XPost: rec.arts.anime.misc   
   From: miles@gnu.org   
      
   Ping Kuo  writes:   
   > which the end credits of the movie implies, yes, all you said is true,   
   > but there is also the power of left things unsaid and let your   
   > imaginations to do the works.  not to mention of keep thing focus on   
   > what is essential, as human attention span tend to waver after two   
   > hours.   
   >   
   > another example would be Harry Potter Goblet of Fire, novel vs. movie,   
   > they were talking making two films for that one book in the beginning.   
      
   Sure, the limitations are in part inherent to the medium.   
      
   It's weird though, because my sense is that unlike his other movies,   
   somehow he doesn't quite pull off Nausicaä the anime.  Two constant   
   feelings I had during the movie were (1) "hey slow down go back I wanna   
   see more of that!" or (2) "Huh?  WTF was that??"   
      
   The movie felt like there was a lot of stuff that was left sort of   
   unexplained -- but that really _should_ be explained for the reader to   
   understand what's going on.  I.e., the missing stuff wasn't simply   
   background detail, where "unexplained" is often very satisfying (because   
   as you say, it acts to help the viewer's imagination fill out the world).   
      
   As it happens, I read the manga first, so I'm not really sure if a   
   first-time viewer of the movie would feel the same way -- it could   
   simply that I was viewing it expecting all the magic of the manga, and   
   it was simply the comparison that made me disappointed in the movie.   
      
   On the other hand, it could be that by working on the longer more   
   detailed (first half of the :-) manga first, Miyazaki didn't do as good   
   a job on the movie.  I imagine that the process of working out a movie   
   storyline from scratch is very different from cutting down an existing   
   story to fit the constraints of animation; clearly Miyazaki is very good   
   at the former, but ... I think there's a strong temptation when doing   
   the latter to make an overly complex plot that tries to preserve all the   
   details of the original as unsatisfying little snippets.   
      
   It would be interesting to hear the opinion of someone who saw the movie   
   first and _then_ read the manga...   
      
   [I've been much happier with Miyazaki's other movies: they somehow seem   
   much more "whole".  Though one of the charms of his work is the highly   
   detailed and interesting background worlds, he's very careful to keep   
   them as _background_, with the main foreground elements of plot and   
   character kept fairly simple.   
      
   Oddly enough, I've never seen the movie "Tonari no Totoro" -- but I've   
   read the _novelization_!  I'm kind of afraid to see the actual movie   
   now... :-]   
      
   -Miles   
   --   
   A zen-buddhist walked into a pizza shop and   
   said, "Make me one with everything."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)