No wizard of Earthsea Ghibli until 2009

[Spriggan]

Yep because of the Sci-fi channels movie Disney can't release the anime version due to rights issues.  Kind of sad.  Or at least this is the case from Le Guin herself, you can read her impressions of the movie at http://www.ursulakleguin.com/GedoSenkiResponse.html

in a nutshell:

Mr Goro Miyazaki asked me just as I was leaving, "Did you like the movie?" It was not an easy question to answer, under the circumstances. I said: "Yes. It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie."

[Chimera]

From Le Guin's thoughts:

Much of it was, I thought, incoherent. This may be because I kept trying to find and follow the story of my books while watching an entirely different story, confusingly enacted by people with the same names as in my story, but with entirely different temperaments, histories, and destinies.

From this and other comments, it sounds like Le Guin was very disappointed with the film (not to mention the fact that Goro Miyazaki, not Hayao Miyazaki as she had been lead to believe, was the director). Film adaptation can be a tricky thing. But I subscribe to the opinion that though changes must be made for a very different art form (visual storytelling in a film requires different tactics then written storytelling in a novel), the "spirit" of the original work should be kept. I completely agree with this statement of Le Guin's:

Of course a movie shouldn't try to follow a novel exactly — they're different arts, very different forms of narrative. There may have to be massive changes. But it is reasonable to expect some fidelity to the characters and general story in a film named for and said to be based on books that have been in print for 40 years.

These are just a few of her criticisms--and they all seem valid. From these observations, I'm thinking perhaps it's not such a bad thing the release has been postponed until 2009. It sounds like I'd be very disappointed with the film.

[stacer]

Sounds like it was as true to the book as Ella Enchanted. That is to say, the only thing that remained of the book was the character name.

[Chimera]

Well, they did keep the curse-thing...

But, yeah, they changed a lot.

[Spriggan]

Just so you know Le Guin hates every adaption of her books, as for this version it's made more monies in Japan then any other animated movie had, so it's really popular over there.

[Chimera]

Hmm. Interesting. Well, I guess I'll have to wait until 2009 to see it and form an opinion of my own.  

[stacer]

Well, she had good reason to hate the adaptation of the SciFi version of Wizard of Earthsea...

[Chimera]

Agreed. I mean, they changed the fact that Ged was black! That's a HUGE change, if you ask me. Since Le Guin was all about changing the normal fantasy main character (something beside the young white male protagonist) first with Ged and then with Tenar, I'd definitely call that a sacrilege.

[stacer]

I'd call it whoever read the book to do the screenplay and casting weren't paying attention. It's very subtle at first, the fact that Ged is black, and it wasn't helped by decades of a white kid on the cover again and again. Unless you're reading carefully or know the history of the book (both things, I say, anyone making a movie of this book should have done), it's easy to miss, especially with the cultural assumptions that it's common for readers to make--that the main character is the same race/ethnicity as the reader. It's this very assumption she was trying to debunk, and the filmmakers should have caught on.

[Spriggan]

Or they did catch that fact but decided to change it to try and appeal to more people which is worse in my opinion.

[stacer]

Either way, it's a major component of the story, which was totally missed.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

1) He was not "black" he was dark skinned like an islander, was my understanding.

2) The color of his skin is irrelevant to the story itself. At least, it seemed so on my recent re-reading of Wizard and Atuan.

3) I think LeGuin, like sprig says, just doesn't like adaptations of her books.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

He's supposed to be red-brown. And no, the skin color is not crucial to the plot, but it is crucial to what she intended the book to be. It was meant to allow non-caucasians to feel enfranchised by fantasy, and she's received numerous letters from fans over the years who said that the Earthsea books were the first books that made them feel exactly that.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

and yet the non-caucasion Ghibli is the one making the choice to make them "white." I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, but it seems a little peevish to get upset when a non-white man feels enfranchised enough that he doesn't need to make the color like his own.

[stacer]

I was referring to the SciFi channel production. The race of Ged was only the beginning of the horrors of that production.