Castle in the Sky

Categories: 1986 films | Anime | Japanese films | Films directed by Hayao Miyazaki | Studio Ghibli

Castle in the Sky, known in Japan as Laputa: The Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ Tenkū no Shiro Laputa) is a 1986 animated film directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

Image:Castle in the Sky DVD.JPG

DVD case cover for Castle in the Sky

1 Characters
2 Setting
3 Plot
4 Other information
5 Credits
- 5.1 Cast
- 5.2 Awards
6 External links

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Characters

Sheeta – a little girl, the heroine of this story, and possessor of a mysterious levitating stone.
Pazu – young boy, friend of Sheeta who serves as an apprentice to a boiler mechanic and helps Sheeta throughout the story.
Colonel Muska – a mysterious man, apparently working for some intelligence agency of the government as a secret agent.
Dola – stern but motherly head of a small band of pirates.

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Setting

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The world in which the story takes place is clearly Earth, but apparently in a parallel universe, or possibly an alternate history. None of the place names matches real-life geography, and all of the aircraft (except one or two primitive airships) use different technology from real 20th century aircraft. Some of the architecture seen in the movie could belong to an English or Welsh mining town, but set in a series of steep-sided gorges that bear no resemblance to any place in Britain. Running through these gorges are railroad tracks set on high wooden trestle bridges, more reminiscent of early railway bridges in the Rocky Mountains, and there are armored military trains that also have no comparison in our world. The overall level of technology seems to be the equivalent of our own world in the 1920s, with telephones, steam engines, and radio using something like morse code. On the military side, the uniforms seemed to have been inspired almost to the point of direct copy from German World War I uniforms, complete with its spiked pickelhaube and maxim water-cooled machine guns.

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Plot

In ancient times, people are said to have inhabited gigantic flying fortresses from which they ruled the earth using an array of immensely powerful weaponry. One such fortress, Laputa, is said to still exist, propelling itself through the sky concealed within the swirling clouds of a violent hurricane. While most people consider Laputa to be a myth, some, like Pazu, believe it to have a basis in reality; Pazu's deceased father once caught sight of Laputa, and even managed to take a photograph of it when his airship was caught in a storm. However, even with this evidence he was ridiculed, contributing to his untimely death.

One night, Pazu, who is employed as an engineer's assistant in a mine, witnesses a young unconscious girl float to earth from out of the sky. The girl, Sheeta, has in fact fallen from an airship in which she is being transported under guard by a sinister group of government secret agents headed by Colonel Muska, her plunge being precipitated by an attack on the airship by a family of pirates headed by an aged yet charismatic woman named Dola. Both the pirates and Muska appear to be motivated by a desire to control the strange blue crystal Sheeta wears as a pendant, and which seems to possess levitational powers.

Her pursuers soon trace Sheeta to Pazu's village, and the children are forced to escape by train. About to be captured, they fall from a collapsing rail trestle bridge and are saved from certain death when Sheeta's crystal spontaneously activates, allowing them to float safely into an abandoned mine below the town. There they meet an old miner known as Uncle Pom who reveals to them that the crystal is made of a forgotten element (called "aetherium" in the Disney English language dub) which was used to power Laputa, and that it is one of the largest such crystals in existence. Pom counsels Sheeta to remember that the crystal's power rightly belongs to the earth, and that she should never use it to commit acts of violence.

Believing that their pursuers have abandoned the search Sheeta and Pazu emerge from the mine, and Sheeta admits to having an ancient "secret name" passed down through her family - Lusheeta Toelle Ul Laputa - which includes the word "Laputa". This establishes a direct link between Sheeta, the crystal, and the floating city. She also reveals that after being orphaned she had lived alone on a remote farm in the north of the country until government agents under Muska had come one day to abduct her. Shortly afterwards the children—who have in fact been under aerial observation—find themselves surrounded and are captured by Muska's troops. They are taken to a huge seaside fortress where they are separated—Pazu confined in a subterranean cell, and Sheeta locked away high in a tower.

In discussions between the general in command of the fortress and Muska it becomes clear that the government is sponsoring a concerted search for Laputa, and that Sheeta and her crystal are believed to be the keys to its discovery. Muska attempts to gain Sheeta's trust and co-operation by showing her the remains of a giant Laputian robot that are kept in a locked room beneath the fortress. He tells her of how in plunging from the sky the robot proved that Laputa's existence was not a myth, and that the advanced technology it represents could become a threat to world peace if left uncontrolled. He shows her that a winged symbol on the robot's casing is identical to the one inscribed onto her crystal. He also intimates that unless she co-operates with him in unlocking the crystal's secrets—which he believes can be used to physically locate Laputa—Pazu is likely to come to harm.

Seeking to protect her friend, Sheeta confronts Pazu, telling him that she has agreed to co-operate with Muska and the government, and asking him to return home and forget he ever knew of her and Laputa. Muska pays him three gold coins to "reward" his efforts in "protecting" Sheeta and returning her to him—an allusion to the Biblical betrayal of Jesus by Judas. Stung by this apparent rejection an angry and confused Pazu returns to his village, only to find Dola's pirate family occupying his home.

An angry exchange between Pazu (who has been quickly restrained) and Dola ensues, and the chief pirate accuses the boy of betraying his friend for money, and revealing that Sheeta will probably be killed once the location of Laputa has been revealed. Pazu recognizes this, and when the pirates decode a government radio transmission revealing that the following morning Sheeta, Muska, and the general are to depart the fortress in search of Laputa aboard the gigantic military airship Goliath, he begs Dola to let him accompany her. The old pirate agrees to this, reasoning that Pazu's presence will make it easier for her to capture Sheeta and the crystal.

Sheeta meanwhile is in despair over her situation, and crying alone in her room, recalls a spell taught to her as a child by her grandmother that is to be used in times of peril. She recites the spell and the crystal immediately bursts into life, filling the room with rays of blue energy. Simultaneously, in the basement of the fortress, the Laputian robot reactivates.

The film directly links the Laputian civilization to Judeo-Christian and Hindu texts: when Muska demonstrates the immense destructive power of the floating fortress (which is presumed to be nuclear), he asserts that it was the basis of the Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Vedic weapon "Indra's Arrow".

The film's introductory scenes show what is intended to be retrospectively interpreted as the historical foundation to the legend of the ancient flying cities. The skies are initially filled with such city-fortresses, which are later shown disgorging streams of humanity into the world, having come crashing to earth. This suggests that the people of Laputa are the founders of the film's contemporary civilization, who willingly abandoned their violent history and dependence on advanced technology.

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Other information

The flying city Laputa is based on parts of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, though the two stories are not related in any other way. The name of the movie was changed in several western countries (such as France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States) to Castle in the Sky because "la puta" means "the whore" in Spanish. Swift undoubtedly knew this, but Miyazaki probably did not.

Many believe that characters from Miyazaki's 1978 series Future Boy Conan were prototypes for the characters of Castle in the Sky.

The Laputan robot design is identical to the robot that appeared in the Miyazaki-directed Lupin III TV episode "Farewell, Lovely Lupin" from 1981.

The Laputan "fox-squirrels" originally appeared in Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

On the roof of the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo there is a lifesize model of the robot from Laputa.

The Disney-produced English dub was recorded back in 1998 and planned for release on video in 1999, but Disney eventually decided to release it to theaters instead (presumably because the first release under their deal with Studio Ghibli, Kiki's Delivery Service, performed better than expected on VHS). After the box office failure of Princess Mononoke in the U.S., however, Castle's release date was pushed back yet again; on occasion the completed dub was screened at select children's festivals (to tremendous, although localized, success). The movie was finally released on DVD and video in the U.S. on April 15, 2003, alongside Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away. Even though the dub received mixed reviews (criticisms were directed at the leads while Cloris Leachman's Dola and Mark Hamill's Muska drew raves), it, as with Disney's other English tracks for Miyazaki's films, found an audience.

Castle in the Sky was the second-best selling DVD from Studio Ghibli distributed by Disney in 2003, the year of its release (after Spirited Away and ahead of Kiki's Delivery Service).

For Disney's English version, original composer Joe Hisaishi was commissioned to rework and extend his original synthesizer-composed soundtrack into a 90-minute piece for symphony orchestra in an effort to make the movie more accessible to U.S. audiences. This caused controversy with fans, many of whom argued that the new soundtrack taints the film (mostly in the case of scenes which previously involved dramatic use of natural silence, as in the opening airship raid or for when Pazu and Sheeta pass through the stormcloud). On the other hand, according to a diary about the reworking of the music, Miyazaki is said to have applauded Hisaishi's efforts, and even some critics gave the re-scoring high marks in their reviews.