okay, my thread talking about how howl's moving castle was a terrible adaptation.

DONT BREAK THE THREAD. I HAVE A LOT TO SAY. IT MAY TAKE SOME TIME.

okay so, to start off, i grew up with this book. it's literally my childhood.

it's written by a welsh author called diana wynne jones. she died of lung cancer in 2011, i think, but literally i was raised on her books and they mean so much to me so this is a little personal ngl.

i'm gonna talk about howl first because he's my biggest issue with this movie. as in, they completely ruined his character. he was literally downgraded to a stereotypical anime guy. i feel no attachment to him, no emotion at all. he was just.... there. idk what sophie saw.

in the book however, howl is this big personality. he's a womaniser. he grins lots. he pretends to be 'all that', you know?

i suppose in a way he's what people would stereotypically class as a bit 'gay' what with his obsession with the way he looks.

like he's just a ponce. he has these fancy suits and he's all smiling and trying to get girls to have a drink with him and 'charming' them.

he's just a big idiot. and he throws the biggest tantrums. and he WHINES. he's whiny and stupid, but you just love him anyway!

the first time sophie met him, in fact, was nothing like in the movie.

she was on her way to see her sister at the bakery, that's true. and on her way there she was walking down a busy street and she bumped into this guy in a fancyass suit

and he like grinned at her and was like "where are you going, little grey mouse? wouldn't you like to come and have a drink with me?"

you know, that kind of thing.

and sophie literally thought nothing of him until she met him again later in the story. he was just a dude.

howl IS just a dude. and idiotic dude. not some starry eyed romeo like he thinks he is.

also, and i understand this is a japanese adaptation, but HOWL WAS WELSH. HE CAME FROM FRICKIN WALES. i watched with english dubs so i could take notes and, just saying it wouldn't have killed anyone to keep his freaking ethnicity.

which leads me onto another thing. the japanese adaptation could still have included where he was from.

you know the door that leads you to different places? with those colours you turn the dial to? well ima call the colours blobs because thats what the description++

was in the book.

the black blob actually lead to wales. it lead to howl's home in wales.

howl was from a different world than the land of ingary (i dont know how to spell all the names). he was essentially from a world like ours only with wizards in it.

and it was quite a prominent part of the story in the book. howl took sophie and michael there at one point.

but, my point is, the directors or whoever wrote the movie plot.... THEY COMPLETELY IGNORED HIS WELSH ORIGIN. which, i feel is a huge part of who he is.

like... i just don't think it's okay to do that???? call me stupid, call me white and say it's fine cos welsh people are white and why can't a white persons ethnicity be ignored (racist of u to say so), but it's not okay.

imagine if a white author wrote a black character and++

completely ignored black culture or something? it's kinda like that. like his roots were ignored completely and they really made him who he is as a character and showed you why he acted so differently from the people in ingary. like... he was raised in a different world.

he was just a guy from wales who was bulshy and thought he was 'all that', but in reality he was a complete coward and a whiny baby who needed to be looked after.

he was just a guy and there was no reason to ignore his entire personality in favour of dull af sexy anime dude.

honestly, the way they completely erased howl's character in the movie is the worst thing they could have done because it then also takes away his and sophie's relationship and the chemistry they shared.

i don't have any complaints about sophie's personality because i think they actually got that pretty spot on, but you can't have a ying without a yang, okay?

the way howl and sophie argued in the book, the lowkey enemies vibes they had because HOWL DID NOT WANT HER CLEANING++

HIS HOUSE. HE DID NOT WANT HER SNOOPING AROUND. he even called her "mrs snoop".

like they lowkey hated each other because he liked things the way they were and she was like IT'S DISGUSTING, I'M CLEANING IT. DEAL WITH IT HOWL.

and he just had to.

like none of that was in the movie. NONE AT ALL. the chemistry they had in the book was fucking amazing.

like he liked living in his guy house that was never clean or tidy, and sophie came in and was like "im your new cleaning lady, of course. i'm going to clean."

he just, he just akjsdhjkadsh you will never understand how great their relationship in the book was unless u read it.

howl's personality was fucking ruined, okay? he wasn't howl. he was....... nothing.

but let's move onto calcifer. he was downgraded to being majorly comic relief? or an attempt at that? like that's all i can remember is some cringy moments i guess were supposed to be funny?

in the book he was much more serious, still a bit sassy and stuff, but much more serious and he's kinda the embodiment of that emoji half the time.

he was still ofc, howl's heart and a major part of the plot, but i felt like his personality was weird and off in the movie.

and OH GOD. the scarecrow. the scarecrow was a major character and he got throw away in the movie.

let me get into some of the plot before i talk about that, though because it'll b easier that way.

it's just the way they handled the scarecrows character that makes my blood boil.

but first, to start off, the plot of the book.

sophie is working in the hat shop and she's resigned to living and working there forever because she's the eldest of three sisters.

and fable has it that the eldest of three sister will have bad luck if she ever sets out to seek her fortune.

she has two younger sisters, lettie and martha. one went to live with a witch and be her apprentice, and one went to work in the bakery.

and a part of the story is that lettie and martha traded places at some point because martha wanted to bake and lettie wanted to learn magic. so martha learned enough magic to make lettie look like her and herself look like lettie.

it's not a huge part of the story and it's not especially relevant but lettie (who is pretending to be martha under the apprenticeship of this witch) is. she comes into the plot because at some point howl starts courting her, being a womaniser, etc.

just keep that in mind for later because it's important cos it introduces a character that wasn't even in the movie, and yet he was a vital part of the plot for the book.

so before sophie gets turned into an old woman she visits the bakery and finds out that lettie++

and martha traded places.

then, later that day, or a few days later (i forget exactly) she gets visited by the witch of the waste.

and if you remember, the only time sophie and howl met in the book was when he tried to pick her up and take her for a drink.

there was no flying, no weird black sludge people, no nothing. the black sludge people aren't even in the book at all.

so the witch of the waste literally just came into sophie's shop. i can't remember if there was a specific reason, but i feel like there was one.

and either way, she's rude to sophie as sophie shows her hats and lets her try them on. and eventually sophie ends up snapping at her or something cos GOD WHY U HERE IF YOU DONT LIKE MY HATS.

and the witch puts sophie under a spell, turning her into an old woman.

and once the witch has gone, sophie packs some food and leaves because she can't stay at the hat shop like that.

so she 'sets out to seek her fortune'.

and she stops to rest near this hedge where she hears noises. so she goes to investigate and finds this dog stuck there with this stick kinda wrapped around its neck or something.

and once she gets the dog out it runs away, but the stick that was trapping it turns out++

to be a pretty expensive walking stick.

both the stick and the dog are important to the story. namely because the stick becomes sophies sort of 'magic wand'

and the dog i'll talk about later: his name is percival.

now i'm not enitrely sure in what order these events happen, whether sophie sees the scarecrow before or after she saves the dog, BUT that's irrelevant.

because at some point she stops to eat and ends up sitting near a scarecrow. (THE scarecrow) who she talks to.

it's an inanimate object, but she just chats to things, you know? and basically she ends up getting up and leaving, carrying on her way.

only after a few miles she hears this 'tap tap tap' following her. and she turns and sees the scarecrow hopping after her.

and it scares the shit out of her. so she starts walking as fast as she can, trying to get away.

the long and the short of it is, she gets so scared that when she sees howl's castle up ahead she decided to go in there rather than let the scarecrow get her.

and that's the first big difference between book scarecrow and movie scarecrow. because for a good part of the book sophie thought it was evil and sent by the witch of the waste or something. like she saw it as a threat.

and she pretty much meets calicfer, makes the deal with him, and then falls asleep, just like in the movie. and she wakes up the next day to meet michael and stuff like that.

michael's character i don't have much complaints about only i saw him as a bit older, but maybe that's just me. he got a lot more exasperated in the book than he ever did in the movie.

and, yeah when sophie sees michael is gonna eat only bread and cheese for breakfast she pretty much just goes "nah fam, bacon and eggs. CALCIFER.... bend down your head" and she proceeds to 'bully' calcifer into letting her cook on him.

then howl arrives.

and he's probably wearing that stupid flamboyant blue suit. which is something you'd know about if you'd read the book.

anyway that's irrelevant. she says she's the cleaning lady, howl just... rolls with it or ends up having to roll with it. idek. but all that happens.

and then we get down to what i really wanted to talk about.

prince justin and wizard suliman.

wizard suliman was the royal wizard until he went to the waste and supposedly got himself killed by the witch of the waste.

prince justin then (i think) went to look for him++

and consequently disappeared.

so the king orders howl to go and find them both and kill the witch.

but ofc, howl doesn't wanna do that because the witch has put a dark curse on him ever since he jilted her, ditched her, ran away cos he scared of commitment or something.

ya know, she pissed cos he doesn't love her, basically. and the whole book is about him trying to avoid this curse.

okay ima take a break and finish this thread later.