Compared to Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke, Yubaba from Spirited Away, or Fujimoto from Ponyo, Muska is simply evil and not much else. 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. 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. 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. 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.Īs for Mark Hamill and his character Muska, Hamill’s voice performance - for me - sounds too similar to the Joker. Leachman’s performance helps give Dola some color in an otherwise bland array of characters. 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.Ĭloris Leachman, on the other hand, has to be the MVP of the cast, playing Dola, the leader of the pirate gang. Anna Paquin, likewise, does fine, but I felt like she kept going in and out of a British accent. 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. James Van Der Beek, by himself, does very well but having a grown man play a 12-year-old boy is as weird choice. Again, not a bad movie in its own right, but as a Miyazaki film, it’s one of his lesser outings.įull review and critique: ( Warning: here be spoilers!)įor a voice cast that includes the amazing Mark Hamill, this might be one of Miyazaki’s movies with a lesser voice cast. 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. By the end, I was kind of ready for the movie to be over. 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). 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. On its own merit, this is a fine movie, but as a Miyazaki film, it’s just kind of… there. It’s not as fun as Porco Rosso and it’s not as ambitious or impactful as Nausicaä. Spoiler-free review: Unfortunately for this movie, it doesn’t bring a lot to the table as a Miyazaki film. 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! Sheeta, while fleeing those who pursue her, encounters Pazu (voiced by James Van Der Beek), a young orphan boy. 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. Last week, I tackled Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). 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. 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. Castle in the Sky, the third of Miyazaki’s 11 films as writer/director
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