Aero-Troopers: The Nemeclous Crusade (2003)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Excellent but underrated film

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The Nemeclous Crusade is unlike anything else in science fantasy. Combining superior CGI visuals with the spirit of 1930s sci-fi magazines, it combines to keep the viewer interested and then some as it proceeds through its world of the sky. The story involves Joshua, a boy who becomes a warrior for a sky-based civilization that is battling a gigantic sky-ship that resembles both a whale and a shark. Joshua's relationship with his mentor and with a girl who lands on their sky-ship and assists in the battle with the whale/shark sky-ship becomes a focal point of the story, told throughout with the feel of a chapter of a biography. The film succeeds in making Joshua a fascinating individual and compels the viewer to see his struggles with an intensity that caught me by surprise the more I watched the film.The surreality of this world of the sky easily draws the viewer in and keeps the viewer fascinated to the end, making for a sleeper science-fantasy triumph.

I am too old to have grown up playing video games, but I also am young enough that Ray Harryhausen was before my time. I am an animation fan and have seen most animated movie features and watch anime series weekly on DVD.So, after saying that, I loved this film. I am talking about the story, and the way it made me feel. The innocence, beauty, and noble ideals of the characters were very refreshing. It was a sweet movie.I think my son might have problems with the animation, as he has played video games most of his life, and as I've seen from the other comments, the expectations for animation is very high from these individuals. But for me, the characters appearing puppet-like was endearing. The scenery was beautiful and the colors were marvelous.I watched AeroTroopers twice and will recommend it to my son, with the hope that he'll enjoy the story and not worry that the animation does not match up to that of his latest video game.

While the voice talent is a tad heavy-handed (other voices/actors might have raised the over- all level of the production: perhaps there is a subtitled version somewhere?) younger viewers will find a lot about this film to amaze and intrigue them. Jaded viewers will wince from time to time, but there's a charm to the piece that left me smiling and nodding my head, wishing I'd had Areo Troopers to watch when I was 15.My chief salute goes to the design team: the retro-future world is fully realized. The film is full of cleverly designed machines, admirable costuming and inspired pyrotechnics. It was these triumphs that kept my 50+ eyes on the screen to the point where I began to care about the story.If you are a fan of well-thought-out alternate-future machinery (as in films like Wings of Honneamise) you'll find Aero Troopers rewarding, and worth toughing it out through the sometimes artless dialog.

I would have to classify this as one of the least enjoyable movies I've ever watched. There were many wonderful ideas, including imaginative locations and vehicles, and the basic premise of the story had merit, but the execution seemed *miles* off target.Firstly, the main character looks to me like a little boy, somewhere between 3 and 8 years of age. The opening scenes find him running and playing, with suitable childish glee. I was both startled and disappointed, then, when he began laughing with the voice of a young teenager. The voice felt utterly wrong for the character - like sci-fi scenes where a woman speaks with a man's deep voice. We are also supposed to accept that a considerable amount of time passes over the course of the film, but his character never looks or sounds any older. His childish appearance is made all the more disturbing by the fact that he is given a love interest (whom we are supposed to like, but whom I found to be repulsively creepy).One of the biggest overall problems with the film, however, is pacing. Things just don't happen at a natural tempo. This is true both in the bigger scope of the story, as well as within the context of particular scenes or camera shots.A prime example of this would be the many scenes which simply showed two characters doing something and laughing. The purpose of such scenes is to establish that the characters are bonding, and having a good time together. This could be accomplished in about 5 to 10 seconds. Unfortunately for the viewer, these scenes are drawn out to a minute or two in length. At the end of the scene, the characters are still in the some location, doing the same thing, and nothing new has been presented. This extra time does nothing to advance the plot, and very quickly becomes tiresome.Not only is this laughter hard to justify from a story-telling standpoint, it's also hard to accept it as believable. When people are enjoying an activity, the normal human response is not to laugh, but to smile. People only laugh for extended periods (without anything funny happening) when they are exceptionally tired or drunk, and the laughter in the film didn't seem to be caused by either of these.In many of the shots, the animation was also just *slightly* too slow to feel natural. Other shots were clearly intended to be slow-motion, but these lost much of their effect and believability, because motion blur wasn't added.It is also worth mentioning that a substantial portion of the dialog in the film consisted of single words. The characters showed a tendency to say things like "oh" "ah" and "ooh", in response to their environment, to a degree which was excessive, annoying, and rather silly. They also liked to answer questions with single word answers, whenever possible.If I'd seen the movie more recently, I'm sure I could quickly double the length of these comments. Since it was a few months ago, however, (and I don't plan to watch it ever again,) I shall conclude my ramblings with the recommendation that you go and watch this, as a spectacular example of how *not* to make a CG film.