Problem: negative
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Answer: Way back in 1967, a certain director had no idea about a galaxy, far away or near. He was trying to complete a movie with the title THX etc. this short is a remanufactured history of a certain George. i am sorry it has only cuteness to defend it. This is merely an advertising promo for the director, actors, et. al. It has little intrinsic artistic value. It is a brochure. The lead playing George, is very fine, as is the Leia character, and the ersatz Darth character. All else is plain commercial dross. What a waste. Still, it got the job done I guess. The rest of the movie is merely treading water to kill time I guess. a brochure only.

Problem: positive
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Answer: I just realised I've been using IMDb for years now and I've never reviewed my favourite film. By favourite I don't mean something I like for now, I mean this film is so supernaturally perfect that there is never another animated experience going to touch it. This is obvious because I am never going to be a child again; I saw this film on ITV in the early nineties. I was 12 which is the age group this film is directed at, I'm also male, the gender that this film is intended for (the overwhelming majority of Miyazaki's protagonists are female). Consequently this film indelibly inspired my childhood psychology and I am forever indebted to Carl Macek (sp?) for producing the English dub of this film which is far superior to the Di$ney production which is not even funny - I've never even been able to watch that one - of course subtitled is the only way ultimately however the Macek version is SO good (the voices almost exactly corresponding to the original Japanese actors) that this version is available on the Japanese DVD! It's not available on any distribution in an English-speaking country. Go figure.

There are hundreds of competent reviews so I'm going to put some trivia here, not that I'm the definitive archive of information for this film.

First up I'd like to agree with the reviewer who stated that you need 20 out of 10 to review Miyazaki's films - they are so in their own league that they make almost the whole catalogue on IMDb combined pale into insignificance.

The fascinating story with this film is that Miyazaki based the countryside around Slag's Ravine (Pazu's town area) on the Welsh mining communities. He visited Wales for a few months in the early 80s (might be late 70s) just after one of the great mining strikes. Being an avid supporter of the student socialist movements in the sixties he felt their plight. The fight between the townsfolk and the pirates at the beginning serves to illustrate this empathy with the working man. The countryside and the clouds especially in this film remind me of where I grew up as his film depicts a fantasised version of the rolling hills of the midwest British Isles.

The island is of course from Swift's genius satirical novel of the eighteenth century - the story in Swift's book is, deliberately, ridiculous. In Castle in The Sky, Miyazaki weaves together myths such as Atlantis and the Tower of Babel - I think the architecture in addition is based on Peruvian ruins though I'm not sure, someone told me that.

Anyone who gets round to reading this review and who likes this film REALLY will want to check out Miyazaki's epic series Mirai Shounen Conan - Future Boy Conan - based on the short sci fi novel 'The Incredible Tide' by Alexander key (novel is available online). Conan is basically a prototype for Laputa's Pazu and Shita. In addition you may not be familiar with his earlier work for Masterpiece Theatre - some of his key frame animation. He also did key frame for Sherlock Hound - this has some of the finest backgrounds I've ever seen too. Also check out Miyazaki and Takahata's first feature film Horus Prince of the Sun (1968) - amazing by today's standards in fact. What else... Gauche the Cellist and The Flying Ghost Ship - though they're pretty rare.

This film is such a gift, I don't know what we'd do without it with all this other crap storytelling around, this is like an oasis. Arigatou Miyazaki-sensei!

Problem: negative
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Answer:
Sadly, it's true. "Legiunea straina" exposes with absolute clarity the parameters of Daneliuc's irreversible failure.

As it was already said, the author lost the faculty to coalesce his content factors and artistic intentions in a coherent form. Maniacally concerned with the mechanic trick of picking at random news subjects and join them together without any legitimacy, he only gathers a disordered pile of events, unable to follow the least story-line. The script's level is similar to a "Cantarea Romaniei" amateur play about the glorious feats of socialist realism - only, turned upside down: while the communist line dictated a narrow concern only with positivism and sugary festivism, now Daneliuc is as perniciously obsessed only with negativism and disgusting scatology. The ideas content is zero, and the "message", infantile and didactic, at a kindergarten level.

Unfortunately, he also forgot the most elementary professional tenets. He isn't able anymore to organize a dramatic situation, to order it in a correct movie scene, to frame it right and to edit it following the simplest rules of cinematographic grammar. His level of story-telling in film-images is similar to phrasing something like: "Holy sheet man it ain't nuthin right 'ere, and all da people is asses!" What a huge distance from the impressive artist of 1976-1984, who had created unique works as "Cursa", "Proba de microfon", "Vanatoarea de vulpi" - and even "Croaziera" and "Glissando"... Sic transit gloria mundi...