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Post by winnersdontusedrugs on Dec 20, 2017 3:36:48 GMT
I think the more reasonable explanation was that Disney wasn't confident in how Princess Mononoke would perform in the western market, and didn't want to take an already bigger risk than they were already making. Fans look at how popular Miyazaki and Ghibli are now, and are shocked that Disney didn't start shoveling money into the furnace for Ghibli 20-30 years ago when nobody in the west gave a fuck about them. Even now, they're not exactly household names in the west. You say "limited release" as if they got done dirty, but in reality it was probably the best deal anyone was willing to give them at the time.
Who knows, maybe Disney really did try to sabatoge them, or simply put Ghibli on the backburner for the sole reason of "Disney had other stuff going on". Even though the chance isn't high, I wouldn't put it past them. At the same time, jumping to such conclusions is not only unreasonable, but it's giving Ghibli more credit than they really deserve. They wouldn't have become some Disney-rivaling worldwide powerhouse even if they received a golden opportunity back then. They've had better chances to grasp that kind of success in the western market after Princess Mononoke, and they still couldn't do it.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Dec 20, 2017 8:12:21 GMT
winnersdontusedrugs - I also thought this (anime wasn't a famous genre in the US etc.), but the more I search about the subject, more it seems it was a total screw up and in part intentional by Disney. I've found this article from 2003, written when Spirited Away was already a favourite for an Oscar and while anime was getting huge in the US, and Disney still gave less attention and advertising to it than to their b-movies: literally, I'm not making this up; it was much worse than "The Country Bears" (whatever the hell is this), and remember Spirited Away was already an Oscar favourite. They even publicly said they would not distribute the movie, and only changed their minds by the influence of John Lasseter, who was already a Ghibli fan and used his influence at Disney to distribute it, and the fact that the movie was getting all the prizes everywhere. So there was a lot of obvious prejudice against it at Disney. The article clarifies a lot, and I really recommend giving it a read (it's short).Three main reasons given by the article: Disney was never interested in the distribution in the US and only signed the deal to get the VHS distribution in Japan; secondly, they thought animated movies could be only marketed to kids (especially because of all the acompanying merchandising, I guess), so they didn't know what to do with Mononoke, failed at it, and then became wary of other Ghibli's films; third and most important, Ghibli didn't give them rights to merchandising, so Disney didn't have interest in movies that couldn't sell toys, plushies etc. So they ended up releasing an already famous movie, an Oscar favourite - and later winner - at 151 theaters; even after getting an Oscar, they expanded it to about 700. The standard Disney release usually got +3000. And the movie was still a success. And they still gave no proper attention to future Ghibli's films. Also, this proves that Disney's distribution was spotty even when Ghibli and anime became famous, so it's not like they were still dealing with these strange japanese animations - this was 2002-3, after all.
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Dan E. Kool
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Dec 20, 2017 16:22:35 GMT
I think the more reasonable explanation was that Disney wasn't confident in how Princess Mononoke would perform in the western market, and didn't want to take an already bigger risk than they were already making. Fans look at how popular Miyazaki and Ghibli are now, and are shocked that Disney didn't start shoveling money into the furnace for Ghibli 20-30 years ago when nobody in the west gave a fuck about them. Even now, they're not exactly household names in the west. You say "limited release" as if they got done dirty, but in reality it was probably the best deal anyone was willing to give them at the time. This sounds like the most reasonable explanation and, if anything, the article that Cervantes links to confirms it. According to your own article, Studio Ghibli made a lot of money out of Disney marketing the VHS tapes, both abroad and in Japan. Maybe Disney messed up the theatrical release of those movies in the States, or maybe they made as much money as they ever were going to. It's impossible to know if it would have been a bigger hit if Disney had done a better job of marketing it. I doubt it would have changed the game as far as 2D animation goes, though. Disney was already hundreds of millions (and soon to be billions) into Pixar. Hey, I don't care for the singsongy stuff, either, but I don't think that Disney has some sort of moral conviction against the movies that you like. They didn't understand the Japanese stuff, didn't know how to market it, and ended up taking a loss on it. Studio Ghibli wasn't their competition in this situation, they were partners. And like winnersdontusedrugs said, if Disney hadn't tried, who knows, those movies might never have gotten out of Japan at all. |
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Dec 21, 2017 0:54:34 GMT
Dan E. Kool - But that's too reasonable. If I agree, I can't be unreasonably bitter at Disney, and, in that case, what would I be bitter against? 
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Dan E. Kool
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Dec 21, 2017 18:07:46 GMT
Dan E. Kool - But that's too reasonable. If I agree, I can't be unreasonably bitter at Disney, and, in that case, what would I be bitter against? It's alright, man. We all get at least one company to be unreasonably bitter about. Mine used to be Wal-Mart. I've since moved on to Amazon. So long as we acknowledge that it isn't logical, I guess we can still call ourselves sane. |
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Dec 21, 2017 18:53:51 GMT
Dan E. Kool - And if our bitterness against Disney/Wal-Mart/Amazon fails, we always have EA to fall back to.
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Spirit Bomb
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Dec 22, 2017 9:14:26 GMT
Dan E. Kool - But that's too reasonable. If I agree, I can't be unreasonably bitter at Disney, and, in that case, what would I be bitter against? It's alright, man. We all get at least one company to be unreasonably bitter about. Mine used to be Wal-Mart. I've since moved on to Amazon. So long as we acknowledge that it isn't logical, I guess we can still call ourselves sane. Good to hear. I recommend CostCo; based on what I've seen of them, they seem like an objectively better company than Walmart, but Amazon works too. I also HIGHLY advise against supporting ANY fast food chain, since they all use low quality beef which is garunteed to be imported from cattle ranches in South/central america, which is responsible for destroying mile after mile of tropical rainforest everyday. The fast food industry is an evil and extremely unsustainable one. Cervantes you've made some excellent & highly accurate points. Good job. I also would like to add what Disney did to The Black Cauldron; it was a more serious project that was aimed at an older demographic than kids (which ironically means that it would've had a wider appeal than the typical childish Disney animated film). It originally had a lot of violence and scary imagery, but once the CEO of Disney at the time (the same CEO who produced the 90s animated films you & I hate so much) saw the film he was so outraged by it that he demanded that every bit of violence be cut out of the film, and eventually took the original negative into an editing bay and began trimming the footage out himself. In the process he brought it down from possibly an R rating to a PG rating. It just goes to show how insanely obsessed they are about marketability, merchandising, and profitability. Modern Disney hates the film, too, so much so that that refuse to even admit that there was any footage cut out of the film at all. It's downright sad. The really depressing thing is that Disney isn't the only American animation company like this; literally every american animation company has tried to emulate Disney's success by doing the exact same thing they do, including merchandising (like with happy meals at Mcdonalds) and selling soundtracks to their films. American animation is just that bureaucratized. |
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Dan E. Kool
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Dec 22, 2017 15:41:32 GMT
It's alright, man. We all get at least one company to be unreasonably bitter about. Mine used to be Wal-Mart. I've since moved on to Amazon. So long as we acknowledge that it isn't logical, I guess we can still call ourselves sane. Good to hear. I recommend CostCo; based on what I've seen of them, they seem like an objectively better company than Walmart, but Amazon works too. I also HIGHLY advise against supporting ANY fast food chain, since they all use low quality beef which is garunteed to be imported from cattle ranches in South/central america, which is responsible for destroying mile after mile of tropical rainforest everyday. The fast food industry is an evil and extremely unsustainable one. I think maybe you misunderstood me, man. I don't hate Wal-Mart and I don't think businesses are evil. Just sympathizing with Cervantes... |
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Spirit Bomb
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Dec 22, 2017 16:27:10 GMT
Good to hear. I recommend CostCo; based on what I've seen of them, they seem like an objectively better company than Walmart, but Amazon works too. I also HIGHLY advise against supporting ANY fast food chain, since they all use low quality beef which is garunteed to be imported from cattle ranches in South/central america, which is responsible for destroying mile after mile of tropical rainforest everyday. The fast food industry is an evil and extremely unsustainable one. I think maybe you misunderstood me, man. I don't hate Wal-Mart and I don't think businesses are evil. Just sympathizing with Cervantes ... Well obviously not all businesses are evil, but ones like Wal-Mart and McDonalds definitely are evil. |
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Dan E. Kool
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Dec 22, 2017 19:31:52 GMT
I think maybe you misunderstood me, man. I don't hate Wal-Mart and I don't think businesses are evil. Just sympathizing with Cervantes ... Well obviously not all businesses are evil, but ones like Wal-Mart and McDonalds definitely are evil.  |
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Dec 22, 2017 22:05:56 GMT
Spirit Bomb - Your story about how Disney's CEO at the time was against more mature animation reminds me of another situation well known among Sega fans. After being president of Atari during the early 90s, Bernie Stolar went on to become vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America. It's said that he put in motion a series of restrictions on which kinds of Playstation games would be supported by Sony in the US: in particular, the guy had a prejudice against 2d games (as in his vision 3d only was the future) and, most importantly, RPGs, as it's said he thought those games would never sell in the US. Well, Sony fired him later, then he became CEO of Sega of America. His views on RPGs were such a serious problem that the relationship between Sega and Working Designs, which were Sega's most important RPG translators/publishers, became seriously strained (their release of Magic Knight Rayearth was delayed for three years), some big name RPGs like Grandia never got an US release and series like Shining Force 3 and Dragon Force remained incomplete in the US, and only very few rpgs from the large Saturn's large JP rpg library ever came to the US. Then Sony went on to release Final Fantasy 7 and Symphony of the Night. Unneeded to point out that the US quite like RPGs and 2d games. There might be some exageration, but parts of this story were confirmed by Working Designs president himself. So the thing is: sometimes we forget that these companies are not run by machines. The humans that run them can make unreasonable assumptions and have some particular prejudices, and sometimes they very much enforce their personal views or market expectations on their companies.
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Spirit Bomb
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Dec 24, 2017 6:52:48 GMT
Well obviously not all businesses are evil, but ones like Wal-Mart and McDonalds definitely are evil. Menards is also evil. |
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scipioafricanus
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Post by scipioafricanus on Dec 24, 2017 13:31:44 GMT
Nah, just a creepy smile. ![]()  |
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Spirit Bomb
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Dec 28, 2017 12:05:23 GMT
Nah, just a creepy smile. ![]() Oh no, John Menard and his company are definitely evil. |
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cobretti
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Post by cobretti on Dec 28, 2017 15:26:14 GMT
Nah, just a creepy smile. ![]() Oh no, John Menard and his company are definitely evil. Wait you don’t like to save BIG money? |
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