The film has many things going for it - a great script with many memorable lines, a balance of comedy with melodrama, a score and visual design language with a nostalgic romance.
There’s not much to say beyond that I simply enjoyed this film, and rather I debated for a while how to consider the fact that while it is a fantastic film the characters are not close visually and characteristically to that of how they were created by Monkey Punch.
In the end, I’m rating this as a great film, and not a great Lupin III film.
It’s hard to say whether Miyazaki took advantage of Lupin to create a work that propelled his own career and Lupin’s expense. The same can be similarly said about Dr. Strangelove, a film I saw prior, and how it deviates from Red Alert, it’s source material, significantly. However, unlike Red Alert, Lupin III has a very strong existing character profile and Monkey Punch was very deliberate about many design and decision choices in his work that I think were not respected in this film. In a way, I wish this film was made later in Miyazaki’s career (once he became independently successful) and presented as the “Miyazaki take”, similar to the long desired “Tarantino take” of Star Trek - basically having the film made with the understanding that the source material will be altered and shown differently, to show awareness and implicit respect to what came before.
