The Summit of the Gods (2021): finding new heights for sport animation and transmedia storytelling

Abstract

This article analyzes Patrick Imbert’s The Summit of the Gods (2021), which functions as a noteworthy example of animated sports film. As a result, the study of this animated film on climbing and of the authorial decisions made by Patrick Imbert and his collaborators is located at the intersection of several fields, which include the history of sport manga, the sociology of extreme sports, the philosophy of self-transcendence, as well as the literary (de)construction of transmedia storytelling. Consequently, the need to employ various sources becomes manifest in order to aptly frame the multiple significations present in both the form and the content of the film: the historical account of George Mallory’s and Andrew Irvine’s ascent, the playful comparisons between manga and animation, the director’s personal commentaries as well as the film’s reception and critique.

Keywords:

• Climbing
• manga
• extreme sport
• transcendence
• cinema

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Refer to PBS “Lost on the Everest” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/lost/search/camera.html

2 Already on the topic of alpinism, Taniguchi wrote and illustrated the manga K in May 1988.

3 Part of this transmedia storytelling adaptation, several biographical elements can be paralelled between Masaru Morita and Habu Jôji : a young, ambitious but penniless man, who takes inconsiderate risks leading to one of his companion’s demise, or an accident on the northern edge of the Grandes Jorasses in February 1979. The latter is described with extreme care in the film : despite a broken leg and an inoperative caused by a terrible fall, the hero manages to climb back to a place of safety, where he will be rescued in extremis by an helicopter after suffering from hallucinations.

4 While the manga is published in black and white, each first pages of the five volumes are in color.

5 Ostero penned the following to Taniguchi: “Dear M. Taniguchi, it is with a certain emotion that I pen this letter, given the personal and intimate stakes of the project I wish to request; I would like to create a cinematic adaptation of The Summit of the Gods, this magnificent work that your and Baku Yumemakura’s talents have taken to the greatest heights.” Letter from Dec. 11, 2012, in Thomas Vennin, op, cit., 21.

6 Didier Brunner produced blockbusters such as Kirikou et la Sorcière (1998), Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003) et Ernest et Célestine (2012).

7 Jirô Taniguchi passed away on Feb. 11, 2017, at the age of 69 in Tokyo, following a long illness.

8 Refer to Valley Uprising by Peter Mortimer, Nick Rosen and Josh Lowell (2014).

9 In the article of the New York Times dated of March 18, 1923, Mallory is quoted directly: “Why did you want to climb Mount Everest? […] Because it’s there”, 11.

10 The name of this mountain was proposed by the British scientist Andrew Waugh, who had succeeded to George Everest, the man who discovered the world’s highest peak in the 1850s thanks to a particular measuring device named theodolite.

11 Looking back, Odell was hesitant to confirm that he witnessed the two men, since the Hillary Step (over 30 meters high, at an elevation of 8600 meters) that composes the last stretch of the ascent to the top of Mount Everest blocks the view from the bottom of the slope.

12 A kōan can be defined as a story, a question, a statement meant to cause “great doubt” and test the student’s progress in Zen Buddhism.