Laputa: Castle In The Sky - Double Play: The Studio Ghibli Collection (Review)
Friday, 13th May 2011, 16:55

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There are very few, if any, directors who have become synonymous with their studio in the same way as Hayao Miyazaki has become synonymous with Studio Ghibli. One could easily make the same argument for John Lasseter and Pixar Animations, but Lasseter has brought along other directors such as Pete Docter who have made Oscar-winning films themselves. On that point, Lasseter treats Miyazaki as a master filmmaker (with good cause) and the two have become good friends to the point where Lasseter oversees the Western releases of Miyazaki's films, even having input into the English-language voice casting. There are so many great Miyazaki films that it's hard to single out which one is his masterpiece, from Spirited Away to Ponyo and Princess Mononoke.

One of his earlier films was Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which, in 1986, became the first film created and released by Studio Ghibli. On board a huge airship, a young girl is either being protected or kept prisoner – nothing is made overly clear – by a group of men under the command of Colonel Muska. When the ship comes under attack by a group of pirates led by an old woman called Dola and a firefight between the pirates – her sons – and Colonel Muska's men, the girl picks up a wine bottle and smashes it over Muska's head, knocking him out and taking a pendant from him. For reasons that are still unclear, she climbs out the window and begins to inch along a ledge but this attracts the pirates' attentions as they spot the pendant and, with the airship swaying and small planes buzzing around her, she falls.

Instead of plummeting to her death, her fall gradually slows and gently stops just before a young miner, Pazu, who has seen her falling and has run from his house to where he thinks she will land, can catch her. Just as she stops and floats in mid air just above his outstretched arms, she suddenly drops into his grasp and he put her down safely. When she wakes up, she has absolutely no idea of what has just happened and Pazu tries to explain that the necklace, which glowed bright blue to slow her fall, is somehow magical. He tries to demonstrate what happened by borrowing the necklace and jumping off the roof of his house but nothing happens and he just crashes to the ground. Whilst in his house, the girl, who divulges her name is Sheeta, finds a photograph of a huge island which is floating through the sky. Pazu describes how his late father took that photo, which is of the mythical city Laputa, was considered to be a hoax by his contemporaries yet Pazu believes Laputa is real and wants to find to prove his father was right.

However, before they can discuss things at length, Pazu and Sheeta have to flee because they have been tracked by Dola and her gang of pirates who are now at Pazu's front door so, with Sheeta disguised as a boy, they flee through the town. The townsfolk clearly don't want to have anything to do with the pirates and there is a show of strength between the most muscular pirate and the most muscular man in town which turns into a fight, leaving the pirate unconscious. During the fight, the children jump onto the train and Pazu takes over shovelling coal in order to make the engine move the train as quickly as possible. However, the pirates are also on the tracks and, when they catch the train and the children are forced to jump onto a wooden ledge which collapses and, when many of the ground, the pendant glows a bright blue just as before, saying their lives and telling Dola it is the stone she is after.


Pazu and Sheeta landed in a mine where they meet Uncle Pom, a man who has been mining for decades and shows the children that, when he turns off his light, the stones come to life and begin blowing a brilliant blue, the same colour as Sheeta's pendant. When she shows this to the old man, he asks her to put it away as it is extremely powerful and the purest example of the crystals he has ever seen – the same material that keeps Laputa aloft. Returning to the surface, Sheeta confides in Pazu her real name isn't Sheeta, but Lusheeta Toel Ul Laputa, which is Laputian for 'Sheeta: true ruler of Laputa' or 'Sheeta: Queen of Laputa'. However, before Pazu has a chance to take in this bombshell, a plane lands nearby and the two are captured by soldiers and separated.

Prior to watching this for review, it had been so long since I saw Laputa: Castle in the Sky that I couldn't remember what happened following their capture and what the army, Colonel Muska (who knows Sheeta's real name) and the pirates all want with Laputa or even how the film ended so this is very much like watching it for the first time.

Having now watched it twice – once with the Japanese soundtrack and once with the new English dub – I was amazed both times at Miyazaki's writing and direction, the beauty of the hand drawn cell animation and the overall spectacle of the film. It was interesting to compare the difference between how the film plays with the two different language tracks. The English dub certainly sounds a little more frenetic with more voices and background chatter in some scenes which makes everything sound a little busier whereas the Japanese soundtrack sticks to the main characters speaking so the emphasis is on what they are saying rather than the scene as a whole. Oddly, the two main characters in the English dub sound a great deal older with Anna Paquin and James Van Der Beek making them sound like they're in their mid-teens, probably five years older than the voices provided by Keiko Yokozawa and Mayumi Tanaka in the same roles, respectively. The new English dub does have very well chosen actors for some of the other roles, such as Cloris Leachman as Dola and Mark Hamill to play Colonel Muska, with both of them doing the job extremely well.

However, I found the Japanese actors deliver their lines with a great deal more force in the more intense scenes, just as younger children would when their emotions are much rawer than those in their teens. One particular scene, when Sheeta and Pazu face off against Muska near the end demonstrates this perfectly with Pazu yelling at the Colonel in a way that is much more convincingly played by Mayumi Tanaka found James Van Der Beek. Overall, it doesn't really matter which language track you choose as they both have their merits but just don't try to watch it with the English dub and subtitles as you'll find they don't marry up at all as the subtitles are there for the Japanese soundtrack which is very different in parts to its English counterpart.

As with every other film I've seen by Hayao Miyazaki, this is an utterly enchanting and magical film which sweeps you up from the very first sequence and keeps you there until the final credits roll.

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