This movie is a prequel to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
For a few reasons:- A bunch of animals seen in Nausicaä (both the movie and the manga) are seen in this movie.
- When the kids get to Laputa, part of the Nausicaä theme actually starts playing!
- The robots seem to resemble the fire walkers an awful lot. Perhaps the government that wanted to use the robot managed to build the first fire walker based of of it, and so started off the Seven Days of Fire.
- Anyone notice a similarity between the uniforms and the role the Tolmekians in Nausicaa and the military in this film?
Muska survived the end of the film
Everyone seems to assume he fell to his Disney Villain Death even though it wasn't shown (and the film wasn't shy about showing some serious falls). Sheeta and Pazu manage to cling to the roots, the number of roots there and the close proximity between the three of them makes it more than likely he could to the same. Plus it would just be super poetic for him to survive and be trapped in the very place he had spent his life searching for, while deprived of its technologies and not even having working eyes to appreciate its beauty.- The tree (with the remnants of Laputa still attached) rises into low orbit by the end credits. Muska has no way to provide for himself or navigate, and there's no telling if the tree is still low enough for the air to be breathable (small animals can be remarkably hardy in this manner). If he didn't fall to his death, he's going to suffocate or starve.
- Actually if he did stay up there he would have Oxygen since we see in the credits that Laputa's great tree is still making Oxygen (visible via a translucent white glow around the tree) and it will probably do so until it runs out of water once it gets plenty of sun in Earths high atmosphere
- Bastard deserves it.
- He could find some stuff the soldiers left behind, build an parachute from it and simply jump.
- While blind?
- It could have been temporary.
- Actually, a Freeze-Frame Bonus during the scene in which Laputa falls into the sea reveals a man wearing a brown suit falling among the debris.
Dola is Pippi Longstocking grown up.
Think about it. She's super strong, super awesome and a pirate. And there is a picture in her private chambers on the Tiger Moth that looks suspiciously like early Pippi Longstocking concept art that Studio Ghibli did when they wanted to make a Pippi movie. The siege Laputa made on the earth is similar to the war the Journey (2012) characters waged with each other, which ultimately destroyed their civilization.
The cloaked figures in Journey fought against each other to gain absolute control of the destructive energy source they'd discovered. The Laputians destroyed parts of the earth before they learned that life and compassion, not power and destruction, are the most important things. But, as both universes learn, having ultimate power without the wisdom and compassion to understand it will just destroy and cause tragedy. In Laputa the world got off easy, as the Laputians learned their lesson before destroying everything, unlike in Journey.
- Laputa Effect in action, maybe?
Pazu is a descendent of Lemuel Gulliver
- Pazu's father, like his ancestor, may have retreated into misanthropy. While Gulliver's reasons were due to his experiences with the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos, Pazu's father did so after society refused to believe his story about Laputa and regarded him as a fraud. This might have lead to his death at a younger age, Pazu explaining that "he died of a broken heart because nobody believed him".
Laputa was not the only flying island, just the capital of a much larger civilization.
- The opening does show what appears to be mankind mining atherium, learning to use it's power, eventually having entire islands flying through the sky blanketing the world, and then some cataclysmic disaster or conflict that brought the majority of them back down to earth. Rather then being the only flying island Laputa was once the capital of an entire people living in the sky. A war broke out between Muska's ancestors, the original Romska Palo Ul Laputa who claimed rulership despite not being a member of the royal family by blood, and Sheeta's ancestors which brought most of the islands crashing back down to earth. It was only after the war that Laputa was alone and frankly unable to survive so isolated the rulers abandoned it planning to eventually come back... but then finding peace on the surface and never actually returning.
