Epic (2013)
Directed by Chris Wedge
A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group characters in order to save their world—and ours.
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25 films that influenced Epic
What critics say influenced Epic
It echoes forest-battle tropes from FernGully and Avatar and boasts a visual palette reminiscent of A Bug's Life.
Christoph Waltz plays the villain perfectly and deliciously, reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s turn as an evil grasshopper in “A Bug’s Life” from 15 years ago.
Taking characters from William Joyce children’s novel about “Leaf Men” and “Brave Good Bugs,” a team of writers has borrowed from “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life,” and even “Spiderwicke Chronicles” for a story about the fairy forces of life in a forest, the Leaf Men (and women) and their allies, in battle with the rotting reptilian bog-dwelling forces of decay.
If you like this, try: “Robots,” “Ferngully,” and “A Bug’s Life” and the books by William Joyce.
Though technology has made massive leaps in the 15 years since A Bug’s Life, this tiny-creature toon can’t muster anything like the Pixar classic’s sense of wonder at seeing the minute made massive.
That could be the implicit message of all the animated pictures predicated on the tiny, from A Bug's Life to The Secret World of Arietty.
Yeah, there's really nothing new here: Epic swoops through caverns for Lord of the Rings-y battles, soars through trees for Avatar-esque high-flying excitement, and generally rips off every tiny-people yarn from The Borrowers to Ferngully: The Last Rainforest.
The cast is likeable enough, the animation is top shelf and I was even willing to forgive the fact that the story of a human shrunk down to discover a magical, miniature, woodland world struggling for survival is blatantly ripped off from another animated family film (1992’s “FernGully: The Last Rainforest”).
…traditionally-animated environmental parable, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest; while the pair share story qualities and character archetypes (on a surface level), the fantasy story imagined by Joyce is a much more subtle – and elegant – allegory about the importance of faith, tolerance and how all forms of life (even those we cannot fully comprehend) are interconnected.
But if you've seen “Lord of the Rings,” “Avatar” or even “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest,” you'll already be way ahead of them.
Epic is bound to be scolded for its screenplay's rampant rip-offs, which can be traced to The Borrowers, The Wizard of Oz , Fern Gully, The Lord of the Rings, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (charges of Avatar copycatting are sure to abound as well, but since that film was already epically derivative, such criticisms don't seem fair).
Basically, it's a passable combination of Bambi , The Borrowers and Avatar (which plays in my memory as an animated picture).
It echoes forest-battle tropes from FernGully and Avatar and boasts a visual palette reminiscent of A Bug's Life.
Yeah, there's really nothing new here: Epic swoops through caverns for Lord of the Rings-y battles, soars through trees for Avatar-esque high-flying excitement, and generally rips off every tiny-people yarn from The Borrowers to Ferngully: The Last Rainforest.
There are echoes of FernGully and Avatar in Epic's eco underpinnings and sweeping shots of vibrant green.
There’s a lot of familiar elements in “Epic” – from recent movies like “Avatar” and “The Secret World of Arrietty” to earlier films like “Fern Gully” and “The Borrowers.”
Epic feels overlong and overly reminiscent of several other animated movies, like The Secret World of Arrietty , Happy Feet , and Antz .
Taking characters from William Joyce children’s novel about “Leaf Men” and “Brave Good Bugs,” a team of writers has borrowed from “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life,” and even “Spiderwicke Chronicles” for a story about the fairy forces of life in a forest, the Leaf Men (and women) and their allies, in battle with the rotting reptilian bog-dwelling forces of decay.
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Epic feels overlong and overly reminiscent of several other animated movies, like The Secret World of Arrietty , Happy Feet , and Antz .
The film also hews to a premise — tiny people living a clandestine existence under the noses of full-sized humans — that has been similarly employed by “The Secret World of Arrietty,” “Arthur and the Invisibles ” and “ The Borrowers ” over the past several years.
There’s a lot of familiar elements in “Epic” – from recent movies like “Avatar” and “The Secret World of Arrietty” to earlier films like “Fern Gully” and “The Borrowers.”
Basically, it's a passable combination of Bambi , The Borrowers and Avatar (which plays in my memory as an animated picture).
Instead, Wedge and company opt to follow a far more conventional blueprint, one that suggests "Ferngully" as crossed with "The Borrowers," "The Spiderwick Chronicles" or any number of other stories about children stumbling upon secret communities of mythical beings.
Of course, this makes sense considering the villains of the movie are the Boggans (which reminds me of “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” another similar-themed film), and the Boggans are all about rot and decay even though they are natural creatures in the forest.
How epic you find "Epic" may depend on how many similar films, like "Ferngully," "Avatar," "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" or "The Spiderwick Chronicles," you've been exposed to.
Take Nod (Josh Hutcherson) for example, a brave but reckless warrior who feels that the rules don’t always apply to him, kind of like Maverick from Top Gun.
And some of the flying sequences - dogfights above and below the tree canopy - play like Top Gun, only the pilots are armed with bows and arrows and sport elf warrior garb.
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The slug and his snail sidekick seemed familiar types at first, kinda like the feuding idiots in Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress," that is, the inspirations for a couple of 'droids in " Star Wars ."
Epic is bound to be scolded for its screenplay's rampant rip-offs, which can be traced to The Borrowers, The Wizard of Oz , Fern Gully, The Lord of the Rings, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (charges of Avatar copycatting are sure to abound as well, but since that film was already epically derivative, such criticisms don't seem fair).