Hayao Miyazaki's feelings on the Walt Disney animated films

[Jules]

Yesterday I visited Cartoon Brew, as I do on an almost regular basis, and there was a fascinating article about a new book by Steve Alpert chronicling his experiences at Studio Ghibli ... and especially with Hayao Miyazaki. Cartoon Brew revealed six tidbits from the book, all of them juicy. Among them was this:

Miyazaki wasn’t impressed with Fantasia 2000.

On a visit to Disney’s Burbank studio, the director was shown clips from the film, which was then in production. “Asked what he thought of the film so far,” Alpert recalls, “Miyazaki replied simply ‘hidoi … totemo hidoi’ (terrible … really terrible), which I translated as ‘interesting … Mr. Miyazaki finds the animation very unusual and very interesting.’”

As I wrote on the Cartoon Brew page I am dying to know more why Miyazaki disliked what he saw so strongly. I'm also not sure Alpert did the right thing by lying to the Disney artists. I would have told them the truth albeit a little bit more diplomatically. (Perhaps something like "Mr Miyazaki did not like what he saw." instead of "Terrible. Really terrible.") At least I think that if I were one of the crew on Fantasia 2000 and was present on that day and were to read this anecdote now, I'd feel annoyed that Alpert felt the need to sugarcoat Miyazaki's opinion so as not to "offend me". I think the Disney artists are confident in their abilities and have mad respect for the man, and would have taken the criticism graciously and respectfully. One also wonders whether Miyazaki himself was aware that Alpert intentionally mistranslated his statement. But I digress ...

This story led me to wonder what Miyazaki thinks about the rest of the Disney oeuvre. Truth be told I've long thought about this, but rather inexplicably never bothered to research it to find out! In any case, googling this did not produce many results, but I did find a quote from his book "Starting Point" in which he writes:

From my perspective, even if they are lightweight in nature, the more popular and common films still must be filled with a purity of emotion. There are few barriers to entry into these films – they will invite anyone in – but the barriers to exit must be high and purifying. Films must also not be produced out of idle nervousness or boredom, or be used to recognise, emphasise, or amplify vulgarity. And in that context, I must say that I hate Disney’s works. The barrier to both the entry and exit of Disney films is too low and too wide. To me, they show nothing but contempt for the audience.

Those are very strong words, and as they were apparently written in 1988 I am assuming they are referring mostly to Walt Disney's classic films. Whereas I think I understand what he means in his first two sentences, and I agree, I found the rest to be a bit of a shocker.

Let me be clear here ... I never expected Miyazaki to be all gaga over Disney animation. I think the Disney style of film-making with its emphasis on music and its storytelling sensibility is at odds with Miyazaki's atmospheric, philosophical works. However, I reasonably expected him to have some appreciation for it, or, at the least to acknowledge its strengths, even if it is not "his thing". His comments, however, strike me as rather dismissive of the Disney output as a whole ... which I'm not sure is fair. If I'm getting it right, Miyazaki seems to classify the Disney films as "lowest common denominator", requiring little intelligence from its audience, providing little in return and worst of all treating its audience like ignorant, uneducated people who will never grasp increasingly sophisticated concepts. I think this criticism is flawed (fun question: Is a nobody like me allowed to question animation superstar Miyazaki's opinions?). Whereas I admit that the Disney features have not delved into material anywhere near as adult and blunt (and frank) as some of Miyazaki's films, I have never throughout my entire life felt I was being treated like a child in the Disney films. I will admit that the films (most of them at least) are indeed accessible to people from all walks of life (and all levels of intelligence) but I have never found the films themselves unintelligent or unsophisticated. Quite the contrary, I find many of the Walt-era films especially to be the height of sophistication whilst also walking the impossible tightrope of being simultaneously suitable for children.

And here I think is a factor which needs to be taken into consideration when comparing Disney's work to Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli, and pretty much every other animation studio in Japan, can easily and freely create an adult-oriented animated film to critical acclaim. This is because in Japan there is no such concept of animation being a children's medium as there is in the USA. In fact, whereas quite a few of Miyazaki's films are perfectly family-friendly (no less than Disney's output), he has made Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises which are clearly intended exclusively for adult audiences (even if the latter can technically be viewed by a child as there's nothing inappropriate in it; the former is of course full of violence.) I think when evaluating Disney's output one needs to take into consideration that the studio's films have seemingly for ever (even in Walt's time) been under intense scrutiny - nowadays more than ever. The fact is that unless there is a regime change at the management level at Disney, there is no way the film-makers can ever create anything as raw as the stuff seen in Miyazaki's output. Can you imagine WDAS making Princess Mononoke? The film-makers would have received death threats! As a result, I get a little tired of reading criticisms aimed at the Disney films stating how those never reach the darkness or the maturity of the Ghibli films. I guess it's true to some extent, but I can hardly blame the Disney artists (past and present) for that! You cannot compare the studios' films by the same yardstick. The "problem" is not limited to Disney, anyway, but to pretty much the entire American animation industry. I am sure the current artists and animators at WDAS (that so many of us here rag on) would kill to be able to create a Disney Animation-branded film that can be as uncompromising as the best Ghibli output. But they can't! Plain and simple.

So, when I watch a Disney animated film I judge it based on my knowledge of the narrative limitations the Disney film-makers face, and how they go about transcending those limitations to create a film that can still thrill, delight, move me, or make me reflect ... or all of those combined.

I'd love to know what you guys think. Do you feel I am justified in my views and that Miyazaki is perhaps too harsh? Or do you think Miyazaki is spot-on and that I am a bonehead for not getting what he's saying?

This must be my longest post in years!

Thanks for reading!

[blackcauldron85]

My first thought was, did he just notice the CGI work on the F2000 clips he saw, and if he's not a fan of computer animation, he wouldn't like it? But then there was the 1988 quote; unless he only looked at TBC's, TGMD's, & O+Co's CGI work, then that theory doesn't hold water. I agree with you that the Disney films do have depth and meaning. I wonder how he feels about Don Bluth films, or other non-Japanese animated films, or even non-Ghibli films... maybe he's just an animation snob...people like what they like...

[Farerb]

I wonder how much knowledge Miyazaki has on American cinema cause I never felt that Walt's films were aimed for children, they are very much in the same vein as live action films of that same era. Snow White, Pinocchio and Bambi have dark scenes as much as light hearted scenes, and I think after WWII, people were more into light atmosphere because they wanted escapism, and it reflected in both animation and live action. Sometimes I wonder if that criticism is more common now in more modern days then back then. Walt's main goal as I see it was to showcase animation by presenting it as simple fairytale stories so the audience can relate and identify with it, and he had an extraordinary talent of making the audience care about the characters.

He said that statement in the 80's before the Renaissance so I wonder what he had to say on those films, but anyway I don't think Miyazaki is that great of a filmmakers in contrary to what is attributed to him. Sure he had good films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, but he also made Ponyo, the most annoying character I've ever seen and he completely butchered Howl's Moving Castle, which admittedly had a great beginning but eventually turned into a mess. And people thought he would have done a better job with Tales from Earthsea after this?!

[estefan]

Miyazaki is reportedly a big fan of Aardman's work, so he's not completely dismissive of all western animation.

It is interesting that Disney later became Ghibli's North American distributor, although Miyazaki and his producer Toshio Suzuki likely viewed the prospect of a studio of Disney's size releasing his works as a way to widen his audience. Before Disney acquired the distribution rights to "Kiki's Delivery Service" in the late '90s, it wasn't easy to see Miyazaki's films in North America (aside from a recut version of "Nausicaa", which Miyazaki despised, and "My Neighbor Totoro"). That's the reason they recently signed a deal with HBO Max and Netflix to stream their catalogue.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I wonder what he felt when he was invited to Pixar and was hugged by John Lasseter and all that.

Disney is either way not just Disney. The classics are very different from the newer films, and even those differ from one another. Lilo and Stich is for instance not the same kind of movie as Bolt.

The problem is that Disney and Pixar movies have very high budgets, and to make their money back, some crowd pleasing is required.

https://wifflegif.com/tags/403777-anime ... stake-gifs

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't think he's necessarily entirely wrong in that assessment... There is a lot of moralizing in Disney films, especially Walt's films. But I would've thought he'd have a grudging respect for the animation itself even if the story, characters, and so on turned him off. If you were to ask me which is the better overall studio though, I would say Ghibli even if I'm more personally attached to most Disney films.

And there's also the fact that Disney feels like many studios in one considering there are the films made by Walt himself, then the Renaissance films with a whole slew of the different talent, then the Lasseter Era (*puke*), so.... The fact that they have a lot of spotty work in-between the masterpieces isn't really surprising. The Broadway-esque Renaissance films are generally more my sensibility than the majority of the Walt and Lasseter films, imperfect as some of those films are. *shrug*

[D82]

I've found a couple more quotes from Miyazaki on Disney films, the first one from 1987 and the second from 2005:

Besides, Miyazaki-san has been open in his criticism of Disney’s various practices throughout the years. In 1987, Miyazaki-san noted that Walt Disney once described the process of finding good animators as more difficult than finding a speck of gold in a vast desert. However, at the time, it was clear to Miyazaki-san that Disney was unable to break away from its own hierarchical origins.

“They say that Disney Studios failed to nurture successors,” Miyazaki-san explained. “The core animators, called the ‘Nine Old Men’, stayed at the top too long. They became stale and lost their energy. In reality, Disney did try to cultivate new animators. Disney formed a school and trained animators and unearthed talent, even bringing animators to the US through immigration. And yet no successors to the Nine Old Men emerged.”

Source: https://synapsiscreative.com/animation- ... -miyazaki/

2-D animation seems to be dead in America, at least in features. What happened?

We’re hitting a similar wall in Japan. . .I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It’s too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily.

Source: https://ew.com/article/2005/06/17/spotl ... -miyazaki/


It seems to me he likes Walt's films, but not the films the studio has been making after him. At least the movies from the First and the Second Dark Ages.

Here are also some comments he made about Pixar's Up when he visited the studio. He was much kinder there than in his visit to Disney during the making of Fantasia 2000.

[twihard]

I wonder how much knowledge Miyazaki has on American cinema cause I never felt that Walt's films were aimed for children, they are very much in the same vein as live action films of that same era. Snow White, Pinocchio and Bambi have dark scenes as much as light hearted scenes, and I think after WWII, people were more into light atmosphere because they wanted escapism, and it reflected in both animation and live action. Sometimes I wonder if that criticism is more common now in more modern days then back then. Walt's main goal as I see it was to showcase animation by presenting it as simple fairytale stories so the audience can relate and identify with it, and he had an extraordinary talent of making the audience care about the characters.

He said that statement in the 80's before the Renaissance so I wonder what he had to say on those films, but anyway I don't think Miyazaki is that great of a filmmakers in contrary to what is attributed to him. Sure he had good films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, but he also made Ponyo, the most annoying character I've ever seen and he completely butchered Howl's Moving Castle, which admittedly had a great beginning but eventually turned into a mess. And people thought he would have done a better job with Tales from Earthsea after this?!

reading this thread and caught this mistake. He didn't make Tales from Earthsea. His son made it and he didn't approve even then.