Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
Speaker 3: be talking about the nineteen eighty four Japanese animated fantasy
Speaker 3: film NAUSICAA of the Valley of the Wind, an entry
Speaker 3: that I think fits very well in the Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema library because it contains a vision of a world
Speaker 3: imagine with such a unique, confident weirdness that I think
Speaker 3: it actually has come to seem less weird in the
Speaker 3: intervening decades because its original imagery has influenced so much
Speaker 3: other stuff that came after it. I just kept noticing,
Speaker 3: like I feel like I see textures and themes and
Speaker 3: contours and ideas from Nausica like I recognize them from
Speaker 3: later media of the past few decades all over the place.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, this is a film that's been highly
Speaker 2: influential not only within the realm of Japanese cinema and
Speaker 2: Japanese animation, but also in Japanese culture and the larger
Speaker 2: cinematic culture of the world as a whole. Like this
Speaker 2: is a film that casts a long shadow.
Speaker 3: So I picked this movie because I knew it had
Speaker 3: a reputation for being very beautiful and wonderful, and I
Speaker 3: was a fan of Miyazaki already, the writer director, who
Speaker 3: we'll talk about later. But after I watched it, you know,
Speaker 3: in a way, I feel kind of at a loss.
Speaker 3: We'll have to see how today goes. Because I like
Speaker 3: this movie so much. I'm actually finding it a bit
Speaker 3: difficult to put together the correct words to express my
Speaker 3: thoughts about it. For me, Nausica feels almost a bit
Speaker 3: beyond analysis. So I'm going to do the best I can.
Speaker 3: But this might be a kind of weird episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Like this one
Speaker 2: is we discussed a lot of films that are kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, treasures from the Temple, or you know, they're
Speaker 2: kind of sometimes they're curious items that are encrusted with
Speaker 2: interesting jewels. But there is a structural completeness and just
Speaker 2: a completeness of the artistic vision in Nausica that is,
Speaker 2: to a certain extent, unlike anything we've covered before, Like
Speaker 2: this might be the first time we've covered a film
Speaker 2: on weird house cinema that I've long held up is
Speaker 2: one of my favorite films. You know, some of the
Speaker 2: films we've watched for Weird House have become some of
Speaker 2: my favorite films. But Nausica is a film that has
Speaker 2: a special place in my heart and in my life
Speaker 2: with cinema. So I think I've mentioned this before. It's
Speaker 2: my origin story with Nausica, Okay, And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people I was looking around. I saw some
Speaker 2: other people online that seemed like they had a similar situation.
Speaker 2: But I had a very early exposure to this film home,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what it was when I caught it.
Speaker 2: This would have been let's see I actually I did
Speaker 2: some figuring last night and I was able to get
Speaker 2: a little closer to when it was. I want to
Speaker 2: say this was probably the early nineties. I could be
Speaker 2: wrong on that, but I was with my family somewhere
Speaker 2: and we were staying in a hotel and that hotel
Speaker 2: had HBO, and I turned on HBO there and there
Speaker 2: was this animated movie being played, And you know, I
Speaker 2: loved animation at that point, but my exposure to animation
Speaker 2: was was kind of limited based on what was available
Speaker 2: to a mainstream audience during the early nineties. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I knew Disney I knew, and as far as Japanese
Speaker 2: animation went, I knew things like you know, Voltron and
Speaker 2: so forth I had. You know, I'd seen Rankin in
Speaker 2: bass that sort of thing, But this, whatever this was,
Speaker 2: it it seemed so different. You know, I'd never seen
Speaker 2: anything that was at all calibrated for outside of a
Speaker 2: childhood viewership, Like I don't think i'd seen any snippets
Speaker 2: of heavy metal. Maybe i'd seen just a little. I
Speaker 2: think I've seen part of an animated Wagner Opera short
Speaker 2: on public broadcasting at some point, and that that felt
Speaker 2: weird because I was like, this is clearly not for children, exactly,
Speaker 2: like what is this? But yeah, here was this? This
Speaker 2: this strange, weird and just very dramatic vision. I think
Speaker 2: the clip I saw was from like the middle to
Speaker 2: the early end portion of the film, and it enthralled me.
Speaker 2: But then, you know it as a family trip, we
Speaker 2: all had to leave you to turn off the TV,
Speaker 2: and so we left the hotel room and I did
Speaker 2: not find out what this film was, but it stuck
Speaker 2: in my head and I remember it influencing things that
Speaker 2: I imagined and thought about as like I was transitioning
Speaker 2: into a different grade, and I was, you know, I
Speaker 2: was imagining all these these things, and I could see
Speaker 2: like this monster forming out of all these fleshy ropes
Speaker 2: and all. Yeah. So this was a film that touched
Speaker 2: me pretty deeply, but in that weird childhood way where
Speaker 2: you don't really have much follow up on it. You
Speaker 2: don't start asking around like, hey, I saw this movie
Speaker 2: on HBO, what was it? Where can I find it.
Speaker 3: I had a very similar experience with the Revelations of
Speaker 3: Hotel Cable, with the Mystery Science Theater episode of the
Speaker 3: Incredibly Strange Creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sadly, I don't think I ever caught any Miyazaki
Speaker 3: on the Hotel Cable though. It was always Sci Fi
Speaker 3: channel stuff.
Speaker 2: Well that sci Fi channel. It had a lot of
Speaker 2: interesting things on it to expose people too, for sure.
Speaker 2: But yeah, as far as this goes, this was my
Speaker 2: earliest exposure to Miyazaki. I didn't know it was Miyazaki
Speaker 2: at the time. I didn't know this was NAUSICAA and
Speaker 2: I would be in my twenties before I re entered
Speaker 2: the world of Miyazaki's films and realized that this perfect film,
Speaker 2: or at least an imperfect cut of it, was what
Speaker 2: had enthralled me as a child.
Speaker 3: Oh so you think what you saw was part of
Speaker 3: the Warriors of the Wind broadcast.
Speaker 2: I think it likely was when I look at the
Speaker 2: timeline of how things came together, and so it'll be
Speaker 2: interesting to keep that in mind as we when we
Speaker 2: discussed Lawyers of the Wind, which is an early North
Speaker 2: American release and an edit of the film and also
Speaker 2: a kind of a pretty rough dub I'm to understand,
Speaker 2: but at the time, like that's what was available, and
Speaker 2: that's what that's what I caught a glimpse of.
Speaker 3: Well, even if the narrative we were totally structurally butchered
Speaker 3: and a lot of the meaning were taken out of
Speaker 3: the film, I can see how it would be appealing. Nonetheless,
Speaker 3: because one thing that struck me about it was the
Speaker 3: animation style. This is a film where you certainly do
Speaker 3: need to hear the dialogue, Like the story told is
Speaker 3: a wonderful story, and I wouldn't change really a single
Speaker 3: thing about it. But I think this movie would also
Speaker 3: work on mute, like you could chop it up and
Speaker 3: you know, take out a lot of the story and
Speaker 3: stuff and still have an enthralling time just watching the
Speaker 3: animation because every scene really just in the visuals kind
Speaker 3: of tells the story of its own and the way
Speaker 3: a lot of the action is realized, the way the
Speaker 3: characters move and the way shots are framed, is filled
Speaker 3: with emotion completely by itself, without hearing what anybody says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in its complete cut, I think this
Speaker 2: is as close to a perfect film as I can imagine.
Speaker 2: And I don't use that term, you know, without some
Speaker 2: forethought here, you know, it's I love flowed movies. Plenty
Speaker 2: of flowed movies are among my favorites. But I think
Speaker 2: this is a movie where absolutely everything works. But even
Speaker 2: if you encounter it outside of that desired form, it's
Speaker 2: like it's like encountering pieces of a of a temple
Speaker 2: that was ruined, you know, in ancient times. You know,
Speaker 2: even the fragments of it are going to speak of
Speaker 2: the art that went into it. Like, so, you can
Speaker 2: edit this film pretty severely, but you can't edit like
Speaker 2: the environmental themes out of it. You can't edit the
Speaker 2: weirdness and the wonder out of it completely. You're still
Speaker 2: going to get some some intense flashes of that.
Speaker 3: Right, So even if you do, as the Warriors of
Speaker 3: the Wind cut apparently did, like try to edit out
Speaker 3: a lot of the environmental themes about why we can't
Speaker 3: destroy the jungle and stuff, you would still get the
Speaker 3: moments in various scenes of like the way that Nausicaa
Speaker 3: just like physically regards plants and animal life, and so
Speaker 3: that you'd still get that like emotion coming through just
Speaker 3: in those moments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you still get that, like the music
Speaker 2: is still there. The score wasn't replaced or anything, which
Speaker 2: I'm to understand sometimes has occurred with anime films that
Speaker 2: are cut and put back out in a different different markets.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm not certainly not advising anyone watch the
Speaker 2: Warriors of the Wind cut of the film. I think
Speaker 2: that's only for like completists who really want to, you know,
Speaker 2: understand the history of the film. I have no desire
Speaker 2: to see it myself. But I'm also I've also read
Speaker 2: from some people who have that point out, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not a good cut, but it's not nearly as
Speaker 2: bad as it could have been. It's not nearly as
Speaker 2: bad as maybe some people make it out to be.
Speaker 2: But hey, when you're dealing with a film that is,
Speaker 2: you know, arguably perfect in its original cut, like, you know,
Speaker 2: anything you do to it is potentially a defacement. You know.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it, so I can't really say, but
Speaker 3: in reading about it, it does seem to me like
Speaker 3: a pretty profoundly cursed artifact, especially with like the way
Speaker 3: it was marketed. So there's like this poster for it
Speaker 3: that just adds in some badass looking male characters who
Speaker 3: are not characters in the movie. It just got to
Speaker 3: put them in the center of the poster. I think
Speaker 3: we talked about another movie that did that, like a
Speaker 3: like a kid's fantasy movie from the eighties that had
Speaker 3: a that had a girl as the protagonist, and so
Speaker 3: they just eded in like a tough looking dude on
Speaker 3: the poster, not in the film. What what was that.
Speaker 2: A tough on I I don't remember off hand, but
Speaker 2: yet this.
Speaker 3: Oh oh it was one of the Ewoks movies.
Speaker 2: Oh yes it was. It was one of It was
Speaker 2: Battle for Indoor probably, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So this
Speaker 2: poster so that, yeah, War's the Wind, which we'll continue
Speaker 2: to talk about here because you know, ultimately, when if
Speaker 2: you're if you're poking fun about at anything regarding Nausica
Speaker 2: it's Warriors of the Wind that deserves in the marketing
Speaker 2: around where's the wind that deserves that attention? Warriors the
Speaker 2: Wind seems to the poster seems to reimagine Nausicaa as
Speaker 2: a basically like a heavy metal it's in the heavy
Speaker 2: metal you know, comic and film franchise Doctor Doom on there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it kind of looks like a Doctor Doom. Also kind
Speaker 2: of looks like a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus from
Speaker 2: Warhammer forty thousand, the Tech Priests. There's there's some dude
Speaker 2: in the middle with a machine gun or a laser
Speaker 2: rifle that I don't think is in the film. There's
Speaker 2: a guy with a gun riding a pegasus, which definitely
Speaker 2: isn't in the film at all. There are no horses
Speaker 2: in the film, even much less flying horses. And then
Speaker 2: there's sort of a like a sexy Nausicaa in the background,
Speaker 2: but you know, she's like way in the background, Like
Speaker 2: clearly she's not the focal point of this film.
Speaker 3: This poster just has evil corporate sorcery radiating off of it.
Speaker 2: It is it is.
Speaker 3: The business equivalent of necromancy. That the bad kind where
Speaker 3: you're making skeleton armies, not the kind where you're just
Speaker 3: talking to the dead.
Speaker 2: It is. It's I hate it. Yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 2: monster looks kind of cool about it. But but but
Speaker 2: the monster, the monster looks cool because it is something
Speaker 2: legitimate taken from the film. Even if they kind of like,
Speaker 2: I mean, they I'm not even gonna say they made
Speaker 2: it more horrible looking because it's extremely hard horrifying in
Speaker 2: the movie itself. But the poster promises us that the
Speaker 2: future has never been so exciting. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: Naska is an exciting film. It is a very exciting film.
Speaker 2: It has wonderful action sequences of some of the best
Speaker 2: action sequences I've ever seen. And yet it's so much
Speaker 2: more than that. It is a thoughtful film. It is
Speaker 2: a film with deeply well thought out characters. So yeah, this,
Speaker 2: I guess that's the whole thing about where it's the wind.
Speaker 2: It attempts to reduce this to something that the producers
Speaker 2: thought that the public could handle and that the public wanted.
Speaker 3: Though, picking up on the first half of what you
Speaker 3: said here, this is a movie with absolutely thrilling action
Speaker 3: I complained about action a lot on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: I often talk about how action scenes are supposed to
Speaker 3: be understood as exciting, but most of the time they're
Speaker 3: incredibly boring. You've seen a million of these just mind
Speaker 3: numbing actions. He's like close up of a guy shooting,
Speaker 3: close up of something exploding. There's no drama to it.
Speaker 3: There is no emotion, there's no suspense, there's no wondering
Speaker 3: what's gonna happen, there's no really like having feelings about
Speaker 3: the characters or watching interesting exchanges of power. It's actually
Speaker 3: fairly rare that a movie gets action scenes right and
Speaker 3: makes them exciting in the way that they could and
Speaker 3: should be. And Nausica, despite being a movie that is
Speaker 3: thoroughly against violence, has some of the best action scenes
Speaker 3: of any movie I can think of. When you see
Speaker 3: Nausica moving in a tense moment, like when she's racing
Speaker 3: to the rescue, or there's a chase scene somebody's trying
Speaker 3: to escape, or there's a fight about to break out,
Speaker 3: it is absolutely thrilling. Like every moment, you are riveted,
Speaker 3: or at least I was. And it's because it gets
Speaker 3: all of those things. I just said, right, Like, the
Speaker 3: action scenes are full of suspense and emotion. You don't
Speaker 3: know how they're going to unfold, and there is drama
Speaker 3: in it in the movements of the characters. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of like feeling and struggle, and you are right
Speaker 3: there with them, empathizing with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's ultimately that complex alchemy of
Speaker 2: great filmmaking and great storytelling. You know, it's like all
Speaker 2: the elements that make me as ACTI films great from
Speaker 2: just like this, the richness of the animation, that characters
Speaker 2: move like human beings and animals move like animals, and
Speaker 2: everything has weight this scene in that scene or intercut
Speaker 2: so that everything feels like it's in the same place.
Speaker 2: I mean, all of this adds together, and again you
Speaker 2: have stakes, you have characters, and yeah, you have these
Speaker 2: just riveting action sequences on the land and in the sky.
Speaker 3: Oh and especially in the sky, because a lot of
Speaker 3: the action in this film involves flying. This is another
Speaker 3: case where I'm sorry, but I feel like I've been
Speaker 3: struggling to find the right words to express my feelings here.
Speaker 3: But I was talking to Rachel about this before we started.
Speaker 3: According you know, there are a lot of movies that
Speaker 3: involve some degree of kind of power fantasy identification with
Speaker 3: the protagonist, to superhero movies, action movies. You want to
Speaker 3: see the hero do something very confident, be very strong,
Speaker 3: be a ninja, be a strong fighter, or something like that,
Speaker 3: and you get a kind of exciting sense of identification
Speaker 3: with the protagonists there. It's what a lot of superhero
Speaker 3: movies are about and stuff. Nausica has that, but in
Speaker 3: a way that I felt is so much better than
Speaker 3: ninety nine percent of movies like that and kind of
Speaker 3: cheapens them by comparison. The way it feels to watch
Speaker 3: Nausica move and fly with her glider is so thrilling
Speaker 3: and freeing in that sense of watching a character be
Speaker 3: strong and free and be able to act swiftly and
Speaker 3: do what they do with competence and confidence. But it's
Speaker 3: not about like hurting and dominating people the way it
Speaker 3: is in most movies like that. It's about the way
Speaker 3: that she can fly, and I guess really it's about
Speaker 3: the way that she can be where she needs to be.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Because, like you said, the violent action in
Speaker 2: this film is intense and exciting and very entertaining, but
Speaker 2: the film has a very strong pacifist core. It is
Speaker 2: strongly anti violence, and you see that in these themes
Speaker 2: where violence occurs, but violence almost never solves anything in
Speaker 2: this movie. It's communication and empathy that solve problems. And yeah,
Speaker 2: Nausica's ability to move quickly from one place to another
Speaker 2: like that facilitates that kind of communication and negotiation.
Speaker 3: I would say also, though, it's not just a kind
Speaker 3: of shallow, unthinking rejection of violence, where like it just
Speaker 3: so happens that violence is always bad. In the movie,
Speaker 3: like you see innocent characters defending themselves violently against violent
Speaker 3: attacks in a way that you totally empathize with, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's not like they're condemned for doing so. So
Speaker 3: like it, I think it has a mature relationship to pacifism,
Speaker 3: you know, where like there are many situations where a
Speaker 3: character has to use violence and they're not bad for
Speaker 3: doing it. You understand why they're doing it, and you
Speaker 3: and you're in a way can be on their side.
Speaker 3: But also you kind of you kind of get to
Speaker 3: zoom out and see the larger relationship of all these
Speaker 3: violent interactions and see other ways that peace could be
Speaker 3: achieved or that people could get what they want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when the violence occurs, the violence has weight,
Speaker 2: the violence has has a cost for both sides. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like there's a character, Lord Yupa, who will discuss
Speaker 2: here in Bett, who is described as a master swordsman,
Speaker 2: and clearly he is extremely skilled with a blade and
Speaker 2: kills multiple enemy soldiers and at least a couple of
Speaker 2: major encounters. But it is negotiation that he falls back
Speaker 2: on as his true skill to end those encounters and
Speaker 2: to avoid death for himself or for you know, his compatriots.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's yeah, it's quite fascinating to take all
Speaker 2: this apart, but yeah, he had and I think in
Speaker 2: both of those sequences, or at least one key sequence,
Speaker 2: like he has wounded himself. Nausicaa in trying to prevent
Speaker 2: violence is also wounded. And so so yeah, there's no
Speaker 2: like simplistic model of like violence bad, pacifism good. It
Speaker 2: is a complex world full of interactions that we're witnessed
Speaker 2: to in this film.
Speaker 3: So anyway, another problem I've been thinking about when talking
Speaker 3: about this episode is I really don't want to get
Speaker 3: into like granular spoilers for the later part of the
Speaker 3: plot or reveal too much about it, because it really
Speaker 3: is the kind of movie where I would want people
Speaker 3: to just watch it and just let it unfold for them.
Speaker 3: So what can we say as a as a as
Speaker 3: a very safe kind of elevator pitch here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just have to think about just the
Speaker 2: larger genre that it establishes and grows here, and it's
Speaker 2: just it's a post apocalyptic environmental fantasy epic, and yet
Speaker 2: it's more than that too. So it's really hard to
Speaker 2: pin this one down.
Speaker 3: Should we do some trailer audio?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was really tempted to play the Words
Speaker 2: of the Wind trailer because it's ultimately perhaps more amusing
Speaker 2: in a in a purely audio sense. So we'll probably
Speaker 2: just hear a snippet of the original Japanese trailer for
Speaker 2: NAUSICAA of the Valley of the Wind Jodi Yai. So
Speaker 2: not state all right now, if you want to go
Speaker 2: out and watch this film, and we highly recommend that
Speaker 2: you do, certainly if you haven't seen it before, go
Speaker 2: watch it before you continue on with this episode. It's
Speaker 2: widely available in physical and digital formats. Your streaming source
Speaker 2: for this is going to vary depending on international location.
Speaker 2: I know there are some streaming sites that don't have
Speaker 2: it until you cross an international border, and then you know,
Speaker 2: then get excited because now all the Miyazaki films just
Speaker 2: showed up in your streaming service. So yeah, depending on
Speaker 2: where you are, you should be able to find it somewhere.
Speaker 2: They're widely available and they're great.
Speaker 3: I watched it on the Max Headroom streaming service you've
Speaker 3: formerly known as HBO.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, available there as of this recording in the
Speaker 2: United States anyway, but stuff has a way of vanishing
Speaker 2: from there, so I don't know, you know, keep an
Speaker 2: eye out for it. But the thing about these films
Speaker 2: is they will remain available. You should be able to
Speaker 2: find them somewhere, and I will say on the Max
Speaker 2: environment especially and probably anywhere you might be streaming it.
Speaker 2: You can watch it in the original Japanese with subtitles,
Speaker 2: or you can watch it with with a really great dub.
Speaker 2: This is the Disney dub that we'll discuss here in
Speaker 2: a bit. This is not the Warriors of the of
Speaker 2: the Wind dub. This is a really quality dub. So
Speaker 2: you know, your taste may vary when it comes to
Speaker 2: dub versus sub, but in my opinion, this is a
Speaker 2: This is a great one. I agree.
Speaker 3: I don't have a general preference for subtitles versus dubbing.
Speaker 3: It's just case by case for me. But I think
Speaker 3: this is a case where the later English dub is fantastic,
Speaker 3: and we'll get into what some of those voices are later.
Speaker 3: But like, I mean, how can you turn down Patrick
Speaker 3: Stewart as lord you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk about the people involved. I mean,
Speaker 2: most of what we're going to discuss you with the
Speaker 2: people is this is going to concern the director, the writer,
Speaker 2: and author, also the author of the original manga upon
Speaker 2: which it is based, and that is, of course Hayal
Speaker 2: Miyazaki born nineteen forty one, still alive and still active
Speaker 2: as of this recording, and with some details to come
Speaker 2: on that last point. He is, of course a legendary
Speaker 2: Japanese animator and filmmaker. And yeah, it's actually a bit
Speaker 2: intimidating to attempt any sort of summary of his career,
Speaker 2: because while we've touched on directors who have garnered cult
Speaker 2: followings and even larger critical acclaim in their time, Miyazaki
Speaker 2: is kind of in a league of his own. I mean,
Speaker 2: who else can you speak of in the same breath,
Speaker 2: like maybe like Akira Kurosarwa or Walt Disney or Jim Henson.
Speaker 2: Those are just the three that came to my mind.
Speaker 2: But I mean, he really stands on his own. It's
Speaker 2: hard to compare him to anyone else.
Speaker 3: He seems to me someone who just specializes in making
Speaker 3: perfect or near perfect after perfect or near perfect film. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just just cranking them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and devoted to animation, you know, not one of
Speaker 2: these artists where you see like them transitioning out of
Speaker 2: animation into something else, like animation has been his key focus.
Speaker 2: He's an artist that I think is rather defined by
Speaker 2: his interest, certainly again with the medium animation and also
Speaker 2: to a certain extent, manga. But also there are certain
Speaker 2: frequently explored themes that I think come to define a
Speaker 2: lot of his, if not all of his films. Those
Speaker 2: are themes of environmentalism, feminism, pacifism. Also of course soaring
Speaker 2: and flying, sometimes soaring and flying kind of at least
Speaker 2: in Ponio, they the same theme goes under water, but
Speaker 2: we still get this feel of soaring and flying only
Speaker 2: beneath the waves. But yeah, Miyazaki obviously has a lot
Speaker 2: of love enthusiasm for flight. I understand that he is,
Speaker 2: or at least was at one point, a scale model enthusiast,
Speaker 2: and you see that reflected in all the amazing airplane
Speaker 2: designs in this film.
Speaker 3: You know, I realized if I hadn't seen it and
Speaker 3: someone had told me there are a lot of flying
Speaker 3: scenes in it, I might be like, oh, Okay, that
Speaker 3: sounds kind of boring. But it's like somebody telling you
Speaker 3: there's a movie with a lot of driving scenes in it.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Could very well feel like padding. But that is not
Speaker 3: my experience of these The flying scenes are as I
Speaker 3: said earlier, they're full of emotion. They're lovingly crafted, and
Speaker 3: they're intentional. It's not just like patting it out watching
Speaker 3: something move around, And.
Speaker 2: It is the sort of thing that certainly during the
Speaker 2: time period which this film was made, you could not
Speaker 2: have done anything like this with a live action film,
Speaker 2: and even today with computer effects, like maybe if you
Speaker 2: had a big enough budget, you could do something along
Speaker 2: the lines of this, but I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: think any wouldn't still still wouldn't be as good. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, yeah, because we're not just talking about oh,
Speaker 2: here's the here's the shot of this plane flying and
Speaker 2: then here's someone in it. Like you have these complex
Speaker 2: fantasy aviation scenes in which people from one plane are boarding,
Speaker 2: a forced boarding of another plane, you know, landing on
Speaker 2: top of it, engaging in melee combat aboard the airplanes.
Speaker 2: It's it's phenomenal. But yeah, you can look at the
Speaker 2: various designs and there's each kingdom in Nasca. They have
Speaker 2: their own sort of material culture and their planes have
Speaker 2: distinct designs. World War Two aviation buffs especially, we'll see
Speaker 2: the inspiration of various Luftwaffa designs that inform the Toolmikian
Speaker 2: aircraft that you see. So yeah, clearly Miyazaki's love for
Speaker 2: airplanes goes pretty deep. But also his love for natural
Speaker 2: movements is pretty deep as well. Again, like when when
Speaker 2: a person moves in one of these films, they move naturally,
Speaker 2: they move like a human being does, and you see
Speaker 2: this throughout me Asaki's work. I think a really strong
Speaker 2: example of this you can find in the nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight film My Neighbor Totoro's a a classic film of
Speaker 2: his as well, if not a more famous one, just
Speaker 2: because it has like the cute elements of it are
Speaker 2: so overpowering that it's it's you latch onto it more
Speaker 2: with your heart in a different way, it's it's a
Speaker 2: film that very much speaks to the heart of a child,
Speaker 2: doesn't engage in a lot of fantasy world building for
Speaker 2: the most part, not on the same level as Nasica.
Speaker 2: It does have a very interesting fantasy world in it.
Speaker 2: But the thing I noticed most recently, and I really
Speaker 2: was obsessing over when I rewatched it recently, was the
Speaker 2: attention to detail concerning the manner and movements of children.
Speaker 2: It's just spectacular to behold because you know, how would
Speaker 2: you have a character move from point A to point
Speaker 2: B in a scene? Okay, there might be a specific
Speaker 2: answer for that, and then how might you envision a
Speaker 2: child doing it? And how would they do it accurately
Speaker 2: with no regard for budget or time, just so you
Speaker 2: have like all these wild and unnecessary flourishes that go
Speaker 2: into their movement, these strange decisions that children make, like oh,
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to take my shoes off, so my feet
Speaker 2: are dirty, I'm just gonna walk on my hands with
Speaker 2: my feet in the air. That sort of thing, Like
Speaker 2: things that an adult might not realize unless they're actively
Speaker 2: watching the children and figuring out what they are and
Speaker 2: how they move, and then having the determination to make
Speaker 2: sure that that is reflected in the film.
Speaker 3: That's beautifully put. I think that's exactly right. And well,
Speaker 3: it's less about movement. There's one moment in the film
Speaker 3: that stood out as amazing child behavior, which is when
Speaker 3: several characters are about to be taken hostage by a violent, threatening,
Speaker 3: invading army and the children are saying goodbye and give
Speaker 3: them as a parting gift, give them some nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so good. Now again, I can't give Miyazaki
Speaker 2: full coverage here. There have been great documentaries about him,
Speaker 2: but his work as an animator goes back to their
Speaker 2: early to mid nineteen sixties, and then in seventy one
Speaker 2: and seventy two we see him transition into some directorial duties.
Speaker 2: Also in seventy two we see his first writing credits
Speaker 2: on Seo Takahata's Panda Go Panda, which is pretty fun
Speaker 2: if you can find it. This is for young children,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty it's pretty great, like a kid and
Speaker 2: her friend that is a giant panda. As a director,
Speaker 2: Miyazaki started off doing something like fifteen episodes of Loop
Speaker 2: in the third as well as twenty six episodes of
Speaker 2: Future Boy Conan, and then a couple of Loop and movies.
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen eighty four he wrote and directed
Speaker 2: NAUSICAA of the Valley of the Wind based on his
Speaker 2: manga of the same name. It would prove a huge
Speaker 2: hit that in turn spawned the creation of Studio Ghibli.
Speaker 2: Now fun note on Studio Ghibli. It is named after
Speaker 2: the Libyan Arabic nickname for a World War II Italian aircraft,
Speaker 2: again the aviation love in Miyazaki, but it means there
Speaker 2: are three technically correct pronunciations for Ghibli, one in Libyan Arabic,
Speaker 2: one in the Italian usage of it is a nickname
Speaker 2: for an airplane, and then the Japanese usage of it.
Speaker 2: So like the way you hear Japanese speakers like Miyazaki
Speaker 2: himself pronounced Ghibli is different than what I'm saying now,
Speaker 2: but I believe Ghibli as I'm saying it has become
Speaker 2: sort of the standard Ish English pronunciation. So you know,
Speaker 2: your opinion may differ, but there's suffice to say you
Speaker 2: can you have some choices if you want to get
Speaker 2: fancy with it.
Speaker 3: This is a good thing to have strong opinions about.
Speaker 2: I mean, their whole videos about it. But at any rate,
Speaker 2: the success of this film allows them to form stud Ghibli.
Speaker 2: He founds it with director is Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki,
Speaker 2: and they acquire the assets of a company called top Craft.
Speaker 2: And if top Craft sounds familiar, it's because they're the
Speaker 2: company that worked with Rankin in bass on seventy seven's
Speaker 2: The Hobbit, nineteen eighty is The Return of the King,
Speaker 2: and the eighty two films The Last Unicorn and The
Speaker 2: Flight of Dragons. The Flight of Dragons is a film
Speaker 2: that seth Nicholas Johnson discussed with me on an episode
Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema. Is Takahata, by the way, he
Speaker 2: also is known for multiple films and a couple of
Speaker 2: particularly excellent ones, nineteen eighty eight's Grave of the Fireflies,
Speaker 2: and oh a film titled Palm Poco from nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: four which is about Tanuki's and there so you have
Speaker 2: a lot of like scrotal magic in that film. But
Speaker 2: it is very much a film for I mean, kids
Speaker 2: can watch it. It's it's very enjoyable It has a
Speaker 2: very strong environmental message as well. You'll find that on
Speaker 2: your streaming channels as well, alongside Studio Ghibli Fair. It
Speaker 2: has a great English dub of Believe. Clancy Brown is
Speaker 2: one of the many talents that is on that dub,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's really good. He also did a film
Speaker 2: titled The Tale of the Princess Kaguya from twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: That was his last film before he died, but it's
Speaker 2: great to anyway, back to Nyazaki, Miyazaki would follow up
Speaker 2: Nasaca with a whole list of highly influential films. Nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six's Castle in the Sky, which seems to be
Speaker 2: the same world as that of Nausaka. It has the
Speaker 2: same fox squirrel that pops up in it. Nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight's My Neighbor Totoro, eighty nine's Kiki's Delivery Service, which
Speaker 2: is another favorite in My household, nineteen ninety two's Porco Rosso,
Speaker 2: which is a pig fighter pilot film, ninety seven's Princess
Speaker 2: Mononok two thousand and one Spirited Away. Another masterpiece two
Speaker 2: thousand and four is Howl's Moving Castle, which is also amazing.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and eight's Ponyo, twenty thirteen's The Wind Rises,
Speaker 2: and twenty twenty threes The Boy and the Heron. This
Speaker 2: is intended to be Miyazaki's final film, though we should
Speaker 2: note that he previously retired in twenty thirteen. I don't
Speaker 2: know if the man will ever truly stop making things,
Speaker 2: because throughout that initial period of retirement he just kept working.
Speaker 2: He did some shorts for the Ghibli Museum and so forth,
Speaker 2: and then elsewhere in his career. He also did some
Speaker 2: TV directing, he did some commercials, and he even did
Speaker 2: some music videos. I don't think I've seen any of
Speaker 2: the music videos he did, but there's at least one
Speaker 2: with like some sort of angelic being in it. Now.
Speaker 2: As we've already alluded to here, The Warriors of the
Speaker 2: Wind NAUSICAA had a pretty rough start in North America.
Speaker 2: It was initially dubbed and cut by Manson International and
Speaker 2: Showman Ink, and then distributed by New World Pictures, which
Speaker 2: was a Corman Brothers company. H.
Speaker 3: Roger Yeah, yeah, Well, I don't know if he had
Speaker 3: anything to do with it, but come on, you can't
Speaker 3: do this.
Speaker 2: So yeah. Retitled Warriors of the Wind, released in eighty five.
Speaker 2: You know cut down in an attempt to make it
Speaker 2: more appealing to North American children, roughly twenty two minutes
Speaker 2: cut and the voice actors were allegedly not given much
Speaker 2: to go on. So it's supposedly not a great dub.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you can look at that ridiculous poster art
Speaker 2: and it kind of tells you everything you need to know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is true, but I just
Speaker 3: read in comments and stuff on the internet the allegation that,
Speaker 3: like the voice actors didn't know what the story was,
Speaker 3: they were just sort of like given lines blind and
Speaker 3: like hear read this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a very substandard dub for a superb film.
Speaker 2: New World Pictures would hold those rights until nineteen ninety five. Now,
Speaker 2: if you want more information about the words of the
Speaker 2: wind cut, there's a nice little article from James Lapierre.
Speaker 2: You can find this on the blog Cinema Thieck, pointing
Speaker 2: out that it made Niyazaki very touchy about cut in general,
Speaker 2: and rightfully so.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: When Princess Mononoke was a huge hit in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: Miramax Films then CEO Harvey Weinstein made a pitch to
Speaker 2: release it in North America, but with heavy cuts once
Speaker 2: more to make it supposedly appealing to that North American
Speaker 2: children's audience. Miyazaki was offended. He walked out of the
Speaker 2: meeting and studio Ghibli then sent Weinstein a Samurai sword
Speaker 2: with a note that read no cuts, and it was
Speaker 2: indeed released unedited.
Speaker 3: That's a story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in nineteen ninety six, Disney had made a
Speaker 2: deal to become the North American distributors of Ghibli films,
Speaker 2: including Princess Mononoke. Miramax was a subsidiary of Disney at
Speaker 2: the time, Thus that whole situation, and it wasn't long
Speaker 2: before they put in motion plans for a new faithful
Speaker 2: no cuts dub of the film. And yeah, this is
Speaker 2: the one that we watched. So if you were watching,
Speaker 2: if you watch this film with an English dub prior
Speaker 2: to this, to the belief what two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: then you probably watched The Warriors of the Wind.
Speaker 3: So essentially you haven't seen the whole movie, like you're
Speaker 3: missing about a fifth of it or something.
Speaker 2: Right. Oh and by the way, the manga is a
Speaker 2: which I own and I haven't read all of it yet,
Speaker 2: but it is a great like two volume compendium of Nausica.
Speaker 2: It's in black and white with some colored illustrations and maps.
Speaker 2: The movie only adapts the first sixteen chapters, so that's
Speaker 2: something like not even half of the first book. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot more from the world of Nasca out
Speaker 2: there if you're intrigued.
Speaker 3: You shared a map from this manga with me and
Speaker 3: I was looking at it and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: interesting that, like it's showing two different oceans nearly meeting.
Speaker 3: But then what I realized is that there is one
Speaker 3: thing on the map that is a body of water.
Speaker 3: It is the Acid Lake from the movie. There's another
Speaker 3: thing on the map that is called the See of Decay,
Speaker 3: And I realized later that is a translation issue because
Speaker 3: what is called the See of Decay in the manga,
Speaker 3: and I believe in the English subtitles of the Japanese
Speaker 3: that is what's called the Toxic Jungle in the dub
Speaker 3: we watched.
Speaker 2: Is that right, Yes, that's correct, And I think there
Speaker 2: are additional details like those where things are a little
Speaker 2: bit different from the manga to the movie, from the
Speaker 2: Japanese to the English. But you know, for the most part,
Speaker 2: it seems like a pretty great translation.
Speaker 3: But that does make me almost. It does make me
Speaker 3: curious to go back and watch the version with the subtitles,
Speaker 3: because there's I don't know, there's so much pleasure in
Speaker 3: the film already, that's little nuances of language, and that
Speaker 3: was just in the dubbed version, So I want to
Speaker 3: see what other options are available to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was tempted to do the subtitled version this
Speaker 2: time when I thought I was going to watch it
Speaker 2: by myself, but I ended up watching it rewatching it
Speaker 2: with my family, and so we did the We did
Speaker 2: the dub, and it was a lot of fun, all right.
Speaker 2: So at this point I would typically go in a
Speaker 2: lot deeper on the cast. I'm not really going to
Speaker 2: do that with this episode, but I do want to
Speaker 2: just briefly go over like four main characters, and we're
Speaker 2: going to start with Nausica. NAUSICAA in the original Japanese
Speaker 2: cut was voiced by Sumi Shiamoto born nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: a veteran Japanese voice actor with credits from nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: nine till today. I believe she's still active. The Disney
Speaker 2: voice talent again from two thousand and five is Alison
Speaker 2: Lohman born nineteen seventy nine American actor now retired. I
Speaker 2: think mostly did like independent type roles, and I think
Speaker 2: this might be her only animation gig. I could be
Speaker 2: wrong on that, but she's notable for being in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two is White Oleander, two thousand and threes
Speaker 2: Big Fish, and two thousand and nine's Drag Me to Hell. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember her from Drag Me to Hell. She has
Speaker 3: to act opposite a goat heead.
Speaker 2: I believe that's the film where people get dragged to hell, right,
Speaker 2: like straight through the floor. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, they
Speaker 2: should have named it Don't Get Dragged to Hell.
Speaker 3: That's right. But you know what, she's great as Nausica. Yeah,
Speaker 3: really good.
Speaker 2: I agree. She puts so much emotion into this performance.
Speaker 2: It's it's perfect, all right. We mentioned lord Yupa already
Speaker 2: in the original Japanese audio voice by Goro Naya, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty thirteen, Japanese actor and
Speaker 2: voice actor who had also worked on the Loop and movies.
Speaker 2: But in the Disney dub it is the voice of
Speaker 2: Patrick Stewart born nineteen.
Speaker 3: Forty really inspired casting choice.
Speaker 2: He's perfect, absolutely any I don't need to tell you
Speaker 2: who Patrick Stewart is. You know. This is Captain John
Speaker 2: Luke McCard. This is Professor Xavier. This is Walter Blutt
Speaker 2: from Blunt Talk. This is Gerney Halleck from David Lynch's Dune.
Speaker 2: This is the Erotic Bakery owner from that one Saturday
Speaker 2: Night Live sketch. So I have a feeling we'll come
Speaker 2: back to Patrick Stewart in the future on Weird House.
Speaker 3: Cinema when we do the episode on David Lynch's Dune.
Speaker 2: I think I think that would be that would make
Speaker 2: for a good episode because, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: great stuff, a lot of weird stuff, some questionable choices.
Speaker 3: Scenes where he's going into battle holding a pug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some great performances. There are some strange performances
Speaker 2: from great actors. It's it's a mass It's wonderful, all right.
Speaker 2: We have a character named Aspol. This is this is
Speaker 2: kind of like a male side character that you know,
Speaker 2: you can imagine that some of those North American producers
Speaker 2: saying like, why isn't this our hero? Why why is
Speaker 2: it the girl? We want? The boy is the hero?
Speaker 3: He's a boy. Put him in the middle of the poster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why does he have a supporting role? But he's
Speaker 2: still an important character that The Japanese voice talent was
Speaker 2: Yoji Matsuda born in sixty seven, as a Japanese voice
Speaker 2: actor who's also in Princess mononok. The American voice talent
Speaker 2: is Shila Boof born nineteen eighty six. This is back
Speaker 2: when and he was mostly known as like a kid
Speaker 2: youth actor. This dub was made the same year that
Speaker 2: he was in the Keanu Reeves adaptation of Constantine.
Speaker 3: Oh but can you imagine if they had gotten Keanu
Speaker 3: Reeves for this role.
Speaker 2: I mean, hmm, I don't know. I have to think
Speaker 2: about that. Ask me about that later when I've had
Speaker 2: time to reflect. Okay, you've been a little too old
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: I guess this is supposed to be like a character
Speaker 3: around the same age as Nausaca, right, like late teens maybe?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is when when when Laboufe was was
Speaker 2: was pretty young. But yeah, I'm Reeves will have to
Speaker 2: come back. Maybe we'll watch a Keanu Reeves film at
Speaker 2: some point, because that's an interesting career trajectory. I believe
Speaker 2: there is a he's a performer that's that's matured like
Speaker 2: a whine to a large extent. But then again, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe you go back and you watch Francis Ford Coppolas
Speaker 3: Dracula and you notice things about him that you didn't before.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Yeah, I don't know. That's that's that'll be the challenge,
Speaker 2: Like where do you dip in to the I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you got to go early for some of
Speaker 2: the weirdest stuff. I will return to you, my love.
Speaker 2: All right. The next character we're gonna mention, and this
Speaker 2: is the I think the last one we're gonna mention
Speaker 2: in casting detail. Here here is the character of Kashana.
Speaker 2: Kashana is essentially the villain of the piece, but it's complicated, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because the thing about Miyazaki films is there's rarely a
Speaker 2: like pure cinematic villain. I think the closest you get
Speaker 2: is in Castle in the Sky. But here we have
Speaker 2: a character that does largely line up with the idea
Speaker 2: of a villain and expectations of a villain, you know.
Speaker 2: But she's still defined and presented in such a way
Speaker 2: that we understand where she's coming from to some degree.
Speaker 2: She's we can we can relate to her on some level.
Speaker 2: She's a warrior princess fighting for a nation's survival, and
Speaker 2: underlying all this determination and rage that we see, we
Speaker 2: also glimpse deep trunk and fear, so we understand like
Speaker 2: a lot of what's informing what she's putting out there.
Speaker 3: I think the temptation with a villain is always to
Speaker 3: make them sadistic, to make them take pleasure in causing
Speaker 3: other people pain, because I think in most movies that
Speaker 3: sort of flips the switch that makes it feel okay
Speaker 3: when the hero who's supposed to be a good guy
Speaker 3: just kills them or lets them fall off a cliff
Speaker 3: at the end, it's because they were needlessly sadistic. You
Speaker 3: know that you can deal with them brutally and it's
Speaker 3: all right. She I don't think, is needlessly sadistic, though
Speaker 3: she does do a lot of cruel things. They are
Speaker 3: things that she thinks she has to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So she's a very fascinating character and a
Speaker 2: solid villain presence in the film. The Japanese voice talent
Speaker 2: here is Yoshiko Sakaki Bara born nineteen fifty six, another
Speaker 2: Japanese voice actor with a ton of credits. She also
Speaker 2: voiced the puppet Master in Ghost in the Shell two
Speaker 2: point zero. I think that's the one that has a
Speaker 2: bassot hound in it. Maybe they both have bassot hounds
Speaker 2: in them. Oh weird.
Speaker 3: I have occasion to say the words basset hound later
Speaker 3: in this episode.
Speaker 2: Oh okay. The American voice talent here from the Disney
Speaker 2: cut is Uma Thurman born nineteen seventy. She's great in
Speaker 2: this role, I think so. Yes. I think she brings
Speaker 2: all the appropriate levels to this performance, and I think
Speaker 2: it lines up with the kind of roles that she's
Speaker 2: built her career off of. She's had a ton of
Speaker 2: great roles over the years, a ton of not great
Speaker 2: but highly entertaining roles. She's always had a knack for playing,
Speaker 2: on one hand, action oriented characters as what but also
Speaker 2: devious vixen's and fem fatales. She's played both Poison Ivy
Speaker 2: from Batman and Medusa from Greek Mythology.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I was just thinking about Poison Ivy. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's an Oscar caliber role.
Speaker 2: But you have to admit she's entertaining in it, So yeah,
Speaker 2: her range ultimately goes beyond all of that. I mean,
Speaker 2: her filmography is a great mix of big budget fair
Speaker 2: like Batman, movies and so forth, but also artsier films,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's just a bit of trivia. She's
Speaker 2: the daughter of American Buddhist author and academic Robert Thurman. Now,
Speaker 2: the rest of the Disney dubcast includes some other great
Speaker 2: performances by Chris Sarandon, Edward James Almos, Tres McNeil, Frank Welker,
Speaker 2: Mark Hamill. He has a very fun role in this,
Speaker 2: and at the very beginning you get a little bit
Speaker 2: of narration from Tony j the late voice actor who
Speaker 2: really good at dramatic narration and also occasionally the voice
Speaker 2: of elder gods and so forth.
Speaker 3: Actually, while talking about villains, you could argue that Chris
Speaker 3: Sarandon's character is the more villainous of the two, even
Speaker 3: though he's the lackey to her, like she's ultimately issuing
Speaker 3: the more evil orders. But Chris Sarandon's character, I think
Speaker 3: comes up is more just kind of a venal and
Speaker 3: totally self interested.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he's a real snake. Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 2: is the has the princess died? Does it mean that
Speaker 2: I'm going to finally rise to the throne? And then
Speaker 2: she shows back on me. He's like, well, that dream
Speaker 2: died pretty quickly. He's lazy but once to advance and
Speaker 2: is kind of completely a moral in that direction. But
Speaker 2: also he's only going to put in so much effort,
Speaker 2: only going to stick his neck out so far exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Finally, the music on this one is a composition by
Speaker 2: Joe Hisashi born nineteen fifty, Japanese composer and musician, noted
Speaker 2: for his work with Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki. In particular,
Speaker 2: he scored all but one of Miyazaki's films, and that one,
Speaker 2: I believe is nineteen seventy nine's Loop in the Third.
Speaker 2: So like everything you think of instantly as Ghibli and
Speaker 2: Miyazaki he has had a hand in. His work is
Speaker 2: always great, and it's one of those things where you
Speaker 2: can't separate his sound from the Azaki's visuals because they're
Speaker 2: always together. But I especially love this score because I
Speaker 2: think this is definitely the synthia and more experimental of
Speaker 2: any of the scores from this composer that I've heard.
Speaker 3: I didn't make notes of it at the time, but
Speaker 3: it seems to me the style of musical themes throughout
Speaker 3: the film is incredibly varied.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard there's like an om theme that has
Speaker 2: kind of a sitar kind of a quality to it.
Speaker 2: There are some sort of harpsichord elements that kind of
Speaker 2: have a medieval European vibe to them. I think when
Speaker 2: we're encountering some of the kingdoms. There are other stretches
Speaker 2: that are very synthy, and then the other parts of
Speaker 2: it that are more like sweeping in traditional I think
Speaker 2: that's right and catchy. There are some very catchy tunes
Speaker 2: in it as well, so it's varied, but across the
Speaker 2: board great score.
Speaker 3: So this is the part of the episode where we
Speaker 3: would usually do a plot recap. This is one of
Speaker 3: those films where I think it would not feel right
Speaker 3: at all to do that the kind of scene by
Speaker 3: scene look, so instead, I want to take a different
Speaker 3: tack here where I focus really intensely on the opening
Speaker 3: and then we can give maybe a very light broad
Speaker 3: synopsis and talk about some of the other major themes
Speaker 3: and scenes.
Speaker 2: Sounds good.
Speaker 3: So again we're going to be talking about the uncut
Speaker 3: version with the two thousand and five English voice cast,
Speaker 3: But I want to look at the opening shots because
Speaker 3: I think they tell a lot about the style of
Speaker 3: the film. So at the very beginning, we hear wind blowing,
Speaker 3: and the action opens on a barren, dusty landscape covered
Speaker 3: with smooth, round speckled objects, so presumably smooth stones, but
Speaker 3: they look almost like eggs. There is a haze on
Speaker 3: the horizon and we again we hear the wind blowing,
Speaker 3: and in the distance a pair of dark figures are
Speaker 3: plodding toward us through the haze. Then there is a
Speaker 3: close up of the feet of the figures that were
Speaker 3: moving toward us as they cross the desert, and instead
Speaker 3: of human feet, we see strange, cross shaped talons, like
Speaker 3: the feet of an enormous bird tracking across the earth.
Speaker 3: And all around we can now see inclose up what
Speaker 3: looked like the round stones before. Instead they are spherical
Speaker 3: white orbs plastered to the ground with a kind of
Speaker 3: elastic matrix of fiber, like big egg sacks of spiders
Speaker 3: wrapped in silk, And all around them are little tendrils
Speaker 3: of an almost fuzzy texture, kind of like woolen fern shoots.
Speaker 3: And then there's another shot. The two figures we saw
Speaker 3: in the haze are enormous birds, like you might have
Speaker 3: guessed from their talons, they're giant bipedal birds like EMUs
Speaker 3: or rheas, except they are wearing masks over their faces,
Speaker 3: masks that look like they're made of leather with glass
Speaker 3: eye slots, kind of like World War One era gas masks.
Speaker 3: And then stranger than that, one of the birds is
Speaker 3: carrying a rider who's riding it like a horse, a
Speaker 3: figure in the shape of a man draped in a
Speaker 3: long cloak with a drooping, wide brimmed hat that I
Speaker 3: would say is halfway between a samurai helmet and a sombrero.
Speaker 3: And the rider is also wearing a mask like a
Speaker 3: gas mask, with an elongated snout, so the mask makes
Speaker 3: him look like a dog. And all three of these creatures,
Speaker 3: the birds and the rider, their masks, have these floppy
Speaker 3: appendages hanging off both sides of the snouts of the mask,
Speaker 3: kind of like the snood of a turkey, if you
Speaker 3: don't know that term, the snowed. You know, the sort
Speaker 3: of flap of flesh that hangs down over the beak
Speaker 3: of I think of a male turkey. And so they've
Speaker 3: got these things hanging off the snouts, except they're not
Speaker 3: exactly like a you know, like a like a turkey snood.
Speaker 3: The floppy snoods are symmetrical and smooth, like the ears
Speaker 3: of a basset hound.
Speaker 2: All right, there you go.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, there are white particles like snowflakes falling through the
Speaker 3: air all around. And then we cut to a point
Speaker 3: of view of the rider as he moves through the desert,
Speaker 3: and ahead of him are trees, but without leaves. They
Speaker 3: are dead trunks lofting these dead black branches, and they're
Speaker 3: completely covered in gigantic versions of the silk egg sacks
Speaker 3: we saw dotting the ground below. So it's like a
Speaker 3: forest that has been reduced to skeletons by a plague
Speaker 3: of spider silk cotton ball tumors. Then in the distance,
Speaker 3: through the trees, we see a windmill. It comes into view,
Speaker 3: so now there's some kind of human habitation in this
Speaker 3: cursed land. Then the rider and the two birds begin
Speaker 3: to walk through the dead forest, and the giant cotton
Speaker 3: balls in the trees start to move, So maybe they
Speaker 3: are not big spider egg sacks. Instead, they are releasing
Speaker 3: puffs of gas containing pink particles, like they're big bladders
Speaker 3: of pink dust just fumigating the earth. So now you wonder, oh,
Speaker 3: could this be why the rider and the horse birds
Speaker 3: are all wearing gas masks. Then when they reach the
Speaker 3: area of the windmill, beyond the dead cops of trees,
Speaker 3: we see the ruins of a town with walls and
Speaker 3: gates and towers and huts, all covered in the diseased
Speaker 3: cotton balls and the fuzzy fern shoots. It's like a
Speaker 3: city annihilated by a moldy, furry cancer that rides on
Speaker 3: the wind. And all of this, by the way, happens
Speaker 3: in the span of a few seconds, So up to
Speaker 3: this point we're like less than a minute into the film.
Speaker 3: But I really wanted to drill into this sequence of
Speaker 3: shots because I love the way that each image and
Speaker 3: each reverse shot shows you something strange and imaginative that
Speaker 3: makes you reinterpret whatever you just assumed about the image
Speaker 3: you saw a few seconds before. So it's almost like
Speaker 3: sort of like getting you into the right frame of
Speaker 3: mind to appreciate the film. It is priming you to
Speaker 3: like let your mind come out of hiding and willingly
Speaker 3: explore the light of an alien sun.
Speaker 2: I think it's my understanding that all of this was
Speaker 2: cut from Warriors of the Wind. They're just like cut
Speaker 2: that crap let's get to it.
Speaker 3: Obnoxious, But anyway, I would say this is illustrative of
Speaker 3: something I would say about the movie generally, and generally
Speaker 3: about my experience of Miyazaki, which is that NAUSICAA and
Speaker 3: the rest of his movies are mostly very free of
Speaker 3: perfunctory cinema, of perfunctory screen time. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of movies are filled up with shots that I feel
Speaker 3: like there's something that the director thought had to be shown, Like, Okay,
Speaker 3: he's going up to the big scene on the roof
Speaker 3: of the building, so you have to show him going
Speaker 3: to the elevator and getting in the elevator and pressing
Speaker 3: the button for the top floor. So you get a
Speaker 3: sequence of shots that are maybe necessary to move the
Speaker 3: action along and help people understand what's about to happen.
Speaker 3: But there's nothing dramatic about the shots themselves. They're just
Speaker 3: mechanically sort of like giving you information to orient you
Speaker 3: for the next thing. Miyazaki movies, in my opinion, have
Speaker 3: very little of this. Instead, they seem to treat nearly
Speaker 3: every frame as an opportunity. Everything you see is a
Speaker 3: new chance to delight you or show you something interesting,
Speaker 3: make you feel something, make you feel like you can
Speaker 3: inhabit the film's world. And there's almost nothing I can
Speaker 3: think of in this movie that is merely mechanical, serving
Speaker 3: solely to orient the viewer in time and space, you know,
Speaker 3: connect to one moment to the next, or set up
Speaker 3: future scenes. Pretty Much every moment is pleasurable, or reveal
Speaker 3: something interesting and strange, or is meaningful in itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. When Miyazaki shows you something, it's important
Speaker 2: on some level, even if in say and saything like Todoro,
Speaker 2: it just means you're going to stop and look at
Speaker 2: a frog for several seconds and you know that that
Speaker 2: frog is going to be exceptionally realized. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's important when he shows you something and you
Speaker 2: have to you have to watch and take.
Speaker 3: It in anyway. So the writer dismounts from the bird.
Speaker 3: In the scene, he takes out a rifle. He goes
Speaker 3: into one of the houses, and inside the house he
Speaker 3: sees like skulls and signs of a formerly happy life
Speaker 3: covered in oldest deadly silk, and on the floor there
Speaker 3: is a child's doll. He reaches down to pick it
Speaker 3: up and it crumbles to dust in his grip and
Speaker 3: he says to himself. Yet another village is dead.
Speaker 2: So this is will come to learn as the shape
Speaker 2: of the world at the close of the Ceramic era,
Speaker 2: some thousand years after a cataclysmic time known as the
Speaker 2: Seven Days of Fire. So much of the world is hostile,
Speaker 2: it's poisoned, it's dangerous for human beings and other organisms
Speaker 2: from our time period, or like the birds, I guess,
Speaker 2: things that have evolved more directly out of our time period.
Speaker 2: Far flung human kingdoms are feuding over the remnants of
Speaker 2: the earth, amid the constant threats of starvation, sickness, and
Speaker 2: the insects of the toxic jungle or the Sea of decay.
Speaker 3: Yes, though we won't find all of that out all
Speaker 3: at once. Again, something that's very pleasing about the movie
Speaker 3: is sort of the pace at which the information about
Speaker 3: the broader world is revealed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's teased out. There's some great stuff even in
Speaker 2: the opening credits, which we'll get too, that give you
Speaker 2: stuff to go on to figuring out where what has
Speaker 2: happened to the world and what might happen again.
Speaker 3: But so after this figure picks up the doll and
Speaker 3: it crumbles, then suddenly we cut to the sky where
Speaker 3: creatures are swarming. And these creatures are sort of hard
Speaker 3: to describe. They're referred to as insects by the characters.
Speaker 3: They're kind of like giant teal hawkroaches with dragonfly wings
Speaker 3: and the heads of not dragonflies but dragons. They've got
Speaker 3: like jaws and teeth and red eyes without lids, and
Speaker 3: pink tongues lashing, and they make bizarre yammering noises that
Speaker 3: sound halfway between like a locust swarm and something electronic
Speaker 3: like a you know, a speaker glitching with RF interference.
Speaker 3: So the rider sees this, he goes back to his
Speaker 3: horse birds and he says, let's go. Soon this place
Speaker 3: too will be consumed by the toxic jungle, and the
Speaker 3: giant birds sprint off into the desert with the sand
Speaker 3: crunching under their feet. And then finally, there was no
Speaker 3: music in the opening, but finally we get music in
Speaker 3: the opening narration that tells us a thousand years have
Speaker 3: passed since the collapse of industrialized civilization, a toxic jungle
Speaker 3: now spreads, threatening the survival of the last of the
Speaker 3: human race. And yeah, during the credits, as you said,
Speaker 3: we get images that are not explicit but they give
Speaker 3: us kind of hints of what happened before, Like there
Speaker 3: are these interesting tile mosaics that show things like boats
Speaker 3: but flying in the sky, and then giant, monstrous figures
Speaker 3: breathing fire onto the cities of humankind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the kind of thing where I mean the first,
Speaker 2: probably first couple of times I watched this film, I
Speaker 2: didn't really pay as much attention to these credits, but
Speaker 2: they do reveal a lot.
Speaker 3: And I thought it'd be interesting to comment on the
Speaker 3: appearance of the giant warriors that are shown in the
Speaker 3: credit sequence, and then we'll figure into the movie later on.
Speaker 3: So this part seems to be showing how the old
Speaker 3: world perished in flames before the millennium, and obviously these
Speaker 3: giant humanoid figures had something to do with that. So
Speaker 3: they are shown standing over burning cities, red and black,
Speaker 3: lit from below by the fires that are consuming the
Speaker 3: human world, and the way they're lit by the fires
Speaker 3: from below, their legs and crotches are like red going pink,
Speaker 3: while their shoulders and heads are covered in black shadow
Speaker 3: except for solid white eyes near the tops of their heads,
Speaker 3: and then their heads are strangely bullet shape, making them
Speaker 3: look like mechanical men, kind of ghostly mechanical men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're very streamlined. We don't have any like surface
Speaker 2: details regarding their bodies. You know, they mostly in profile,
Speaker 2: so you get more of a sense of giant robot,
Speaker 2: of something mechanical, something coldly mechanical. And yeah, this will
Speaker 2: be important for later on. And again, I just love
Speaker 2: the ancestral art we see depicting these events. It's really great.
Speaker 3: And to further dwell on, you know, things we only
Speaker 3: see for a few seconds in the film, but there's
Speaker 3: full of interesting choices, Like even though the faces of
Speaker 3: these beings are hidden in shadow, they have a what
Speaker 3: I would say is a frighteningly unemotional posture. They look
Speaker 3: disturbingly free of malice, and I think they would look
Speaker 3: less scary if they looked angry or hateful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like there's a cold sense of awful judgment
Speaker 2: to them, like they are machines, Like they are giant
Speaker 2: robots that have you know, there's been some sort of
Speaker 2: air and they've decided, Oh, all the cities of the
Speaker 2: world are supposed to be on fire, so that's what
Speaker 2: we're gonna do.
Speaker 3: Though, as the historical imagery of the credits fades away,
Speaker 3: we move up to the clouds, where we will spend
Speaker 3: a lot of the movie actually, and this is where
Speaker 3: we're going to meet our protagonists, to sort of where
Speaker 3: she's at home. In the clouds, we see an outline
Speaker 3: of a pair of giant wings drifting over the cloud tops,
Speaker 3: and at first you might think it's a bird, but
Speaker 3: then we see up close and again with the theme
Speaker 3: of like showing you something and then making you reinterpret
Speaker 3: what you just saw, the bird shaped thing is a human,
Speaker 3: a young woman riding on top of a wing shaped
Speaker 3: glider craft. It's kind of like a powered surfboard for
Speaker 3: the sky, and she looks over what remains of mountains
Speaker 3: that are kind of in the shape of monster skulls,
Speaker 3: and then she lands outside of a thick forest of
Speaker 3: monstrously oversized plants. Now, I think this might be a
Speaker 3: good moment to talk about the significance of the glider
Speaker 3: in the film. I struggle to think of another movie
Speaker 3: where a vehicle becomes such an emotional part of the story.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could say, maybe like The Millennium Falcon
Speaker 3: or something, but even that maybe takes multiple movies to
Speaker 3: achieve this kind of significance. The glider that Nausca flies
Speaker 3: around with is such a special and powerful element of
Speaker 3: the story, such that when there's a part later where
Speaker 3: it seems like the glider is in danger of being
Speaker 3: lost or destroyed, it's as if a beloved character we're
Speaker 3: having their life threatened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it is. All of the devices in
Speaker 2: this film, all of the vehicles, are really well thought out.
Speaker 2: They feel entirely real. You feel like every there are
Speaker 2: no mysteries to it, there's no like undefined portion of
Speaker 2: the thing. You know that there is an interior to
Speaker 2: the tanks, you know that there are seat belts on
Speaker 2: the seats inside of those airplanes, and you have the
Speaker 2: glider has this just intense physical reality to it as well.
Speaker 2: And the way that she interacts with it, the different
Speaker 2: poses she goes into whilst using it, it's it's all amazing.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a way to make a somewhat vulgar analogy,
Speaker 3: it's almost like Tony Stark's Iron Man suit. It is
Speaker 3: the device that she uses to like sort of upgrade
Speaker 3: herself from just a character into a superhero in a way,
Speaker 3: like it's the it's what she uses in a lot
Speaker 3: of the most crucial action scenes in the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, except it has more physical reality because in those films,
Speaker 2: those Iron Man films, especially later on, it's like it's
Speaker 2: it's like, at times it's a it's pieces of a
Speaker 2: suit that are applied by CGI robot arms, and then
Speaker 2: later it's like nanites that crawl on to Tony Stark
Speaker 2: and become a suit, and it's like, I'm so far
Speaker 2: removed from what that is, Like show me the shoes.
Speaker 2: The suit isn't real, you know, whereas the glider always
Speaker 2: feels real.
Speaker 3: I already regret the comparison.
Speaker 2: I just I think I think the comparison is apt
Speaker 2: and the similarities are apt, but the difference also helps
Speaker 2: define what makes the glider work so well, you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So we follow Nausica as she explores the
Speaker 3: toxic jungle. She's wearing a gas mask. It also has
Speaker 3: the basset hound ears hanging off of the snout. She
Speaker 3: hops over giant lotus pods and ducks under tree roots
Speaker 3: and takes samples of the white fuzz we saw from earlier,
Speaker 3: the cancer that seems to have killed the villages, But
Speaker 3: she doesn't really seem afraid. In fact, there are like
Speaker 3: hulking insects like heaving around in the in the brush
Speaker 3: behind her, and she doesn't really seem afraid of them either.
Speaker 3: She's just sort of exploring. And eventually she comes across
Speaker 3: the figure of an enormous arthropod that she calls an oom.
Speaker 3: But it's not the creature itself, it's the shell of
Speaker 3: an ome. The ome has molted like a you know,
Speaker 3: like a locust, and left behind its shell, and she
Speaker 3: like starts to climb over it. Well, maybe we should
Speaker 3: take a moment to describe the omes because they're very
Speaker 3: important to the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the omes are a wonderful mashup of several evocative,
Speaker 2: fantastic and natural world creatures. I think there's there's a
Speaker 2: clear sense of the cicada and the cicada shell to
Speaker 2: these creatures. That reminds me, especially of as a child
Speaker 2: finding a discarded cicada shell and playing with it or
Speaker 2: just staring at it. And I mean sometimes as an adult,
Speaker 2: I'll do this, you know, to find a cicada shell
Speaker 2: is kind of magical because it is like this this
Speaker 2: thing that is the complete exterior of the original larval creature,
Speaker 2: you know, and you see the full legs you see
Speaker 2: the eyes and so forth, and you get a strong
Speaker 2: sense of that with the ome. But there are other
Speaker 2: elements here as well. In one particular's scene, I feel
Speaker 2: like there's a strong sense of gray whales inspecting a boat.
Speaker 2: There's a scene where they come up through the water
Speaker 2: and they're floating around the boat, very much like whales
Speaker 2: in a breeding lagoon. Naturally, there's an element of the
Speaker 2: sandworms to them. Dune clearly was one of Miyazaki's many
Speaker 2: influences here. They're very interesting physically. They have segmented armor
Speaker 2: plating that animates really really well, and really interestingly, many legs,
Speaker 2: multiple eyes, and rows their frontmost legs have a feel
Speaker 2: of grasping fingers, but they can also emit glowing golden
Speaker 2: feelers that are very important to the plot. Also, their
Speaker 2: eyes normally glow blue when active, but they glow red
Speaker 2: when they're enraged.
Speaker 3: And the rage is a really interesting element because clearly
Speaker 3: these are by some characters viewed as monsters. They're certainly
Speaker 3: large insects, but they are also unambiguously presented as creatures
Speaker 3: that can feel. They have emotional lives of a sort,
Speaker 3: and there are things that upset them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's another way they have a strong whil
Speaker 2: feeling to them, because there's the sense that there is
Speaker 2: intelligence there, there is emotion there, but it doesn't directly
Speaker 2: communicate to humans, you know, but we are able to
Speaker 2: sympathize with them.
Speaker 3: So Nausica climbs over this molted shell, and she even
Speaker 3: in a detail that I just it's hard to describe
Speaker 3: why this was so pleasing, but like what she does
Speaker 3: with it is she decides to harvest one of the
Speaker 3: discs covering one of its eyes. There's like a clear
Speaker 3: sort of shell material that she manages to blow out
Speaker 3: of the rest of the shell by using a bit
Speaker 3: of gunpowder and chips it out, and she's like, I
Speaker 3: want to take this ie back home with me. I
Speaker 3: just love that. And here, maybe we could do a
Speaker 3: note on Nausca's you know, the character of Nausica. So
Speaker 3: even in this opening scene alone in the talks jungle,
Speaker 3: we see a lot of her temperament and her personality.
Speaker 3: She has a very strong affinity for the natural world,
Speaker 3: even the toxic parts, and displays a broad scientific curiosity.
Speaker 3: And there's that's that's not just an intellectual thing, there's
Speaker 3: like an emotional manifestation of that, which is a kind
Speaker 3: of resting, happy sense of surprise about things. And she
Speaker 3: also shows a very fundamental kindness of spirit which comes
Speaker 3: through when she's like exploring this ohm shells. She's clearly
Speaker 3: delighted and interested by it. But then when she starts
Speaker 3: looking at it, she's like, oh, if I could you know,
Speaker 3: blow off one of these discs of the shell that
Speaker 3: covered the eye. This could be useful to people back
Speaker 3: home for making tools.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nausicaa is one of the amid all these fantastic elements,
Speaker 2: and it's easy to focus on the weirdness like Nausicaa
Speaker 2: herself is such a strong component of the movie. I
Speaker 2: was talking about this with my and my wife my
Speaker 2: son this morning. What were your favorite parts about Nausicaa.
Speaker 2: And of course my son loved the fox squirrel because
Speaker 2: it's cute. It's full of personality and believable animal energy.
Speaker 2: You know, so many great sort of catlike animations to
Speaker 2: that that character. I guess, I guess it's a character.
Speaker 2: But uh, but then but then Nausicaa, Yeah, just so
Speaker 2: clearly defined, so much depth. I mean, she's she's strong,
Speaker 2: she's brave, she's loyal, but highly compassionate like we've been
Speaker 2: talking about, and she has this kind of determined sense
Speaker 2: of optimism for for what people can do, for what
Speaker 2: we could accomplish. And yet it's not like blind optimism,
Speaker 2: like when like she's deeply hurt by our failings and
Speaker 2: by our persistence when it comes to you know, choosing
Speaker 2: at times the bloody path or the illogical path or
Speaker 2: the stubborn path, so she feels all of that. It's
Speaker 2: not like this this you know, eyes closed optimism about
Speaker 2: the world, like it's grounded in reality, but it's focusing
Speaker 2: on what we could do and what we can do.
Speaker 3: I love the character of Nausica, not only as we
Speaker 3: were talking about earlier that you know, there are her
Speaker 3: heroic elements, like you know, the when it's thrilling to
Speaker 3: watch her as she races to the rescue or something,
Speaker 3: but also, yeah, her character is so fundamentally good, but
Speaker 3: in a very real way, not in a way where
Speaker 3: she's just a lawful, good paladin. You know, she is
Speaker 3: just such a believably admirable human and embodies a lot
Speaker 3: of character traits that I literally just like getting excited
Speaker 3: about kids watching the movie and wanting to be like Nausica,
Speaker 3: because wanting to be like Nausica is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, my son had a poster of Nasca up
Speaker 2: on his wall for a bit, because one if you
Speaker 2: get the manga series, there's a nice little full color
Speaker 2: Nasica poster of her underglyder that comes with it. I
Speaker 2: think it finally got torn out by accident.
Speaker 3: I was truly getting I don't want to get like
Speaker 3: this here. I was getting very emotional thinking about like
Speaker 3: when my daughter is going to be old enough to
Speaker 3: watch this movie, and you know, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: she won't even like it, who knows, but I feel
Speaker 3: like she probably will. And I was thinking about, oh,
Speaker 3: what imagining her like playing NAUSICAA wanting to fly around
Speaker 3: the house and stuff, and so I don't know, it
Speaker 3: is powerful, but anyway, sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the story, so she's exploring this this shell
Speaker 3: and she she sits down on it, and there's a
Speaker 3: part where she's sort of like she gets covered in
Speaker 3: the you know, these dust particles that are coming off
Speaker 3: of these these toxic plants that they're calling the spores,
Speaker 3: And she says the Machigo poems are sending out their
Speaker 3: afternoon spores. It's hard to believe these spores could kill me.
Speaker 3: Five minutes without a mask and I'd be dead. So
Speaker 3: she's confirming that she recognizes that the jungle is deadly.
Speaker 3: It's not like she's in denial about the danger of it.
Speaker 3: But she also just has this detached appreciation for its
Speaker 3: beauty and its own purposes. But she's interrupted when she
Speaker 3: hears a commotion in the distance. There are gunshots. Somebody
Speaker 3: must be fighting the insects of the jungle or trying
Speaker 3: to escape them. So she comes out of the jungle.
Speaker 3: She like climbs up maybe on one of these big
Speaker 3: skull mountain statues, and she comes up to see that
Speaker 3: there is a huge ome, probably the same one that
Speaker 3: left behind the molting that she was just climbing on.
Speaker 3: It's chasing the man with the two horse birds from
Speaker 3: the prologue. It's bearing right down on him. So Nausica
Speaker 3: dashes to her glider. She flies off to the rescue,
Speaker 3: and in the end she manages to prevent it from
Speaker 3: killing him. She manages to stun the ome with flash
Speaker 3: bangs and then pleads with it to go back to
Speaker 3: the jungle. She like talks to it as she's flying
Speaker 3: alongside it on the glider, saying, this is not your world,
Speaker 3: and she succeeds. She looks back and the rider on
Speaker 3: the horse this will turn out to be the character
Speaker 3: Lord Yupa who they know each other. But he looks
Speaker 3: back and he marvels that she's able to turn away
Speaker 3: the rage of the huge beast with nothing but some
Speaker 3: flash grenades and an insect charm.
Speaker 2: He says, oh, yes, this is the cool little device
Speaker 2: that she twirls around in the wind and creates this
Speaker 2: soothing sound for the insects.
Speaker 3: Her relationship with the insects is so interesting because she
Speaker 3: recognizes that they are dangerous. She's not in denial about them,
Speaker 3: and many times in the movie she has to act
Speaker 3: forcefully to prevent them from hurting people, you know, throwing
Speaker 3: flash bangs to stunt it and trying to charm it
Speaker 3: and turn it away. But she also doesn't want to
Speaker 3: hurt the insects, and she speaks to them with a
Speaker 3: kind of strained affection, telling them to go back to
Speaker 3: their jungle, telling them firmly but compassionately that they have
Speaker 3: to calm down. And there's something she says multiple times
Speaker 3: in the movie to an insect or to an ome.
Speaker 3: That really stuck with me. I thought this was so interesting.
Speaker 3: The phrase she says is please be good, which connotes
Speaker 3: this sense of familiarity and responsibility of one for the
Speaker 3: behavior of the other, like a parent would say to
Speaker 3: their own child, please be good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, and this becomes important too at
Speaker 2: the backstory of nausica Things, we learn about her past.
Speaker 3: So after she saves him from the insect, the two
Speaker 3: characters meet Nausicaa. She is the Princess of the Valley
Speaker 3: of the Wind we will learn, which is a small, humble,
Speaker 3: peaceful kingdom in this post apocalyptic world. And the man
Speaker 3: who's been riding the bird again is Lord Yupa. He
Speaker 3: is a servant or some kind of night of the
Speaker 3: Valley of the Wind. And when they meet, Yupa reveals
Speaker 3: that he was chased by the om because he's shot
Speaker 3: at an insect. And this will be significant later because
Speaker 3: we learn that like any form of violence against one,
Speaker 3: tends to agitate and draw the rage of all the
Speaker 3: rest of the insects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this ties in well to the pacivism themes throughout
Speaker 2: the film that yeah, violence doesn't actually solve anything, It
Speaker 2: just causes more problems. The way you saw things is
Speaker 2: ultimately through communication and empathy.
Speaker 3: I think violence is often shown to solve an immediate
Speaker 3: situation but create an even bigger problem in the near future. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he says the reason he shot in an insect
Speaker 3: was lord Yupa is not shown as being cruel or
Speaker 3: malicious either. He says he had no choice to do
Speaker 3: it because he thought that the insect was attacking a
Speaker 3: human baby. But it wasn't a human baby. It turns
Speaker 3: out it was a pocket sized mammal called a fox squirrel,
Speaker 3: and lord Yupa still has the animal with him here,
Speaker 3: and Nausica quite quickly takes it on as her pet,
Speaker 3: despite its viciousness. They talk about it, they say, you
Speaker 3: know these things are You know they're mean? And when
Speaker 3: she first meets the fox squirrel, it bites her hand
Speaker 3: and draws blood. This is another running theme I loved.
Speaker 3: There are many scenes throughout the movie of Nausica tolerating
Speaker 3: and showing a sort of kindness or at least a
Speaker 3: lack of reaction to creatures and people that are threatening
Speaker 3: her and being unreasonable, and somehow by sort of deflecting
Speaker 3: and stepping back, she is often able to change the
Speaker 3: course of the action or change your relationship just by
Speaker 3: not reacting in kind to somebody who is being threatening
Speaker 3: or violent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so much of this film is about this idea
Speaker 2: that our relationship with nature is out of balance, both
Speaker 2: here in our world but also within the fantastic world
Speaker 2: of the film, and that things need to be put
Speaker 2: back in balance. And so even with the fox squirrel
Speaker 2: that is largely there as just kind of a mascot
Speaker 2: and companion that spends a lot of time looking cute
Speaker 2: and being like the loyal cute creature on her shoulder
Speaker 2: and so forth. But yeah, in this initial meeting is angry.
Speaker 2: It bites her, draws blood, and I think that's important
Speaker 2: to the overarching themes of the film to see that
Speaker 2: this complex view of nature is evident even in the
Speaker 2: cute mascot character.
Speaker 3: So, Nausica and Lord Upa go back to the Valley
Speaker 3: of the Wind. They go back to their home, and
Speaker 3: they're welcomed.
Speaker 2: When they arrive.
Speaker 3: Nasca is reunited with her family, but things the action
Speaker 3: of the story begins to really kick into gear when
Speaker 3: the people of the valley are confronted by interventions from
Speaker 3: the other nations around them who are maybe not so
Speaker 3: humble and not so peaceful, but are in fact at
Speaker 3: war with each other, and the valley is caught in
Speaker 3: the middle. And here I think maybe we should stop
Speaker 3: going kind of like seen by scene and instead just
Speaker 3: like talk about some things that stick out from the
Speaker 3: narrative as it progresses.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there are so many things to potentially discussed
Speaker 2: in the film. One thing, you know, every time you
Speaker 2: rewatch a great film, something hits you a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: Either something with you has changed over the years, or
Speaker 2: you've learned something new or been exposed to something new.
Speaker 2: In my case, one of these was the starship that
Speaker 2: we're exposed to. We see this on the like ruined
Speaker 2: on the shores of the of the sea there, and
Speaker 2: it looks very much like a submarine. It looks like
Speaker 2: an old military submarine. But we're told, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: these things they used to also travel in the stars.
Speaker 2: They speak of it as a starship. And the way
Speaker 2: I used to interpret that and still kind of interpret
Speaker 2: it this way, is like, well, they're so far removed
Speaker 2: from the technology of the ancients, they don't really know
Speaker 2: what it was for. They think that a submarine may
Speaker 2: have also flown amid the stars, and I found that
Speaker 2: rather enthralling. But I think another strong theory is that
Speaker 2: this is a reference to the fantastic flying submarine in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty three Toho film Atragon, which we previously
Speaker 2: discussed on Weird House Cinema. It's like, of course, submarines
Speaker 2: can fly and can go into space. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I did not make that connection at all. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know. I still hold both of
Speaker 2: those interpretations in my head, but it's something that I
Speaker 2: guess would have probably been clear to, you know, to
Speaker 2: sci fi anime viewers of the day in the intended
Speaker 2: you know, original intended Japanese audience.
Speaker 3: What do you think about the super weapon theme. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of movies, especially like sci fi or
Speaker 3: fantasy movies, that have the plot device of a kind
Speaker 3: of super weapon that somebody has come into possession of
Speaker 3: that could annihilate the other side in a conflict, and
Speaker 3: maybe there's a struggle to possess the super weapon. That
Speaker 3: is a plot element here, but it's different than it
Speaker 3: often is. There is something instead kind of frightening but
Speaker 3: also sad and pathetic about the super weapon plot line
Speaker 3: in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the concerning the Giant Warriors or the Giant God Warriors,
Speaker 2: I think is they're sometimes translated. Yeah, as we mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier in the film, we see those flashes of them
Speaker 2: during the Seven Days of Fire, and they look kind
Speaker 2: of like big robots, illuminated partially by the flames of
Speaker 2: burning sea, and they have these kind of like light staffs,
Speaker 2: and it's generally like kind of a clean, inorganic look
Speaker 2: that the creature the things have. But later in the film,
Speaker 2: is the plot progresses, a part of the plot concerns
Speaker 2: some remnant of these things that has been unearthed beneath
Speaker 2: the city of Pegie that has become a contested artifact,
Speaker 2: and we come to learn that these are not quite robots.
Speaker 2: They're at least biomechanical, if not entirely biological, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a whole supply with them, like regrowing one of
Speaker 2: these things and trying to get it in a state
Speaker 2: where it can be used again, and there is a
Speaker 2: strong sense of the thing that should not be to them,
Speaker 2: a concept that certainly is used a lot in sci fi,
Speaker 2: horror and fantasy, but I think this is one of
Speaker 2: the most impactful examples of it as far as I'm
Speaker 2: concerned in my viewing, because when we start seeing this
Speaker 2: thing again growing in power, and then when it's finally unveiled,
Speaker 2: when it's finally sort of resurrected again, there's just a strong,
Speaker 2: overwhelming sense of like, this was a mistake. This was
Speaker 2: a mistake in the past, and you've made an even
Speaker 2: bigger mistake bringing it back. And it's like it's destructive. Yes,
Speaker 2: it has. There's strong allusions to atomic weaponry and the
Speaker 2: way it behaves and the way it sends out like
Speaker 2: this devastating death beam, but it's also like in a
Speaker 2: constant state of decay, you know, or or incomplete gestation.
Speaker 2: It's it's like malformed. It's like an unrealized dream that
Speaker 2: is more nightmare than anything else. And what makes it
Speaker 2: more horrifying is when you have characters in the film
Speaker 2: that then double down on their dedication to their plans
Speaker 2: involving this technology, despite how just revolting and flawed and
Speaker 2: ultimately ineffective it clearly is.
Speaker 3: Is the weapon itself sentient It kind of seems like it,
Speaker 3: and it seems like its existence is a nightmare that
Speaker 3: it would like to wake up from like it does
Speaker 3: not want to exist and it is not happy with
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's again it's it's horrifying. It's a horrifying thing.
Speaker 2: Just excellent vision on Miyazaki's part. It's my understanding. I
Speaker 2: haven't read this far into the manga, but I think
Speaker 2: we learned more about them in the manga, but in
Speaker 2: the film at least, I feel like we also know
Speaker 2: just enough. You know, there's a lot of mystery to
Speaker 2: what they are and how they worked, why they were
Speaker 2: they were created, and yeah, absolutely a perfect thing that
Speaker 2: should not be.
Speaker 3: There's another thing I wanted to mention that Naska does
Speaker 3: better than most films that have this element, which it
Speaker 3: has a prophecy and fulfillment of prophecy element. This is
Speaker 3: something I often find kind of tedious in storytelling. I
Speaker 3: don't know. One thing I might compare it to is
Speaker 3: the solution of a of a mystery story, Like when
Speaker 3: there's a murder mystery and you don't know who did it,
Speaker 3: and you know that's very exciting to not know and
Speaker 3: want to find out. Almost always it's kind of disappointing
Speaker 3: when you actually do find out. It's the rare story
Speaker 3: where the solution of the murder mystery is as interesting
Speaker 3: and exciting as it felt to be in the middle
Speaker 3: of the mystery and not know. You know, I sometimes
Speaker 3: call out the few examples I can think of, like
Speaker 3: you know, a name of the Rose, where like the
Speaker 3: solution is fascinating and exciting. This is one of the
Speaker 3: few stories I can think of that has a truly
Speaker 3: thrillingly satisfying fulfillment of prophecy, which you know, often has
Speaker 3: the opposite effect on me when when a character fulfills
Speaker 3: a prophecy, I'm often just kind of like, okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it was all foretold this then this movie, I don't
Speaker 3: know how you feel about a little but like the
Speaker 3: fulfillment is unexpected, like it causes you once again, like
Speaker 3: I said, about many things, and you know, even mundane
Speaker 3: little things. From shot to shot, the movie is often
Speaker 3: just making you understand something you saw before, or an
Speaker 3: image you saw before and thought you understood in a
Speaker 3: different way. The fulfillment of the prophecy element does the
Speaker 3: same thing in.
Speaker 2: This Yeah, I would agree with that. I would say
Speaker 2: another couple of examples that I think do the prophecy
Speaker 2: thing well would be the Never Ending Story and the
Speaker 2: Dark Crystal. I think I like the way they handle it,
Speaker 2: but they but they both handle it in a slightly
Speaker 2: different way, so maybe not directly comparable to the Nausica
Speaker 2: but but yeah, I agree that sometimes the whole who
Speaker 2: will be the chosen One then can be a little
Speaker 2: trite because you know, of course, we know who the
Speaker 2: chosen one is going to be in any given picture.
Speaker 2: Usually can see it coming a mile away, or they'll
Speaker 2: flip it. They'll give you a little twist, but you're
Speaker 2: only going to twist one or two degrees to the
Speaker 2: left of the right.
Speaker 3: Really, the fulfillment of the prophecy here is so weird
Speaker 3: and so unexpected and so beautiful when it happens. I'm
Speaker 3: getting goosebumps right now thinking about it.
Speaker 2: It is just a very goosebump bump inducing film, you know,
Speaker 2: it just hits all the right notes. Can you believe
Speaker 2: we missed being able to see this on the big
Speaker 2: screen by just like a week or two? I think
Speaker 2: earlier this month they put it back in theaters, But
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the A Miyazaki films are
Speaker 2: regularly put back in theaters, So I should have mentioned
Speaker 2: that when we were talking about ways to see it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: keep an eye out because periodically you can catch a
Speaker 2: Miyazaki film on the big screen in North America at least,
Speaker 2: and probably in other markets as well.
Speaker 3: All Right, I think that's going to have to do
Speaker 3: it for me. I can't say anything else.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, this was a fun one, and again
Speaker 2: we encourage Well, I hope you didn't make it through
Speaker 2: the whole episode without having ever seen Nasca. Hopefully you
Speaker 2: went out and you watched it. But hey, if it's
Speaker 2: been a while since you've seen it, go out and
Speaker 2: watch it again. It's like I say, this is a
Speaker 2: film where the message speaks to us today, you know,
Speaker 2: just as well as it spoke to us back in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. Time. If you would like to check
Speaker 2: out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, what publishes every
Speaker 2: Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 2: We're primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but Fridays we set aside for just a
Speaker 2: discussion of a weird or fantastic film. If you want
Speaker 2: to see a full list of all the movies we've
Speaker 2: covered over the years, you can go to letterboxed dot com.
Speaker 2: That's l E T T e r box d dot com.
Speaker 2: Our user the handle there is weird House, and we
Speaker 2: have a list of all the movies and you can
Speaker 2: do all sorts of neat things where you can, you know,
Speaker 2: can list them by genre and so forth. If you're
Speaker 2: just interested in the animated films, for instance, you can
Speaker 2: click that tab and just see the animated ones that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. And I also blog about these at
Speaker 2: summut to music dot com.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
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