An Unmade Film Shaped Hayao Miyazaki | Hacker News Reader

An Unmade Film Shaped Hayao Miyazaki

animationobsessive.substack.com

67 pointsvinhnx9 comments

> He felt kind of washed up. Miyazaki’s debut feature The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) had flopped at the box office, and he viewed it as a rehash of his past projects. “I don’t think I added anything new,” he admitted. He saw his creations as stuck.

He's awfully hard on himself. Castle of Cagliostro is, by all accounts, a fantastic movie that rises well above its source material. And it has an immortal legacy as an influence on several major Western animation studios.

You don't get to be great by thinking your work is already good enough; then you don't push yourself to make it better

If even your good work is crap in your own eyes, and you keep pushing well beyond that because you think it still isn't good enough, you can (but won't necessarily) end up in the pantheon of your artform

Contrast this with publishing an LLM's first response to a query, which is the polar opposite course of action

The way Miyazaki’s changes to and own ideas for Rowlf eventually snowballed into something else entirely, Nausicaä, kind of reminds me of how Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ideas for making a Dune movie eventually took on their own life as The Incal.

Also every time I see Miyazaki concept sketches, I’m blown away by how beautiful his watercolors are.

His movies are my favorites. I can almost always watch them no matter my mood. They are simply beautiful, and their pacing is relaxing. I wish more directors would take cues from him.

Same. I lived vicariously through my wife when I started showing all his movies (she had only seen Spirited Away) and can't wait to have a kid and watch everything (multiple times) all over again.

Great in-depth article, as always from `animationobsessive`.

> he got into alt comics in the orbit of Métal Hurlant, a foreign magazine

This is just a strange phrasing, why not just say it was French? Especially considering the next sentence being

> Meanwhile, an American comic from (...)

Seems to be a case of American-centered view "me vs the rest of the world". Or if it is depicted from Miyazaki point of view, it should be clarified.

> Or if it is depicted from Miyazaki point of view, it should be clarified.

It's obvious to me this is from Miyazaki's point of view, it never crossed my mind while reading it that it needed clarification.

I love that Miyazaki's real arc didn't start until he was older. Within this arc there are huge jumps in ability. There are two books that are compilations of interviews Miyazaki did in Japan around the times of each movie releasing. A few things stuck out to me:

1. The Japanese entertainment press is/was FAR more sophisticated than anything we have in the states. 2. Miyazaki is all about the details. There is no aspect of his films where there isn't a compelling 'why'. 3. I wish I understood Japanese so that I could experience these films in his own voice.

The books are Turning Point and Starting Point. Honorable mention is Sharing a House with the Never Ending Man, which was written by the only American who worked at Ghibli for a stretch. That one is less about creativity and more about the movie industry/how hard it is to translate Japanese into English

Even if you're not a native speaker it's worth watching the subbed versions versus the dubbed, mostly because the US distributors (cough Disney cough) demanded thematic motif music stuffed in every single goddamn semi-contemplative break in the action.

The subbed original audio features absolutely top class environmental sound design, and a more sparse musical landscape, when it is even present.

That's not to disparage the US scoring, which is fantastic, but the presence of music in scenes- versus the sound of distant fighting, the chittering winds, roaring water- changes them quite utterly.

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