Truly Dreadful Film

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This movie is set on a different planet. It starts with an unknown force destroying the people of a naturalistic utopia civilization. A soldier is set out on a mission to investigate this force. The story is interesting with the force slowly being revealed and then battled. There is also an interesting time travel concept which makes it more mysterious. I thought it got a little too fast-paced near the end though. The best part about this movie is the animation. It's not very refined or high quality but the style and the creativity in the design of this world and it's creatures is amazing. Most of the characters aren't interesting though. At all. The main protagonist has absolutely no personality throughout the movie and his voice acting isn't very good either,and his love interest has a bit more but still is more like a cipher. The only other main character, the villain is much better with his manipulative and all-knowing personality, and creepy voice acting. Despite it's flaws, I think this movie would be great for animation and science fiction fans.

René Laloux never did make another movie as intriguingly bizarre as "Fantastic Planet". But Gandahar comes close. It provides not only a sci-fi world, but one with no relation to our planet Earth. Its culture, environments, and fauna are quite foreign. Sadly, Gandahar doesn't have the artistic tone to make it truly stand out. Fantastic Planet's use of color, stop motion, and music emphasized the alien feeling. Gandahar doesn't particularly amaze in any of these areas. It has more focus on plot, but it isn't very strong. The protagonist has little character to him, and some elements were cheesy. The robots look like they came from the 50s, and the "rebellion" at the end has been seen dozens of times after Star Wars.Still, there are some cool, weird scenes and concepts in the movie. If you don't expect something as great as Fantastic Planet, its a fun distraction. Make sure NOT to watch the "Light Years" English dub cut! D:

It feels too easy to call Rene Laloux's animated movies "trippy", as if one can only appreciate them while on drugs. But there's a kind of weird dream logic mixed with hallucinogenic science fiction that Laloux, along with his collaborator Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky, seems to have mastered. Unfortunately, Gandahar was his last feature film, and not his best. But for animation buffs or fans of weird sci-fi, it's well worth a look.Gandahar uses a fairly straightforward, action-driven space opera plot line. It dramatizes the clash between nature and technology, perhaps in an over-literal way. Most of the above-mentioned weirdness comes from a race of misshapen seers that speak in impossible tenses, and a plot that requires time travel to a point which is simultaneously past and future. It's not convoluted, but it's impossible to understand just as actual time travel would be to our chronologically-limited minds. Oh, and there are lots of breasts, most of them belonging to blue people. Between that and the violence, Gandahar is certainly much less child-friendly than Laloux's other films.Gandahar isn't really original as a whole, although there's a lot of fun absurdities like giant crabs throwing rocks at armies of metal men. But it's a fun watch, with just enough weirdness to put it above the familiar repertoire of 1980s science fiction. If you're a fan of any of the artists mentioned above, this is a must-see. If you're not, maybe give Gandahar a chance anyway. Who knows, you might like it.

It's not as bad as some people want to make you think. "Time Masters" is much better, but if you like "Time Masters" (and like it much more than "The Fantastic Planet") then you'll probably like "Gandahar" (aka "Light Years") too. It's true, it has a lot of talk, but that's because it HAS a real story instead of other so called adult animation movies. The music wasn't bad (I even find it good), but especially one music was getting on my nerves at the end of the film. The animation isn't a breakthrough either, but with it's light effects and the fantastic backgrounds it was 100 times better than the animation in Fantastic Planet. On the other hand it's falling to dust if compared to the best Japanese animation films at that time like "Akira" for example.Go and decide for yourself!