Castle in the Sky--The OLDER dub VS Disney's dub (Disney's wins out)

JTurner

Recently, I had a chance to take a look at the pre-Disney dub of Castle in the Sky. There have been a number of fans who say that this version surpasses the current one, but I didn't have the same response when I saw it. The only points this dub has is that it doesn't have the rescore or the sometimes overdone extra dialogue. On the other hand, though, the script itself is not very smooth and comes across as very stilted, with attempts at humor that sound either contrived or not very well written at all. Even with the one asset that it preserves the last part of Sheeta's speech, it isn't enough to make up for the choppy writing.

On that level, the voices sound plain wrong too. People have said Pazu and Sheeta's VAs are "absolutely perfect" compared to the newer dub, but I didn't feel the same way. While I didn't consider James van der Beek or Anna Paquin the best voices in the cast, they were nowhere nearly as artificial or lifeless as these two here. Pazu, voiced in this older dub by Barbara Goodson, only comes across like a 30-year old woman *pretending* to be a boy, and whatever "enthusiasm" there was supposed to be in the character didn't sound very natural at all. (I don't have this kind of problem unless a woman can do it convincingly, but in this case it is much too obvious; I find it far more distracting than an older voice.) I'm sure the actress who plays him is talented, but it just doesn't show here. In other words, she comes across as very robotic.

Sheeta, voiced by Lara Cody in the older dub, fares even worse; the actress raises her voice to an unnaturally high pitch to sound young, but that only works against the character instead of in favor of it. Like Goodson, she doesn't bring any real emotion to the role, even at the moments where Sheeta is supposed to be desperate. It just sounds so shrill and flat. Even her delivery of the final speech in the throne room isn't as strong as it should be.

In short, these two are so underwhelming, it makes the performances of the leads in Disney's dub sound more natural and believeable by comparison. (I'm not saying Van der Beek and Paquin were "perfect" for these two characters, but I felt that both put more emotion into their performances than these older guys. Nor was I ever bothered by their voice work in the first place.)

Muska, portrayed by Jeff Winkless, is the voice that *really* brings down the first dub. Unlike Mark Hamill, Winkless is boring (and I mean BORING with a capital B), sounding completely like a monotonous announcer; even in the scene where he shows Sheeta the robot, there's an obvious detachment in the voice that works against the scene. Oh it doesn't get any better from there; the climactic moment where he unveils his true nature and demonstrates Laputa's power is very underwhelming; he doesn't put anywhere nearly half as much energy or enthusiasm that this scene requires (case in point: when he knocks Sheeta aside, he simply says "You little brat" with zero emotion, and his subsequent "Now you die" is both corny and laughable; I haven't heard a line this hokey since Ray Ginsay's "Now you die" in Vampire Hunter D). Even his evil laughter is devoid of any menace of threat that Hamill brought to the role. Watching this very scene in the old dub is just like a bad episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000"; I kid you not. It gets even worse at the final confrontation scene, where he's saddled with corny dialogue such as "Now say bye bye!", which is so awful that it brings unintentional humor to what was in the new dub a more frightening, sinister line, "Now get over here!"

On that note, even Dola (Rachel Vanowen) disappointed me. Her voice isn't the least bit convincing or natural and she simply screams her lines with none of the personality that Cloris Leachman gave to her. Even when she's not shouting, there's still something about her performance that's very off; it just sounds so stilted, almost as if she's reading instead of acting. How is this preferable to Disney's version?

The pirate brothers are just as bad (Eddie Frierson, Dave Mallow, and Barry Stigler); even though they are SUPPOSED to be the most cartoonish characters in the movie, these guys not only come across as hokey-sounding, but aren't even the least bit funny. Mandy Patinkin, Mike McShane, and Andy Dick are ten times better than these three; much of their dialogue, too, is funnier--extraneous though some of their added-in banter may be, they succeeded in expanding on their characters, making them much more distinctive, especially in the scene where they offer to help Sheeta in the galley. But in this older dub? These guys have no personality, or energy. They're just stale and cartoony.

The other characters are not much better in the older dub. Unlike Richard Dysart's charming performance as Uncle Pom, the JAL VA, Ed Mannix just sounds every bit as goofy as the pirate brothers with zero trace of grandfatherly-ness or elderly quality. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed at this voice actor, especially since Dysart had a more appropriate tone for the character and had memorable lines.

The General actually doesn't sound too bad; voiced by Mike Reynolds, he's probably the only VA that comes close to being passable, but even then, Jim Cummings trumped him with a great character voice that I liked.

The less said about the generic-sounding minor supporting characters, the better.

It seems like these guys were simply emulating the original Japanese VAs, which doesn't sound like a recipe for ideal dubbing. What bothered me most the dub was how ROBOTIC it sounded, with lines either coming across as flatly delivered, lacking in emotional depth or fluency, or ill-fitting with the visuals.

Also distracting is the "walla", or rather, lack thereof. In scenes such as the aforementioned street brawl and the climactic finale where the soldiers are retreating from the robots, the background characters don't make ANY sound. This calls so much attention to itself, that it further detracts from the arguments that this is a "superior" dub.

Even with the points that it's less chatty and the leads don't sound as mature, this 80's dub still disappointed me. By the time I got around to seeing the end, I found myself wishing I had never heard of this older dub, nor even paid attention to those who said that this is a "true" dub for this film, because it sounded exactly the opposite. Streamline's dub of Totoro was far better than this. (Carl Macek produced the FOX-distributed version of Totoro because he thought this older dub of Laputa was underwhelming. I can't blame him.)

If anything, this older dub only showed me how BETTER Disney's version is and that I never should have wasted my time listening to those naysayers in the first place.