I have only myself to blame

[james_davis_nicoll]

Well, now I've seen Tales from Earthsea.

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Dare I ask which version?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Is there more than one version of the movie with that title? I've never seen the SyFy abomination but didn't it have a different title?

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

The SyFy abomination is the version I thought you might have suffered through. If you haven't seen it, don't. I gave up in utter disgust when a young Sparrowhawk was addressed by his true name five minutes in by this girl on his island.

[chomiji]

Your stomach is likely stronger than mine. I can't make myself do that.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

Since your cats could have swarmed you and torn your throat out, you do have someone else to blame.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Aaaaand?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

So... it was bad?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

More some combination of "not like the books" and "bland". It's a bad sign when the most interesting part of watching the movie is guessing voice actors.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I had heard that it is without redeeming feature. Your assessment here is consistent with that.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

And estimating how many stories Arren and Therru sprint up and down in the finale. It's something like 20. They're not even breathing hard.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw that tweet from cardamomaddict! I think "guess the voice actor" is a less dire place to be in while watching a movie than "spot the continuity errors," a point the Largely Mythological Husband and I have been known to reach.

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

The short description is: "The setup of The Farthest Shore resolved by the events of Tehanu. If you're trying to figure out how that would work....it doesn't, really.

Mind, it is still a gorgeous Studio Ghibli movie, without having the anti-war message jammed in sideways like in Howl's Moving Castle. Presumably that's because Goro made it instead of Hayao.....

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

Crap. James, can you fix those italics?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I think only the commenter can and not after there is at least one follow-up.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I thought it was adequate in many ways but not up to Studio Ghibli's better work -- which is not surprising, since it was essentially the Ghibli B-team that did it.

I didn't hate it, nor would I anti-recommend it.

[daev.livejournal.com]

I would have liked it better if it were not supposed to be Earthsea.
I think I also would have liked it better if it had been The Real Miyazaki.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The comments in the extras on the DVD are damning, up there with "means well."

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Well, I quite liked it. But then I was quite able to not expect it to have much of any correspondence to the books. It felt rather like a pretty Disney rendition of some traditional fairy tale, and I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing. Given that Goro is perhaps the future primary figure at Studio Ghibli (?), I thought the result was quite salutory. Ghibli's output is so astoundingly high quality, this might feel like a poor cousin, but it does not feel like the weakest of their projects, nor is it anywhere near the depth of crap that the world's other major animation studios have produced. I suspect it will wear well long term.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

So if I have never read the Earthsea books and really liked Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Porco Rosso, would this be worth getting?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Rent before buying. It is not as good as the others you mention, I think. But it is as good as Pom Poko, Cat Returns, and others among the "less good" Ghibli films, in my opinion. The visuals and richness of the production design are really interesting I think, especially compared to the faux-Euro surfaceous fantasy glop coming out of Disney lately (compare with ::shudder:: "Tangled" for example). The thoroughness of Ghibli's production design work is no more lacking in "Earthsea" than the best of Ghibli's work, but the depth of story and character is not as evident.