Hayao Miyazaki continues to kick retirement in the cloaca. Here’s the trailer for his latest Studio Ghibli movie, The Boy and the Heron:
Maybe it’s just the way the teaser is cut, but this looks to be creepy and scary, and maybe some more World War II trauma is seeping in than The Wind Rises explored.
Yeah, this looks pretty wild. How can you not be excited for another Miyazaki movie?
I took my kids to see Princess Mononoke in the theater this summer. It is my favorite Miyazaki, maybe because I saw it in the theater when it first came to the states. It was incredible to experience it again on the big screen. Can’t wait for another experience like that.
That looks freaking awesome.
I am looking forward to this, but I hate the English title. The Japanese title, How Do You Live?, is so much more enigmatic and evocative.
I hate that they are releasing images for this. I’m going to see it anyways and I loved the approach to the released they had in Japan (and I know it’s not practical for the international release, but I still really don’t like they’ve changed it).
What did they do in Japan, not give anything away?
There was just a poster.
English voice cast has been announced:
Dave Bautista is someone called the Parakeet King.
Also Dan Stevens in a minor role.
Looks good to me. I’ve always liked their picks for voice acting. Just don’t mess with Bale’s lights!
This looks absolutely wild.
This was great, and seems to have done well at the U.S. box office over the weekend.
Yeah, this was fantastic and the English dub reaffirms my belief that Robert Pattinson is the best actor of his generation.
Seeing it wed
I saw it Sunday night. The sex scenes were kind of lame, ritualistic if you will. The pelicans were well animated, though.
Miyazaki’s film took the top box office spot this last weekend, which I was not expecting.
I admit that I left the theater after this having enjoyed it but also a little deflated. It is a quieter movie than most of his others (even if more grotesque as well). And, for me, less thoroughly transporting—though that’s still leaving room for a lot of incredible spectacles.
Most Miyazaki films capture you first and foremost with the portrayal of their young protagonist. Mahito is plenty interesting, but he does less to let you in (no black cat, red elk, or fire elemental to share his thoughts with) and he stews in silence.
And the logic of the world (always impressionistic in his films) is extra loose. We meet younger versions of characters alongside spirits of the dead and about-to-be-born alongside swarms of sentient animals… Weirdly the bathhouse for spirits was more coherent.
What does seem clear is that Miyazaki is thinking about the future of Ghibli and—as he said in one of the recent docs, I forget which—expecting it to not survive him. Mahito, the obvious bloodline inheritor, does not try to keep the tower standing. He goes home to be with his family, which was always his priority. And it won’t be handed off to any corporate juggernaut, either (which is what I take the ravenous parakeets and their entitled king to represent).
Robert Pattinson performance aside, I will also say that one thing I straight up didn’t care for in the film was the mystical, malevolent, mysterious heron ending up as a shoddy, incompetent, useless little imp-man. Long-time producer Toshio Suzuki has claimed that the heron represents him (and that Mahito is Miyazaki and the granduncle Isao Takahata, senior (and now deceased) founder of Ghibli. Everything in the run-up to the film and its first thirty minutes made the heron seem like a profound presence, which was then totally undercut. I trust the master has his reasons, but it was too jarring for me and didn’t seem to pay off.
Plenty to think about with this movie, though, and I am eager for a rewatch!
Really want to watch it, but if I hit the theater this weekend it’s going to be Wonka. This doesn’t scream to me a movie that I need to see on the big screen as much as I love all the movies.
“The final movie of a once-in-a-lifetime auteur who drew every frame by hand in the perfectionist pursuit of a dying cinematic craft doesn’t scream itself out to me as a movie I need to see in theaters. Unlike the Wonka prequel! Now that’s going to be the next Lawrence of Arabia!”
:) I just don’t think there’s anything lost seeing it on my tv as opposed to in the theatre.
I know you’re being hyperbolic, but it’s interesting to me that Miyazaki was talked into being more hands-off with the actual animation of Boy and the Heron compared to his other films. Plus, he’s been integrating digital effects since… Howl’s? There’s definitely some in this.
Also, Wonka is supposed to be real good.
Great article about the process of producing the English dub:
“We’ve had a lot of communication with agents for years where they said, ‘I just want you to know that if another Hayao Miyazaki movie comes through, please give me a call before you talk to anyone else.’ So we had a pretty big arsenal of people who we knew were Ghibli fans, and might bring that energy into the performance.”
