4 ms·

It'll be interesting to see how the box office does. It's been a while since _The Wind Rises_ and Miyazaki is more beloved than ever and all 3 reviews I've read

by gwern 3y ago

It'll be interesting to see how the box office does. It's been a while since _The Wind Rises_ and Miyazaki is more beloved than ever and all 3 reviews I've read thus far seem highly positive (and certainly more positive than _The Wind Rises_), but there's also an extraordinarily low level of discussion. I was shocked when I clicked on the first review and realized it was a review - "oh, huh, when did it come out?" The justification offered about 'people being tired of marketing' sounds absurd, and more like they are finding excuses to skip work because they are old & exhausted, and another step in winding down Ghibli. I expect lower box office than it deserves; even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect...

anigbrowl 3y ago
There were long lines snaking out of theaters to see it despite the almost complete lack of marketing. Maybe people are sick of being marketed to, I certainly am. I'm not reading this review because I don't want to know anything about the movie before I see it. Even the international title is a disappointing concession to the retailing of art as entertainment product.
- wk_end 3y ago
  I'm not sure how I'd title it if I were the American distributor, to be honest. It's not an adaptation, but 君たちはどう生きるか is the name of a book for young adults that the Japanese audience might be familiar with; the reference will be lost on an English-speaking audience, draining it of some of its meaning and nostalgia. Imagine a film called "The Little Prince" or something...but of course, The Little Prince isn't the same book, with the same themes, as 君たちはどう生きるか. And even if there were a book which the reference mapped onto well, it still feels like referencing a different title in the translation would be egregious. In that sense, I'm somewhat fond of "The Boy and the Heron", though I acknowledge it isn't ideal and, as someone who prefers more literal translations, wouldn't necessarily be the route I'd take. Without injecting any specific (and thus wrong) reference, it evokes the nostalgic feeling of English childhood fables and aphorisms - and it lends it their feeling of moral weight, too, just as the Japanese title does. It's a good and evocative title. The literal translation everyone's using, "How Do You Live?", also isn't ideal. There's a couple of grammatical mismatches between the two languages; whereas the "you" in English can be both singular and plural, the Japanese is explicitly plural; and Japanese doesn't explicitly differentiate present and future tense, and here the meaning is actually likely more future tense. But the big problem is that, to my ears, it sounds deeply accusatory in English, along the lines of "How do you live with yourself?" - and given Miyazaki's views and temperament that wouldn't have surprised me! But in truth the intended Japanese meaning is more inquisitive and philosophical. The original title, in the original novel, is from a book inside of the book, left as a question to the reader. In prose I might translate it as, "How will you, readers, choose to live your lives?", but there's countless variations I've considered; none of them are quite right, and to be honest none quite have the original's punch of a good title! (disclaimer: I'm a reasonably advanced student of the Japanese language but not a native speaker. Apologies if I've gotten anything wrong.)
  - Jill_the_Pill 3y ago
    "How do you live with yourself?" Huh. I read the new English translation of the book and came away with just that sentiment: Copper lets his friends down and has to figure out how to go on.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    That's an excellent argument. While I'd have preferred to stay closer to the original title (eg 'How shall we live?', where the 'we' connotates an abstract us), you make a good case for why the distributors might have opted for vague and mysterious over philosophical but possibly awkward.
momonotoro 3y ago
What's the over-under that Miyazaki cares one whit about how it does at the box office, though? Based on his past work, he doesn't seem like the sort of person who sees money as a way of keeping score. And this isn't the first time that he's retired and come back to make one last film. Maybe he just wanted to tell another story, and didn't feel like bothering with the whole palaver of drumming up interest and courting the press?
soupfordummies 3y ago
Seriously! I had no idea this even EXISTED and I actually sat down and looked over all the upcoming movies recently-- multiple times!
giraffe_lady 3y ago
This only makes sense if you value "box office numbers" for their own sake which this signals very clearly that they do not. As the article points out it's not the first time he's said he thinks his career has run its course, but there's also no reason to think he wasn't sincere any of those times. He knows he's famous and it will do very well without marketing. Why optimize a metric you don't care about? I don't find the cynical laziness explanation as convincing as the stated motivation tbh.
yardie 3y ago
I learned about it a few weeks ago because the cinema and anime blogs were posting about a new Miyazaki project that had zero marketing, which is a kind of brilliant marketing in itself. So, here we are discussing marketing strategy about a film that wasn't marketed.
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
> but there's also an extraordinarily low level of discussion. I was shocked when I clicked on the first review and realized it was a review - "oh, huh, when did it come out?" You are commenting on an article in the Verge for a movie which has only been released in Japan and won’t be out in the USA for months. This article is one of many in most western publications. A lot can be said about this movie but having a low level of discussion is definitely not one of them. What’s the point of a marketing campaign when you have so much organic reach?
- jvican 3y ago
  You seem to assume @gwern isn't a Japanese speaker. His comments about low volume of reviews might very well apply to just Japan.
  - flakiness 3y ago
    Japanese speaker here. It does. The review volume is low (apparently no preview for media?), and these people aren't very excited, it seems.)
  - WastingMyTime89 3y ago
    I don’t need to assume anything. Gwern isn’t an anonymous poster. His bio is in his profile and he is indeed American. First results are in by the way. Second highest results for the opening weekend of a Ghibli movie. I think they will survive the lack of marketing.
    - Quinzel 3y ago
      > I don’t need to assume anything. Gwern isn’t an anonymous poster. His bio is in his profile and he is indeed American Far out, thank you for this, I was under the impression Gwern was anonymous - I’m glad you don’t need to assume anything.
- gwern 3y ago
  There were way more Western articles about _The Wind Rises_ back then. I definitely wasn't clicking on a review and going 'wait, that came out already?' Everyone knew, whether or not they had any interest in anime.
franciscop 3y ago
> even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect At Hayao Miyazaki level, having no marketing IS a very clear PR move. The article states it clearly, it's adding mystery to the movie. Everyone knows that it's not going to be a bad movie since it's a Ghibli one, but also no one knows what it is about so everyone is impatient to go watch it and discover all that mystery. Since the opposite is true, I've lost interest in movies when the trailer revealed way too much, I can see this as a clear move in the opposite direction.
numpad0 3y ago
Haven't watched yet but words I have seen used to describe so far are it's a concentrate, a funeral, those kinds. And there's absolutely no trailer for this movie; there's the poster, a "quock quock quock" tweet from Ghibli's Twitter account, that's all that are out of theaters on this matter. Now that I'm mildly spoiled by Verge I have to go watch it. damn. Hopefully they don't mandate suit and a tie.
coldtea 3y ago
>even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect... But, but Hayao Miyazaki could not give less fucks about the effect...
arkitaip 3y ago
I feel the same about all movies hitting theaters these days. The marketing and the social discussions just aren't there anymore.
isykt 3y ago
> Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect... He doesn’t care. He won an Oscar and didn’t show up. The Oscar is still at Disney.
phlakaton 3y ago
I am one of I presume millions of Americans for whom the words > new Miyasaki flick are all the marketing I need. Even the poster is superfluous. As long as somebody reminds me when the film lands in the States, I'm there.

by gwern 3y ago

anigbrowl 3y ago

There were long lines snaking out of theaters to see it despite the almost complete lack of marketing. Maybe people are sick of being marketed to, I certainly am. I'm not reading this review because I don't want to know anything about the movie before I see it. Even the international title is a disappointing concession to the retailing of art as entertainment product.

wk_end 3y ago
I'm not sure how I'd title it if I were the American distributor, to be honest. It's not an adaptation, but 君たちはどう生きるか is the name of a book for young adults that the Japanese audience might be familiar with; the reference will be lost on an English-speaking audience, draining it of some of its meaning and nostalgia. Imagine a film called "The Little Prince" or something...but of course, The Little Prince isn't the same book, with the same themes, as 君たちはどう生きるか. And even if there were a book which the reference mapped onto well, it still feels like referencing a different title in the translation would be egregious. In that sense, I'm somewhat fond of "The Boy and the Heron", though I acknowledge it isn't ideal and, as someone who prefers more literal translations, wouldn't necessarily be the route I'd take. Without injecting any specific (and thus wrong) reference, it evokes the nostalgic feeling of English childhood fables and aphorisms - and it lends it their feeling of moral weight, too, just as the Japanese title does. It's a good and evocative title. The literal translation everyone's using, "How Do You Live?", also isn't ideal. There's a couple of grammatical mismatches between the two languages; whereas the "you" in English can be both singular and plural, the Japanese is explicitly plural; and Japanese doesn't explicitly differentiate present and future tense, and here the meaning is actually likely more future tense. But the big problem is that, to my ears, it sounds deeply accusatory in English, along the lines of "How do you live with yourself?" - and given Miyazaki's views and temperament that wouldn't have surprised me! But in truth the intended Japanese meaning is more inquisitive and philosophical. The original title, in the original novel, is from a book inside of the book, left as a question to the reader. In prose I might translate it as, "How will you, readers, choose to live your lives?", but there's countless variations I've considered; none of them are quite right, and to be honest none quite have the original's punch of a good title! (disclaimer: I'm a reasonably advanced student of the Japanese language but not a native speaker. Apologies if I've gotten anything wrong.)
- Jill_the_Pill 3y ago
  "How do you live with yourself?" Huh. I read the new English translation of the book and came away with just that sentiment: Copper lets his friends down and has to figure out how to go on.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  That's an excellent argument. While I'd have preferred to stay closer to the original title (eg 'How shall we live?', where the 'we' connotates an abstract us), you make a good case for why the distributors might have opted for vague and mysterious over philosophical but possibly awkward.

momonotoro 3y ago

What's the over-under that Miyazaki cares one whit about how it does at the box office, though? Based on his past work, he doesn't seem like the sort of person who sees money as a way of keeping score. And this isn't the first time that he's retired and come back to make one last film. Maybe he just wanted to tell another story, and didn't feel like bothering with the whole palaver of drumming up interest and courting the press?

soupfordummies 3y ago

Seriously! I had no idea this even EXISTED and I actually sat down and looked over all the upcoming movies recently-- multiple times!

giraffe_lady 3y ago

This only makes sense if you value "box office numbers" for their own sake which this signals very clearly that they do not. As the article points out it's not the first time he's said he thinks his career has run its course, but there's also no reason to think he wasn't sincere any of those times. He knows he's famous and it will do very well without marketing. Why optimize a metric you don't care about? I don't find the cynical laziness explanation as convincing as the stated motivation tbh.

yardie 3y ago

I learned about it a few weeks ago because the cinema and anime blogs were posting about a new Miyazaki project that had zero marketing, which is a kind of brilliant marketing in itself. So, here we are discussing marketing strategy about a film that wasn't marketed.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

> but there's also an extraordinarily low level of discussion. I was shocked when I clicked on the first review and realized it was a review - "oh, huh, when did it come out?" You are commenting on an article in the Verge for a movie which has only been released in Japan and won’t be out in the USA for months. This article is one of many in most western publications. A lot can be said about this movie but having a low level of discussion is definitely not one of them. What’s the point of a marketing campaign when you have so much organic reach?

jvican 3y ago
You seem to assume @gwern isn't a Japanese speaker. His comments about low volume of reviews might very well apply to just Japan.
- flakiness 3y ago
  Japanese speaker here. It does. The review volume is low (apparently no preview for media?), and these people aren't very excited, it seems.)
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  I don’t need to assume anything. Gwern isn’t an anonymous poster. His bio is in his profile and he is indeed American. First results are in by the way. Second highest results for the opening weekend of a Ghibli movie. I think they will survive the lack of marketing.
  - Quinzel 3y ago
    > I don’t need to assume anything. Gwern isn’t an anonymous poster. His bio is in his profile and he is indeed American Far out, thank you for this, I was under the impression Gwern was anonymous - I’m glad you don’t need to assume anything.
gwern 3y ago
There were way more Western articles about _The Wind Rises_ back then. I definitely wasn't clicking on a review and going 'wait, that came out already?' Everyone knew, whether or not they had any interest in anime.

franciscop 3y ago

> even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect At Hayao Miyazaki level, having no marketing IS a very clear PR move. The article states it clearly, it's adding mystery to the movie. Everyone knows that it's not going to be a bad movie since it's a Ghibli one, but also no one knows what it is about so everyone is impatient to go watch it and discover all that mystery. Since the opposite is true, I've lost interest in movies when the trailer revealed way too much, I can see this as a clear move in the opposite direction.

numpad0 3y ago

Haven't watched yet but words I have seen used to describe so far are it's a concentrate, a funeral, those kinds. And there's absolutely no trailer for this movie; there's the poster, a "quock quock quock" tweet from Ghibli's Twitter account, that's all that are out of theaters on this matter. Now that I'm mildly spoiled by Verge I have to go watch it. damn. Hopefully they don't mandate suit and a tie.

coldtea 3y ago

>even Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect... But, but Hayao Miyazaki could not give less fucks about the effect...

arkitaip 3y ago

I feel the same about all movies hitting theaters these days. The marketing and the social discussions just aren't there anymore.

isykt 3y ago

> Hayao Miyazaki can't release a movie with zero marketing and expect no effect... He doesn’t care. He won an Oscar and didn’t show up. The Oscar is still at Disney.

phlakaton 3y ago

I am one of I presume millions of Americans for whom the words > new Miyasaki flick are all the marketing I need. Even the poster is superfluous. As long as somebody reminds me when the film lands in the States, I'm there.