"The best film outside the [main] competition [at the Venice Film Festival] has been Werner Herzog's The Wild Blue Yonder. Just when we thought Herzog's
genius had died or retired, the Aguirre, Wrath of God man
comes back with an inspired drama-mockumentary."
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
"The film, - a hybrid of documentary material, footage of the actor Brad Dourif as an extraterrestrial resident in America, hallucinatory images from space and the sub-arctic, and a soundtrack featuring a Senegalese singer, five Sardinian voices and a Dutch cellist – is mesmerising and beyond categorisation.”
David Jenkins, Sunday Telegraph
"What vocabulary could one invent to describe the radically magnificent images of The Wild Blue Yonder? Rarely does a filmmaker give us the opportunity to view his intelligence at work as Herzog does. Political, ecological and poetic at the same time. Hybrid documentary, mutant manifesto and fiction all at the same time, The Wild Blue Yonder is, above all, a vision.”
Olivier Seguret, Liberation
"Herzog’s strangely beautiful film has marvellous music and hypnotic imagery. It’s a triumphant mix of great imagination, hypnotic images and an extraordinarily haunting score. The sountrack is destined for greater things.”
Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter
"It has long been a matter of conjecture how Werner Herzog
would cope without his muse and nemesis, the late Klaus
Kinski. His beautiful, odd new sci-fi fantasy, The Wild Blue
Yonder, suggests he may at last have found a replacement in
the form of Brad Dourif, cast as an alien stuck on Earth and
none too happy about it. He is a visitor from Andromeda, a
planet submerged in water and the subject of attention from
human astronauts. With his rolling eyes and grimacing
features, Dourif achieves a pitch of madcap intensity worthy
of the star of Aguirre, Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo.
Between Dourif's blasts to camera, Herzog shows us
mathematicians and Nasa scientists speaking gibberish about
the future of humankind, while throwing in exquisite imagery
of astronauts adrift in space.”
Geoffrey Macnab, Guardian
"The Wild Blue Yonder : Planet Herzog
An Unidentified Cinema Object landed yesterday on the Lido, unleashing the admiration of the international press: the docu-film The Wild Blue Yonder in the running for a prize in the Horizons section. Its pilot, the famous German director makes this film a veritable "trip" without breaking the narrative line (the history of the world reviewed by an alien) as passionate as it is hilarious. Werner Herzog makes a brilliant returns to the top of the 7th art, adding another jewel to his collection of out of the ordinary feature films. A work of hypnotic beauty with an original soundtrack of bewitching music by Ernst Reijseger and with the enchanting voice notably of Mola Sylla from
Senegal.
Produced by British outfit West Park Pictures in co-production with the filmmaker’s company (Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, also handling sales internationally) and French Tetra Media, The Wild Blue Yonder also had support
from the BBC, France 2 from the CNC.”
Fabien Lemercier, CineEuropa
"Germany's Werner Herzog came up with the festival's most original film, The Wild Blue Yonder, in which he uses found footage of the astronauts aboard a space shuttle flight and documentary images of underwater exploration in the Arctic to weave a sci-fi fantasy about aliens on Earth. It's an almost
indescribable concept, but an extraordinarily beautiful one."
David Stratton, The Australian
"One of the best films in Venice this year comes hotfoot from the Lido: Werner Herzog's characteristically droll and bizarre tone suffuses dreamlike photography of a space-shuttle trip and an arctic dive, and the story of an alien. Bewitching."
The Independent
"Described as "science fiction fantasy," German maverick Werner Herzog's latest, "The Wild Blue Yonder," should stand with the likes of "Fata Morgana" and "Lessons of Darkness" as one of helmer's best efforts at smudging the lines between docu and fiction. Entrancing and often funny pic spins a tall tale about deep-space voyages to and from Earth, via a mixture of original material, archival clips and footage shot in space by astronauts. Achingly beautiful music by Ernst Reijseger completes ace package."