A beautiful and breathtaking adventure. I've seen Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind a few times now, and Castle in the Sky has a lot of similar visual material. In fact I spotted a couple of fox-squirrels in this one, a type of creature that played an important role in Nausicaä, which was just one more reason for me to believe that the two stories are actually set in the same imaginary world. But even though Nausicaä was made first, I prefer Castle in the Sky. In fact I prefer it to all other Miyazaki films.

I do have an issue with Miyazaki animations. By the end of the film, the "bad guys" always seem to forget that they're bad and completely reverse their ideals, for little or no apparent reason. But without giving anything away, Castle in the Sky does a much better job with this.

I personally believe the two greatest qualities in any animation are the quality of the animation and the atmosphere. The first is pretty much a direct result of how much love and care is given and how much money and hair is pulled out during the creation of an animation. Like any of Miyazaki's works, the animation of Castle in the Sky is breathtaking in its depth, clarity, and fluidity. But creating an atmosphere is a much finer task. By atmosphere I mean making something that pulls your viewers in so deep that they forget about the outside world and accept everything you show them as real, without question. It requires a careful balance of story, character, and aesthetic, all of which needs to be well developed and organized.

I don't think I took my eyes off the screen once while watching this. For all I know I may well have vanished from the real world and fallen into Miyazaki's wonderland. His world has a past, present, and future. It has its own science and its own fantasies. It has great nations with political struggles, and small villages where every single person has a life and a story of their own. And through it all you are shown the tale of a little boy and a little girl, and you are guided on an enchanting adventure that journeys upon the very fabric of legend. This movie has atmosphere.

...no pun intended.

Laputa:Castle in the sky!!!!This is an awesome film, I JUST LOVE ALL GHIBLI films. This comes in my top 5!!!!!! It's totally fantastic!!!It's also very funny in some part, and very exciting in others!!! If you try this film and like it, I also recommend Nausicaa of the valley of the winds.

"Castle in the Sky" is one of Miyazaki's best works, in my opinion. However, it is extremely similar in designs and characters' mentality as "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" and most of his posterior works.Take a look at Sheeta (from Castle in the Sky), Nausicaa (from Nausicaa of the valley of the wind), the girl form Mononoke Hime, Kiki (from Kiki's Delivery Service), etc. They all look the same! Even on Studio Ghibli's Music video "On Your Mark" the angel girl looked like a clone from the other girls I mentioned. Other patterns continue in most of Miyazaki's films (such as the villain being a woman at first, but not for the entire movie). I mean, I am the only one who notices this? I think I'm going cracy over this! Nobody seems to care that most of these movies follow the same format.
For those of you who haven't seen any Studio Ghibli's movies so far, I wouldn't go as far as to advice you not to watch "Castle in the Sky", or any other of Miyazaki's films for that matter. But keep in mind that they have a very similar skeleton.

This film is AWESOME! Not surprising, it's a Miyazaki film and those are THE BEST!!! But, sadly, it's not as good as some of his other films.

I watched both language versions of this movie on Turner Classic Movies. Of course, just like me to turn the TV on when the beginning is over. So, following the whole story of this movie was a little difficult.

I loved every bit of this film, from start to end credits(well, I would if I start in the beginning of the movie). I wanted to ride something like the flyers(which looked like dragonflies w/o the tail) when Pazu & the pirates go save Sheeta. That looked to fun. Then again, the glider looked just as fun. Aw poo, too bad I can't do that in real life with exceptions to hang gliding. Oh well!

I am sorry, but I must take this movie down a peg, because it really isn't that great. It has some interesting characters and the story is creative, basically at Miyazaki standards.The story was intresting ,but, once the essentinal characters were introduced, the movie just couldn't hold up, it became pretty bland. Its basically, just a good film, but it really dosen't venture outside of good. If you want to see an early excelllent Miayzaki film, see "Castle of Cagliostro" one of his most underrated works.

It really isn't a surprise at all that I absolutely loved this film. Miyazaki is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time (not just animators, filmmakers, and this is coming from someone whose life revolves around mostly live-action film).

Just the name will probably be enough to convince many to see this film, and I don't see any reason to try to convince anyone any further. It's worth your time. Thematically, it isn't anything new from Miyazaki (or, I should say, his later films weren't anything new thematically, but I guess Nausicaa did come before this...). Anyway, there's the reverence for nature, the strong female roles, the wholly engaging adventure, the unforgettable moments, and the pure imagination that are in all or most of Miyazaki's features.

On a side note, please watch this and all of Miyazaki's features with the original voice track and subtitles. Even if the acting is good on a dub, the script (especially the Disney ones) ALWAYS compromises the seriousness and impact of the story. These films were made for whole families, and Disney tends to dumb them down, and censor them (there's nothing terrible, but just subtle things like never referring directly to a death that just took place on screen) for very young children, which simply aren't the only demographic that Miyazaki is making his films for. The dub compromises Miyazaki's artistic integrity, and the subtitles being the closest a non-Japanese-speaker can get to his vision makes them the superior choice.

It is to my sad knowledge that the Disney dub absolutely destroyed the foundation of this film. If you ever get the chance to see this masterpiece, i urge you to watch it in Japanese or French (with or without subtitles depending on whether you can speak the language or not) if you must watch it in english, at least watch it in Japanese first. The english dubbing of this film is so unbearable i almost wanted to eat my shoe, or at least throw it at the tv screen.

James Vanderbeek, or whatever the heck his name is, makes you groun and sigh every time you hear his whinny 30+ year old voice come out of a 13 yr old Pazu, and it doesn't get any better when you hear the sterotyped bad guy voices for the....bad guys. Semi-British accents do wonders as villians (not!) And i'm not even touching the gorey details of the horrid dialogue.

As for the Japanese and French voicing(I don't know French, so all i can say is that it "sounded" good) the work was wonderful and the characters highlighted the screen. The movie itself is richly detailed, inspiring, and downright entertaining with its loads of eye candy action. the characters are loveable, and the story highly original and superbly told. the animation and atmosphere of the film was gold for it's time, and still looked up on today.

All in all, it's amazing how voice overs can destroy a potentially well dubbed film. Castle in the Sky was so lazily worked over, disney tries to win the audience over with an "all-star-cast" proclamation, only to give you a worn down, retired crew of lame voice actors. Only Anna Paquin did a decent job as Sheeta. So as i said before, For the love of animation! watch it with subtitles first. after that, watch the disney dub at your own risk.(if you dare...)

The first of the official Ghibli films, Laputa is most similar to its predecessor Nausicaa, but whereas Nausicaa was a SF epic, this is more of an action comedy-adventure with a fairly weak SF premise.

For the first half hour of the movie I thought I was going to love it. Once again you find yourself in awe of Miyazaki's attention to detail, and his ability to conjure up an imaginary world in meticulous, beautiful perfection. The animation, though still not in the league of the later Ghibli films, is a little better than in Nausicaa.

I mentioned in my review of Nausicaa that one character is drawn in a more 'Lupinesque' anime style. Here there are a whole bunch of them: the pirates. They provide the comic element in the film, though quite why it needs a comic element I'm not sure. There was nothing funny about Nausicaa, and I think it was better off for it. Still. having said that, Dola, the pirate leader, is easily the most memorable character in the film (even if she's basically a female Long John Silver. Dont be surprised if you're reminded of 'Treasure Planet' at times) and is well voiced by Cloris Leachman in the American dub.

The English voice cast acquit themselves well for the most part, actually. However something started going pear-shaped for me about this movie by about the halfway mark. I think the best way that I could describe it is that the characters get swallowed up by the vast scope of the story. I'll come back to that later.

There is so much to admire about Laputa, that I feel mean for giving it only three stars, but for me the operative word here is 'admire'. It was more impressive than personally affecting, and at over two hours it just started to drag.

The crucial thing for me was this: I really found that I didn't care much about any of the characters. Disney would have taken the care to develop the characters, make you really fall for them, rather than leave them as relatively two-dimensional pieces to be moved around while you gawked at the amazing vistas in the movie. Even that would have been tolerable if there was some hard SF in the story to make up for it, but it was basically a lot of gobledegook about Princesses and magic crystals. That's where Laputa falls down as far as I'm concerned, and that's what holds it back from being a potential 4-star movie. Having said that, it must be admitted that Miyazaki was leagues ahead of Disney in general in 1986, when you consider that their movie of the same year was the pretty dire 'Great Mouse Detective'.

Laputa is a good film in some ways an amazing film, and you should definately see it, but I do feel it's over-rated. I definately prefer the earlier 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'.

BTW, if you manage to watch them in chronological order, watch for the fox-squirrel from Nausicaa popping up briefly in Laputa.

I didn't think this movie would be that good when we rented it for my little brother and sister, but when i finally watched it i loved it! i love James Van der Beek! It was an awesomely done movie. I loved the robots, and the Pirates and the garden! it was lovely!

This movie is absolutely well done. When I first watched it, I expected something very boring. I got something way more than that. It was stunning, and absolutely gorgeous. This is up there on my list of anime movies, and I have seen TONS of anime. This is incredible, and very inspiring. It's funny as well. You will enjoy this all out.