Will Miyazaki's new animation "Spirited Away" succeed in the US?

Cafe Society
1

It’s been a smash hit in Japan with the highest all-time gross at the box-office It’s also been a critical success winning a Golden Bear at the Berlin festival . Now it’s going to be released in the US (On Sept 20 IIRC)

Some things going for it:

  1. It’s a more standard children’s film compared to Miyazaki’s last film Princess Mononoke which is a great film but not really for children (and which did poorly at the American box-office although some blame Disney’s release strategy for that)
    2)It’s likely to get rave reviews from American critics especially from Roger Ebert who is a big fan of Miyazaki.
    3)Disney seems to have put a lot of effort in the dub assigning it their star director John Lasseter. By all accounts the dub is excellent.
    4)There is a solid core of Miyazaki fans in the US who should create some word of mouth.

OTOH:
1)At a little more than two hours it’s longer than most children’s films in the US.
2)Summer holidays are over.
3)Disney once again seems to be rather cautious with a limited release in a few cities at first. This caution might be self-fulfilling.

What do you think?
BTW a good site for information on the film and all things Miyazaki:
www.nausicaa.net
Here is the IMDB entry:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0245429

2

Children’s film? Daaaamn, I am suddenly looking forward to my DVD a lot less.

3

It might be more of a children’s movie than Mononoke, but the blood flies pretty freely, along with several other bodily fluids. Kaonashi (no-face) was also kind of disturbing at times.

I really enjoyed it, but I don’t know how it will do in the States. The problem is that it doesn’t really fit neatly into any category: it’s an animated film about a little girl, but it’s not really a children’s movie; it has some humorous parts, some action parts, and some adventure parts, but none of them make up enough of the story to call it a comedy, action or adventure movie.

I hope I’m just underestimating American movie viewers, because it was a great film, and deserves recognition.

4

I managed to get a subtitled copy a few months ago, and I loved the movie. But then, I love Miyazaki. I’m not sure how well this will do in the US. It’s your basic fairytale, but there are a lot of things in it I’m not sure will make sense to US viewers. There are a lot of references in it to traditional Japanese folktales and religious practices which will go right over the heads of most people and leave them confused. Also, mainstream US markets generally do not know how to react to anything animated that is not completely and 100% for kids. Anything disturbing in animation, such as depictions of injury or of blood, don’t go over well. And it has no hugely climactic super-happy ending, which I think most US audiences expect with a ‘kids’ movie’, so this could well count against it.

Hardcore Miyazaki fans have probably already seen the film in its original or subtitled version, and from what I know about many self-described ‘otaku’, they don’t go in for Americanized anime. I don’t know if you can count on them in the box office. And quite frankly, the general US movie-going population just doesn’t respond well to foreign films, no matter how well they are re-edited and dubbed to fit their audience.

So it’ll probably have the same problems Princess Mononoke did. Poor box office showing, generally poor reviews, as most reviewers just won’t know what to make of it, but a steady renter at most video rental establishments. Even My Neighbor Totoro, the most ‘for kids’ film Miyazaki has done so far, didn’t do too well here. It was criticized as being too slow and weak in the plot. American kids didn’t respond well because there wasn’t enough action for them- years of fast-paced, violent (though bloodless) cartoons have not prepared them for an actual film.

And don’t even get me started on Grave of the Fireflies.

5

Spirited Away was reviewed on Ebert and Roper just now and both of them really liked it. It was great to see clips from the movie for the first time. I think technically the animation looks less lush than Mononoke but in terms of visual inventiveness it is amazing.

“Children’s film? Daaaamn, I am suddenly looking forward to my DVD a lot less”
I don’t think “children’s film” is term of abuse merely an indication of its suitability for children. Totoro and Kiki are children’s films but still beautiful and moving to adults. Spirited Away wouldn’t have won the Golden Bear if it was childish and simplistic.

“generally poor reviews, as most reviewers just won’t know what to make of it”
Actually Mononoke received near unanimous praise from American reviewers and Spirited Away is likely to get the same as the Ebert and Roper show indicated.

6

It may be a children’s film relative to Mononoke, but only in relation to Mononoke. Some of the images in the film might be too scary for young children.

Anyway, I saw Spirited a week ago or so, and I liked it a lot. I like films where normal people step into fantasy worlds (as opposed to being extraordinary characters in a fantasy world from the get-go, like in Mononoke), and Spirited was like that.

However, I too suspect American audiences won’t be as receptive to the film, and that it won’t do well at all. Then I’ll remember that Swimfan was number one its debut weekend, and I’ll be thoroughly disgusted.

On the bright side, it’ll start playing in Seattle this weekend, so I’ll be able to see this in a real theater, with a big screen and good sound system. It’ll be awesome.

7

I just watched it. It’s pretty good, I think, probably better than Mononoke. I liked the lack of a typically overblown anime finale. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of a memorable theme from Joe Hisaishi, though his work was solid.

However, I don’t think this movie has a chance in the US, barring a freak occurence of huge word of mouth. It’s an even tougher sell than Mononoke, and frankly, I think that while story-wise it’s more of a children’s film, in terms of content it’s even less so. The amount of glop in this movie is staggering, and much of it would be too scary for younger kids. It’s also way too long for the attention spans of younger kids; it was even a little long for me, and I’ve seen plenty of Japanese films. I have a hard time seeing what kind of advertising they could come up with that would effectively push this to an adult audience, even those who might enjoy it if they gave it a chance.

8

First things first, I predict that much of Spirited Away’s success in America will depend on the quality voice acting (not a whole lot of really big names attached, I see; we’ll see how this goes).

In every other way, however, Spirited Away deserves to do significantly better than Princess Mononoke.

Visually. Spirited Away has the most stunning and imaginative visuals that I have ever seen. Kodama are fine and good, but the creatures in SA have them outdone both in terms of imagination and cuteness.

( ::KKB takes a moment of silence to mourn his lost Kodama pin:: )

Children’s reaction. The kids will eat this movie up.

First off, the protagonist is a young girl (eleven or twelve, perhaps), and there aren’t nearly as many meddling adults as Mononoke had. (In fact, if you define “adults” as being adult and human, there aren’t any for most of the movie.) She’s also much more likable than either of the young protagonists from PM (Ashitaka was too serious and San was just plain cold). In other words, she’s just a little girl, and kids dig story characters that are like them.

Secondly, the story is much more goal oriented and isn’t as bogged down (as a child would perceive it) with moral and ideological ambiguity as PM. In other words, it’s not as talky.

Finally, on a related note, there’s more action than in PM (it’s also less gory, FWIW). And the visuals, which I think children would find amusing, should get them through the slow bits (which, considering Miyazaki’s other works, really aren’t all that slow at all).

Adult reactions. The few adults who see it should enjoy it.

It is long, but it is at the same time very straightforward (well, for the most part), and the time should go by relatively quickly. (It’s also shorter than AotC, I believe, and I’m sure tens of thousands of parents sat through that.) Did I mention that it’s a gorgeous movie?

Thematically, it’s a very…“warm fuzzy” movie, so it shouldn’t get the “Huh? Did we win?” type reaction that PM had. And, again, it’s not as gory so not as much “My darling child shouldn’t have been exposed to that” reaction. (There is blood, btw, but no severed hands. That should count for something.)

Box office. It will make a depressingly small amount of money, as Disney doesn’t seem to be promoting this movie at all.

Only a chance encounter with a movie poster let me know that Disney was releasing this movie in September (prior to this, I only heard whisperings that Disney had any plans for it at all), and that doesn’t bode well at all. On the other hand, this movie does have potential for generating good, and strong, word of mouth, if Disney does release it in enough theaters nationwide. We’ll just have to see.

9

Though I haven’t seen the movie myself I agree with KK that American children will love the movie if given the chance.

For one thing both Totoro and Kiki seem to be quite popular in the US in terms of the video market without any significant marketing push. And don’t forget that American kids today grow up on Japanese pop culture both in terms of video games and animation. And the movie doesn’t seem to be much weirder than ,say, Alice in Wonderland.

In terms of the parents I think that the high praise of big critics like Ebert would be a big draw if marketed properly through trailers.

I really think that if Disney took the plunge and prepared a 20 million dollar marketing campaign and a nationwide release they would be rewarded with a hit. Of course the failure of Mononoke makes that look really risky. But I don’t think Mononoke was the right film to start of with in the US market and in any case Disney seemed to give it a limited release with little advertising.

Unfortunately I get the impression that Disney will be timid again, go for a limited release and fail to market it properly.

BTW yahoo has the trailer and some nice clips.From what I have seen the voice acting does seem excellent
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1808405164&cf=trailer

10

As I suspected the American reviews have been extremely positive.A 100% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes after 51 reviews. Check them out.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/SpiritedAway-1116064
Great reviews from Roger Ebert, Elvis Mitchell (NYTimes) and Kenneth Turan (LA Times) among many others.

Here’s hoping that Disney sheds its timidity and uses these good reviews successfully in an aggressive marketing campaign. I don’t have too many hopes but I suppose the fact that they took the trouble to make a good dub is a good sign.

11

I saw the Americanized Dubbed version today (Digitally!! Whoo-hoo technology!!). It was pretty good. The length didn’t bother me at all, and i didn’t notice many kids being taken out to go to the bathroom or anything (though there was this one guy who fell asleep and started snoring). I plan on heading to J-Town to catch the subtitled version in a week or so so i can compare the two.

12

I took my family to see it this weekend and it was breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative.
However, as to its success it the US, I’d have to say it has the deck stacked against it.
Normally when a film comes out, we have an opportunity to see it in any of the nearby mega-multiplexes, ranging from 16-20 screens within a 5-10 mile range. Not only that, but the media is usually saturated with ads for each new release hitting the screens. We didn’t see or hear any ads for “Spirited Away”, but fortunately almost all of the movie critics in the papers did a big feature on it, so we were made aware of it being out. When we started checking to see which of our local multiplexes was showing it, we were amazed to find it was only showing in SF, Berkeley, and Oakland here in the bay area. They seemed to have completely written off the suburbs.
We took the 25 mile train ride into SF to see it, and it was definitely worth the effort. But how many others are willing to make the effort?
Normally, a major release is shown on scores of screens locally, including showings around every half hour at many multiplexes. “Spirited Away” was on about 3 screens, and only shown 3 times a day at the theatre in SF we went to. Little chance of piling up the big numbers. Hollywood will contend that it is not a success compared to the cookie cutter family fare they serve up. That it is too long and complex for the American audience. So it looks like they have created a self-fulflling prophecy regarding the success of “Spirited Away.”
But do whatever you have to do to see this magnificent film.

13

I agree 100% that American kids(and many adults) would lap up Spirited Away if given the chance and that Disney’s timid release is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Meanwhile Spirited Away has done quite decently on its first weekend with almost half a million dollars from about 24theatres; an average of about 17 thousand which is quite decent.

The charitable view of Disney’s strategy is that it is waiting to see how the movie does,hope for some word of mouth and then releasing it more widely. Hopefully Spirited Away has passed the first test. The problem with this strategy is that it risks losing the buzz from the unanimously positive reviews that the movie has got.

14

I finally saw it yesterday as well. I think if any of the Ghibli movies has a chance at being a big commercial hit in the US (short of re-releasing Totoro), it’d be this one. But I’ve never been any good at predicting commercial success – I thought Monsters, Inc. was better than Shrek in every possible way, and I enjoyed Lilo and Stitch so much that I can’t understand why it wasn’t bigger.

But just based on content alone, it’s got everything it takes. Beautiful animation, enough action to please the older kids, cute characters to please everybody, not too violent or bloody, and an all-around fantastic voice cast (especially Suzanne Pleshette and Daveigh Chase). It is a bit longer than animated features in the US tend to be, but there were several little kids in the audience when I saw it, and they seemed to be engrossed by every minute of it.

I hope y’all are right and Disney will expand the movie to more theaters. As others have mentioned, here in the Bay Area, which I would imagine to be a key target market for the movie, it’s still not playing widely and hasn’t been advertised at all. I had to make the trek out to San Francisco to see it. On the plus side, the theater was mostly full.

15

A couple of other things I just noticed while looking around the web:

  1. Disney’s marketing approach seems to emphasize that it’s a Japanese (or at least, foreign) film. I wonder if that’s the right approach. Considering that a disturbing number of people still use the term “Japanimation,” I wonder if they’re going to perceive that the movie is too foreign, or associate it with Dragonball and Gundam and giant robots and tentacle rape scenes.

  2. The trailer also made the movie look pretty scary. Granted, it’s PG, so they’re going for an older audience than the typical Disney movie. But the violence and scares are incidental to the movie, more like a Grimm fairy tale than something like Mononoke. I thought the overall tone was a lot closer to Totoro than anything else.

  3. Konnichi-wa, Opal-san!

And one other thing I just remembered: I love the music from the film, but hate how it was used. It seemed like it was always getting in the way and seeming inappropriate. But on its own, it’s beautiful stuff.

16

I can’t find any up-to-date sites with per-screen averages listed. Is $17K per screen good or merely average?

17

$17k per screen is very good. That’s the highest per screen value this week. Although since it’s showing in just 26 theaters I imagine that number is scewed.

Still one would hope it’s enough cause to spread the movie to more and more theaters.

18

Despite the fact that Hawaii has the largest percentage of Japanese in the US it ain’t playing here.

19

Just come here to San Fran. Taht seems to be what everyone else in this thread did!!! :stuck_out_tongue:

20

Not us. We saw it in Seattle. :wink:

It’s not playing in Hawaii? Damn. Here’s hoping it gets a nationwide release soon.