Howl's Moving Castle - What's the Difference?

look at that they call this a castle diana wynn jones's 1986 fantasy novel howe's moving castle is about wizards witches curses and interdimensional travel that mentions the looming specter of war exactly one time and it's more than 400 pages but hayao miyazaki's 2004 animated adaptation by the same name is about a whole lot of war so how and why did the anime master adapt an otherwise peaceful fantasy y a novel into a pacifist declaration with no restraint on spoilers twist the knob by the door to blue because it's time to ask what's the difference in 2003 with the iraq war on the very near horizon miyazaki set out to make an anti-war film one that showcased the whimsical and manufactured way in which nations find themselves killing each other but jones novel has very little to go on in the war department her story of sophie hatter's embroilment and the affairs of witches and wizards is more about the fleeting and romantic nature of youth than any sort of allegory for the real world the short answer here is the movie is very different from the book but there's really only one difference but it's a difference that changes nearly every other part of jones's novel like we said there's only a single passing mention of a war brewing with a neighboring country in the book but from the opening sequences of the film the war is ever present there are enormous flying warships scores of wizards transformed into winged beasts and a non-stop barrage of peaceful imagery disrupted by the violence of war whenever howl dips his toe into the fray he turns into a nightmarish crowman a transformation that gets progressively harder to reverse forcing hal to leave a bit of his humanity behind whenever he engages with the fighting but it all really starts with how the two main characters meet in the book we meet sophie a mild-mannered and diligent milliner as the oldest of three sisters whose father has passed resigned to the fact that her fate has largely been decided for her there's no fortune to seek for her like her younger sisters no real option to get married just an uneventful lifetime of making hats but on may day as she walks through town feeling hopeless and exploited she runs into a handsome young man who asks to buy her a drink literally scared by the encounter she declines the offer and the man politely leaves it's not until later in the book that it's revealed to have been howl and so their first meeting isn't technically a meeting in the movie same as the book sophie has of course heard of the wizard howl and the rumors that he eats girls hearts in the film she mostly ignores them but her part in the adventure begins during a lively military celebration the scene depicts a community completely sold on the pageantry of war but while sophie purposely avoids the party on the streets she's accosted not by howl but by two soldiers who don't want to take no for an answer hey looks like a little mouse lost its way howell arrives just in time to send the soldiers packing but hal is himself being followed by these globby looking things and flies away with sophie and toe putting the pair literally above the wartime celebration and so the first impact of the movie's war establishes a different relationship between hal and sophie in the book there's no relationship at all with sophie still relying on the rumors about hal for her information but in the movie she begins to doubt those rumors and the first seeds of a romance are sown it also shifts the focus of the story's inciting incident the curse in both the book and the movie the witch of the waste arrives in the hat shop and places a curse on sophie transforming the young woman into an elderly 90 year old the book finds the witch of the waste sweeping in with a few cronies and with a vague threat about taking out her competition places the curse in the movie the witch taunts sophie with a give my regards to howl as she literally flies through our despondent hat maker giving a more pointed motivation for dumping a curse on her in both mediums however sophie takes her transformation shockingly well this isn't so bad now is it after an initial and understandable freakout she sets off into the world knowing she can't stick around the hat shop as an old lady once sophie sets out she finds herself in the titular castle in much the same way there are a few superficial differences the castle's appearance is much more claptrap in the movie looking as though it were assembled from spare parts of other buildings while the book castle is described as just a big spooky looking castle book sophie also rescues a dog who was stuck tied to a tree and she's terrified of the turniped scarecrow but soon enough she finds herself with the fire demon calcifer and house apprentice michael renamed markle for the movie but as wars are one to do things get messy real quick with this adaptation when you start to look at the biggest casualty the plot maybe the biggest change is with sophie's family while movie sophie does have a sister that works at the bakery in town book sophie has a sister letty and a younger half-sister named martha whose stories are intertwined with the rest of the action throughout the book after their father's death the girl's mother can't afford to keep them around anymore so the youngest martha is sent to a princess with a witch while letty is sent to the bakery but they're unhappy with that arrangement so martha steals a spell to transform their appearance into the others and they switch places later on michael falls in love with letty but it's actually martha while hal falls in love with letty too but the real letty who was posing as martha a princess scene with the witch who happened to be trained by hal's old teacher but the dog sophie rescued also fell in love with the real letty because he was one of the guys with the witch of the waste the night that sophie was cursed and it turns out the witch cursed sophie because the witch had been spurned by hal and was actually trying to curse letty whom hal was in love with and once she'd done that she cursed the guy into becoming a dog but that's just part of a long plan by the witch to curse hal that involves a prophetic poem kidnapping both the king's brother and the court wizard solomon then taking them apart and recombining their body parts in a different order only waiting hal's head to complete the weird love frankenstein and all the while posing as solomon's former fiancee and threatening hal's family who lives in wales like the actual world wales complete with mid 80s computer rpgs and horseless carriages that sophie finds baffling also that hal falls into her trap but after sophie figures most of it out when the dog sword of half turns back into a man tracks her down and warns her of the witch's plan she's ultimately thwarted but also hal admits at the end that he pretty much knew all of it all along [Music] yeah none of that's in the movie they also have a seven leagues boots that allows you to walk seven leagues at a time which is no it's cool you know just a cool thing yeah i thought i'd mention that yeah for sure but intricately plotted love geometry aside none of that is necessary for miyazaki's singular focus on war instead some characters are repurposed the witch of the waste for example in the novel she's a powerful and fearsome foe in fact the most violent the book gets is a battle between howl and the witch of the waste in which hal returns in the form of a cat the film's witch of the waste and the revenge she's attempting on how for being spurned comes off as petty and inconsequential set against the backdrop of a destructive war her character is reduced to a senile tagalong for much of the story as opposed to the book in which she's the main antagonist in the film that spot belongs to the powerful witch sullivan she's a mashup of two characters from the book solomon the kidnapped welsh wizard formerly known as howard sullivan and mrs pensteman the witch who trained both hal and letty's teacher movie solomon an advisor to the king appears to orchestrate the war and the actions of many of the key players on a whim ambivalent and pretty ambiguous as to her motivations she facilitates the witch of the waste's quest to claim hal's heart from kausiver and she's responsible for kidnapping the prince but in the film it's the prince of the country with whom they are at war and when the magic of sophie's love reveals the turniped scarecrow is actually the prince madame sullivan's game is up and she calls off the war as flippantly as we can only assume she started it meanwhile there's one last difference worth mentioning the love story from their first meeting way back at the beginning of this video there's a spark between movie howl and sophie howell's journey is one of finding courage he's vain and flamboyant and a little childish but his journey navigating the pull of the war is one that inspires sophie to become more confident and adventurous herself the pair gradually form a bond that's consummated by the end of the film in the book meanwhile how is much more of a rake and a slitherer outer as sophie puts it he makes a habit of getting women to fall in love with him then faulting unable to stand the idea of a woman not wanting him and unable to stand her when she does he even uses the guitar that he can't play as a prop to woo them it's a quality sophie actively despises for the entire novel it's not until the very end with the witch of the waste defeated that hal reveals to have known sophie was under a curse the entire time and had not only tried to break the spell but decided sophie just enjoyed living in disguise as an old woman the film hints at this along the way when howell peaks at his sleeping sophie to find her transformed back to her younger self but the book drops all this knowledge at the very end revealing hal's more honest intentions allowing very little time to develop a love between the two so what made howl's moving castle a novel with zero war the right novel to become an anti-war film well the themes explored in the novel of sophie's wasted youth and powell's obsessive vanity are recontextualized by war in the film it's the transformation featured in the book of young to old of childish behavior to adult responsibility that actually made diana wynn jones's y.a fantasy the perfect vehicle for miyazaki's staunchly anti-war statement that'll do it for this episode but we'll keep conjuring up comparisons so be sure to subscribe to ign movies and tv for more what's the difference

Channel: CineFix - IGN Movies and TV

Views: 167,788

Keywords: howl's moving castle, hayao miyazaki, christian bale, emily mortimer, josh hutcherson, billy crystal, dee bradley baker, howl, wizard, sophie hatter, anime, war movies, anti-war, adaptation, book vs movie, YA, young adult, studio ghibli, hbo max, best anime, animated movies, top 10 anime, best animated films of all time, animation, what's the difference, ign movies & tv, ign, cinefix

Id: t4m3ZgHCBe0

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021