Sohu Entertainment Special Article (Yama Jin/Text) In various senses, Hayao Miyazaki's new work "What kind of life do you want to live" is an extremely special work.
In terms of word-of-mouth, this is a feature film with the lowest score on Miyazaki's Douban, and the score has dropped to 7.7 points after 5 days of release. In the past, the Douban score of Miyazaki's works was usually in the 8-9 range.
On the foreign rating website IMDb, "What kind of life do you want to live" also has only 7.6 points, which is lower than "Spirited Away", "Princess Mononoke", "My Neighbor Totoro" and other Miyazaki classics.
After the release of the film, it also received a relatively high level of evaluation in Japan, with some people feeling that the visual effects, production, and art were very exquisite, while others felt that the story was obscure.
In terms of publicity strategy, this film is also one of the few films that Studio Ghibli does not promote, and releases trailers and stills directly.
However, it was such a film that was released directly and was rated as "obscure" by many people, and won $240 million at the global box office, which was a big hit in various regions.
In the mainland, "What kind of life do you want to live" surged with a box office of 500 million yuan in 5 days, and the total box office forecast given by the ticketing platform is currently 770 million yuan. In Japan, the box office exceeded 400 million yen on the first day of release, which directly drove the sales and republication of Genzaburo Yoshino's book of the same name (only the same name, the movie story is original).
In the United States, it won the opening weekend box office, and the final box office result of $46.6 million not only broke Studio Ghibli's record for the highest grossing film in North America, but also became the highest-grossing Japanese original animated film on the planet in North America.
Why is "What kind of life do you want to live", a polarizing work by Hayao Miyazaki, a global hit?
From the perspective of the mainland market, its big sales may be due to the "scarcity" of the work in and out of the play.
Outside the play, among the new films in the same schedule, "The World of Grass and Trees" is a niche literary film, and the Douban score of about 7 points also makes it difficult to attract more audiences to the cinema by word of mouth; The box office appeal of these two new films is not even as good as "Godzilla vs. Kong 2", which has been released for more than a week. In contrast, Hayao Miyazaki's new work is the one that attracts the audience the most.
In the play, from "Porco Rosso" to "Spirited Away", in the past few years, Miyazaki's past classic works have been re-screened in mainland theaters from time to time, ensuring the exposure and attention of this animation master.
Secondly, "What kind of life do you want to live" is Miyazaki's first new work in ten years after "The Wind Rises". Unlike the re-screening of classic works in the past, this film is the first time that Hayao Miyazaki's new work has been released in the mainland, which is also attractive enough for the audience.
From the perspective of the North American market, Miyazaki himself has enough global popularity and appeal, and his works have been shortlisted for the Oscars and the Venice Film Festival many times, among which "Spirited Away" also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film and the Berlin Film Festival's highest Golden Bear Award.
At the same time, in the North American market, the voice cast of "How Do You Want to Live Your Life" can be described as star-studded - Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Florence Pugh, etc., which also increases the box office appeal of the movie to a certain extent, especially when Western audiences do not like to watch subtitles.
With a global box office of $240 million and this year's Oscar for Best Animated Feature, Hayao Miyazaki and his "How Do You Want to Live Your Life" have undoubtedly become winners.