#howl's moving castle and adaptation

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 322

Every once in a while, I adapt my own writing, or someone else’s writing for a visual medium. Primarily comics, it was something I got into thanks to @wereah back when I was in university. The act of adapting something I’m familiar with into another medium often informs my views on adaptations.

That and Howl’s Moving Castle.

Both the book and the movie.

For those not familiar with the book (and I strongly recommend you read it, if you haven’t), Howl’s Moving Castle is a fantasy young adult book by Diana Wynne Jones. It’s actually part of a series, though I never got around to reading the rest of the books.

In all honesty, I didn’t even know this was originally a book. I had originally seen the movie and then was given as a gift by my sister as an adult. Which I treasure greatly because it’s such a bitch to buy books for me. Anyways, I loved the book, and loving the book never diminished my love for the movie. Both are excellent for very different reasons.

But the book made me appreciate the difficulty of adaptations from one media to the next. 

Without spoilers, the thing you have to understand about the world of Howl’s Moving Castle is that it is a world where the tropes of fairy tales are the way of the world. Sophie, who is the eldest, and as a result of fairy tale tropes, does not seek anything for herself beyond being a hatmaker at her father’s shop because the eldest always fails, while it is the youngest who goes on to have many magical and amazing adventures. 

From a story writing perspective, this book is wonderful in its storytelling and world building, because it describes the world and uses it to inform the reader what drives Sophie’s decisions. From an adaptation perspective, if you want to remain true to the book, it’s a goddamn nightmare.

One of the issues people do not talk about enough about adaptation is the unique ability that written narrative has over a visual medium like television and movies. Most writers write in third person omniscient, which is a narrative style that allows the reader to have a view of the character(s) thoughts and the world that the characters themselves may not have. 

This is also known as exposition.

There is a lot of exposition you can put into a narrative that would be clunky, awkward and create terrible pacing in another medium. In the case of Howl’s Moving Castle, as a movie, there’s no way you can let the audience know Sophie’s thought process about why she chose to be simply a hatter without adding an additional scene somehow, preferably not by having Sophie herself monologue her thought process. 

And that doesn’t even cover the fact movies are never enough run time to squeeze in all the ideas a full novel may have. I’m sure there are people who criticize the fact the movie had cut out Howl’s background and at least two story threads (turning two characters into one), but frankly you would not be able to fit this whole adventure into one hour and a half movie otherwise. The movie took the characters, a concept and the general plot and just ran with it, and that’s fine.

It was a very good movie after all.

But I think about Howl’s Moving Castle when I think about what it takes to adapt one work for another, and I appreciate the difficulty in doing so.

[nadiajustbe]

I think the whole issue I have with Howl's character in HMC movie can be outlined in one brief sentence:

"You can't write Howl Pendragon without writing Howell Jenkins"

[myclutteredbookshelf]

Please reblog for a larger sample size.

[chillinglikeashilling]

At some point when it is not 1 am on a work night I'm going to make a proper post about why I think people who are really enjoying the storytelling of Misfits and Magic 2 should give The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko a shot but the most concise pitch I can give you is that TMTC is also a story about a magical world undergoing a revolution, that explores themes about systems of power and the ways those systems work to exploit certain people to the benefit of others.

The main character Sade is literally disabled by these systems and her love interest/deuteragonist is an obnoxiously beautiful man who has literally cursed himself in pursuit of justice against these systems.

Also for everyone who liked the shadow possession thing- they have a magical bond that let's him feel her emotions, which is absolutely necessary because Sade would rather die than admit to being uncomfortable. In fact Sade's willingness to accept discomfort (and the willingness of the powerful to ask her and others like her to shoulder discomfort so they don't have to) plays a pretty big part in the story.

Lastly, and this is actually an appeal to all my fellow Bob stans from PoL, there are a lot of songs involved in the magic in this book and the audiobook narrator sings all of them. Not in a very polished, instrumental backed way but just in a way that feels true to someone making up a song on the spot.

It's a standalone story in the universe of author's main duology so there's more to explore if you want but it's not necessary to understand this book.

[blorbo-apologist]

I am of the camp where i watched the Ghibli movie of Howl's Moving Castle (mainly in Japanese but I've watched the English dub too) lots but I'm only just getting around to reading/listening to the book right now.

This experience is confirming my MO of always watching the movie before reading the book because this is hilarious. I saw someone on here call howl a "sopping wet drama queen of a cat" and every page i read basically confirms this lol

For a person who grew up both English and Japanese, it's also hilarious to see how the book (with its very realistic portrayal of sniveling complaining Brits but somehow placed in a compelling story and the world is full of magical versions of people that i knew growing up. all very nostalgia inducing to me) was transformed into a romanticised Ghibli-ized lovely cosy story with less snot and whinging(our national pastime you know). Because in my experience this is how much of Europe (remember the Japanese tourists despairing in Paris?) and definitely how the UK is romanticised by Japanese people.

[theriu]

Great Movies So Significantly Different from Their Books That Fans Treat the Books and Movies as Separate Stories:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Mary Poppins

Howl’s Moving Castle

(Help me add other ones, guys! Also try to stick with movies people actually LIKE; you’ll notice Eragon and The Last Airbender are not on here 😂)

[emojisarestatussymbols]

Acceptable book-to-movie adaptations:

Howl's Moving Castle

Silence of the Lambs

Muppet Treasure Island

[mbrainspaz]

reading Howl's Moving Castle for the first time: Y'all were lying to me. This is barely different from the movie at all. That's fine and all, but why—

when they suddenly go to Wales: Oh.

[swiftsnowmane]

That feel when you crave fanfic about a story that is both a book and an on-screen adaptation, but you can’t find nearly enough fic for the version you actually want to read about…

[eyeswaitingfortuesdaynight]

i've already gotten two separate comments on my spy!kdj fic about the orv liveaction, i fucking KNEW this would happen

at least there's already one fic posted dunking on the whole gun thing, so i'm going to read that and then keep working on my own version

[casscainturnedmegay]

This is my genuine apology to anybody who's ever asked me if I've watched a movie/show they liked because if some girl was like "no, but I've read the book, I don't really watch tv" all the freaking time I'd be annoyed too

[nadiajustbe]

My favourite Howl moments is the ones where he decides that he DOESN'T NEED THIS STUPID WIZARDY STUFF like he's WELSH and PLAYS RUGBY that's what it is‼️‼️‼️

Him literally running to WoTW instead of using any of his spells. Him randomly reminding Sophie that he was playing for his university like he knows what to hell it's even means. Him using half of the cosmetics from our world because it basically better. Him refusing tolearn how to write with a qull and just bringing ballpoint pens with him for God's sake. Him acting like his fights with WoTW is in general some kind of hand-to-hand combat. Him acting like Sophie and Michael should absolutely love the car ride cause pfff what's unusual there I've been doing this for my whole life. Him referencing to Shakespeare, John Dohn, Sleeping Beauty AND Alice in the Wonderland either expecting or not expecting everyone around him to understand the joke. Him just randomly reminding that he's Welsh and then starting being upset about his music talent. All of this as it's the most natural wizard-like thing in the world imaginable.

Love him.

[myclutteredbookshelf]

Please reblog for a larger sample size.

[estellaestella]

whitewashing a Japanese film bc yiu want to see your white boy in every role. Wonderful. Loving the racism and disrespect towards Miyazaki and Ghibli, keep it up.

My sweet summer child, I suppose you dont know that Miyazaki's movie is based on Diana Wynne Jones' novel Howl's Moving Castle and that Howl is from Wales. So a live action adaptation of the story would start there. Besides which, the Ghibli movie (with its Western outfits, buildings, carraiges etc) is clearly NOT Asian-coded so I have no idea where you got the idea that Ghibli-Howl Jenkins and Ghibli-Sophie Hatter are Japanese.

Also, it's important to remember two things (1) just as fanfic can depict whatever the hell the fanfic writer wants to, fanart can also take liberties with canon, which I am not doing btw (2) objections to race-bending and gender-bending casting should always be well thought through, which yours wasnt.

[moonlight--magician]

Howls moving castle, a rant

the Ghibli adaptation of howls moving castle is a disgrace to the original source material by ridding it of many plot points and characters and inserting anti war propaganda that was not present within the original story that was presented. With also taking out characters with plot relevance or condensing two characters into one the adaptation also wrote out the only specifically stated to be dark skinned character and made him into a Japanese boy that very much white in his design, changing a dark skinned aspiring wizard who was a teen with dreams and love to a white boy with a fake beard that barely showed up Michael was such a great character but here he was rewritten to be Markl who didn't exist in the original source. Also making Howell seem like a better person than he was in the original source. Even in modern depictions of the story the covers show the design for Sophie used in the movie when in actuality that was not the case of how she transformed. And she canonically looking nothing like the Ghibli art style of old ladies at a least keep the movie and book separate from each other as they bled so much together I feel the original story that was planned to be told was buried under a bad adaptation.

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

There's this like

Really funny phenomenon where I'll watch people do redraws/aus for popular relationships with every ship under the sun. Like redraws of people's ships as sophie/howl, or disney princesses and their prince, or hades and persephone, or sasuke/naruto, etc

And then randomly I'll find there's an entire sprawling au out there where someone took one of these popular/mainstream romantic pairings, pasted Sonic and Tails onto the characters, and then insisted to hell and back that they're brothers and that people would be weirdos to assume in any way they're depicting the two as romantic. Despite pasting them onto a well known ship or canonically romantic pairing, and not really changing the relationship moments from the source material much if at all.