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Can Hayao Miyazaki Save Disney's Soul?
IronicGrin writes "Even hard-core House of Mouse apologists have to admit that Disney's Feature Animation division has lost its way. After a half decade of pathetic failures (Atlantis) and epic disasters (Treasure Planet), the company shut its fabled Orlando 2D animation studios last year and announced that it was jumping on the computer animation bandwagon. A big motivation for the move to CGI was, of course, the Magic Kingdom's tenuous relationship with Pixar--the source of all of Disney's recent animated hits. But Disney is overlooking a better example of just what its toon team has been doing wrong...right under its nose.
Howl's Moving Castle, which opened this weekend to rapturous critical acclaim, is the third masterpiece from Japan's Studio Ghibli that Disney has released theatrically. Today's New York Times has a feature by A.O. Scott [reg required, blah blah] calling Miyazaki the "world's greatest living animated-filmmaker"; meanwhile, last Thursday, I wrote a column for SFGate.com on why Disney animation, 3D rendered or not, is doomed to irrelevance if it fails to (re)learn some basic lessons from Miyazaki and his cohorts at Ghibli. What do you think? Is Disney destined to fade to black, or can a little Ghibli flavor (mmm....Ghibli) get it back on track?"
As a start to saving their soul, Disney would have stop trying to extend copyrights every time Mickey Mouse is about to go into the public domain.
Their unconstitutional extension of copyrights in perpetuity has made them about as evil of a corporation as I can think of today.
I'm a big tall mofo.
The point isn't that the Studio Ghibli movies are anime. They aren't succeeding because they are made by Japan in a Japanese animation style which is currently "in". They are succeeding because they are interesting, original stories with genuine charm, rather than schmaltzy, PC-laden cheese produced by the mangling of public domain works or historical events into unrecognisability.
The most successful and enjoyable things Disney has recently produced have been Lilo & Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove. They were good because they were interesting, original stories, not because of the way they were animated. So it's hilarious that Disney has decided that 2D animation is dead, and if they switch to 3D everything will be all better. As I recall, Treasure Planet was partially done in 3D. It still sank like a lead balloon.
I know what movies I'll be getting for my hypothetical future children.
To take that point further, as an anime fan of many years, it wasn't the animation that attracted me to anime. It was the stories. Some of the greatest anime series were original stories with deep involving plots that weren't just fomulaic or "safe". Series like Evangelion, Ranma, Full Metal Panic, Escaflowne have well thought out characters, original stories and brilliant scripts.
My belief is Disney fails with most movies because it tries to make a movie as appealing as possible to everyone (dialogue adults and children understand, adapting known stories rather than making it original, dumbing down) and tries so hard that it messes it all up. If it tried to be a little more "out there" with their storylines, it may have some success.