring somewhere he shouldn't, he discovers Toola, a girl placed in stasis by an earlier civilisation. Releasing her proves to be the catalyst for a number of changes, most of which will be familiar to anyone who was watched Nausicaa, Avatar, Frengully and the like.The message is fine (if arguable) and the look of the movie is terrific - design and animation are both great. The problem with this film is more serious - it is that it never really grabs you.I am used to Studio Ghibli's contributions to Japanese animated cinema. They are weird (to my western sensibilities, at any rate), but they have bags of heart: they grab hold of you at the start and never let go. Origin, by contrast, never really does. The two rebellious lads come close, but after their initial exciting foray, the characters all become cardboard and you stop caring. It's a shame because, with a bit more effort put into the human story, this film could have been very good (if unoriginal).

This well animated film treads the same nature versus technology ground that Hayao Miyazaki films often do, and in the beginning it is pretty good, with a reasonably interesting premise and very nice, visually striking animation.There are some minor problems in the plotting early on. Most notably, it's unclear why bringing civilization back is a bad idea. Eventually it does become clear why, but the movie just kind of assumes it must be a bad idea without taking much pains to persuade the audience.Still, I was enjoying the movie until perhaps the last 20 minutes, when it becomes ridiculous. It turns out that, rather than restoring the world, the final solution will, as best I could tell, return the earth to the state of burning lava. How is that a good idea? And how would anyone survive? Next, why is the volcano weaponized? If it is just designed to reformat the earth, why does it need defensive weapons? I'm also unclear on why it needs to move. Does it simply destroy a little of the planet at a time? (In which case I suppose the planet could be reformatted piecemeal, which would explain how people could survive.) Lastly, why, if you shut down the volcano, would it self destruct? What possible sense would that make? And how would any personnel in the volcano actually leave? And get far enough away.Towards the end the movie also gets way too sincere and preachy. So that what should be the emotional, uplifting finale feels like a huge let down.All that being said, it's a nice looking, perfectly enjoyable movie if you can accept its flaws.

Roughly the first 30 minutes of this movie were actually quite entertaining despite ripping Laputa and Nausicaa. We get to see a glimpse into the everyday life of a people adapted to living in the relatively difficult circumstances. Characters and the Neutral City are well introduced and the slower pace suits the movie well. The rest of the movie however is an absolute disaster. Badly written, uninteresting, clichéd and just plain stupid. We get absolutely dull villains, a walking volcano, useless crying heroine and magic forest superhero powers. Even the pretty visuals of the first half of the movie seem to evaporate towards the end.As pointed out in the other reviews: If you have seen Nausicaa then don't bother with Origin. Nausicaa did everything better. And even if you haven't don't bother with Origin, watch Nausicaa instead.