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Stardust – Lightning Harvesting Air Pirates

Stardust - lightning Steampunk airships

While Stardust, the film, may be out in the US, I must wait a little while longer before the airship of Captain Shakespeare can brave the skies of the Atlantic and bring it to the UK shores. However, in the meantime, I can amuse myself with the background information about the antics of the air pirates, and what it is that they actually do. They harvest lightning, for the black market (of course). It’s a simply fantastic idea (literally), and the airship seems to have webs and vanes of metal attached to the sides to act as lightning rods to collect this powerful side-effect of nature which they store in a jar. (Leyden, perhaps?)
I’m still looking forward to this, and if anyone over the ocean has managed to catch this, please feel free to let me know in the comments what you felt of the film – though preferably with as few spoilers as possible. Thank you!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 11:13 pm by Tinkergirl and is filed under Film Reviews.

Adric

The air pirates are the best part of the film. The funniest jokes and situations revolve around them, especially the Captain. As a whole, tho, I felt that the movie was a bit of a disappointment, but not for lack of trying. There was a lot of good stuff, but it didn't ever feel as epic as it looked like it was trying to be.

Patrick

Overall it was a decent movie. I did catch myself looking at my watch a couple of times during the movie though. Maybe if they would have brought the movie down to about an hour and a half it would have flowed alot smoother. --- Oh and the lightning collecting airship was badass!

Seth Graham Cogsmith

I do believe my dear that this movie was a very well done piece of film indeed. I recently saw it on saturday and was thrilled in general by shakespear and his men. I highly recommend this movie to anyone stateside and also when it comes to you rush to see it immediately my dear. On another note a great piece of film is the japanese movie
Casshern. It is filmed in a steampunk world, however this may be, there are some futuristic aspects. Check it out if you havent already. The trailor on youtube will stun you.

Dr. Redmoon

I'm no film critic, but I think Stardust was a fantastic film, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There was action that wasn't too over-the-top, there was drama that didn't take itself too seriously, and there was comedy at just the right moments. I felt Deniro had a smaller role than one would expect, but he was easily my favorite character.

Coraline Ashby

This may just be the Neil Gaiman fangirl in me, but I thought it was excellent. My friend, who has not read the book, had a similar opinion. The whole atmosphere of the piece was simply...perfect. As Dr. Redmoon said, it wasn't over-the-top or too serious, but managed to find a balance between the two. It may have been quite different from the book in parts, but everything just seemed to work. I highly recommend it.

NovySan

I saw the film opening night, the theater was full, and the film was well received. What was left out was small, and what was added was in the spirit. Mentions of "Princess Bride" good were bandied about.

Arklan

thourghly lovd it. great fun all around. ...of course, i must admit, one may find claire danes quite distracting. i always do. heh.

Kim

I honestly was not expecting to like the movie as much as I did. In fact, I've seen it twice since it came out last Friday! I'm telling anyone I know to go out and see it, so hopefully it does decent in theaters and we can get more intelligent and fun fare like it.

D'log

Fab - it sounds like it could be based on the Unreal Tournament 2004 total-conversion mod, 'Air Buccaneers'...

http://www.ludocraft.oulu.fi/airbuccaneers/

Doug

I thought the overall movie was just above mediocre as far as plot and character development go. However, the setting and background videography were absolutely stunning! Not to mention, the fantastic, steampunkirific airship, which was probably my favorite part of the whole film.

Proffessor Varne

I thought the film was fantastic, my wife and I hurt ourselves laughing at the Captain's antics. The Airship was well worth the ticket for the movie, as were some of the props the Pirates used. I guess now I'll have work on making the leather tube they used as a personal lightning carrier. If you liked the Princess Bride, I think you will enjoy this movie. A thoroughly enjoyable movie all told, IMHO.

Widgett

The film on the whole was quite enjoyable. The cameos of many excellent Brit comedians/actors were half the fun. DeNiro and Pfeiffer appeared to be having criminal amounts of fun. And any time you can get Peter O'Toole to play a king, you get points just on principle. But as far as the visuals go (and I need to get my own review written so I can include this point), Charles Vess wins.

Zeke

Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer (something that cannot be debated) and this movie really is a dazzler. It's a bit simplistic, yes, in a way evocative of fairy tales, but still a great watch.

Let me put it this way: if you're on this site, then you like steampunk. And if you like steampunk, you'll definitely want to see it.

graycube

I thought the ending was a little too "hollywood" and a bit of a let down. (I liked the book's more original ending better.) Overall though I really enjoyed this movie. It was a fun escape and so much more original and fun than 99% of the movies out there that make it to this kind of distribution.

I think what some people didn't like about the movie was its originality, they wanted it to fit some sort of fantasy paradigm and were confused when it didn't.

Antonio Luca

I went on the saw this movie just yesterday. I enjoyed it very much. I didn't know there was a book, so I guess I will have to go out and read it. As some of the other people have said, DeNiro is quite funny and the airship was fantastic.

Sean

Just saw it.

And, frankly, I thought it was just slightly above mediocre. It felt like The Princess Bride, but with less irony.

The scenery was very pretty as were the actors but the story seemed nothing more than an excuse to move the characters from one CGI-effect to another.

Claire Danes and Charlie Cox had pretty good chemistry, or at least, they were very cute together.

DeNiro should stick with his tough-guy schtick. The whole closeted transvestite with the tough exterior just wasn't working for me.

Very steampunky... but I could have waited for it on DVD.

-S

Dave

Not related to Stardust, but I thought you might want to see this.

WORKING MONOWHEEL for sale on ebay! Handbuilt, lots of lovely brasswork, pedal powered!

http://cgi.ebay.com/1873-Monocycle-Replica_W0QQ...

Mmmm, monowheel. :-)

Askaris

Lightning being harvested by air pirates, eh? Sounds a bit like the edge chronicles.

Natalia

I for one enjoyed the film, and though that it was a very good time spent at the theatre.

strugglingwriter

I absolutely loved this movie and want to see it again as soon as possible. That said, I agree with graycube about the ending, though I can see how the ending from the book wouldn't have worked as well for a big budget movie.

Go see this movie. As Gaiman said, "It's not a sequel to anything."