Retrospective: Castle in the Sky (Patreon)

Castle in the Sky sees Western fiction lover Hayao Miyazaki reach new heights of occidentalism, at times playing like a laundry list of his favorite Western adventure stories. The movie explicitly states Laputa's debt to Gulliver's Travels early on. The influence of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne is always at least faintly detectable. Miyazaki is engaging in a late 19th Century mode of science fiction here, where airships and industrialization are booming. It's not quite steampunk, but one sense steampunk would not have developed into what it is without Castle in the Sky. And that's not getting into the nods to King Kong or Raiders of the Lost Ark (and while I doubt Miyazaki had seen The Terminator at this time, man, That Scene could have come straight out of Cameron).

The film sees Miyazaki at his most Children's Adventure Story fan. Two children, one with a mysterious past and a magic amulet, are on the lam from a band of pirates, the army, and a government agent. It's madcap, with Miyazaki throwing all his favorite ideas into a blender. Surprisingly then, Castle in the Sky is a tightly structured adventure story, revealing necessary information at the right times and holding back when it needs to. The act breaks are incredibly clean, allowing the movie to fluidly transition from one peculiar idea to another. By the time we reach ancient kingdoms and schisms, we feel perfectly at home with this strange world Miyazaki has concocted. His brand of bucolic utopianism and vociferous anti-militarism are fully formed here. A fine adventure story from a filmmaker who will only improve with time.