The state and future of animation

[Ben]

I bet they loved that newfangled Lion King…

[GeffreyDrogon]

Let's change the subject here. If he actually studied animation and storytelling, do you think Goro Miyazaki would actually be a decent filmmaker?

[GeffreyDrogon]

Also, some of my sisters have seen The Lion King remake, though some of them haven't (based on what I've heard).

[Ben]

If he actually studied animation and storytelling, do you think Goro Miyazaki would actually be a decent filmmaker?

Ouch! Something Jar Jar Binks once said, quite often in fact, comes to mind here…

Also, some of my sisters have seen The Lion King remake, though some of them haven't.

Okay, good, well…that narrows things down…

[EricJ]

Let's change the subject here. If he actually studied animation and storytelling, do you think Goro Miyazaki would actually be a decent filmmaker?

Tales From Earthsea and Up From Poppy Hill were.....decent, but as Ghibli successors go, Goro's not only no Hayao Miyazaki, he's no Hiromasa "Secret World of Arietty" Yonebayashi.

He's just....decent.

[GeffreyDrogon]

How about Earwig and the Witch?

[Ben]

That’s what we all thought…

[EricJ]

How about Earwig and the Witch?

You.........don't wanna know.

But to chalk it down to experience, just say that Studio Ghibli and Robert Zemeckis' "Monster House" don't mix.

[Randall]

Earthsea was terrible and aimless. Poppy Hill was actually quite good. But then Earwig disappointed, failing to tell a cohesive story (though it still managed to be entertaining). Overall, Goro ain't the answer to keeping Ghibli going. He is an outsider pretending to be a director.

[GeffreyDrogon]

Why can't independent animation studios pay big companies taxes in exchange for better marketing and advertising?

[GeffreyDrogon]

When it comes to Goro Miyazaki's work, why was From Up on Poppy Hill, a historical film, better received than the two films he adapted from books?

[Randall]

Poppy Hill was simply a much better film. He seemed to have a much stronger handle on the material, perhaps because it was more grounded.

Earthsea was his first feature, and it showed. Badly. No point to it, really. Earwig wasn't too bad, aside from less sophisticated CGI, but the script needed another pass. I just don't think Goro is a strong story guy. Though, even his dad's stories were often crafted on the fly, but at least the dad had stronger story sense.

[EricJ]

Also, Hayao added a few notes to Poppy Hill, which is why the big pan up of all the wacky busy club students on the balconies looks suspiciously like the bathhouse from Spirited Away....

Earthsea wasn't screen-meltingly bad, or even "dreary", unless you were a hard-core LeGuin geek complaining about books accuracies. For those who hadn't read it, it was just depressing, with a gothy villain constantly musing over death, and our Timothy Dalton wizard showing off more magic-for-pointless-magic's-sake we'd had enough of in Howl's Moving Castle.

And Earwig, like the rubbery "theme-park suit" Robert Zemeckis mocap CGI characters in Monster House, proves that Ghibli is not ready to move to CGI until they understand it. Pixar had plenty of practice with shorts before they leaped into the pool.

[Ben]

I don’t quite get the hate heaped on Goro…apart from him, on a wider scale, not every Ghibli film has been gold, Hayao or not: Howl's Moving Castle was almost interminable, along with The Cat Returns (yes, not a Miyazaki I know). They have a solid track record, but the hits and misses are not always as successful as, say, Pixar, even given some of their sequel outings — not that I would really compare both studios since they go for completely different kinds of topics and audiences, but you get my drift.

[GeffreyDrogon]

It also didn't help that Tales From Earthsea was a pretty by-the-numbers fantasy film with a misleading title and weak writing with multiple plot holes and a lack of scale in worldbuilding.