Tales From Earthsea

I had first heard about this movie when someone mentioned to me that Hayao Miyazaki’s son, Goro Miyazaki was about to make his first movie. Hayao himself being the director of classics like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away has earned a spot as being one of my favorite directors. It was a few months later that I had heard that the movie was going to be based on the Earthsea series by the science fiction/fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin. My excitement rose even higher at this, having read the Earthsea series. The preliminary news I heard about it was wonderful as well, it was doing great in the box office in Japan, making over seven million dollars on opening weekend. I was absolutely elated by the time I had heard that Studio Ghibli had hired Willem Dafoe to play the lead villain of the movie. So, I put aside time, turned the lights on dim and grabbed a bucket of popcorn.The movie picks up very fast with a ship being tossed around in fierce waters. The outfits and design of the ship echoed that of which Le Guin had hinted at in her books. The Celtic music picks up as the ship is about to be overturned and you see two majestic white dragons rising from the water and dancing about in the clouds, the dancing soon turns to rage as one of the dragon severs the head of the other from his body.

The next scene is a meeting of politicians sitting in front of the King, telling him of the dragons that were spotted off shore and how his son is missing. The King is very distressed and sets off by himself down a long corridor. The king hears steps, turns around and sees nothing. Then an assassin reveals himself and pierces the king through the heart. The king calls out that the murderer was his son, Arren.

There are certain clichés that animes fall in to, archetypes and setups that must be avoided at all cost. Hayao Miyazaki of all people is aware of this. Hayao has made all of his movies devoid of these archetypal characters, these story elements that are so played out, so predictable and void of emotion. So surely......SURELY his son, Goro, would know not to cast a silent, bruting and tortured teenager as the lead role......surely.

Spoiler: he doesn’t.

With patricide out of the way for Goro, he moves on to wrecking more staples of the Ghibli Studio legacy. Hayao himself was known for designing wonderful creatures, whereas always had a basis in creatures in our world, had distinguishing qualities that made them whimsical, mysterious and often magical. Goro Miyazaki decided to go for another approach......realistic, droningly witless and fairly unimaginative. This is becoming quite a trend for Goro.

I would like to mention that I am not even commenting on the distinct and numerous plot holes, errors, dead-ends and meaningless dialogue that is in this film especially compared to the deep-thinking universe expanding stories of Le Guin. Quite frankly, the only thing incredible about this story is that they were able to take Le Guin's story and universe and chop it up in to something so streamline and silent that it is hardly recognizable. It gave a taste in my mouth comparable to discount sushi.

This Kind

There were a few crowning achievements of this movie, Studio Ghibli remained to give wonderful backgrounds to the piece, yet what they put considerably less attention to was character movement. That is unless it was directed towards Lord Cob, the movies antagonist. Let me say that Lord Cob was one of the best parts of the movie, Dafoe delivered every line in the movie with a whispering effeminate growl that was equal parts enticing as it was disturbing. His movement, his hair movement and later on his magical ooze (there isn't a better way to explain it) was animated very well.

There were a few interesting story themes, yet instead of being hidden under a layer of fantasy story-line, they were announced, said blatently, practically screamed throughout the last forty-five minutes of the movie.

By the end of the movie you will be happy to see the credit. You might have thoroughly enjoyed the animation sequences and wonderful painted backgrounds, yet there wasn't much else to grasp at. The representation by Disney cast some of their rising talent as the two main lead children, I guess that's what happens when you sell your distribution rights, but then again the movie even ended with more anime clichés like the typical female pop-star song while the credits role.

Like I mentioned, the movie was released in Japan and made quite a bit of money, even stayed on the top of the box-office for 9 weeks, but it must have been a slow season because the movie that took its number one place was X-Men: Last Stand.... The movie was then released on the thirteenth of this month in America, only going to 22 theaters across the country.

Ursula Le Guin commented on the movie after seeing it, saying that the content was changed to "drastically changed" and that it didn't represent her books at all. She later made a comment to Goro personally that "It isn't my book, it's your movie, it's a good movie". Ghibli then used part of this quote on the company website to advertise the movie.

The Ghibli name is what drew everyone in towards this movie, it's what gave Le Guin the confidence to sign the rights of her book, it's what gave this movie such an expensive budget, perhaps everyone thought they were getting the father, but didn't find anything worth keeping when they found the son.

And with that, Goro adds quite possibly the only dark chapter in Studio Ghibli's Legacy.