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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?"
...no.
Any company that can justify stealing from the public domain with no intention to return anything to it has clearly not only drawn up a contract with satan but has also disputed the subclauses, delivered the first two goats, renegotiated paragraph three and taken the whole legal department on a field trip to hell to learn new techniques.
Beep beep.
Because Disney isn't about animation anymore, its about Parks, Hotels, T-Shirts and films signed off by the sort of people who next week will sign off the building of a 500 room "luxury" hotel.
Until Disney drives its animation division as a seperate company run by people (business people) who understand that market it will be doomed.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
PS: Here's an excellent series of articles about what went wrong with Disney feature animation.
just like they abused their relationship with Pixar. IIRC, the announcement that they were closing their 2d animation studio came right before Pixar announced that after their current contract was up they would be bolting from Disney? Why? Because that asshat Eisner assumed that Disney was invincible and Pixar would come crawling to Disney no matter how much they were abused.
I still don't think Disney learned their lesson. Eisner didn't have one creative bone in his body, all he did was bleed dry whatever he could(and took a lions share of cash for himself) while Disney's main properties languished. I suspect the same will go for this relationship.
Monstar L
Of course I could be completely wrong and anime would be more than just a fad, in which case this would be a good move for Disney. I guess that's the gamble.
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling! -- CBG, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
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.
Disney is more likely to poison Studio Ghibli than Ghibli save Disney from its current evil incarnation.
I mean, come on: It's Disney; they can't do anything without the suits fucking somebody up.
After something like "Toy Story" or "Finding Nemo" or "Lion King" (which was not originally planned to be such a big hit!), every subsequent animated film gets compared to it. Not just box office revenue, but also reviews, relevance, etc. And of course, none quite measure up. So they cut animation spending, lay off animators, and shut down animation divisions.
The problem isn't that the subsequent films weren't good films. (Well, some weren't. Others were.) But the problem is that the blockbusters were too good.
Disney just has to get back into the cycle where they produce a range of quality animation (allowing some "duds" as well as non-blockbusters to get made). In this business world, where a single non-blockbuster means you shut down the division, this is indeed hard.
I liked (as in didn't hate and enjoyed watching) treasure planet and atlantis as well. Is there some fundamental reason why I shouldn't have?
.: Max Romantschuk
If Walt Disney were alive today, and saw what was happening to his company, he'd be rolling over in his grave!
Wait a minute...
It's sad to see the state that Disney is in. My fiance is an animator, so we've had our fair number of trips down to Orlando. She knows a number of animators, most of which have been fired.
A lot of the animators have started up their own studios though. I think Firefly Studios is one? Regardless, I think the Disney that Walt had imagined is long gone and far from coming back. They need to stop pumping out sequels and start creating movies with good stories.
It doesn't matter what medium the movie is delivered in; it's the story that delivers.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
What are you talking about? Just about all I ever do is watch cartoons and have sex or have sex and watch cartoons or have sex while watching cartoons and I have no intention of changing my lifestyle just because I'm turning twelve next month.
You know what, I love lots of anime. I can do without the ninja chicks in bikinis and powered armor, but I personally consider Nausicaa to be the greatest animated film ever made, for example.
But to assume that anime would attract the same kinds of audiences as Disney's crap is ridiculous and unsupportable. No, their releases don't get especially good market support in the US from Disney, but most of the Joe Six-packs I know who've seen Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away thought they were either (a) boring as all hell, (b) pointless, or (c) impossible to understand.
Think what you want of these people, but this is the audience that is attracted to movies like Toy Story or Aladdin or any of the dozens of like films: very American, lots of "physical" humor, not especially deep. People want crap like what Disney produces; they just need to rediscover what makes good crap.
I'll content myself with being among the few Americans who enjoy anime, but I will never delude myself into thinking it might ever be mass-market fare in the US.
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I'm not sure that originality is Disney's biggest problem. After all, some of Disney's biggest 2D hits were based on fairy tales and fables (Beauty & The Beast, The Little Mermaid, and yes, Aladdin and The Lion King [based on Hamlet] ). No, I think the big problem is Disney can't seem to find something that audiences identify with anymore. In the 90's, that something was the production value of a cartoon with Broadway musical numbers combined with the best animation Disney had to offer, and decent story telling (Aladdin was nearly completely rewritten before it was ever released).
So far, Disney can't find that niche to milk it. Pixar has managed to find this formula without musical numbers. Can Disney do the same? So far, the answer seems to be a resounding no.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
That, or it means it kicks ass like Miyazaki's other works.
If it weren't for my "Don't buy stuff published by MPAA members" policy, I'd own at least Kiki's Delivery Service.
Howl's Moving Castle may be the third Miyazaki film Disney has distributed in the U.S., but that doesn't mean much unless you live in a major metropolitan area. Those of us stuck outside the 20 largest cities in the U.S. are doomed to wait an additional six months for these title to come out on DVD. Apparently, Miyazaki is a taste that those of us in small towns to medium-sized cities just aren't cultured enough to understand. God forbid that Disney would actually do a wide release of these masterpieces, and actually back it up with advertising.
While the DVD releases have been good, I was under the impression that it was the boys at Pizar who got Disney to distribute Miyazaki's work in the U.S. in the first place. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
You're only as smart as your brain.
Setting aside the fact tht TS and FN were not, properly, Disney films, I don't think that the hits are the problem. Someone at Disney has given up on animation. There have been pretty good films (not ohmygodgottaseeita100times good), and the young audience doesn't really care that much about the nuances of story line.
The best example recently is the Heffalump movie. It's a little-kid movie, not the traditional epic, but its great for little kids (I'd say under 5, maybe up to 7 or 8 depending on the child). We saw it with my 2 year old in the theater. When it came out on DVD, we got it. So, if you were head of marketing, and you had a fairly big DVD release, how would you handle the marchandising? Lots of Roo and Lumpy stuffed animals, right? Midshare, get the kids playing with them. Give them something tangible to reinforce the whole Pooh franchise, right?
WRONG! Not only do most of the retail outlets have nothing in the Pooh line except - maybe - a stuffed Pooh bear that isn't tied to the release at all, but even the freakin' Disney Store online doesn't have a Lumpy. None. Nada. Zilch. Now, they did have two Lumpys in the local Disney Store . And those were left over from the shipment after the theatrical release, when the original (meager) shipment of Lumpy and Roo sold out in about a day and a half. Flew off the shelves, according to the DS worker.
No, in my opinion somebody at the top has purposely set the 2D animations up to fail.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There's much irony in the fact that in his heroic years, Disney used to be a victim of intellectual property rights abuse. First, he was "outlawyered" by his coworker Charles Mintz who basically stole rights to Oswald, The Lucky Rabbit, leaving Disney seemingly without any chance. To get out of this predicament, Disney had to hastily invent another character and thus Mickey was born. But even then, major Hollywood studios have had a virtual monopoly on sound and Disney had no option but use a patent-infringing system known as Cinephone to create the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
One might expect that being a victim of abuse, Disney should never be abusive to the others. However, in real life it's almost always the opposite. When you are a victim, you don't dream about the perfect world, where nobody is a victim - you dream of the world where YOU are no longer a victim. I think this could partially explain this company's attitude to patents, copyright and trademark. "There was no mercy for me - why should I have it now for anyone?"
Disney's contract with Ghibli requires them to not edit it. Localization in the dub is allowed, as long as the story doesn't take a big hit, but nothing else.
Rumor is, Miyazaki even sent them a genuine katana with a note to that effect attached to drive the point home.
"Lion King" (which was not originally planned to be such a big hit!)
The Lion King wasn't planned to be a big hit but it was, of course it wasn't really their movie at all, just a prettier version of someone elses, likely.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Sorry...that didn't work.
THE LINK
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
Miyazaki may be an ubelievably great artist, but his movies will not bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in movie sales, and billions in merchandizing
... Except in Japan. In Japan, Miyazaki's movies really do bring in this kind of revenue, and he's without question the most popular animator in Japan. Maybe the most popular film-maker in Japan. Of course there are cultural differences, but is the concept of what makes a good story really that different in Japan and America? And by the way, the article is talking about using Miyazaki's approach, not his actual films - Disney have already have already managed to procure global distribution rights to Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, as well as the video rights to most of the others. (They've done a really poor job of the region 2 DVDs so far, as well.)
One good turn - gets all the covers.
I can't imagine what such a note would say that would drive the point home, unless it went something like this:
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As far as I am concerned, Disney has always been about seducing children to the dark side. After all, Mary Poppins was a witch who took her charges to a meeting of her coven. Then there are films like "bedknobs and broomsticks". Or clips like Mickey as the sorcerers apprentice. Can anyone think of a Disney film that has promoted faith in God... didn't think so. The trouble is that our whole culture has become so hedonistic and pagan, that the devil no longer *needs* Disney, he has video games teaching children to cast spells and make pacts with demons before most of them can read.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
need i say more?
indierock / punkrock band photos and more... http://www.digitaldefection.net
Or a World War.
Will anime last? Will anime last?
Are you kidding?
I thought anime was just a fad during ROBOTECH. I thought I was the only one who worshipped at the altar of Star Blazers.
And this is back in the day when you couldn't get anime at the local Blockbuster, when the only way to see anime was to have a friend (or a friend of a friend of friend) send you copies of tapes that originated in Japan.
We sat in darkended rooms watching 10th gen copies of tapes that were so blurry by that time you could barely see the characters or hear the sound. Just look up the history of the CFO (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) for that bit of madness.
Yeah, anime is just a fad, that has lasted 30+ years so far in this country alone, with no sign of abating. Anime is now glutting the animation market, you can barely find a cartoon on TV or in the video stores that *isn't* anime or anime-based, or anime looking.
Cartoon Network, to their credit, is producing a lot of animation with a variety of styles, and much of it is quite good. But, their action-oriented stuff is generally anime-looking (teen titans, justice league, etc. etc.)
Star Blazers will have it's 25th anniversary IN THIS COUNTRY (the USA), in September. That's Star Blazers, not Space Cruiser Yamato.
And, despite the crude looking animation, it's still one of my favorite shows, one of the hallmarks of anime everywhere, and still a fairly strong seller on DVD because of the power of its storyline and characters.
Yeah it's fad. A Fad might be the current hupla surrounding the re-release of GATCHAMAN, which you might have seen as Battle of the Planets (or Eagle Riders or G-Force). I saw the DVD preview for that recently, and jumped out of my seat.
But anime appears to be here to stay. Consider the fans of Astroboy, now aging into their 50's, who are still fans of Astroboy, or who, at least, can fondly remember the opening song.
And what would your childhood have been without Speed Racer, currently enjoying a breif stint doing Geico Commercials (because everyone remembers the show!).
Yeah, anime is a fad. It's a fad that has already lasted an entire generation, and kids who've been fed a steady diet of Pokemon are now turning to Love Hina (as my nephew is), and then soon Evangelion.
I'd dropped out of the anime scene until I came across something called "Big O" on Cartoon Network. That show was so friggin amazing that I became an anime fan again, practically overnight.
I'm in my 40's. Please, tell me this is a fad. Because so far, it's outlasted my entire wardrobe.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
A small feature on the Pixar Exhibition at the Studio Ghibli Museum: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/museum/pixar/
If the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons went into the public domain, the character itself would also become public domain. Although more recent Mickey cartoons would still be copyrighted, anyone could start making their own new Mickey Mouse cartoons. Or t-shirts, or watches, or lunch boxes... One would only need to be careful to derive their Mickey drawings etc. from the public domain works, rather than later versions.
It fails to mention that The Lion King is not Disney's original story, but was instead plagiarized from Kimba the White Lion.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.