Castle in the Sky

If you’re thinking about starting your own film studio, it’s doubtful that you would do much worse than making something like “Castle in the Sky” as your debut. It came out in 1986 as Hayao Miyazaki’s first movie when Studio Ghibli was created, and more than three decades later, it still holds up.

Brad Cook stated in his review, “Castle in the Sky is a rip-roaring adventure film that can hold its own with the best cinematic tales in the science-fiction and fantasy genres over the past several decades. It opens in media res as a young girl held captive aboard a zeppelin escapes when the ship is attacked by sky pirates.” She falls, looks like she is committing suicide, but we see that she has a rare crystal on her necklace.

The girl, Sheeta, voiced by Anna Paquin, ends up in a mining town and meets up with a boy. Pazu, voiced by James Van Der Beek, whose father once said he saw a floating island called Laputa, which, no shock is where the crystal is from. Sheeta wants to find Laputa, and so does Pazu and they team up. Soon the kids are running from Colonel Muska, (Mark Hamill), who originally kidnapped Sheeta, along with Captain Dola (Cloris Leachman) and her family of sky pirates (Mike McShane, Mandy Patinkin, Andy Kick and Matt K. Miller).

“Castle in the Sky” has the original Japanese cast, with optional English subtitles, or you can listen to the dubbed Disney version with Anna Paquin and James Van Der Beek as the main characters and Cloris Leachman and Mark Hamill playing Dola and Muska, respectively. I agree with Cook when he said, “While dubbed animation can be a mixed bag, Disney has done a good job of casting the English roles in Miyazaki’s movies since they started distributing the films on home video in North America during the late 90s.” “Castle in the Sky” is the epitome of that.

Honestly, this movie is actually in my top five favorite Studio Ghibli movies. I really loved the animation, the world it built, the characters, the voice acting, the flight sequences and the when they got to the castle of Laputa, it looked mesmerizing. I already said what my least favorite Studio Ghibli movie is, but this being the first that was made when the company was created was actually a decent first film. I can understand if someone were to say that they didn’t like it, but for me personally, I thought it was pretty good. It's one of my favorite animated movies ever. My cousin let us borrow his DVD copy of it, so that’s how I watched the film. If you want to check this movie out, by all means do so. I give it a recommendation, if you want this to be your film to get you introduced to Studio Ghibli. It’s a good film to start off with. If this is anyone's favorite Ghibli movie, I completely understand.

Well, I sadly can’t say that the next film I look at is another one of my favorites. It’s down there in my lower five films, but it’s one that I don’t think I will ever see again because it’s one of those that you only have to see once and never see again. If you want to know what I mean by how heartbreaking of a movie it is, stay tuned tomorrow in the next installment of “Studio Ghibli Month” to find out.