Review: Castle in the Sky

Dir. Hayao Miyazaki (1986)

Pirates board a fancy airship in search of a young woman. She successfully evades them as they hunt her, but then her grip on her hiding place outside the ship gives out and she plummets to her presumed doom.

Cut to title.

Now that's how you start a movie!! Despite this incredible opener, a fresh viewing of castle in the sky reveals it to be as good as you remember it in some ways and surprisingly subpar in others. I'll start off with what works and then migrate to what doesn't really hold up.

Miyazaki's grasp on wonder and amazement is in fine form here, literally any scene involving Laputa, robots, or the floating island itself is a scene of sheer cinematic magic. The general message of the movie is also very interesting. Technology is shown to be something that feeds off of nature, men dig in mines for precious stones or coal. In this world, technology is clunky, mechanical, and pollutant. Contrasting this, Laputa’s technology is shown to be sourced from nature and works with it. Now this tech is shown to be far more powerful than the advances the ground dwellers have made, which seemed to work against nature. The overall theme of the movie being that if we work with our natural resources instead of consuming them outright, we'll find real power and advance as a species. Except, as the history of Laputa and the humans general reaction to the discovery of titular castle in the sky, we're far too greedy and power-hungry as a species to be entrusted with this real power. This is a message that resonates in the real world. Atoms are as fundamentally natural as you can get, split one and you get nuclear fission. Boom. Obviously humans did discover this and obviously humans greed and lust for power have kept this technology from generally being a positive thing. There's a lot to think about once the credits roll. Sheeta sums up the film's message during the final moments as follows: no matter how many weapons you have, no matter how great your technology might be, the world cannot live without love. If you're thinking, wow that's about the tritest possible summation of a complex them…well, you're right and that brings me to the downer part of this review.

Castle in the sky seems to operate without an understanding of what it even is. Let me explain, it's a movie about a girl searching for her place of origin: the fabled land of Laputa. No, wait. It's not. It's a movie about a boy who meets a girl searching for her place of origin: the fabled land of Laputa…except that's not right either. It's a movie about a boy and a girl who join pirates to escape from the military which is being led by a man who's searching for said girl's place of origin: the fabled land of Laputa. That's a bit closer, at least. There's just so much in this movie that's utterly vestigal. Don't get me wrong everything you remember being good about this movie is probably still good, but it is easy to forget how most of the running time is consumed by tail-chasing.

Pazu is such a boring protagonist. He's also, well, he's not the brightest glowing stone in the cave. He adds almost nothing to the story, literally everything he does could easily be done by Sheeta. In terms of screenwriting, Pazu should have been relegated to a side character yet he’s somehow the main character without ever offering anything to the story unfolding. It's baffling, the more you poke at it the more the narrative kind of falls apart like it's a stack of cards built on convenience.

For example the first person Sheeta meets in the movie, after narrowly avoiding plummeting to her death, just so happens to be a young boy obsessed with Laputa…the only person in town who believes it exists. How convenient! Easy shortcuts like these happen so often over the runtime of the film that it stops being cute and starts feeling lazy. There's also some really funny violent slapstick humour that pervades the running time of the film and it totally works, except for when it intrudes on the magical moments and kills the atmosphere. The film feels desperate to get the audience to laugh when they're busy becoming invested in the characters or situation or theme.

Castle in the sky is a little too comfortable with stripping imagery and themes from Nausicaa while attempting to present them as something new and special. Shiva's wardrobe, the parallel between her and her initial nemesis, the flashback dream of her as a child in a yellow field, the list goes one. We've seen Nausicaa, we love Nausicaa, stop trying to be Nausicaa.

Additionally, and this isn't really the movies fault, but I would recommend watching this one with subtitles. The English dub is distractingly bad. At times Sheeta does this incredible on/off switch with her Australian accent, resulting in some moments becoming unintentionally hilarious.

I feel like I'm being too hard on this movie. It has the bad fortune to be regarded as a Studio Ghibli classic, which honestly raises expectations higher than it can manage and the problems I highlight in this review don't ruin the movie. There's still enough Miyazaki magic to keep the narrative flowing but you may find yourself checking the time halfway through the film and just wanting to fast-forward to the moving robot rescue, the exploration of the castle, or Sheeta's confrontation with her own legacy. At the end of the day. it's a fine movie but I don't think it holds up to the hype, the memories, or the expectations.

If you've already seen Nausicaa, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle but you're still left yearning for more Studio Ghibli amazement, then yes, you should absolutely watch Arrietty, Ponyo, Porco Rosso, and then, perhaps, even Castle in the Sky.

-Josh Evans