Mary Sue and the MacGuffin

Bamyasi · January 20, 2018 05:13 PM

Wow bad.

soup · January 20, 2018 05:20 PM

could you elaborate

Bamyasi · January 20, 2018 10:04 PM

Wow bad story.
Wow bad designs.
Wow bad music.
One good character with hardly any screentime.
Main character design was okay.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Cm0YYNgNr7A

Catch it on torrent but do not pay to see this. Worst Ghibli-associated movie by a mile.

soup · January 21, 2018 06:24 AM

Thank you wizard, I will heed your warning but ultimately end up ignoring your wise council because I am a fool.

rtil · January 21, 2018 12:42 PM

i'm seeing the movie on wednesday. the consensus seems to be the plot is very shallow, and it is very similar thematically to some ghibli classics but rings pretty hollow. i'm keeping my expectations low. i think Yonebayashi has a lot of potential as a director but maybe he needs to be surrounded by more talented writers.

Yvonne · January 21, 2018 05:45 PM

Oouh. Pretty colours and she's beautiful.

rtil · January 25, 2018 12:10 PM

yes it was kind of bad. i rolled my eyes a few times at how much it beats you over the head with its themes despite having really weak character development. only very small children won't be disappointed with all the missed potential and all the ways the story could have branched out. it was like spirited away without any of the worldbuilding or rich characters. a world with hundreds of characters yet it felt so empty. yonebayashi can do better, i can only attribute this to the difficulties of starting a new studio. hopefully their next outing will be better. my detailed thoughts are on this mal review, but basically i'm just comparing it to echoes of ghibli and where it succeeded and failed.

Bamyasi · January 26, 2018 06:49 AM

Great fuggin review, that. I think you nailed it.

The only thing I would add (rather cynically) is that it was quite upsetting to see such a talented director be given what from where I'm standing looks like carte blanche to do whatever the fuck he wanted but instead gave us what for all intents and purposes is the Toyland Video production to Ghibli's Pixar (this is hyperbole).

For that reason I give it a 3/10. Really hope Yaboinebayashi gets his shit together and comes up with his own brand but I guess it took Shinkai this long to step out from Miyazaki's shadow and most other feature directors like Hosoda are still suffocating under it. My prayers are with them.

Making a good animated feature seems really fuggin hard.

rtil · January 26, 2018 03:39 PM

that's why i added that maybe part of the problem is that he no longer has the ghibli masters breathing down his neck and correcting his mistakes as he directs. they probably didn't want to make the same mistake with goro, and guided yonebayashi's hand. now that they aren't there, maybe he isn't the director we thought he was.

of course, that's just a worst case scenario. and i don't think yonebayashi will be the only director at ponoc. it was a "safe" movie and it made good money, so hopefully they can bounce back and make a good 2nd outing.

Bamyasi · January 26, 2018 05:32 PM

Oh yeah I just meant it was sad to see founding a new studio gave Yonebayashi less apparent freedom rather than more.

I'm glad it's making money at least. What did you think of the secondary and tertiary character designs? They stood out to me as uh rather bad.

rtil · January 27, 2018 02:37 AM

he probably does have more freedom but might be uncomfortable or incapable of straying from familiarity.

i wasn't particularly blown away by any of the character designs, everyone seemed rather mundane for better or worse. like everything else about the movie, no risks were taken when it came to this department.