Le Guin and Miyazaki? Let's pray...

[Thadlerian]

The world's greatest writer and the world's greatest director...
Only a rumour yet, but it may turn out to be the news of the century:

According to a blog entry of an anonymous editor working for a publisher in Tokyo, the next film animation work to be tackled by Studio Ghibli will be based on the Earthsea series of novels by American fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Specifically, the book Gedo Senki (Japanese Title). Hayao Miyazaki will reportedly direct. The editor learned of this news when a film rights option was being sought by the book's Japanese publisher Iwanami Shoten. The America-based Sci-Fi Channel adapted Le Guin's Earthsea series to TV in 2004 in it's "Legend of Earthsea" miniseries. The author has expressed her disapproval of the faithfulness to the original works of the above TV version. Miyazaki has in the past admitted being an admirer of Le Guin's writings.

Source: Anime News Service

 

[Narainatar]

That would be so awesome, the legends of earthsea weren't as good as they could have been. I was kind of dissapointed, but this is a whole new start
​

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

I hope this works out. I've always thought the Earthsea stories deserved greater recognition. Having said that, Miyazaki, although good, still does the cute, bonkers "anime thing" so they might wind up giving Ged a Cloud Strife haircut and a young schoolgirl companion & a talking dog or something. Which some people may view as an improvement!

 

[Thadlerian]

I hope this works out. I've always thought the Earthsea stories deserved greater recognition. Having said that, Miyazaki, although good, still does the cute, bonkers "anime thing" so they might wind up giving Ged a Cloud Strife haircut and a young schoolgirl companion & a talking dog or something. Which some people may view as an improvement!

It won't be old Hayao this time, but his son, Goro. Perhaps he's more of a somber-minded Isao Takahata type. I hope the characters will remain black, though. I've never seen black anime, I wonder if it's even possible...

 

[edott]

i believe that they can do a very good job as long as they stay close to the original story. studio ghibli has done some really great movies.

 

[Space Elf]

Im quite looking forward to this, though the links i've found for the trailers always fail to load properly, I refer to these ones, which never really work ...



http://www.ghibliworld.com/gedo_senki_second_trailer.wmv

http://www.ghibli.jp/25trailer/

Is it just me? Or does anyone have a more workable link? The latter one starts off fine, but deteriorates quickly, while the first don't work at all.

 

[Thadlerian]

You have to click "save target as" on the wmv file.

 

[Blue Mythril]

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/earthsea/index.html

This could work...

 

[GOLLUM]

Let's hope so....

 

[Blue Mythril]

Ha I was referring to the link, but yes, same goes for the blending!

 

[Thadlerian]

Le Guin has now seen Gedo Senki, and has stated her opinions on her site.

It's not too uplifting. She had intented a movie to be made by Hayao about the time between book 1 and 3 (not book 2), but instead Goro made a mix of book 3 and 4, messing up characters, plot and the feeling of Earthsea. Still, it doesn't sound like a bad movie...

 

[Carolyn Hill]

Le Guin's description of the movie portrays it as nothing like the books, so I suspect that if you are a fan of the books, you will have to put them aside in order to appreciate the movie.

And even then, I wonder if I will be able to appreciate it. All I see are bad signs. Quoting from Le Guin's response to Gedo Senki:

"The excitement was maintained by violence" = a bad sign.

"Entirely different plot, lacking coherence and consistency" = another bad sign.

And the worst sign = that killing the bad guy is the solution: "My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions."

 

[weaveworld]

I have not read the books but I did like the film, but I am a big studio ghibli fan

 

[Lillyanna]

I'm on the third book of the Earthsea Cycle (The Farthest Shore) right now; I'm not sure why it took so long for me to pick up any of the Le Guin books.



For Christmas, I'm getting several Studio Ghibli movies on DVD. I hope that the Earthsea movie lives up to Ghibli's and Le Guin's reputation. We'll see.