Tales from Earthsea

Recommendation: please read the original novel series Earthsea before you watch the movie (Japanese: ゲド戦記, meaning the Story of Ged's Battles), otherwise you'd sleep very well in the cinema.


I left some comment about this movie in other blogs, here is its English translation:

I don't think that the problem of the movie is the fault of the plot, because the director Goro Miyazaki (Japanese: 宮崎吾朗) is not the author of the novel and the novel is an award-winning piece. The problem is that he selected a wrong media to express his own vision.

First of all, the novel is not popular in Chinese society. Few people would spend hours to finish the books before watching the movie. The director selected to start the movie by the third book of the series, however. It would make audiences lose their way. This is because much background information has been described in previous book, say Tenar's experience in The Tombs of Atuan.

Unlike his father Hayao Miyazaki (Japanese: 宮崎駿) as the last generation of creation professionls, he represents this new generation of creation professionals. The creation of the last generation is audience oriented and aims at audience's thought and resonance. This is a typical way of creation workers. On the other hand, the new generation is creator oriented and aims at communicating with audience by expression of creators' thought. Ang Lee , for example, belongs to the latter. His movies are expression of his thought about struggling against and living under the tradition. This is a typical way of modern artists.

In addition, this movie is dependent. Such movies, such as the movie version of The Phantom Of The Opera, should base on its original creation and audience should well understand the story, otherwise it is hard to understand the new works' creation detail and variation.

Finally, the director does not seem sufficiently determined to handle this job. The movie lacks of attracting doubts about something hidden, it cannot stimulate audience to read the original books. In contrast, The Lord of the Rings, which is similar to Earthsea as a famous novel in the Western soceity with rich background material, could be successfully transformed to a movie. The movie trilogy is a successful job and the director should learn from it.

I would like to express my opinion about the first directed work of Goro Miyazaki and I wish he could understand my words. I look forward to his coming productions with improvement.

Why did I still watch it last night? Just because of ma belle dame. :P