Castle in the Sky (1986)

Castle in the Sky is about two children, Pazu and Sheeta, who each have some attachment to the mythical floating island Laputa and the ancient civilization that lived there.  Pazu's late father once managed to photograph the island, and he wants to show the world that it's real.  Sheeta is a descendant of ancient Laputans who heard many stories about them from her grandmother.  There's also an evil government agent, Muska, who pursues Laputa because he believes it houses powerful weapons.

It's an adventure film about looking for treasure.  Mamoru Oshii said it was one of the few Studio Ghibli movies he liked because it had a "good structure" for a "boy's adventure."  It isn't quite so solemn as Nausicaä or Grave of the Fireflies.  (Oshii had some choice comments about that last one.)

The world Pazu lives in feels antique in the characters' style of dress, their clunky machines, and their lifestyles.  I was not surprised to learn the valley where Pazu lives was based on Wales, because it looks like the Welsh coal-mining valley town depicted in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley.  Laputa, on the other hand, is designed outside of time.  Its monumental pillars, gardens, ruined cities, and domes look ancient, but robots wander through them.  There's more machinery below the stone monuments, all controlled by a computer that works by the movement of floating cubes.  

This is one of those films that has you noticing where later works borrowed from it.  Many of them are video games where you're supposed to be on an adventure.  The best example comes from this year: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.  It borrows more extensively and obviously than anything else, and not just in the floating islands that resemble Laputa.  It has gigantic, irregular clouds, a lost ancient civilization, and robots that wander ancient ruins.  It succeeds more than Breath of the Wild in sparking the urge to find something fascinating, and in delivering on it.

And yet in Castle of the Sky itself, when Pazu and Sheeta finally reach Laputa, they find emptiness.  They land in one of the gardens.  A robot approaches them to move their small wooden aircraft away from a bird's nest full of eggs.  They follow the robot to a grave inscribed with text they can't read.  Next to it is a broken-down robot that has stood in the same spot for centuries.  Nothing happens on Laputa except the activities of animals who couldn't care less about ruined civilizations.  

The legend of Laputa's past takes the characters a long way.  But the legend has one part that's genuinely inspiring, and another part that glorifies the warlike ambitions of the Laputan civilization.  In the end, the second part has to be discarded to find something real for the sake of those who live in the present—not just Pazu, Sheeta, and their pirate friends, but the animals and robots in the gardens.  What is real are moments like when Pazu and Sheeta share a cloak to keep warm in the crow's nest of a flying pirate ship.  Or the forces of nature themselves, the roaring wind and clouds that swallow people into pitch-dark shadows where all you can see are bolts of lightning that look like dragons.  Laputa consists of a terraced city, a massive war machine, and an enormous tree whose roots permeate everything.  At the end of the film, Pazu and Sheeta cause the war machine to crumble and fall into the ocean; the tree and the city's gardens rise.