Nice effects though.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

As soon as I heard "it's based on a novel" an immediate expectation came to my head, now I'm not someone to think movie adaptations of novels are a bad thing in many instances including other Ghibli films film adaptations can be amazing, but by just reading the name a lone 'Tales from Earthsea' I had a feeling that the story told in the novel would be just far too massive of an adventure to fit into one film, the reality of condensing a book into a film is stuff has to get cut out, and the bigger the story the more to cut out.And unfortunately this film pretty much hit that expectation, it is so amazingly clear that there is so much more to this story than what we see, so many side stories and arcs are set up with promising ideas but ultimately full flat due to just straight up not being able to give them the time they need.There is just far too much that seems to happen in the novel to be able to fit into one movie so instead of having one focused fleshed out story, every element is competing for screen time and brushed over in the end leaving you with far more questions than answers, I have no doubt all of these elements are present and very well thought out in the novel however...A movie should be able to stand on it's own, you should never HAVE to read additional content to fully understand what should have been conveyed to you.The most painful thing about this film for me personally is the background art where, in my opinion, is some of the best and most detailed I have seen so far in a Ghibli film, don't get me wrong it's all very impressive but in this film the detail was off the charts.Thus it ultimately saddens me that all that spectacular artwork has gone into what I would say is an 'ok' movie at best and that really sucks.So I suppose if you are looking to see some spectacular background and art this is the number one movie I would recommend, however if you are looking for anything of value, I'm sorry but this is not the place to find it.

I think Studio Ghibhli did a pretty good job of making this film. This is coming from a person who has never read the book and believe it or not I was actually planing on seeing this film for 6 months due to other movies and exams I was too distracted. But when I finished my ICT exam I decided to have the evening off and watch a movie so I came across Tales of earthsea. I have to say the movie was very beautiful. The music was also very beautiful to listen. The voice acting is pretty decent. The only thing that concerned me was that is Cob a male or a female because he had the appearance of a female but a male voice actor (William Defoe). Had good life lessons. I can see why some people might be angry since it is probably nothing like the book. But ignore the haters it is a pretty amazing film.

While I found the beginning of this movie incredibly tedious and boring, by the end it has become philosophically intriguing. I really enjoyed the idea that life without death is not life at all, and that overcoming death also means overcoming life. Now, I don't care that this movie isn't about Ursula LeGuin's books. Her books are a hot mess I like to read for the fun of it, but the storyline isn't particularly well done. This movie at least gets that right. I think Ursula LeGuin should be honored that her half-baked ideas inspire artists of various kinds to adapt some of her works as source-material. I am particularly pleased that we get to have a glance at Tennar as an older, more mature woman, and Sparrowhawk as a wise man instead of the firebrand we all know and love, but this story isn't about them, it's about a new set of challenges with new characters. Sparrowhawk just assists in restoring the world, but the spotlight is no longer him.

I've finally found it... a Studio Ghibli movie I did not like. Let's talk about it.Studio Ghibli had a lean few years following their greatest commercial success, Spirited Away. That film made the equivalent of $300 million and finally broke the studio through to Western mainstream audiences. It is the reason many Ghibli classics finally got released in the West. But the five films they released after that were decent at best. The nadir of this slump was this flick.Up On Poppy Hill- the film that ended the streak of below-standard Ghibli movies- was a period romance. In this film, the company dips its toes into another genre- the big-budget, soulless fantasy Lord of the Rings rip-off genre. Yay! Among the films in this most detestable of genres, this is far from the worst. It looks and sounds gorgeous, and there are some good ideas thrown in here and there. The last five minutes are borderline phenomenal. But as a whole, the film embodies many of the worse elements of the genre: boring storytelling, stale characters, needless babble, overindulgence, and a distinct lack of focus, all of which combine to make a film that is impossible to care about.This is really a shame, as this movie could have been really good. The source material, while not extraordinary, is creative and clever. The world of Earthsea is certainly not as boring as this film made it out to be. Go read the books and see for yourself. And even if the source material were bad, Ghibli and fantasy seem like a can't miss combination. Nausicaa is a great example of Ghibli's love of fantasy. In that film, they set precedents. In this film, they follow precedents. Nearly everything in this film is ripped off from something better- another hallmark of this horrid genre. In the end, it plays like a second-rate Nausicaa ripoff, a second-rate Legend of Zelda ripoff, and a third-rate Lord of the Rings ripoff.It is also far too long. Normally, I wouldn't complain about a long Studio Ghibli movie. If there were a four-hour director's cut of Mononoke or Spirited Away, I would be ecstatic. But there is a reason animated movies are usually shorter than the average blockbuster outside of the fact that they take forever to make as is- the nature of animation makes a 90-minute animated movie feel full and luscious, while a typical 90 minute drama feels claustrophobic and barren. A 120-miunte Ghibli movie like Spirited Away or Mononoke feels like a 3-hour-long live action movie.But length is something you have to earn. A 90 minute movie with characters you hate is annoying, but a three-hour movie with characters you hate in inexcusable. This film is 120 minutes long, and for the reasons I stated earlier, it feels like it's three hours long. I normally hate people who fall asleep in movies, but for this flick, I would encourage it.The characters are painfully cliché. There's the young hero, the evil sorcerer, the hero's mentor, and so on. It feels like these characters were lifted straight from a set of archetypes. The only character who's somewhat interesting is the hero's love interest. While not a great character, she has all the film's interesting scenes, and is easily a standout in this paper-thin cast.I absolutely despise our main protagonist. His struggle does not become apparent until halfway through the film, and it feels like it came out of nowhere, and it doesn't particularly feel like a struggle. This would be acceptable if he were interesting in any way, but he's not. To say he has no character would be kind. I would much rather have Link from Legend of Zelda, a character who literally never speaks, be the main lead here. The guy we got is so angsty and depressing and bland. The movie desperately needs us to care about him, but we don't, not in the slightest. He is honestly one of the worst leads I've ever seen. Nothing about him makes any sort of sense, and everything about him is so clumsily handled, and even if that weren't the case, he's still absolutely awful.If over half this film were cut, nothing would change plotwise. This film has no right to be 120 minutes. It has no right to be 90 minutes for that matter. It should be 70, 80 minutes at most. And if I had to choose which parts to cut out, I'd cut out the parts where the characters talk. The dialogue is horrible. I would honestly enjoy this film better if I watched it in Japanese with no subs. I would rather this film be a travel documentary about this world. The landscape shots are the best things about the flick.To be fair, if I have to spend two hours of my life watching a bad fantasy movie, I'd choose this over pretty much anything else. But I'd rather spend two hours watching a great fantasy movie, which is what this would have been. Goro Miyazaki, the director, would improve, but here, he squanders a potentially enjoyable film into the worst slog in Ghibli history. I weep for what could have been.