I'm a bit gutted about this. I recorded Laputa off TV as a kid in the late 80s and completely fell in love with it. I sat for hours watching it on repeat and drawing pictures of clouds.
Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind are probably my favorites of his.
The Telepathic Kid wrote:c'mon guys, he had a good run.
And especially since I was losing faith in him after the awful Howl's Moving Castle.
I mean he restored that faith with Ponyo.
That's funny. I don't particularly care for Ponyo, but love Howl's Moving Castle. For whatever reason, I thought the world was unanimous in this. Differing opinions!
Yes, he's had a good run though. We can all agree on that. A well deserved retirement.
Spirited Away...Christ, one of my favorite animations and has quite the brilliant soundtrack.
I'll just copy and paste (from another board) my opinions on why I don't like Howl's Moving Castle here;
Now, this is a large post warning, with a lot of spoilers for the film. Too bad there's no spoiler tags or nuthin like that implemented on this forum
I'm not of the opinion that plot mechanics are the sole foundation of a good Miyazaki film, hell I gave it 6/10 on RYM.
It's just that when it comes to Miyazaki, the visuals and atmosphere are almost always spot on, because watching any of his films is going to school for learning about animated films.
In films like Ponyo and Nausicaa, the dues ex machinas are forgiven, and with Kiki's Delivery Service, the go nowhere plot is endurable. All this due to the characters and visuals.
Howl's Moving Castle doesn't have the interesting main characters and has too many plot strands with smaller side characters for the audience to focus on, and in the end it doesn't really wrap up tightly. The visuals are still there, but what bugged me was the whole Turniphead just happens to be the prince of the other nation who was put under a spell and will end the war for whatever reason and the shoehorned love story, but that happens in nearly every Miyazaki film. Sometimes it works (Mononoke and Laputa), sometimes it doesn't (Spirited Away). There's a lot more smaller details but those are my biggest problems, other problems include stuff merely written off like "oh, it's magic", and character inconsistencies.
I'm sure you're aware of the film convention of setting things up and then being paid off, that's how films work. You can't pull something out of thin air, in the improvisation classes I took, this was called a "pink elephant", because it takes you out of the reality of the improvisation, as thus it ruins the performance. You lose interest in the characters and you start thinking about "why did that pink elephant come up? that wasn't told about before..."
Dues ex machina to an extent is a similar device but it's only around the end, and it's usually dire circumstances which lead to the end, but they make sense. When there's a love story just shoved into a film with no explanation about 40-50 minutes in, I lose the atmosphere and it just becomes difficult to watch the rest of the picture with the same level of enthusiasm.
My main problem with Howl's overall is just a lack of focus and is way too muddled around the third act. I know it's adapted from a book, so Miyazaki's not really to blame. To an extent, I feel Miyazaki tried to put his own spin on something that may have had enough already, and thus an overflow of the pot. I can't say these comments are correct or incorrect though, as I haven;t read the novel and I don't know how much he actually used.
I'd have to agree, Howls Moving Castle was a bit shit unfortunately but yeah, he did redeem himself with Ponyo although it wasn't a patch on some of his classics.
As for him retiring, yes he has had a very good run, he is old now and his films will live on, but:
