To start this blog, I want to briefly note my love of Hayao Miyazaki's marvelous films. Hayao Miyazaki has worked with Studio Ghibli and Disney to bring us such animated masterpieces as Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke. His works have been critically acclaimed and highly praised over the years; however, Miyazaki seemed to hit a peak with Spirited Away, and his most recent works seem to be rather lacking. Although Howl's Moving Castle-which followed Spirited Away-was, in my opinion, very well done, its ending seemed a little too silly for the tone that the rest of the movie had set, what with Sophie kissing everyone just because it seemed like a nice, fairy-tale thing to do.
And then came Ponyo-which had the most ridiculous premise and seemed to have the sole purpose of promoting the little Jonas and Cyrus in the English dub. (SPOILER WARNING) The story is about a goldfish princess who meets a boy named Sosuke, falls in love with him, and decides that she wants to become human so that she can be with him forever. This story is loosely-very loosely-based on The Little Mermaid, which is something we all know well. A classic romance, right? There's just one problem-Sosuke is five years old. Five! At the end of the movie, Sosuke must promise to always love Ponyo otherwise she'll turn into sea foam, and his mom and Ponyo's parents (the king and queen of the sea) all get together to see if he'll agree to this arranged marriage. At five years old! Of course he says yes...but how does a five year old boy, who hasn't even reached his "girls have cooties" stage, know what a big commitment he's making? When he grows up and actually finds out what romantic love is, he's going to be stuck with a goldfish! What if he ends up only loving her as a friend, and meets someone else he would want to be with? I don't mind sappy romance stories that have the idea that love lasts forever, but come on, they're much too young for this (or Sosuke is, anyway; who knows how age works for Ponyo. Maybe, since she's a fish, she'll only live for a couple of years). Sure, you can argue that since he knows who he's going to end up with, he'll just grow to love her and won't even need to worry about other girls, but it's still a weird idea. Along with this matter, the general storyline of the movie is just plain boring. Since Ponyo ran away to the human world, her daddy is trying to get her back to the ocean, so there's a huge storm during the night and the sea level rises to flood most of the town. Sosuke's mom went over to the nursing home where she helps out to check on the elderly ladies and gets stranded there overnight, so Sosuke and Ponyo go to find her. There's also something about the moon getting too close to the earth and causing the tide to rise too much, but this plot point wasn't memorable enough for me to remember. Overall I feel like they spent all of their energy in the animation-which, to be fair, was just as good as any of the other films-and neglected the story. It felt too stretched out in the middle and too rushed at the end for it to be enjoyable. I haven't watched the original Japanese dub, but I doubt that it would make much difference.
Currently, Hayao's son, Goro Miyazaki, has taken over directing/animating, and here we arrive at my main issue: Tales from Earthsea, which was released in America last summer (2010). I had seen the trailer for the movie and thought that, after Ponyo, this would be another epic story that would reflect the true potential of Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibli's genius. Unfortunately, it only came out in a few select theaters across the US, and I was disappointed until I found it a couple of weeks ago on DVD. I immediately bought it, and when I started watching the film I was enthusiastic, though I would soon change my opinion. (SPOILER WARNING) It starts out by introducing the idea that, long ago, humans and dragons "were one", but eventually there was a division among them. One group wanted to inhabit land only, while the others wished to stay out at sea. Those who moved to land became humans and those who stayed behind became dragons. Along with dragons, this universe has wizards and magic, and the idea is that one can obtain complete control over something with the knowledge of its true name (a big theme in fantasy). However, in the setting of the movie, the wizards are forgetting the true names of things such as the wind and rain and can no longer control them, even losing their magic powers, and dragons are appearing again and fighting amongst themselves. It seemed like this would be a really interesting plot for the movie, but, to my great disappointment, these ideas basically die out and go nowhere.
We meet our main protagonist, Prince Arren (pronounced like "Aaron" in the English dub and "Ah-ren" in the original Japanese), who runs away from home because he spontaneously murders his father, the king, and steals his sword, which can only be drawn out of its sheath by someone who has great magical powers-or something along those lines. He travels with his nameless mount, which looks rather like Yakul from Princess Mononoke (this is the best picture I can find of it; it looks rather like a llama crossed with some sort of deer), and eventually meets a man named Sparrowhawk, who we later learn is the Arch Mage-the most powerful wizard in the land. After coming to a city, Arren saves a girl from slave traders, but while fighting them he says something along the lines of "I don't care if I die", which ticks her off because she thinks that he doesn't value life when, in fact, he's just being emo since he's possessed and/or being stalked by some unseen shadowy force. Unfortunately for her, Arren and Sparrowhawk show up at the place she's staying, which is the home of Sparrowhawk's lady friend, Tenar.
The main villain-wizard eventually appears, and is so genderly confused that in the Japanese she's a woman and in the English he's a man (as in having a female/male voice actor, respectively). Cob (as [s]he is named) is a rather useless villain; along with having a completely nonthreatening name, Cob has a very weak motivation for trying to catch Sparrowhawk, and commands very pathetic henchmen: the slave traders. For some reason they work for Cob (though I have no idea why an evil wizard would care about human trafficking, it's not like [s]he uses them for anything), and although they run into Arren and the girl he saved-whose name is Therru (pronounced "Terru")-several times, the worst they do is threaten them and trample a garden. They could have taken advantage of finding the two kids, who are being watched over by Sparrowhawk (though after awhile he leaves to get information, or some other stupid move that leaves his charges defenseless), and kidnapped them to lure Sparrowhawk to Cob's castle. But no, that would make too much sense. Instead, they come back later to kidnap Tenar and only tie Therru to the fence (Arren ran away because he's being chased by whatever-it-is). It ultimately makes no difference who they kidnap and leave behind, because all four of them end up at Cob's castle within a few hours. Cob finds Arren and tricks him into giving up his true name, and promises to give him the secret of eternal life, which he tells Arren will allow him to be free from fear and the guilt of killing his father. Sparrowhawk gets captured after coming to save Arren (he shouldn't have left the kid alone in the first place), and Therru is visited by the thing that was chasing Arren-which turns out to be his soul or his heart or whatever, since Arren was taken over by a shadow and the good part of his soul was left behind, or something like that-and is told to bring Arren his magical sword.
So everyone is now in one place; Cob is going to kill Sparrowhawk, Arren is going to fight Cob and now has the will to live, and he and Therru share their true names with each other to show their bond/closeness. Arren and Therru climb up to the top of the tower where Cob is planning to make Sparrowhawk jump to his death, and Arren is able to draw the magic sword. He cuts off Cob's arm, which somehow breaks Cob's magic and reveals him(her) to be ridiculously old and, for some reason, eyeless. But wasn't this story supposed to have dragons in it? Throughout almost two hours there has only been one dragon scene, and that was in the first five minutes! Well, it turns out that Therru is actually a dragon, and she transforms so that she can flame Cob (literally)-who mistakenly thinks that she will grant him(her) immortality. Too bad for you. Therru flies off with Arren, and after only about two minutes of her being a dragon, Arren hugs her and she changes back into a girl. Seriously?! The cover of this movie shows her as a dragon, and she's only in dragon form for two minutes! Whatever, the movie is pretty much over at this point, and I stopped caring awhile ago.
To sum it up, Tales from Earthsea was a pretty big letdown. In the beginning it looked like it was going to be really cool, but as the movie wore on it ended up having lame villians, main characters who made poor choices (Sparrowhawk is always leaving Arren unprotected and having to save him later, and Arren is an un-dynamic wimp), and the false advertisement of dragons when the story only briefly mentions them. The animation and artwork is fine, and Goro has a slightly different, individual style from his father (though he ended up stealing lots of character designs from his father's previous works), but good animation alone is not enough to make the movie. Hopefully Goro will improve over time, because I don't want to continue being disappointed with these movies.
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