*** May contain spoilers ***
Fan of the books? Then dont watch this.
A Customer from Aldershot,
18th August, 2009
As far as Studio Ghibli films go, this is by no means the worst, but if you liked the Earthsea books, you are in for a huge disappointment. Music: Some of the music was actually pretty good in this, especially during some of the landscape scenes where there was a nice sense of mystery while still achieving the “epic” feel that you would get in the Lord of the Rings films. I didn’t particularly like Therru’s song, in fact that entire scene was pretty pointless. The lyrics were kind of lame, and they seemed to forget that since Therru was burned as a child her voice was extremely husky. Scenery/Animation: No complaints here, the animation was quite nice throughout. A lot of the shots of the landscape and sky were stunning and looked how I imagined Earthsea should – while still managing to convey the Japanese style that you see in similar films. Storyline/Characters (spoilers here): Ok, this is where the film fails, BIG TIME! Now Studio Ghibli films aren’t exactly renowned for their ingenious plots, but considering how fantastic the books were I am stunned at how they managed to mess this up. Basically the film roughly follows the storyline of the third book, The Farthest Shore, but contains elements of all 4 books, and ends up trying to cram way too many ideas into one film; the result is that no elements of the plot are fully explained, developed or resolved in any way. For example, rather than Arren being sent to Roke by his father to seek advice from the mages and Ged, the film starts with Arren murdering his father and running away, then coming across Ged later by chance. Later you find out that Arren has some sort of dark shadow following him, making him do evil things etc. This is basically the story of the first book, except that the shadow is following Arren, not Ged, and not because he did some evil to release the shadow on the world, but for no reason at all. You see the shadow later in the film, it takes Arren’s form like the Gebbeth in the Wizard of Earthsea. Secondly, the dreams that Arren has serve little purpose in the film, since he and Ged never follow Cob into the dry land, there is never any reference to Arren leading Ged back from that place, or that the one who walks through that land would be King, or of Ged losing his power. Worse than that, Cob is trivialized into a cliché villain, with minions who go round threatening villagers etc. while at the same time draining the power from Earthsea. Oh, and you'll recognize the 'black slime' - Same as in Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke etc. any demon or evil villian/being just turns into black slime towards the end of the film. No reason, i guess they just think its fun to animate or something! Then there are countless and unexplained references to the meaning of life and death and the equilibrium, the wisdom of wizards etc. in an attempt to justify the patchy storyline. Unfortunately I cannot talk about the “guest appearences” from Tenar and Therru (except that they have no relevance apart from the provide an interlude in which Ged and Arren do some farming) because I don’t have enough words left.
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