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Disney and Anime Plagiarism?
tenchiken asks: "Disney is at it again. A while ago they were accused of (ahem) lifting portions of Kimba for use in 'Lion King'. Now their newest movie, Atlantis has an amazing amount of similarity with GAINAX's classic Anime: 'Nadia, The Secret of Blue Waters'. Take a look at Ain't it Cool News's write up which has comparisons from the Anime point of view and of the Disney point of view. Details about the 'Lion King' and 'Kimba the White Lion' can be found here. Well, give Disney a little credit for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, after all, those were original stories, right?" You know, I was looking at the ads for this movie just this week and I thought the exact same thing! While fiddling around on the web, I found
this comparison, and it appears that both pages are using information from
this Anime News Network feature.
Check out the above links as they may put the similarities (and any differences) into better perspective. So are the creative juices running dry over there in Disneyworld? Or is this just your average case of an earlier work's influence on a new release?
Your "grandfatherly" character was also an FBI informant who turned friends, collegues, and employees over to the House Un-American Commitee to be blacklisted as communists.
http://www.apbnews.com/media/gfiles/disney/
-z129
This just helps to expose how utter farcical it is to allow the copyrighting of ideas rather than words.
Yes, "Atlantis: The Lost Kingdom" is much like "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water". But as the article notes, "Nadia" in turn borrows a huge amount from Miyazaki's "Laputa". The idea for "Laputa" of course came from the eponymous magical island from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels."
But of course this masterwork of the übertroll Swift was really a satirical updating of More's "Utopia," which was a Renaissance answer to Plato's dialogues concerning ideal government, notably 'The Republic' as well as 'Timaeus,' where the parable of Atlantis is described for the first time in extant Western literature (albeit with attribution to Solon).
Copyright applied to ideas is really nothing but a sham. If anyone is getting ripped off here, it is either Plato or the supposed Atlanteans.
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Better still, Disney's version of Otaku No Video :D
And to think I saw my first glimpse of 'Atlantis' and thought to myself, "Oh good, for once in their lives they are taking a _broader_ concept and writing their own damn story around that". Of course, this was before I saw the side-to-side story elements between that and Nadia. And the side-to-side _character_ designs between that and Nadia... *yeesh*
I don't know _where_ my brother turned this up years ago, but one reading of this small book will make your jaw drop, and answer questions you never thought to ask, like-
_Highly_ recommended...
This has little to do with creative juices. Disney is out to make money. In their animated work, the machine works like this: take a classic (aka 'proven') story, tweak it to their satisfaction, and release it under their own animation style and direction (and usually too much spontaneous breaking into song for my taste... ;-).
This process is so institutionalized it's even got a name: "Disneyficiation".
The fact that they've taken to poaching story concepts from much more recent manga and anime works is perhaps somewhat depressing, but no different in style than Snow White. They even did it to themselves: IMO, Fantasia 2000 was mostly a Disneyfied knock-off of the original!
On my high school's grad night we ended up going to Disneyland and pretty much had run of the park. In one of the gazebos there were fair sized posters of Disney characters but drawn in the full anime styling. It was pretty funny to see them stop hiding the definite anime influence in alot of their art now. Before Pokemon exploded in the US most people didn't have any idea what anime even was. Shit look at what Disney did to Princess Mononoke. I was really stoked to go see it in theaters, especially with the high quality dubbing Miramax had done to it. My problem started with the fact it was only released in two fucking theaters in Southern California, one I'd never even heard of. Then there was the problems with Miramax being able to release it on DVD. I'm glad I got my copy before Disney decides to pull any horse shit and yank the disc from market. The original Japanese cut of PM is really good but Miramax's effort is also pretty damn cool. Now I'm off to count change so I can finish my Lain collection.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Well, the writers of the movie indicated that they'd never seen Nadia, but they did homage some elements from Miyazaki. I see no reason not to take them at their word. I mean, you have to admit that Nadia has been a fairly obscure series, as anime goes, up to now. It had a crappy Streamline dub that's long been out of print, then in the last year or so a limited edition VHS sub, and the DVDs are only starting to come out now. I've been an anime fan since 1991, and I've never seen Nadia--nor have I had a chance to. Why should they have?
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
IMO the problem with Disney plagiarizing (or taking inspiration from) many works is that they refuse to acknowledge proper credits to the original authors. Would it cost them much? Adding a line at the end of the credits reciting "partially inspired from Osamu Tezuka's 'Jungle Taitei'"?
Maybe the original author would like to see a few bucks in royalties, but so what? it's not as if they couldn't afford it.
Somebody in other posts mentioned the GPL, and the apparent contradiction in our community which encouages to share IP when it's computer programs, but doesn't approve of derivative works when it's motion pictures.
The point is that every single GPL program I've seen properly recognizes its ancestors, be it direct and indirect, and acknowledges the work of those who created them. Disney's recent movies don't.
Hmmmm. What song will the Death Rape machine sing? And will Elton John be the voice?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Yeah, how come all female Disney lead characters' mothers are dead?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I saw an English-dubbed version of "Laputa" a decade ago in the theatre. It's fantastic! Everything a Miyazaki movie should be. I saw the preview for the Disney dub at the beginning of the VHS of "Kiki" and kept waiting for the damn theatrical release. What the F*** is going on?
OTOH, I still think the 70s TV animated version of "The Little Mermaid" is the best one: it's far scarier (like good fairy tales should be!) and there's no annoying sidekicks, dammit.
Especially when they combined it with "The Golden Prince." Now that's a freaky movie.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
That should be a laugh riot. . . .
but i'd think that Disney has enough resources to thuroughly check and make sure their stories are indeed original. I knew of the "Lion King" deal (heck, the simpsons even made fun of it) but when stories parallel like this, it makes disney look like they are rewriting history.
that being said, it's not like their animated movies are original at all but they are fairy tales that have been "disneyized". I could accept "the little mermaid", but for disney to copy wholesale "Nadia", it's not so much ignorance as it is revisionist.
He's not dead!!! He's frozen!!!!
your comment seems to implt shakespeare was the original source. That's rather silly when nearly everything he "wrote" was stolen or sourced from some other older (or current) story (already in existence).
But it wasn't as if he tried to hide this also this was a completly different environment from the century plus of "copyright" which Disney has lobbied for.
Nope. A Hans Christian Andersen story.
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Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Mononoke isn't a Disney copy because Disney didn't make Mononoke.
That's a product of Studio Ghibli, whom licesensed it to Disney (under a fairly protective contract, no editing was permitted) through Miramax. Had this not happened, you'd likely have seen a Disney movie very similar to Mononoke eventually.
Of course, every Anime fan should fear the fact that Miramax has Ghost in the Shell 2, and who knows what they'll do to it (edit wise...)
props to all dead homiez
Realistically now, take a look at how many movies were based on samples from books, some parts may have been used, but were the authors really slighted when the entire book wasn't used? Could have been a name or town, etc. Not everyone is James Patterson to command mega bucks for their work, so there are plenty of times plagurism occurs. Similarly situations arise where many would like to claim something as theirs when others may have thought of something similar and acted in better fashion or faster to make something out of it.
Wouldn't surprise me if Disney ripped things here and there, as long as the entire concept isn't ripped then legally they violated no laws. Personally when I think of Disney I think of small children or do good family doo hickey types while for Anime I tend to think of younger, hip, into fashion, skateboarder, biker, geek types. So the comparison to me personally is non existant. Don't buy Disney if you think it affects you, however aren't there better things to bitch about?
Want Root?
to the question of "are all their creative juices dry?" I have to answer that this is not just a Disney problem - more a Hollywood problem.
Look a little more closely and you'll see that it's not just Hollywood that's run out, and it's not as bad in Hollywood as it is elsewhere. Tinseltown has been picking off ideas (plotlines, charachters) from many, many 'sources' for as long as it's been an institutuion. What I belive is happening now is people gaining better access to sources that hollywood rips from.
Disney's been doing Andersen's tales for years, no one's complained. Many plots steal (and pervert) european folk stories, something especially noticable in the 50s. (And, of course, they fact that 80% of Hollywood movies follow one of maybe 10-15 plots.) But there are still some good, original stories being produced in Hollywood. Let's remember that Disney is about as LCD as you can get.
The industry that has lost almost all hope, on the other hand, is the music industry. While it's not as bad as in Poland, where the big 5 'majors' constantly releasing the same artists that had hits back when most of the music buying public was being born, it's not getting any better. You have Britney Spears releasing one song twenty-four times (just listen to the beats on her album, it's all the same song). Bands making careers off on a single *cover* of some 80s hit. Everybody doing house and hip-hop remixes. Covers of old songs being hyped as the 'best new thing'. Producers recycling beats between artists...
Fortunately, it is exponentially cheaper to record, produce and release an album then it is a film. This gives the music industry to be constant flow of new ideas while allowing the them to take risks. At 10, 20, 50 million dollars a picture, the motion picture industry's not too keen on letting much go to chance. So unless the storyline has 'universal appeal' or, better yet, is tested (a book, a anime version =)) it's going to have a hard time getting made.
There is salvation. As technology has made the production of music dirt cheap (and it is, it really, really is) it's bringing down the costs of film production. Of course, we're nowhere near the quality of celuloid (although I've seen filtered digital film that, at PAL/NTSC resolutions looked better) you can actually put a small film studio together for the price of a small recording studio. We're seeing a proliferation of independant films, fresh, new story lines. That's definately something to look out for.
And if you're not into 'independant' cinema (as it is often lacking) check out movies from around the world. Asia and India have a thriving movie 'scene', putting out litteraly hundreds of titles each year, many of the best ones are transfered to DVD and released subtitled. Europe's movie industry is a bit tattered (especially Poland's) but you can still get a lot of good movies. (I'm currently going through my love affair with 'Fucking Amal')
It wouldn't be entirely fair if I were to say that the movie was a TOTAL rip off, as I haven't seen it yet. Much like the Lion King, there is probably quite a bit of noticable influence.
The Lion King was sort of a mix between Kimba the White Lion and Hamlet, IMO. It didn't completely rip off of Kimba, but it was easy to tell that Disney took a lot of influence from that show.
Why doesn't Disney just go ahead and say something like, "We were influenced by Gainax's brilliant Nadia series." If they had said something like this when announcing the movie, they would probably get better PR. Instead, they flat out lie and deny that any of their animators have ever seen these series.
I think if they admitted the similarities as tribute or influence, instead of anime fans calling foul on Disney for ripping off Nadia, they'd be heading to the theater more eagerly to see Atlantis to find the tributes to Gainax's work.
Knowing Disney there is probably a decent amount of differences in the show, and I'm sure with all the lame songs that'll be there, that it won't be nearly as good as Nadia anyway.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
All of "Disney Classics" are just that-- classics that have been through Disney's machine.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Pinocchio? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Aladdin? The Sword and the Stone? Brer Rabbit? Dumbo? Jungle Book? They're all classic folktales from various cultures. Disney never claimed to create the concept, just the adaptation you see under their banner.
That's why the official titles are Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or Disney's The Little Mermaid. Same goes for Disney's Atlantis. They're adaptations of classic stories.
With each new medium (voice, tablets, scrolls, books, silent movies, talkies, animated movies, modern cinema and now computer-rendered movies), classic stories are told and retold and re-retold with the new medium's strengths or with a new angle to keep it fresh.
There are some legitimate causes for complaint if a new work draws too substantially or too unoriginally from an older work; Lion King, Mononoke, and Atlantis may suffer from being on the borderline of this issue. But to say that Disney isn't putting something original or fresh into any of their adaptations of cultural classics is a big stretch.
This has been going on far longer than Disney's corporate life, so why piss on Disney's parade? Oh, yeah, this is slashdot, where groupthink and corporate bashing is the norm. Where selling an adaptation of a public-domain concept is considered evil. Get over it.
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Romeo And Juliet was based on the old greek myth of Pyraemus and Thisbe, two young lovers from opposing houses who die in a graveyard due to their loves. As for Hamlet, I don't feel like digging out Edith Hamilton/Bullfinche's mythology at the moment to look it up. As for historical basis, kids from opposing houses killing themselves over their love was not a rare occurrance in those times (Hell, it happens now.).
The Shakespearean tradgedies that were based on Historical events tended to be a bit obvious as to what they were, eq. Julius Caeser and Antony and Cleopatra.
The point I was originally trying to make was that no stories are really original; there are always many people who have done/said/written/etc. it before.
There are no original stories. All stories, one way or another, are just retelling of all the basic myths of mankind.
For example, the Lion King was not ripped from Kimba, it was ripped from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Hamlet, like many of the bawdy bard's works, was just a retelling of assorted chunks of greek myths that he liked. The greek myths were old stories that had been handed down orally for centuries.
This kind of thing is basic stuff. Joseph Campbell taught it for decades (Exploration of Campbell's work inspired Star Wars, a popular Star Wars topic that is about as unoriginal as plots can be.). It was a PBS miniseries. Most high schools teach it as part of advanced freshman english classes. Any social anthropology teacher at any level will probably bring it up.
And of course, the idiots who run Slashdot, in an attempt to bring down the corporate machine, attack Disney for stealing plots for their movies, simply because they fail to realize that the plots of the Japenese animation they so often watch are no more original than they were when other people told the same stories a millenia ago.
This lack of variety to be seen in the artistic world at a fundamental, reductionist level is only excacerbated by the forms of Plato; there exists only one perfect form of each concept. You have your forms and ideas mixed up. Each form is an imperfect representation of the divine idea. And, of course, there exists the divine idea of a troll, very closesly perfected here.
:wq
Snow White and the Seven Devils of Kimon, coming to a theatre near you.
Ok, when ripping a script, at least change the name of the main character more than one letter. You see, if i turned in a history paper that was ripped off the internet and i only changed the spelling of a few words, my teacher would not only turn me in for plagiarism, he would smack me in the head with my own stolen paper for blatant stupidity. Come on, people, if your gonna steal something, do it right.
I am !amused.
There are some legitimate causes for complaint if a new work draws too substantially or too unoriginally from an older work; Lion King, Mononoke, and Atlantis may suffer from being on the borderline of this issue. But to say that Disney isn't putting something original or fresh into any of their adaptations of cultural classics is a big stretch.
If you had bothered to read the linked articles, then you would have seen that they aren't simply talking about Disney retelling classic story with a modern twist but ripping off of a large amount of the plot for their non-classic movies (Lion King, Atlantis) from recent works that are still under copyright which is and if this were the U.S. with it's Disney bought Sonny Bono act would be under copyright for decades more which is PLAIGAIRISM.
Slashdot overreacts sometimes, this isn't one of them.
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I'm sure that someone who knows more of English history can give you a list of which Shakespeare story came from which source. (English was never my strong point). In any case, He was right on the point about this, and I would have made a similar comment if he hadn't first.
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yes, it is... for Disney.
The copyright holder for Nadia must show that protectable elements of the work were taken. The artwork isn't close enough to be infringing, and the plot elements listed on the oldcrows page (e.g., "the bad guys are interested in Atlantis so they can capture and use the power source") are far too vague to be protectable. Furthermore, the guy who authored the page has added a link to the following statement:
Furthermore, even if the holder of the Nadia copyright could somehow prove that Atlantis used protectable elements, all Disney has to show is that the authors of Atlantis were not exposed to Nadia. Constructive knowledge (i.e., "being in the animation business they should have known") isn't sufficient; they must have actually known about it, as copyright law (unlike patent law) doesn't protect against independent creation.
I once viewed about five episodes of Nadia, and I've seen the Atlantis trailer. I don't see that much similarity in the plot. Both are set in the "Jules Verne future", but that's about it.
Which one was Memento? Maybe it was just a rip-off of The Limey. Where in hell do the X-Men fit in?
Those seven stories have to be some broad genres to fit everything, and even then you'd be missing a lot of the differences between movies. Those differences, on the other hand, are what make movies entertaining.
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You appear to be right. From Burton's translation:
IT hath reached me, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Aladdin hight.
http://mfx.dasburo.com/an/a_night_29.html
I'm having a bitch of a time trying to get the original French translation though.
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Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
According to Walter Elias Disney's death certificate (source: Big Secrets by William Poundstone), he died of cardiac arrest due to a cancer arising from the passages of the left lung. Disney was cremated at Forest Lawn, Glendale, "and has a perfectly ordinary gravesite."
Eisner, however, should be **** for perverting the Constitution of the United States.Will I retire or break 10K?
David also wrote two other interesting secrets of DisneyLand books: Mouse Tales: A Behind-The-Ears Look at Disneyland and More Mouse Tales : A Closer Peek Backstage at Disneyland
Interesting reading for both Disney fans and haters.
Given that, is it suprising that they want to make sure others don't do what they did -- take the work that came before them?
Will the copyright expire on any of the Mickey Mouse stuff?
Fight Spammers!
Besides plagiarism, another annoying thing with Disney and Hollywood in general is a peculiar form of nationalism, in the sense of either historical falsification, or slight modification of the stories to make sure that it fits with American patriotism.
Here we have a typical example. Instead of beginning in 1889's France, the story takes place in 1914's America. Why? Because this story involves cool heroes, a cool machine with an highly advanced technology, built by original and very wealthy people. Well, this HAS to be in America, doesnt'it?
This example follows the example of this Hollywoodian movie on the battle of England, where the allies manage to decode the German communication for submarines (again!), or something like that: this event was key in the battle of England. The British achieved it. In the Hollywoodian movie, the Americans do it. Pretty vicious, huh? It's based on actual historical events, but it's falsified to make sure that the heroes are American.
There are hundreds of examples of these types each year from Hollywood. It may be just because it is assumed to be good for business (although I know that Disney also has quite a conservative culture and has a problem with France), but it's morally unjustifiable. Moreover, which over country would dare do something like this than America? Can you imaging the Chinese movie industry creating "historical" movies, where the chinese are organizing the D-day and saving Europe from nazi Germany? Or can you imagine Zimbabwe shooting a movie where extraterrestrials attack, and where all the key events (their arrival, as well as their defeat) take place in Zimbabwe?
I know it's "just entertainment", and that it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Except that the power of Hollywood on the minds of the people everywhere on the planet has become tremendous. Hollywood can manipulate the people on a global scale, but to the advantage of one specific country, and of specific and sometimes questionable values. This explains in part the irritation of several countries with the American movie industry.
Or how about Disney's first "tenticle fetish" theme ride?
Or is this just your average case of an earlier work's influence on a new release?
Just your average case of MPAA hypocrisy, that's all.
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DOOR!!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
When I saw the trailers to Atlantis, While I did see a slight resembalance to some anime works, such as Laputa, Mononoke and Nadia I saw something else that struck me quite a bit more... The resembalance to James Gurney's Dinotopia...
While it may again be a case of similar source material, it may go farther as well..
1) The Disney's Atlantian machines have a remarkable resembalance to the "Strutters" in Dinotopia.
2) Dinotopia: The World Beneath has a very similar plotline: Scientist searching for a lost civilization, explores underwater for an entrance, then a cavern crawl, to the remnants (though uninhabited in this case) of a lost civilization they find a crystalin power source and then leave, upon which point the crystal brings out the worst in party members and a struggle ensues for the crystal.
3) Some similarity can be seen between Disney Atlantis' location on a plateau surrounded by waterfalls, and Dinotopia's waterfall city. There is some simiarity of architecture as well, but that can be more easly explained bythe efforts of both Gurney and Disney to make a "ancestor culture"
I'm not saying it happened, but after Seeing much the same thing happening in SW:TPM w. the design of Theed and the end parade in parcicular I wouldn't rule it out, and considering the similarities in source material between Nadia and Atlantis: I actually worry a little more about this possibility.
http://www.newgrounds.com has an article on their front page.
Animation would be impossible if it weren't for plagiarism. The animation artists are all crooks. It's an inherent part of their process.
First, they start with a single drawing, a stil image known as a "cell". Then, they make another that looks almost exactly like it, only it's a little bit different. Then they do this again, and again, thousands and thousands of times.
Then, once their "movie" is completed, they show each of these images, each essentially a ripoff of the previous image, in sequence very quickly. By pulling this fast switcheroo, the audience is fooled into thinking that it sees a "motion picture" and not thousands of repeated images, each of which varies very little from the ones immediately preceeding it.
Yet in spite of the obvious similarity of one cell of animation to the one preceeding it, the masses just seem to love it. If only they knew the real goings-on behind the scenes.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
If you don't, urutsukidoji is the movie that started the tentacle rape anime genre ;)
Actually, Aladdin is not lifted from Arabian folklore - it's not Arabian at all. In the 19th century, there was a craze in Europe for all things Arabian, and translators could sell books by offering the largest collection of the "1001 Arabian Nights." A French translator, in an overzealous attempt to outdo his competitors, made up the Aladdin story to add to his collection. Of course, the story that sounded like it came from Arabic ouvre but still strangely appealed to Europeans (wonder how?) became the most popular.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Folks,
:-/
All the griping about Atlantis: The Lost Empire being a ripoff of Japanese anime makes me wonder if you can't do anything inspired by an earlier work.
Think about this: remember the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? If that movie wasn't a rehash of the vast majority of movie serials from the 1930's and 1940's I don't know what is.
Anyway, having seen Atlantis, the movie is more like something inspired by a combination of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Gainax's Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water, the Hayao Miyazaki-directed movie Lupin III: The Castle of Caligostro, and the Miyazaki movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
The movie can get clichéd in spots, but gawd, the visuals and musical soundtrack are AWESOME. I highly recommend seeing this movie on the largest movie theatre screen you can find and make sure the theatre has a THX-certified sound system, too.
It's a good article, and direct. Pick up a newsstand copy and flip through for it.
if you'd like more examples of disney badness, check out The Society of Disney Haters's website.
after spending some time on the SODH website, nothing disney does surprises me anymore.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
With a desire to see the plagarism, just about any story told can be accused of being heavily copied from an existing one - often without the script writers even being aware of the orginals existence. Take a look at the way, every time Spielberg makes a movie, several people sue him for stealing their ideas (kind of curious how he manages to keep copying the majority of his movie from several places at once).
The way things are going, I wonder how long it'll be before scriptwriting follows the original PC cloning and those working on it are kept in closed environments where the companies can prove they never saw anything from the outside?
And I doubt it was merely Walt keeping Annette Funicello out of anything skimpy. Take a look at all the episodes of "I Dream of Jeannie" and count how many times you see Barbara Eden's belly button. You won't! It was too risque' at the time.
Anyways, its a good comparison... Mickey Mouse is a corporate identity and women are showing alot more skin on TV.
If Disney weren't so aggressive, they likely wouldn't be around at this point.
Cough cough...
http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Plato.html
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Disney and anime are both exceedingly trite and cliche. They both use the same general framework and styles... I don't mean drawing styles, i mean narrative styles. Here I'm thinking of more grounded anime like this Nadia thing, not Akira type stuff. It's all the basic stock of characters. Basic plot: Ooooh the crystal is linked to the core... but mysterious! And she's... exotic! Like the guy said above, 7 basic story archetypes. Disney isn't that creative, and usually anime isn't either, even when it's being insane and random, it's just pointless pulling random ideas out of the writers' collective asses. (except the mechanical stuff, I'll give ya that, I dig that) So there's my rant. :P
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--hongpong.com
Who wrote Winnie the Pooh? Who wrote Peter Pan? Who wrote Alice in Wonderland? Who wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, (and what is the proper title of the book)? How many kids these days are going to grow up thinking that these stories, and many others, were all written by Walt Disney? A. A. Milne, James Barrie, Lewis Carroll and Victor Hugo, (author of Notre Dame de Paris) probably turn in their graves every time one of these Disneyized corruptions of their work is screened. Whenever Disney gets it's hands on something you can count on a good deal of the story being changed, and any history corrupted. While many Hollywood productions seem to do this with any given novel turned screenplay, Disney films, for some reason, "redefines the standard", (where have we heard that term before?), and what is presented in the Disney film becomes the norm. For instance, the Seven Dwarves did not have names until the Disney flick, it's Disney's Pooh that kids picture, not the Ernest Shepard drawings. I realize that much of this can be put down as "artistic license", but consider that Disney is so big, so powerful, that many kids don't even realize that the books exist, let alone what the original plot was, or how old the book really is. Does that remind anybody of another huge monopolistic company that hates it when facts get in its way? Ahh, Disney! The Micro$oft of kidlit!
While this whole issue is of questionable relevance to "stuff that matters" I guess I have to admit that it matters enough for me to add my own thought. So here goes: to the question of "are all their creative juices dry?" I have to answer that this is not just a Disney problem - more a Hollywood problem. There seems to be an inherent inability in the California entertainment scene to create anything truly groundbreaking, or even thoughtful and interesting. Note that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was all over the Oscars, which have traditionally been a members-only Hollywood exhibition. Or the way the X-Files started to stink the moment production moved down from British Columbia to LA.
There seem to be two issues at hand, and they may be related. First of all, Hollywood is so revenue-driven that they must try to hit the least common denominator with everything they do, which excludes a lot of highly artistic content which might just be too niche-market for the bean counters who run the show to approve. This also leaves out a good deal of stuff that just seems too wierd for the apparantly wierd people who decide what gets produced.
The other issue surrounds the culture of Southern California itself - at great risk of generalizing here, I'd describe it as soulless. Everything there has a price value, and that value seems to be the only one that matters. This highlights the age-old battle between Northern and Southern California with the northerners constantly accusing the southerners of being thoughtless and greedy. The fact is, it may not be possible for someone wholly immersed in the SoCal culture ideal to actually come up with much of anything that isn't plasticy and over-glitzy to everyone else. I know people from LA will vehemently disagree with this, but my rebuttal is: where's the content? When the best movies and television (in terms of quality, not ratings) are being made anywhere but hollywood, what is the problem?
My biggest concern is that Hollywood seems to behave as though it should be the cultural center for the US, and considering the "role models" it proposes, this would be a very bad thing indeed.
Insert flames here:
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
anyone know who owns the copyrights on the nadia flick? Because I bet disney is about to make a boatload of money, as they often do, off this movie. Sounds like a pretty airtight case, if it could ever hit the courts.
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
An Interesting and semi-related article was in the LA Times this morning, about how Disney is laying off a good chunk of it's animation group, and many of the older members think that the new environment does not foster the kind of (perceived) creativity that made Disney famous.
From the Article:
But longtime animators say the more serious problem is that the division--once the premier place to work--lacks the creative vibrancy that fostered such hits as "Lion King."
I got my wish. Walter Eugene Disney wandered in about four o'clock and his first words to me were... "where are your parents?" When I'd assured him that I was not an orphan and well looked after, he wanted to know if I was having fun. I could hardly speak, I was so happy. He wished me and my family well, and then left. I still don't know for sure if the rumors about his loft above the firehouse was true or not. I didn't care... I'd got to say "hello" to Walt.
Fast forward fifty years. Michael Eisner makes more money in a year than Walt did in a lifetime. Disney, BuenaVista, and their subsidiaries routinely make movies that feature nudity, foul language, and violence. Disney gets sued over underwear. Disney gets sued over wages and benefits. Disney announces layoffs just to perk up the stockholders. Disney is no longer a kindly old grandfatherly type that wants to know where your parents are; Disney is now just another faceless megalithic corporation that just wants to know where your money is.
As an aside, did you know why Annette Funicello never wore a bikini in any of her beach movies? Yup, Walt. He thought it would make a bad impression on youngsters if a former Mouseketeer showed too much skin. He held her to a contract provision for the rest of her career just because his sense of moral obligation made him sure that that was the right thing to do.
If there is an afterlife, I feel sorry for Walt, looking down on what has become of his dreams for family oriented entertainment and family values.
That wonderful day in the firehouse is gone forever.
Its easy to get these things mixed up. It was Damon, not Afflec, who was in WWII. He was in the other theatre of operations though, over in france.
Hardly the first time Disney has poached earlier works for their animated films. What irks me is that at the same time they're making millions retelling other people's stories (and here I'm thinking more of Aladdin and Snow White and other renditions of classic stories) they're doing their damndest to prevent anyone else from doing the same with their classic stories.
I'm not so bullheaded as to refuse to ever see a Disney film, but when I'm deciding what to go see I definitely take into account the fact that Disney's lobbying is a big reason there won't be any significant American contribution to the public domain for years to come.
Actually, it's precisely because of Disney's lack of originality that partly explains why they are successful (marketing usually fills in the rest). The public has been conditioned to enjoy familiarity and uninventiveness, or at least settle for this as the norm. A standardized committment to quality in all spheres of consumption usually emphasizes the standardization, and not the quality. *cough*Redmond*cough*
Come to think of it, does this make children's stories the breeding ground for Disney's crass expectations of what they'll eat up at the box office, since they have that built-in familiarity during those impressionable ages?
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
Hmm ... you've obviously only watched a small selection of anime.
... there are as many and varied storylines as there are in US live-action movies ... in fact, usually more. Yes, there are a lot of anime shows which follow a formula, but there are many which also step outside the normal bounds. Take for example the superb "Jin-Roh", a metaphorical and at times literal retelling of the classic faerie tale "Red Riding Hood". Or the incredible story of Nausicaa (in particular, the manga - the movie does not have the same depth).
I would invite you to contrast the artwork and character designs of "Magic Knight Rayearth" (by CLAMP) and "Kiki's Delivery Service" (by Hayao Miyazaki). Or Harlock Saga (by Leiji Matsumoto). Shirow's hard-eyed Deunan (from Appleseed) is another character design which breaks the mould.
Indeed, the very topic involves a show (Nadia) which breaks the standard "big-eyed" character design of anime - it is based more on the character designs of Hayao Miyazaki.
As for storylines being all the same
Getting to the original topic, I cannot believe that the writers and artists involved with Atlantis were completely unaware of Nadia. I have no problems accepting that many of their ideas came from the works of Jules Verne and other sources. It's just that those "other sources" have to have included Nadia for there to be so many similarities. It's far beyond coincidence.