#disney animated canon

[writebackatya]

I like to think that at some point in time these two crossed paths

And for that moment in time they finally had someone in their life that understood all their pop culture references

[princesssarisa]

I've seen a lot of complaints lately about the lack of romance in recent Disney movies. Do you think Disney's next princess movie should give the heroine a love interest? (not counting Moana 2 because I seriously doubt they'll give Moana a LI in the sequel)

I think it would be nice to see Disney bring back romance.

They've certainly made enough romance-free movies to drive home the point that girls don't need romantic love to be complete. And for many of us, the love stories are some of the best parts of Disney's animated movies of yesteryear.

That said, if they do give the next Princess a love interest, I hope they don't fall back into the same formula of "bickering to friends to lovers" that they kept repeating for a while. Tiana and Naveen, Rapunzel and Flynn, Anna and Kristoff, Judy and Nick if you ship them... while each of those pairings do have unique qualities and appeal, it's still a little bit formulaic. Disney almost seemed to have forgotten that a romance arc doesn't need to be either "bickering to friends to lovers" or old-school Love at First Sight.

As far as I'm concerned, the Disney Renaissance was the golden age of Disney love stories, because each couple had a unique relationship arc and dynamic. Ariel and Eric's gentle, fun-loving teenage romance – closer than the others to old-school Love at First Sight, but handled in a fresh, modern-feeling way. Belle and the Beast's blend of a rom com-style "bickering to friends to lovers" arc with sweeping Gothic Romanticism, which somehow works beautifully despite the difference between those two genres. Aladdin and Jasmine's bonding of kindred spirits and shared longings, and the conflict caused by their class gap and Aladdin's self-doubt. Simba and Nala's bantering childhood friendship that grows into adult love. Pocahontas and John Smith's Romeo and Juliet-style forbidden passion. Quasimodo, Esmeralda and Phoebus's love triangle that ends in happy romance for the latter two and warm friendship that both share with Quasi. Hercules and Meg's arc of "innocent, kind-hearted boy teaches hardened, cynical girl to love again," combined with Meg's redemption arc as she breaks free from Hades. Mulan and Shang's comradeship-in-arms that ends with a hint at future romance. Tarzan and Jane's bonding through exploring each other's worlds and then each having to choose between their own world and the other's.

Each of these love stories is unique and special in its own way. I hope that when Disney finally decides to do romance again, they'll break away from all earlier formulas and make it just as fresh and unique as those past examples.

[mmdisney200]

Disney’s Wish collection by Mattel ⭐️ links for all dolls are on my Twitter account, for some reason can’t post link here!

[twoheadedfilmfan]

Disney Animation in IMAX

[spiderdreamer-blog]

Tarzan (1999)

It's hard to define sometimes where the end of the Disney Renaissance period from the late 80s through the 90s is. After the release of The Lion King, the 2D animated features steadily made less money and critical acclaim became more mixed. There was a sea change occurring thanks to more competition from companies like DreamWorks and Warner Bros., as well as the advent of the computer. For me, the dividing line is 1999's Tarzan, mostly because it's after this point that we get to what I and others call the 2000-2004 "experimental" age with films like The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lilo & Stitch, and Treasure Planet. But Tarzan has much in common with those films, representing a step away from the Broadway musical traditions and into a new, intriguing arena of animation storytelling. It's genuinely one of my favorite Disney films to revisit, and I hope this review helps explain why.

The story takes Edgar Rice Burroughs' initial novel Tarzan of the Apes as a guideline more than an actual adaptation, namely ditching concerns about nobility wealth inheritance and unflattering black African caricatures (the spinoff TV series would deal with the latter in trying to be, uh, less problematic about such). We pick up with Ye Olde Dramatically Convenient Boat Wreckage in a truly commanding opening sequence set to Phil Collins' anthemic Two Worlds. Tarzan's unnamed parents land in Africa and are put in parallel to gorillas Kala (Glenn Close, at the time coming off a very different performance for Disney as live action Cruella De Vil) and Kerchak (Lance Henriksen). Tragedy strikes for both families, and where one loses his parents, another gains a son. But Tarzan (Alex D. Linz as a child, Tony Goldwyn as an adult) grows up knowing he is "different", desperate to prove himself as an ape and belong. He seems to find an equilibrium, becoming best friends with Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) and Tantor (Wayne Knight at his most nebbishy), and even managing to vanquish Sabor, but then strangers arrive. Strangers who look like him, in the form of British scientist Archimedes Porter (Nigel Hawthorne), his daughter Jane (Minnie Driver), and their guide Clayton (BRIAN BLESSED). Now things steadily grow more complicated as Tarzan wishes to learn all he can about these outsiders and himself, but what might it cost?

One of the first, most notable things about the film to me is its complexity in the writing and characterization. Looking back, the Renaissance can have a problem in terms of male leads being love interests who don't get as much focus or slightly bland focus-tested "likable". This isn't true for ALL of them; the Beast has many layers to his personality, while Simba and Quasimodo are great, imo, because they have more baggage tying them down and thus more to rise above for true heroism. Nor does it make most of them bad characters. But it was notable enough, as was the tendency for them to be overshadowed by the villains or sidekicks, for co-directors Kevin Lima/Chris Buck and writers Tab Murphy/Bob Tzudiker/Noni White to slightly...course-correct.

Ergo, Tarzan himself is very much the main focus here. There's only one major sequence that he's not really involved with, and even when he's not onscreen, the other characters are as intrigued by his contradictions as the audience. (Insert your own Poochie jokes here, though obviously it doesn't come CLOSE to that) We truly feel his anxiety about fitting in, and the lengths he goes to are intensely relatable even at their most self-damning.

The other characters, too, feel richer and more lived-in than many of the standard types. Kala is a mother figure, one who tries to make Tarzan feel like he belongs, but is deeply scared of losing him. Kerchak is possibly my favorite character in the film because of how much you have to read into his actions because he holds so much back emotionally until the very end. Even then, he comes off as a more realistic harsh father figure than a caricature, and we can always understand where he's coming from. Jane is one of the best Disney love interests, meanwhile, feeling like a modern romantic comedy heroine with a lot of drive and initiative, as well as being just genuinely nerdy, which you don't often see even today. Clayton manages a nice two-step of seeming like an obvious bad guy but playing things down the middle until he gets what he wants. Even the comic relief gets good moments, such as Professor Porter gently supporting the romance or Tantor standing up for himself at a critical juncture.

Of course, what helps here is that said characters have some of the most beautiful environments and animation backing them up in Disney history. The African jungle is depicting as a kind of painterly, hyper-real fantasy, with impossible tree shapes and vines that bloom in the sunlight. And the then-revolutionary Deep Canvas CGI process allows Tarzan to soar through them, the camera spinning and rotating with each movement. The design sensibility is "classical" Disney to a large degree, but with slightly longer faces or larger eyes to add expressiveness. The California, Parisian, and Florida animation teams all clearly busted their asses to make this come to life. And Glen Keane's work with the Paris studio on Tarzan might be the best of his legendary career in terms of the variety of movements and subtleties in expressions. So too goes the rest of the supervising animators: Ken Duncan makes Jane truly lovable and wholly distinct from the likes of his Meg or Amelia; Randy Haycock gives Clayton a macho swagger that feels entirely his own rather than feeling like a Gaston ripoff; Bruce Smith combines remarkable anatomy work and microexpressions with Kerchak; Russ Edmonds' Kala is warm and motherly while never letting you entirely forget she's a gorilla; Dave Burgess makes Porter funny with his slightly squat, short shapes; and Mike Surrey and Sergio Pablos make for an excellent duo on Terk and Tantor in terms of contrasting their size, as well as the latter giving nervous-nelly body language to such a huge character. That's harder than it looks.

The aural end is just as good. Much hay and memery has been made of Phil Collins going ridiculously hard on the storytelling songs, which I fully support. But it really is true that they add so much here and take the burden off the characters in terms of singing save for the improvisational scat number "Trashin' The Camp". I'm partial to "Strangers Like Me" in terms of the earnest yearning and connections that Tarzan makes over the course of it. And of course the various versions of "Two Worlds" are essentially the mission statement of the film, complete with absolutely bitchin' percussion. Mark Mancina's accompanying score is also excellent, sounding like a fusion between The Lion King (which he produced/arranged for both the film and Broadway show) and his action movie work on projects like Speed or Bad Boys. Particularly great is the cue that plays when Tarzan defeats Sabor and builds up to his classic yell, which milks the heroic triumph for all its worth.

The voice cast is also excellent top to bottom. Goldwyn has a deeper timbre than many Disney male leads, less of an ingenue, and this adds to the stormier emotions; we truly feel his pain on lines like "Why didn't you tell me there were creatures that look like me?" But he's not TOO grim, thankfully, and gets some good subtly funny moments such as sounding out monkey noises in a conversation that Jane only hears one half of. Close is properly maternal, of course, getting her best showings in emotional one-on-ones with both Linz and Goldwyn as they hash out their relationship. Henriksen, like the animation, wisely underplays Kerchak and lets the emotion come out through his gruff, gravel-pit voice rather than obviously signaling things. Driver is hilarious and winning as Jane, getting some of the best laughs and most sweetly tender bits of the proceedings. It's all the more impressive when you consider she played Lady Eboshi in the Princess Mononoke dub the same year, which is the utter opposite of this performance. BRIAN BLESSED doesn't do a lot of his patented BRIAN BLESSED yelling outside of some choice bits at the end, but he makes a meal of Clayton regardless as a charismatic asshole, and I like how he plays a climactic bit of manipulation in particular. Hawthorne gets a much better showing here than his previous Disney voice role as Fflewddur Flam in The Black Cauldron, daffily sweet and humorous in equal measure, while O'Donnell and Knight are familiar vocally but use that to inform their characterizations rather than distract.

I think what I like most about this movie is that it feels incredibly well-rounded. Some Disney movies from this period might have a great villain or sidekicks but a weaker protagonist in Hercules or strong protagonists/villains but a weaker supporting cast as in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Then you have Pocahontas, which sucks on ALL ends!) In Tarzan, everything feels of a piece, and nobody jars against the tone or mood. Combine that with the dizzying highs of the animation and truly excellent emotional beats, and you've got a real winner that stands the test of time in my eyes.

[indy829]

The Little Mermaid has been selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in their National Film Registry, making this the 10th Disney Animated Feature selected since the NFR's formation in 1988:  Snow White in 1989, Fantasia in 1990, Pinocchio in 1994, Beauty and the Beast in 2002, Bambi in 2011, The Lion King in 2016, Dumbo in 2017, Cinderella in 2018, Sleeping Beauty in 2019, and now Little Mermaid.  To be included in the registry, a film must be at least 10 years old and be deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

It's a big deal for a film to be included in the registry as, once selected, a copy is obtained from the studio/copyright holders, after which it is lovingly restored and then placed in a weather-proof and temperature-controlled vault where it will be available for future generations.  So what this means is that children will still be driving their parents up the walls with Hakuna Matata and Under the Sea even after a nuclear holocaust.

Which Disney films do you want to see selected next?

[sweet-caress-of-twilight]

Today marks 20 years on Home on the Range!

Disney won't promote it, so I will! Stay tuned for more HOTR-related posts today!

and remember to BUST A MOO!

[punster-2319]

It’s a shame that The Nightmare Before Christmas and A Goofy Movie aren’t in the official Disney animated canon, because if they were and had gotten the same marketing push as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King then 1991 through 1995 probably would have been the studio’s most successful run of animated films.

[tngmpersonal]

So as of now, anything from Disney's recent-ish output that is worth watching? The last Disney Animated Canon film I saw in theaters was Ralph Breaks the Internet, which I found fun at first, but the first one was way better. I skipped over the films (both Animated Canon and Pixar) where there's no "real" villain, and I've heard that Wish is hot garbage at worst or forgettable at best.

The last Marvel Cinamatic Universe movie I saw was No Way Home, which I really enjoyed. I didn't watch any of the MCU movies that afterwards because I didn't see their predecessor films, not to mention there were other movies I wanted to watch this year.

And as much as I want to watch some of their animated shows, Disney barely pays them any mind, and I'm not willing to pay that much for a streaming subscription. Nor do I have a good timezone or schedule to watch those shows on reruns, (I only came across The Owl House by chance, and that was around a finale).

So yeah, what is worth watching from Disney as of now, and how easily could I watch it? Legally or otherwise.

[lisaas2418]

Hey, for a long while I had a kinda cool AU idea for twisted wonderland. How about twisted wonderland x disney animated canon, but in an adventure style?

So like the NRC cast is like captured by a bad guy with their respective great seven and Yuu & Grim have to save them with the disney heroes.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about it.

[writebackatya]

As far as I’m concerned

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is the live action remake of Disney’s Robin Hood

So there’s really no point in remaking that one

[matt-eldritch]

This week I made some rough colour palettes for my fighting game version of Princess Jasmine. I based these on the various designs that she'd had over the many, many movies and shows she's been featured in.

A - My own design for a possible default outfit. The flowers printed on her sports bra are the ones she's named after.

B - Based on the original Aladdin movie.

C - Based on the outfit Naomi Scott wore in the 2019 remake's "Speechless" musical number.

D - Based on the 2019's redesigned Jasmine outfit.

E - Based on her loungewear look over in 2018's Wreck-It Ralph 2.

F - Based on the pink outfits she would wear in the Aladdin DTV sequels and the spinoff TV show.

G - Based on her outfit on the ABC fantasy-drama series "Once Upon a Time"

[stljedi]

[twoheadedfilmfan]

Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella recording their lines as Timon and Pumbaa in Disney’s The Lion King (1994)

[spiderdreamer-blog]

2023 at the Movies: A Year in Review

2023 has been an odd year for American cinema in particular, between overall tepid box office outside of a few big hits and the combination of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes affecting release dates as well as promotional tactics. (Just so we're clear, this is a Union Solidarity Blog) But it was a fascinating year artistically nonetheless, especially on the blockbuster end. What this list aims to achieve is sort of a capsule review of the theatrical releases I saw (not counting streaming-only films even if I ended up seeing theatrical releases ON streaming) and how I felt about them in capsule review form. And even then, there's still stuff I need to catch up on like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Oppenheimer, Elemental, or Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Anyhoo, on with my list, in chronological release order:

John Wick: Chapter 4: Much like its titular hero, there are perhaps some signs that this franchise could benefit from taking a bit of a rest. Some of the worldbuilding is going from knowingly absurd to just plain absurd, and a couple early action beats, while fun (NUNCHUCKS), are a little familiar in terms of director Chad Stahelski's neon-as-fuck aesthetics. Ultimately, it's not too much to derail things, as Keanu Reeves proves a capable grounding lead like always, and the Parisian third act is giddy, comically overblown violence in the grand John Wick tradition that reaches an unexpected poignancy. The supporting cast might also be one of the best in the series; while Asia Kate Dillion's unflappable Adjudicator is missed from the last installment, we do receive Bill Skarsgard doing an OUTRAAGEOUS French accent as a smarmy villain you really want to see dead by the end of this, Donnie Yen as a clever, funny spin on the blind swordsman trope, Rina Sawayama is both badass and touching, Shamier Anderson stands out by dialing down, and my beloved Clancy Brown has some of the best implicit "are you fucking kidding me" reactions I've seen in a while.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie: I was honestly dreading this for a while. Illumination Entertainment is a perfectly cromulent animation studio who makes films that, with a couple exceptions, represent pretty much everything I dislike about American family filmmaking: loud, hyperactive, deficient of nutritional value, and did I mention loud? But the trailers started impressing me in terms of how well they adapted the candy-colored toybox Nintendo aesthetic to a wider theatrical scope. And if nothing else, casting Jack Black as Bowser would probably be pretty awesome (spoiler alert: he was). Thankfully, it manages to be an immensely entertaining, zippy adventure film that minimizes potential annoyances at nearly every turn. This is primarily thanks to a ready-to-play, enthusiastic voice cast (outside of Black, I particularly like Pratt and Day's brotherly dynamic and Anya Taylor-Joy doing a Disney Princess-esque comedy action spin on Peach), a smartly simple story structure, and leaving a lot of potential open for the future like Seth Rogen's lovable ready-for-spinoff-movies Donkey Kong. It may not rock the boat, but it was better than it had any business being, and that counts for a lot in my book.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The Marvel Cinematic Universe and I are admittedly on a bit of a break. Not because they're doing anything WRONG per se, just that a lot of their shows and movies haven't enticed me as much in the past year. I did get out to see this, though, which is both the best all around MCU film since Endgame and very possibly the best film of its own trilogy. James Gunn pulls out all the stops emotionally for his Marvel swan song (godspeed to you over at the still-in-progress trashfire that is Warner Bros. Discovery, good sir), crafting a beautiful, resonant journey for all the characters. The ensemble cast fires on all cylinders, for one. While Bradley Cooper is the obvious vocal standout as Rocket takes center stage, it's assuredly the role of Chris Pratt's career (other non-Mario/Marvel directors, take note! You can in fact have this guy be funny, credibly tough, AND sympathetic instead of missing out on the other two), Zoe Saldana navigates a difficult emotional dance, Pom Klementieff finds real heart in Mantis, Dave Bautista is still one of our most interesting wrestlers-turned-actors in the choices he makes, Karen Gillan has slowly become of the MCU's MVPs as Nebula, Will Poulter is endearingly dunderheaded as a comedic take on Adam Warlock, and Chukwudi Iwuji proves a truly vile villain who exemplifies the maxim of "if you really want an audience to just HATE a motherfucker, have him torture cute animals". And of course Gunn's musical tastes remain impeccable, such as a Beastie Boys needle drop that prompts a truly bitchin' fight scene (oddly the second time this specific song happened this year in a Pratt-led vehicle). It's funny, it made me ugly cry at SEVERAL points, and I got to see a psychic cosmonaut dog beat people's asses with her mind. What more could I want?

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse: Into the Spider-Verse was a revolution and a revelation for what the American animated film industry could accomplish artistically and technically. How could a sequel possibly live up to it? Across does, against all odds, proving to be the Empire Strikes Back to the original's Star Wars in terms of going darker/more complex on the emotions and to greater visual heights (albeit with the caveat that maybe next time, we can manage the production better and not crunch people so much). Co-directors Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers, and Joaquim Dos Santos (who I've stanned as one of our best animation action directors from Justice League Unlimited through Voltron Legendary Defender) craft a propulsive narrative that asks big questions about who and what Spider-Man is. And while those will have to wait to be fully answered in the third installment, what it sets up is no less compelling or thrilling. Shout-outs in particular go to Hailee Steinfeld, who has to anchor this film with Gwen as much as Shameik Moore's still-iconic Miles; Daniel Pemberton for an outstanding score; Oscar Isaac for giving rich complexity to Miguel O'Hara, who could have felt like a boorish bully in lesser hands; and Jason Schwartzman for not just proving he transitions REALLY well into voicework between this and projects like Klaus, but being by turns pathetically funny and terrifying in ways I've never heard him be as the Spot. Can't wait to see where that goes next time in particular.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: "Pleasant surprise" comes to mind. While I never hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as much as most, it was definitely a little underwhelming as a possibly final Indy adventure. (Not helping is that Steven Spielberg immediately turned around and made an infinitely better indy movie in the form of The Adventures of Tintin) So I was curious to see how going to the well for seemingly the real final adventure would work this time around. Thankfully, director James Mangold proves he has a good eye for creative action, even if nothing here quite reaches the heights of the original trilogy, and Harrison Ford does some of his best acting in ages as a weary, burnt-out Indy; one always got the sense that THIS was much closer to his heart than Han Solo. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a terrific foil to him, joyously amoral (or so she says), while Mads Mikkelsen finds a new spin on coldly cruel cinematic Nazis; he has a tense reintroduction scene that had me squirming in my seat. Add in a slam-bang ending and a touching epilogue, and I'm pretty happy with where things end up for our favorite archaeologist. A solid B+, which we could use more of nowadays.

Also they Poochie-d Shia LaBeouf, which is hilarious to me on several levels.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One: The Mission: Impossible franchise has undergone a curious metamorphosis from where it started as one of many oldies TV adaptations in 1996 to a purposefully old-school action franchise. Director Christopher McQuarrie has become a pro at these over the last three installments, and Dead Reckoning (now no longer a part one, as the back-in-production followup will be retitled) has lots to offer both large and small for action fans even outside of the continued spectacle of Tom Cruise Possibly Wants To Die On Camera. Obviously the big stunt sequences remain a draw, like a terrific car chase through Rome or the climactic journey onboard the Orient Express because trains are ALWAYS bitchin' locations in movies. But just as good are pleasures like a tense cat-and-mouse game in an airport where nobody's quite sure whose side Hayley Atwell's thief Grace is on, Henry Czerny coming back to the franchise after 27 years and looking as shiftily patriotic as ever, Pom Klementieff on this list for the second time looking really hot as she whoops ass, and Cary Elwes getting an unexpectedly choice exposition monologue. Plus the whole deal with the A.I. villain ended up being, uh, fairly relevant.

Barbie: A brilliant human comedy from an unexpected source. This could have gone wrong in so many different ways, I can easily imagine a version that's WAY more lugubrious and, crucially, much less funny. But director/co-writer Greta Gerwig has quickly become one of our best talents between this and the wildly-different-but-has-more-in-common-than-you'd-think Little Women (I also still need to see to heard-it's-excellent Lady Bird). With an infinitely clever script (I love in particular that the "real world" is just as ridiculous in its own way as Barbieland) and Sarah Greenwood's impeccable production design, Gerwig and her cast craft a feminist fable that remains light and funny even at its most strident and angry. Margot Robbie has never been better, hilarious and gut-punching by equal measure, America Ferrera ends up as the unexpected heart of the piece, and Ryan Gosling is absolutely hysterical as Ken while still making him intensely sympathetic. He and Robbie deserve Oscar noms in particular. No, I'm not kidding. Might expand this one to a full review at some point tbh.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: I missed this in theaters and regret it immensely, given that this is a hilarious, cheerfully irreverent take on characters who've really managed a surprising amount of relevance in the modern age. Actually having teen actors voice the Turtles makes them feel so authentic, and they're matched well by an equally game cast like Ayo Edebiri's thoroughly modern April O'Neill, Jackie Chan as a more bumbling-but-heartfelt version of Splinter than usual, and Paul Rudd going full surfer bro as Mondo Gecko. And of course the scribbled-notebook underground comics vibe of the animation is a neat bit of full circle aesthetics if you know these guys' origins.

Wish: All of you are wrong and being dumb about this movie. It's not that I can't grok some of the criticisms as being legitimate, to be fair; for example, the songs, while very good on their own IMO, don't always hit the iconic level of a Frozen or Encanto. But the vitriol with which they've been expressed, and this odd narrative that Disney is in the toilet artistically and needs to nebulously "fix" things, is something I can't at all agree with. It's gorgeously rendered, for one; yes, I would potentially like to see a return to full 2D animated films for the studio at some point too. But if they're gonna experiment even marginally with CGI, I applaud co-directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn making it look this painterly as a starting point. And as with a lot of modern Disney, there's real richness and inner life to these characters. Ariana DeBose is a winning heroine as Asha, who feels distinct from other "princesses" by essentially being working class and unionizing the kingdom. And Chris Pine as Magnifico is a Disney Villain for the ages, blending real complexity in his relationships with scenery-chewing madness. (Also am I the only one who got major "studio executive/CEO" vibes off him?) If this is "mid" or "bland" Disney, I really question what some of y'all are seeing that I seemingly can't.

Also I liked the 100th anniversary references, sue me. The last one in particular gets points for quiet charm rather than grandstanding.

The Boy and the Heron: Hayao Miyazaki, anime's favorite grumpy old man, comes back out of retirement for like the fifth time. Seriously, remember when Princess Mononoke was supposed to be his last film 25+ years ago? I'll believe his "last film" is truly his last when he's in the cold, cold ground. Regardless of the continuing saga of Old Man Won't Retire Because He Seemingly Can't Be Alone With His Own Thoughts, this is a brilliant, haunting spectacle of animation that might be a new favorite for me. Some have called it confusing, whereas I go for "dreamlike", possibly his most to date. Nearly every frame is suffused with longing and melancholy (though this also has some of Miyazaki's best comedy in a while), and, oddly like Wish, this feels like a true career reflection, if a bit more fraught and questioning what legacy truly means. Joe Hisaishi contributes possibly his moodiest, most dissonant score, with little of the bombast or whimsical charm that typifies his music, but it works unfathomably well. Credit also to the dub, with Robert Pattinson as funny and menacing as you've heard, but Luca Pandoval is also excellent as our stoic lead Mahito, Florence Pugh manages to be both a total badass and a funny old woman (it makes sense in context, I promise), Christian Bale puts forth a fascinating two-step with his boisterous father, Gemma Chan and Karen Fukuhara nail some complex emotional turns, Willem Dafoe nearly steals the whole thing in under two minutes, Dave Bautista makes a real meal out of a part not much bigger than that, and Mark Hamill finds resonance as a tired old man.