Tales from Earthsea

A series of plagues ravage the lands.  Dragons are at war in the skies.  All signs point to a great catastrophe inching its way towards the land of Earthsea.  As darkness descends, : an aged Wizard, a Prince on the run and a girl with a mark band together to face an evil Sorcerer hellbent on bringing ruin to achieve immortality.  Each member of this unlikely party carries their own burdens and troubled pasts.  Only by conquering them can they defeat their shared enemy and unleash the ultimate power that can save all of Earthsea.

I cannot imagine the amount of pressure behind Tales from Earthsea given that it was the big directorial debut of Goro Miyazaki, yes the son of THAT Miyazaki.  Having to start your own Anime legacy in the shadow of one of the biggest names not just in Anime but in the world of Animation as a whole, that’s daunting.  Ignoring the loftiness of this burden for a moment, it doesn’t change the fact that Tales from Earthsea might be the worst Studio Ghibli movie I have ever seen…and that’s something you cant really say about a lot of Ghibli (at least that I’ve seen).  This is supposed to be another sweeping high adventure fantasy that the studio can do in its sleep and has accomplished wonders with less money and lesser animation techniques in the past.  Tales from Earthsea is a far cry from those accomplishments, setting its sights high with no true direction that ends up a massive mess that is just boring and joyless to sit through.
 
Based on the novel series by Ursula K Le Guin, I’d heard of the Earthsea title years ago when it was adapted into a miniseries on the SciFi Channel.  Beyond that, the titular fantasy realm just sounds like a really cool place to visit.  Not so if you’re watching this film.  Despite being told about lands in peril and Dragons soaring the skies, Earthsea is devoid of…well anything.  Oh we see one sprawling city but that’s about it.  Everything else is just empty fields, empty deserts and even a huge empty castle guarded by seven lackies (are you freaking kidding me?).  There’s nothing wonderous about this realm and we barely see any Dragons save for the beginning and ending of the film.  Any showings of magic feel miniscule and unimpressive as well.  I spent a lot of Tales of Earthsea waiting for something to wow me or for something to happen in general.  And it does…right at the tail end of the movie but that’s maybe about a minute in a just over two hour feature film, and it wasn’t worth the wait.
 
The characters are the worst part of Tales from Earthsea for me.  Arren is actually my least favorite protagonist in a Ghibli film.  While I wasn’t a fan of Laputa’s leads, at least they weren’t trying to be super edgelords with a mysterious backstory that is never properly explained.  Arren jumps back and forth between a bad ass devil may care and a guy who just mops all day long.  And don’t tell me there’s a reason for it.  They say there is but again, it’s never explored deeply nor is there anything else about him to make him the least bit likeable.  It’s like they started with his big opening crime, continued with edgy and broody but then decided to try and backtrack big time but couldn’t figure out how to do that.  Therru feels like a discount Princess Mononoke with her ferocious stares and forcing herself to stand up straight all the time.  Like I said, magic is mostly unimpressive and it doesn’t get any more unimpressive that Sparrowhawk, who’s just a boring Obi Wan Kenobi style mentor figure without thoughtful wisdom or bad ass fighting skills (his face changing gag was funny but that’s about all).  The most entertaining character of the bunch is main villain Cob (more a name for an 80s entrepreneur baddie and not a high fantasy wizard) and that’s only because in the English Dub he’s voiced by Willem Dafoe.  Dafoe knows his way around a bad guy but here, he’s being extremely soft with his line delivery, so much so it makes Cob rightfully creepy as if he’s trying to seduce you with every word he says.  Dafoe gets to go a little Green Goblin in the final act but truth be told, he’s far more terryifying as the calmer quieter type in Earthsea.
 
I’ll give credit that the music score by Tamiya Terashima is spectacular.  These are the kinds of sounds you expect to hear in a proper fantasy adventure and much of it invokes the heyday of 80s fantasy epics like Willow and The Dark Crystal.  Often times I just stopped listening to anyone actually speaking and just listened to the beautiful tunes in the background.  The sad thing is, this score sure has heck doesn’t belong in a subpar Anime feature like Tales from Earthsea.  Maybe if it was a properly done and much better Tales from Earthsea then yes, it would be perfect.  I may not like this movie much but I would be lying if I said I don’t want this soundtrack on my shelf to listen to while working on writing or building models.
 
Alright, so let’s ignore the big elephant in the room with this film for a moment.  Even if there wasn’t a very important name attached to this project, would Tales from Earthsea have turned out any better than it is?  Honestly, I don’t think so.  The story never reaches the heights it sets in place at the very beginning and just keeps sinking more and more until the films finale.  The characters are boring and unlikeable and barely have any work put into them.  Any of the usual fantasy fare and tropes are dialed back, absent or just so dull it hardly feels like we’re on an adventure.  The poster for this movie looks amazing, a young man standing in front of what looks like a stone Dragon.  The possibilities from that image alone are endless…but Tales from Earthsea never shoots for that endless potential.  Instead it feels shoddily assembled, poorly crafted and in desperate need of reworking from every angle.  This is Studio Ghibli’s rock bottom until I see otherwise and a not so great start for Goro Miyazakis directing legacy.
 
2/10