Club Ghibli #20 - Tales of Earthsea (2006)

It's not her book, is it a good movie?

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Diddy

愛してるって 言わなきゃ殺す
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Well here we are with a movie I was putting off, like, A LOT a lot. But who knows, maybe with 15 years of additional wisdom, this will be a new experience.

The year is 2006, and Ghibli had most recently capitalised on their "Spirited Away" breakthrough with the successful "Howl's Moving Castle". What next? As Ghibli are wont to do, they adapted a book for their next main release, this time the "Earthsea" series by Ursula K Le Guin (yeah I don't know either). But either way, it had a decent following in Japan already, and was a fairly sensible concept, and here we are with "Tales of Earthsea" or "Gedo Senki" (in English "Gedo's War Chronicles")

But let's call to the main stage, Goro Miyazaki, son of Ghibli founder Hayao, for his debut Ghibli film. We've seen his work already with "From Up on Poppy Hill", and he also worked on 2020's "Earwig and the Witch" and the TV series "Ronja the Robber's Daughter". I also found out today that he is fucking hot :horny:

I always do the plot synopses from memory, but this one I can't remember at all so thanks Google. "In the land of Earthsea, a mysterious force threatens to plunge humanity into destruction and chaos. A powerful wizard named Sparrowhawk seeks the source of his world's imbalance, and along the way rescues a runaway prince named Arren. When Sparrowhawk's powers begin to weaken, he and Arren must join forces with a former priestess and her daughter to defeat an evil foe whose quest for immortality will destroy Earthsea."

I have watched this a few times, the first time I fell asleep, so I am curious about it. If I can get through the Stranger Things finale, I can get through this. The authoress knows about reading as well as writing, and said this of the adaptation: "It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie". So there we are. It, along with "Earwig & the Witch" are the only ones to get a "rotten" score on RottenTomatoes, but what do they know? However, it was a hit domestically, becoming the highest-grossing Japanese movie of the year and 4th overall.



HOW THIS WORKS

In a semi book club format, the films will be announced, and over the course of about 2 weeks we can watch it and let everyone know what we thought. We are in the last third of the movies now, so I have decided to curate the last run and not pick the last big ones too soon - we've been really restrained I think so far, so thank you!

I was thinking 2 weeks should be enough time for most people to fit in a viewing at some point, but it's not strict so please come back when you have a chance, no pressure!
@Christian @Gangsta Nancy Lam @jivafox @COB @Haiku @ZenGiraffe @Lucille @KindaCool @Eyes @Queen of the Bay @RaspberrySwirl @RJN @Beverley @big ron @ButterTart @Mats (let me know if you don't want to be tagged any more)
 
PS Club Ghibli members - I have just realised that "Earwig and the Witch" IS in the Ghibli canon, I thought it was made by a different studio - do you mind if I squeeze that in before the end? I guess this only really affects the members who actually watch the films (:D) so @Queen of the Bay and @Eyes - I won't make it the last movie though, just in case it's a turd
 
by all means add in Earwig, I want to suffer through them all one way or the other (I'll go back to the ones I missed before joining in at some point)

I'm not sure if I'm prepared to see what this has done to Le Guin's world - she's one of my favourite authors though perhaps more for Left Hand Of Darkness and her general attitude towards using sci-fi and fantasy for the reasons the genre was intended. Earthsea itself is a pretty high-quality fantasy world but it does fall a bit in with other fantasy worlds with mages and wizards that I read when younger.

Either way I just know of this film through its reputation as a not good Ghibli film which coupled with my memories of the book has me anticipating this in a rather weird way.
 
Haven't finished it yet but that's unrelated to whether I like it. I think i should be able to finish this within the week though 🤞
Oh I see earwig and the witch is on Netflix too.
 
So, to clarify, I've read A Wizard Of Earthsea, the first of the Earthsea cycle, and I haven't read the others.

The wiki says that this is a combination of plot elements from four books including that, however since Wizard is the story of Ged/Sparrowhawk becoming a wizard as a youth, there's not much if any of that in this movie. Like, aside from the character of Sparrowhawk himself, this could be completely outside of the Le Guin universe that I'm aware of. So I'll take it on its own merits, and outside of it feeling a few times like the second or third in a series of movies that's missing its first installment, I didn't have much to say on that either.

It is... an okay action movie. Perhaps due to smooshing together the other books, it sometimes feels like there's a lot going on behind the scenes that isn't very well explained by the movie itself. Like Arren's mood swings, or how exactly True Names work (it's been ages but even if they were explained in the book I read they seem... inconsistently used here). Vague references to the Balance are alright though, I'm okay with the magic usage, that at least seems consistent. The focus on immortality is good, but the villains turning from what at first seems like a promising jab at systemic problems (the slavery and the reference to drug problems) into an evil wizard with a handful of henchmen at a fort of darkness is... rather less good. The city scenes and the farm scenes were great but everything at that castle was quite cliche.

I had an okay time watching it but I could tell even with my partial knowledge of Earthsea and the clues the film gave that better stories can be told in this universe than this. I should read the other Earthsea books to see how the plot stacks up as the author intended it but I do have a feeling that like the mashing together stories weakened it.

also I've looked up this movie on MyAnimeList to discover that in Japanese it's called 'Tales Of Ged' which sounds like they should have just adapted the first book. And that might have been better.
 
Yes, running a temperature probably wasn't the ideal condition to face my boss-stage, and I honestly had NO memory of anything in this film from earlier watches. (I barely do now!)

WELL, it happened - what a weird Ghibli-free movie. I mean the animation style of the faces was there, but they weren't very memorable, were they? Only apparently-male Queen of Evil @COB (and I ooped when their name appeared) left much of an impact. And rare of a Ghibli movie to have a pretty black-and-white cast of goodies and baddies, not a good twist really.

The story didn't really go anywhere, the first 30 minutes were alright, but it felt a bit basic. I don't know why Arren killed his dad, nor why Therru was an everlasting dragon or whatever it was?

It was just a slow pace that didn't really go anywhere, they just went to the Castle of Evil (and seriously, do they only have 6 guards?) and dealt with the issue, and that was it.

The theme of balance and the importance of life was explained several times, including by Arren who was seemingly just told that 5 minutes earlier. I don't think there was much character development, we just got told more stuff about them, and that was it, I don't think any of them really had story arcs.

Normally I say "Well it looked beautiful" and for the most part it did, but it was all a bit forgettable, and that first run-down town they went to felt so ropey against the animated characters.

So yes, the deed is done, and I'm sad to say it didn't budge from the bottom of my ranking (unless Earwig is trash garbage).
 
The story didn't really go anywhere, the first 30 minutes were alright, but it felt a bit basic. I don't know why Arren killed his dad, nor why Therru was an everlasting dragon or whatever it was?

I almost said that, yeah. The first 30 minutes felt like a completely different movie, scenes with no relevance to what would come later except for backstory establishment... of characters we didn't know yet. Doing a poor job of explaining as well.

Comparing it to other Ghibli movies it does feel like a mess that lacks deep themes while having rather poor character development.
 
I almost said that, yeah. The first 30 minutes felt like a completely different movie, scenes with no relevance to what would come later except for backstory establishment... of characters we didn't know yet. Doing a poor job of explaining as well.

Comparing it to other Ghibli movies it does feel like a mess that lacks deep themes while having rather poor character development.

Makes me wonder how he got it so wrong (while he looks so RIGHT :horny: )

Not a good start for his canon but From Up On Poppy Hill was rather lovely so I wonder how Earwig will be?

I downloaded the Ronja the Robber’s Daughter series too, for my sins. Haven’t watched any yet though
 
Anyway I enjoyed this a lot and I didn't mind much the things that were left unexplained cause I suppose the duration would end up being 2 days instead of 2 hours. The animation was gorgeous, especially loved the big city, reminded me of several elements & buildings from towns I know, and the cottage was lovely. Evil queen Cob was a delight of a villain, I loved her and Sparrowhawk was a very very :horny: daddy. Initial feeling was to give this a 10 but since everyone is being so serious, am giving it a 9 in an attempt to not look THAT basic :D
All in all I did have a great time watching and it was good entertainment. LOVELY!
Also loved their true names Lebanen and Tahanu even if we're never told why do they have to hide their names.
 
I’m glad you enjoyed it! A little bemused but it’s all the rich tapestry of life :D

I have to remember that while it’s - likely mostly western - online ratings are awful compared to every other Ghibli (except maybe Earwig :eyes:), it was a decent success in Japan so it’s not like it was universally panned.

Maybe that’s western fans expecting a certain Ghibliness from the film and not getting it, and it feeling surprisingly western.
 
I do take your point that they can’t overload it with exposition, but there is some… well I was going to say Balance :basil:

You don’t need to add all the lore, but I think it needed a bit more worldbuilding on some of the lore that WAS crucial, like the real name thing.

I mean the guy is a mage, that’s fine, I get the general idea of a mage: does magic
But they bigged up the real name thing a lot, and I could infer it was important but I don’t know, is it a Spirited Away deal? little Mermaid? Other?

For me I guess the problem is that there was no audience substitute of someone who had to learn the world with us - it could’ve been Arren, even though he became Neo at the end. It could even have been Therru but she was secretly a really unpleasant-looking dragon so maybe not.

Hmm I guess I have some way to go on this movie. But that’s what this whole club is about right, discussing it is fun, and we aren’t going to be totally condescending and sneery like they are in other threads
 
Of course pet go ahead.

(It may be next week that I watch it anyway... But I will watch it!)
 

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