I have watched Castle in the Sky (1986; aka Laputa: Castle in the Sky) twice now and have had the same reaction both times. During roughly the first half of the movie I felt fairly uninvolved and found myself thinking “Well, there are some nice moments, but overall this is kind of cutesy and tedious.” Then, as the movie went on, I felt myself progressively drawn into the story and by the climax was genuinely moved. As the closing credits rolled on my second viewing, I thought “This is a classic!” And then I re-watched the ending again.
So, let’s try to figure out what about this movie accounts for my evolving reaction.
The object of my mercurial affections has the distinction of being the first official release of Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation company. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Castle in the Sky is a fantasy adventure that follows two children, farm-girl Sheeta and mine-working boy Pazu, as they search for the mysterious lost civilization of Laputa, a city that reputedly floats amid the clouds, like a kind of airborne Atlantis. (The city’s name is taken directly from the floating island in Gulliver’s Travels and doubtless created headaches for the movie’s distributors in Spanish-speaking countries.) The two kids’ quest is also a chase, as they are pursued by a family of air pirates, the military, and a malevolent government agent named Colonel Muska, all of whom are also searching for Laputa.
As one might expect from an animated fantasy, the best part of Castle in the Sky is the fictional world it creates. The movie is set in a kind of alternate universe version of the turn-of-the-20th century: steam locomotives and primitive cars and telephones coexist with air travel in biplanes or enormous zeppelin-like airships. The geographical location is also deliberately unclear, thanks to an intriguing mash-up of various details: the mining town where Pazu lives was modeled on a similar town in Wales, Sheeta’s bucolic native land resembles Georgia, and the government troops wear Germanic-style helmets.
Within this familiar-yet-unfamiliar time and place, the animators create memorable settings. Pazu’s wooden-shack home is built atop a ruined stone structure at the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley town below; the ruins’ tower is filled with birds who serve as the boy’s informal pets. In the aerial passages of the movie, Sheeta and Pazu fly about in a kind of tiny airborne coracle that seems fragile yet oddly cozy. The best setting by far in Castle in the Sky, however, is the titular location: a four-tiered city resting atop a metallic globe in the clouds, Laputa imitates Brueghel’s Tower of Babel, with a hint of the Death Star thrown in (and both similarities should give you a hint about the movie’s plot and themes).
The multi-level city is full of parks and gardens amid Roman-like columns and arches. Meanwhile, inside the globe is a subterranean labyrinth filled with advanced technology, including a chamber whose interior shifts around like an elaborate puzzle. We are always reminded of Laputa’s status as an extinct civilization, though, by how the castle in the clouds is now not only empty of people but overrun with animals and vegetation, most notably a colossal tree that dominates the entire city, its topmost branches spreading to the sky and its enormous roots spreading throughout the globe’s chambers and passages.
After Laputa, Castle in the Sky’s most memorable creation is another remnant of the lost civilization: towering robots who once served the vanished inhabitants but have since fallen into disrepair and only sometimes function. Equipped with long arms and short legs that give them a simian appearance and gait, the robots sometimes come across as gentle. One robot, now covered with centuries of moss, still methodically carries out its duties within Laputa in peaceful coexistence with the animals. At other times, the robots come across as rather more dangerous.
Sheeta and Pazu’s quest for Laputa falls into roughly three acts. In the first act, they meet and become friends while evading the pirate family. In the second, Sheeta is captured by Colonel Muska and his minions and Pazu forms an alliance with the pirates to rescue her. In the third, all parties take to the skies and travel to Laputa, where the movie reaches its climax. And here I think we get to the reasons for my evolving reaction to Castle in the Sky.
The first act bored me largely because I didn’t much like the pirates. Granted, the characters’ design is memorable. The pirate captain and family matriarch, Dola, is a crone with the physique of a wrestler and pink hair done up in huge pigtails that stick out like Salvador Dali’s mustaches. Her husband is a diminutive, cranky engineer who keeps the pirates’ airship running, and the couple have several none-too-bright sons to provide muscle. All this earns the animators points for creativity, but I found neither Dola nor her family very interesting as characters.
The movie quickly makes clear that these pirates are about as dangerous as their counterparts from Penzance and are intended purely for comedy. The comedy is all very broad, though, and I found it pretty unfunny. Moreover, the pirates’ comical status drains any real sense of threat from their chase of Sheeta and Pazu, which seems more reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote’s pursuit of the Roadrunner than a real adventure. All this made the early scenes of Castle in Sky pretty uninvolving.
The bright spots of the movie’s first act were the quieter, more lyrical moments related to Sheeta and Pazu’s developing friendship. Their meeting is unique: having fallen out of an airship, Sheeta is rescued by the crystal she wears around her neck—a relic of Laputa’s quasi-magical technology—that causes her to levitate and gently descend to earth. Spotting her descent, Pazu catches her before she reaches the ground. Later, back at Pazu’s home, he experiments with the crystal in a comically unsuccessful attempt to duplicate its levitating effect. Still a bit later, the crystal’s power revives to arrest a potentially deadly fall for both of them down a mine-shaft. Within the mine, they meet an elderly, gnome-like miner named Uncle Pom who talks to them about the crystal’s powers and cautions them on respect for the earth, which proves a crucial theme. During these slower moments that emphasize relationship development and striking imagery, I began to be drawn in by Castle in the Sky’s story.
By the second act, involving Sheeta’s rescue, the pirates have been converted from antagonists to allies, so there is no longer any attempt to generate false suspense from their actions. Meanwhile, viewers have spent enough time with our two young heroes and their relationship that the real threat Muska poses becomes genuinely suspenseful. Then, the story really takes off, literally and figuratively. Castle in the Sky delivers its most memorable visuals in the third act, with the flying scenes and, as noted, the setting of Laputa.
The movie’s theme comes fully into focus in the final act, as well. Laputa’s most valuable treasure turns out to be not the gold and jewels in its vaults but a high-tech weapon at the core of the city: a kind of atomic death ray capable of raining destruction onto the earth below. The weapon is sought by Muska and, at the climax, Sheeta and Pazu must use the crystal’s magic to destroy the weapon and much of Laputa along with it. This moment is a powerfully symbolic one of nature triumphing over war-making and technological hubris. The globe at Laputa’s heart and the deadly weaponry within disintegrates and falls into the sea, while the enormous tree and its elaborate roots (which catch our heroes from falling) remain. The destruction of Laputa was a big part of why I felt compelled to re-watch the ending.
Castle in the Sky keeps characterization simple and, for the most part, the characters in themselves are not very interesting. As noted, the pirates are broadly comic, while Muska is a fairly one-dimensional villain. Sheeta is a sadly disappointing heroine, sweet and innocent but also rather bland and passive. Between making an escape early in the movie and helping destroy Laputa at the climax, she does not do much and functions mainly as damsel in distress/exposition machine.
The huge exception to the unmemorable characterization—and the real show-stealer—is Pazu, who must be the most formidable 12-year-old in cinema history. Determined and brave in the face of peril, he continually rises to challenges, flying alongside Dola in a pirate airship without hesitation and piloting the airship by himself when the need arises. By the movie’s end Pazu is scaling buildings, charging through Laputa’s chambers while blasting apart walls, and generally behaving like a tween Indiana Jones. Also like Indy, though, he nevertheless retains a kind of bumbling goofiness throughout that makes him endearing—the exaggerated facial expressions made possible by Ghibli’s anime style help a lot here.
While discussing characterization, I should say a few words about the movie’s English dub. Whether it is fair to judge the movie on the basis of an element the original creative team had no control over, I don’t know, but in the case of Castle in the Sky the dub largely works. One-time teen heartthrob James Van Der Beek provides Pazu’s voice and conveys all his boyish enthusiasm. Cloris Leachman barks and screeches appropriately as Dola. Anna Paquin, however, reinforces Sheeta’s passivity by giving a overly subdued performance, perhaps because she seems to struggle with doing an American accent (why the dub team felt this accent was necessary is a mystery, since the story is set in a time and place far from the contemporary United States).
The most memorable voice-actor, though, is Mark Hamill as Muska. Hamill gives a good vocal performance as the villain, alternately silky, menacing, or crazed as the situation requires. Moreover, the memory of Hamill’s most famous role adds an extra layer of fun to the character. Indeed, given Muska’s sandy hair and youthful appearance, it would not be too big a stretch to say Muska is essentially Luke Skywalker if Luke had turned to the Dark Side after all. This association makes Muska a more entertaining villain than he otherwise has any right to be.
Before concluding, I should share one other memorable moment. Animation thrives on visual storytelling and Studio Ghibli in particular is renowned for throwing in little gratuitous details that add to the realism and texture of the story. My favorite example of this from Castle in the Sky comes early on, at Pazu and Sheeta’s first encounter:
Pazu is returning to the mine with a bucket of food for his fellow mine-workers when he sees Sheeta magically descending from the sky. He runs to the spot where she is falling, stretches out his arms to catch her—and then pauses, puts down his bucket, and resumes catching Sheeta. The moment is both funny and a demonstration of the care Ghibli animators put into their creation.
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