Ursula K. LeGuin on Gedo Senki
Earthsea author gives first impressions of Goro Miyazaki film
Aug 15, 2006
(Source: Ursula K. LeGuin.com)
Award-winning author Ursula K. LeGuin has posted her first impressions of Goro Miyazaki's adaptation of Tales from Earthsea (Gedo Senki in Japan) on her website.
She begins with a preliminary note: "Very few authors have any control over the use made of their books by a film studio. The general rule is that once the contract is signed, the author of the books is nonexistent. Such labels as "creative consultant" are meaningless. Please do not hold any writer except the script-writer responsible for anything in a film. Don't ask the book's author 'Why did they . . . ?' She is wondering too."
Overall, LeGuin is kind to Tales from Earthsea. As she told Goro Miyazaki after a private screening, "Yes (I liked the movie). It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie."
She goes into detail: "Much of it was beautiful. Many corners were cut, however, in the animation of this quickly made film. It does not have the delicate accuracy of (Hayao Miyazaki's) Totoro or the powerful and splendid richness of detail of Spirited Away. The imagery is effective but often conventional."
She also notes that the film's "excitement was maintained by violence, to a degree that I find deeply untrue to the spirit of the books."
She also says the "version shown us was subtitled, not dubbed. Studio Ghibli does excellent dubbing, but I was delighted to hear the Japanese voices . . . Ged's warm, dark tone was particularly fine. And I hope the lovely song Therru sings is kept . . . when the film is dubbed."
Goro Miyazaki's adaptation comes off better than the 2004 Sci-Fi Channel version, especially when it comes to race. LeGuin deliberately made most of her characters colored since, in 1968, she was trying to undermine racial prejudice. She notes that the "makers of the American TV version, while boasting that they were "color blind," reduced the colored population of Earthsea to one and a half. I have blasted them for whitewashing Earthsea, and do not forgive them for it."
LeGuin is also bitter about the "bait-and-switch" Studio Ghibli played on her with the Miyazakis. She initially greenlighted the movie, because she was a huge fan of Hayao's work and she thought he would be in charge of production. However, Hayao said he was retiring from filmmkaing, and that instead he would supervise Goro's work on the movie. Instead, Hayao worked on 2005's Howl's Moving Castle and Goro directed Tales from Earthsea on his own. The news that Hayao is now directing a new movie "has increased my disappointment. I hope to put it behind me."
The author delivers some bad news to anime fans: Disney (Studio Ghibli's North American distributor) can only bring Tales from Earthsea to North America in 2009, after the copyright from the Sci-Fi Channel version runs out. As LeGuin says, "Alas! There are dogs in the manger."
You can read the entire text here.
