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REVIEW: Steamboy

And the fact that people besides myself are comparing it to a Miyazaki film is a bad sign, because Miyazaki needs to retire before he starts recycling like he did in Spirited Away.

I agree, which is why End of Evangelion sucks. But Akira does make sense if you pay attention.

Too bad. They both went over your head.

Do you think anything is original? It seems like for everything that has popular appeal, you feel it's your duty to denounce it as a rip-off of [insert obscure movie here]/ [insert random book here]/ [insert kid's blog entry here].

Not everything can be 100% original. With so many centuries of literature under our belt, there comes a point when you CAN'T make something that's 100% original. And when it is, people decry it as being pompous, "drugged," or "HA, what a hack! People think it's cool just because it's original! Clearly they don't know what they're talking about!"

Castle in the Sky was far more derivative of Miyazaki's earlier work than Spirited Away (which rather sticks out in his catalogue), and you can't say he stopped running out of ideas in 1986.

And the fact that people besides myself are comparing it to a Miyazaki film is a bad sign, because Miyazaki needs to retire before he starts recycling like he did in Spirited Away.

I usually only consider the person a hack when they splice ideas from obscure sources without actually building anything new with them.

It has come to my attention that your recent work is being compared to Katsuhiro Otomo's recent film, Steamboy. Myself and another forum user on an American anime forum I go to both have seen what we percieve to be similarities between your films and his film. I think this means you should retire immediately because you're starting to repeat yourself, and there is no higher crime in the rule of man.

P.S. If you don't believe me, watch Spirited Away and then Totoro. Those two films are exactly alike! I mean, one has... uh... a little girl and so does the other one... and... I mean, they're EXACTLY alike, you no-talent hack!

GATSU wrote:

I usually only consider the person a hack when they splice ideas from obscure sources without actually building anything new with them.

Which is basically everyone,

since I've only ever seen you praise the ultra-violent, potato-headed stuff you seem to love from the 1980's (read: Raijin Comics' entire lineup. We all saw how popular and loved those titles were when the entire company went down in flames. Of course, I suppose that makes it perfect for you, since nobody else liked it, it wasn't popular, so that means it's safe for you to enjoy).

The ONLY thing I've seen you praise here lately is a film you haven't seen, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

That's it. Everything else is some unoriginal knockoff of some other thing you saw and that makes it bad.

I'm at the point where I don't think you actually watch anything, you just read reviews by internet film "critics" and then bash things on message boards.

Actually, the End of Evangelion made plenty of sense, if you paid attention. Heaven forbid a movie require you to think and pull from Biblical and psychological references to understand the movie.

P.S. If you don't believe me, watch Spirited Away and then Totoro. Those two films are exactly alike! I mean, one has... uh... a little girl and so does the other one... and... I mean, they're EXACTLY alike, you no-talent hack!

Actually, I thought Miyazaki needed to retire, with or without
any similarities of his films to Steamboy. When he's only making money on the basis of him saying, "This is my last film" as a publicity stunt, it cheapens the value of his work.

They pretty much are alike though. Little girls meets Japanese spirits in both films.

Gone are the confusingly labyrinthine plot machinations of Otomo’s other films; Steamboy is a straight-shooting, easy-to-follow adventure tale.

The film gives you someone to root for, someone to hate, someone to laugh at and a simple philosophical question to ponder about the nature of progress;

It’s like the best of both worlds: thought-provoking, intelligent Japanese-style themes combined with exciting, Western-style action set pieces and pacing, minus all the problems that usually accompany these two filmic forms.

They’ve successfully combined 2D and 3D here in a technique reminiscent of Mamoru Oshii’s visually striking Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

The film uses CG sparingly, relying mostly on highly advanced and beautifully animated traditional animation.

Most importantly, the visuals serve the story; too often in big-budget action films like this we see the storyline concoct a series of disappointing contrivances in order to ratchet up the action. Steamboy carefully avoids this pitfall and forces the visuals to tell the story rather than guide it.

Otomo has really accomplished something here; he’s the first Japanese auteur outside of Studio Ghibli to successfully bridge the culture gap between American and Japanese film,