Take Kiki's Delivery Service and those Disney ''Atlantis'' films; Mix'em together with French undertones and lots of Steampunk. You'll get Alice and the Extraordinary World.
It's the early 1870s in the second French Empire. A war with Prussia is brewing. Emperor Napoleon the Third is attempting to create super soldiers to help in the upcoming battle, but there's a snag and the emperor is killed. Now his son must be crowned the New Emperor, Napoleon the 4th who signs a peace treaty with Prussia, avoiding the franco-prussian war and altering history as we know it.
Strangely enough a lot of the world's famous scientists and inventors are kidnapped over the next 40 years and many of the world's technological advances cease to exist.
Now the world is stuck in a continuously existing steam age leading to economic stagnation and depleted resources as coal, timber become more scarce. With Europe's resources depleted they look to North America as the next great Reserve. But the United States combined with various other nations of the Americas have united in a defense against the European juggernaut.
And that's really where the Story begins. we fallow the adventures of a girl named Alice whose parents are working on a serum to cure sickness of any sort. and in the world were you only have one tree in the entire city and the air quality is about as good as Hong Kong Harbor an ailment for sickness is kind of needed. However this isn't going over well as the French Empire requires that anybody with scientific knowledge is to work with them to further their goals for military expansion. Also there's a talking cat in the movie just like in Kiki's Delivery Service though he's a bit more snarky.
I'd mentioned earlier that the movie has French undertones. and despite the fact that it is a French made movie; It feels very American in it's delivery, which is a little disappointing to me, the film's just a little too predictable it never truly surprises you (except for one little twist at the end.)
Now if it was me I would have Focus the entire movie around the French Empire itself with Alice and her family having to interact with only that. Maybe we could have gotten to seen the war between the French and American forces Somewhere over the Atlantic as they continuously try to take each other's resources.
The animation can seem a bit stiff at times but it makes up for that with his very creative steampunk world, the image of two Eiffel Towers is intriguing enough. Also there are techno powered homing pigeons with little tiny green goggles (which is the entire reason I watched this movie in the first place.)
Part of me would like to see this universe explored more in other movies but unfortunately that just can't happen: One because of how the story ends. Two because the 12 million dollar budget that was spent on making the movie that was never earned back, altogether I think the film only made a million dollars and that's with International numbers.
Comments
Post a Comment