Here's a copy of the US movie poster for Warriors of the Wind, the notorious 1985 New Line Cinema hack of Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. The film was released in theaters and VHS in the 1980s, but has disappeared since that time. If you're curious and have never seen this, copies are available online, and is probably on YouTube as well.
Miyazaki, needless to say, was furious when he discovered what had happened to his masterpiece. It's a hack job that almost qualifies as graffiti art, it's so bad. One quarter of the running time was cut, the characters names were changed ("Princess Zandra?" Really?!), and crucial plot points were just dropped. Oh, and the voice actors sound a lot like Rocky & Bullwinkle (the legendary June Foray denied any involvement). What a mess. But it has a certain campy, MST3K value that we can laugh at and enjoy, especially now that we have a proper Nausicaa on DVD and Blu-Ray.
And this poster? Priceless. I want a copy of this movie poster. Don't you? Of course, you do.
(I wish I could remember who sent this to me. If the author steps forward, I'll update this post to give the proper credit. He had an exhibition of classic anime posters that played at anime conventions, including descriptions on the history of these movies. It was quite impressive, and although he informed me that he was retiring his exhibit, I would like to see it again. Perhaps a short video could be made?)
2 comments:
That would be me! (^_^);; That photo is from 2007 at Anime Vegas. We did another larger exhibit again at AV in 2009 -
40 theatrical posters from Studio Ghibli films and 25 posters for other studios' films. The exhibit still exists, now
in safe storage thanks to the University of New Mexico's anime club. There have been two smaller exhibits since moving
here in 2013 - in 2013 for 'Con Jikan' and 2014 for 'Ghibli Jikan', both here at UNM. Unfortunately no video, but some
lousy cell phone shots from the show setups in 2007 and 2009 are up on the collection's Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/KinemaKawasumiArchives
Paul
('Eishagishi' at GhibliWiki)
Warriors of the Wind is hilariously bad. Nausicaa (or Zandra) sounds like a 40 year old Alabama woman and Kushana (Selena) is British for some reason. They stripped away the shades of gray in the characters and made it all so terrible. It's like what Nausicaa would have been had it been made in live action in 1980s America. Can you imagine that lol?
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