Castle in the Sky, the third of Miyazaki’s 11 films as writer/director

Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, perhaps best known for his work with Studio Ghibli, has gained popularity around the world for his creative and imaginative animated feature films. While they were originally released in Japanese, all of them have been dubbed into English with prominent voice actors and Hollywood stars. For the next several weeks, I’ll be reviewing the English-dub versions of each of Miyazaki’s 11 films as writer and director.

Last week, I tackled Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984).

This week: Castle in the Sky (1986).

Synopsis: Pirates and government agents alike pursue Sheeta (voiced by Anna Paquin), who holds a crystal that is from the legendary Laputa, a self-sustaining castle-city that hangs in the sky, unseen by man. Sheeta, while fleeing those who pursue her, encounters Pazu (voiced by James Van Der Beek), a young orphan boy. The two team up to evade the pirates and the government, and they make unlikely allies along the way as everyone races to find Laputa, the famed castle in the sky!

Spoiler-free review: Unfortunately for this movie, it doesn’t bring a lot to the table as a Miyazaki film. It’s not as fun as Porco Rosso; and it’s not as ambitious or impactful as Nausicaä. On its own merit, this is a fine movie, but as a Miyazaki film, it’s just kind of… there. There are several well-done animation sequences, one of which is depicted on the cover above; but, I feel that the film has pacing problems and seems a lot longer than its actual 2-hour runtime. The voice cast is fine, and the actual adventure is good, but it suffers from having the more engaging villain become an ally midway through, and by having its actual Big Bad come off as super over-the-top to the point where he’s cartoonish (and not in a good way). By the end, I was kind of ready for the movie to be over. Plus, like Nausicaä, it suffers from older animation, but while Nausicaä had an engaging story and characters, this is not quite on the same level. Again, not a bad movie in its own right, but as a Miyazaki film, it’s one of his lesser outings.

Letter grade: B-

Full review and critique: (Warning: here be spoilers!)

For a voice cast that includes the amazing Mark Hamill, this might be one of Miyazaki’s movies with a lesser voice cast.

James Van Der Beek, by himself, does very well; but having a grown man play a 12-year-old boy is as weird choice. Out of curiosity, I switched over the movie’s audio to the Japanese vocals, and Pazu’s Japanese voice actor sounds much more age-appropriate. Anna Paquin, likewise, does fine, but I felt like she kept going in and out of a British accent. I will say that that might’ve been me, as I had the sound pretty low, but either way, she didn’t strike me as one of the stronger members of the voice cast.

Cloris Leachman, on the other hand, has to be the MVP of the cast, playing Dola, the leader of the pirate gang. Leachman’s performance helps give Dola some color in an otherwise bland array of characters. All those moments of determined greed, motherly softness, or human concern came through in her performance, and helped Dola seem far more three-dimensional than I thought the movie was going for, judging by the opening 30 minutes.

As for Mark Hamill and his character Muska, Hamill’s voice performance — for me — sounds too similar to the Joker. I know that Hamill is capable of making each of his characters sound unique, and so I’m not sure if the producers wanted him to sound like that on purpose or whether it was just happenstance. While I will admit that I like the revelation that Muska is also a descendant of Laputa, which explains a lot of things about him, he doesn’t have the complexity that I was hoping for. Many of Miyazaki’s movies don’t have straight-up villains, but rather antagonists who are a little bit more interesting and complex than a typical “Mwhahahaha” sort of villain. Compared to Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke, Yubaba from Spirited Away, or Fujimoto from Ponyo, Muska is simply evil and not much else.

Now, while I have a lot of problems with this movie, there’s also a lot of good to talk about.

As I said, there are several really well-done sequences in the movie, including the opening minutes where Sheeta tries to get away from the government and then the pirates and ends up falling from the airship to presumably hit the ground thousands of feet below; the sequence where Pazu sees her floating and saves her; the two sequences with the robots, who somehow have more personality than some of the human characters; and — perhaps my favorite — is the part where Sheeta and Pazu are talking in the Crow’s Nest and everyone on the ship overhears the conversation. Sheeta’s desire to save people, even those who had very recently tried to kill her, saves her from being a totally flat and boring character.

As stated, the real problems in this movie come from the pacing, it seems. By the time the army arrives at Laputa, I just wanted the protagonists to hurry up and win. And, yet, there are a lot of drawn out sequences of Pazu running around and Sheeta running around, and Muska monologuing, and I kind of just wanted the movie to end by that point. It was a little bit disappointing that, after all the build-up about Laputa, the castle floated up into the air rather than Sheeta and Pazu getting to live there or bring it back down to earth or something. But, it makes sense tonally that the great technological marvels of Laputa stay out of humanity’s reach, lest someone like Muska try to use it for evil.

Overall, I’d probably watch it again one of these days, just to see if my opinion of it improves any, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to people. There are other, much better Miyazaki movies for people to watch. But, if anyone’s curious, I wouldn’t stop them from checking it out.

Next week: Spirited Away (2001).