The new US movie poster for Tales From Earthsea is now available, and is revealed to be identical to the Japanese version, only with English-language text. This is an interesting change of pace from Disney, which usually offers a different poster design for the Ghibli films in America. The original Gedo Senki posters were quite excellent, and probably my favorite thing about that movie.
The tagline suggests a difficulty on Disney's part to come up with a proper pitch for Earthsea. Despite this impressive poster, dragons are virtually unseen in the movie. This climactic moment is really only one moment at the end, and from a dramatic point of view, it lacks punch. I'm still not completely sure what Goro Miyazaki was aiming for, apart from his obsessions over his famous father. Perhaps he was only a casual reader of Ursula LeGuin's novels.
In related news, Disney has announced that Tales From Earthsea will be given a very limited release. It will open on August 13 in only five US cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Honolulu. There is no word on whether the movie will be expanded to more cities after its opening week; I would be surprised if Minneapolis-St. Paul gets snubbed.
Much of this depends on Disney's strategy, how cautious they will be towards Earthsea, and how willing they will be to promote the film. It's very likely that this movie is being given a token release for contractual reasons, as well as the inevitable Oscar nominations. It's also a given that this movie won't pull in $300 million dollars like the latest Toy Story. Hollywood is a business, after all.
I'd really like to learn more from Disney regarding their plans for Tales From Earthsea. If anyone from Disney or Pixar reads this blog, by all means, please contact me. I'd love to hear from you.
3 comments:
The tag-line is the same as the Japanese; or, more specifically, it's the first line of it. It doesn't work horizontally, not how it's been done here at least, but other than that I'm shocked; they've really outdone the UK artwork for once. In particular, this is the first, no, only the second time I've seen one of Ghibli's own official Roman-character logos used in the west, first being posters and boxes for Howl's Moving Castle in the UK. Though with some one can see why they'd want to be replaced, the Kiki's Delivery Service one is particularly wonderful and logos used for English-language releases are particularly ugly in comparison. (The German versions, meanwhile, go to some – admittedly not always successful – effort to recreate them in German.)
It really says something about the quality of the movie if the poster is the best thing about it, tho I agree with you great poster the movie....not so much.
I still feel despite the politcal battle between father and son, that this film was good first film. I have said before, I find that it is very lyrical and abstract piece adding something unique and less verbaly tangable to Ghibli's collection. I watch it a political piece about two people who are lost and are searching for their true identidies that can only be found in eachouther using the Dragon as a symbol of purity and love and a sign of restoration in politcal harmony.
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