Director Knight is a famous Hollywood "rich second generation", and his father is the founder of the well-known sports brand Nike.
The shooting of a 7-meter-tall skeleton model appears in the easter egg at the end of the film.
NO.523
Legend of the Magic String 70 points
Movie location: Broadway Cinema Guorui City Store
Attendance: 15
Legend of the Magic Strings is the fourth anime by Laika Studios. After the film was released in North America, it is said to have won a good reputation, and currently has a rating of 7.9 on IMDB, close to "Zootopia" with a score of 8.1. However, in terms of north American box office, "Legend of the Magic String" did not make as much money as Laika's first three works, becoming the lowest-grossing Laika movie in the premiere weekend. At present, the film's first-day box office in the mainland is 6.75 million, and the box office in the 6 days of release is 28 million, which can only be regarded as a poor performance. The biggest advantage of "Legend of the Magic Strings" is also Laika Studio's well-produced "stop-motion animation", which basically represents the highest level of craftsmanship of this type of animation, and has also been nominated for almost all animation awards in 2016. The film's creators have carefully built a "miniature Japanese village" for the protagonists in the story, blending Japanese yokai legends and ukiyo-e-style scenes, all of which are based on typical Japanese elements. But in the end, it is still just a visual "Oriental", and the storyline style still follows the Hollywood fantasy adventure genre.
Perspectives The shell of Asian culture, the core of American values
Judging from Laika's previous films "Ghost Mother", "Psychic Boy Norman", and "Box Monster", Laika is best at telling a story full of innocence and beauty with a grotesque and terrifying shell, compared with Disney, Pixar and other Hollywood animated films, Laika is more like Tim Burton in the animation industry, and this unique style is also where Laika's success lies. In "Legend of the Magic Strings", we can also see Laika's efforts in this regard - the male protagonist Kubo has just been born with one eye gouged out by his grandfather, Kubo's two aunts wear horrible masks, and the delirious mother and Kubo are in the cave, constantly warning Kubo not to go out at night. I have to say that the film satisfies the audience's appetite at the beginning, with liveliness in horror, and there is no lack of mystery in liveliness. In the later part of the development of the story, it can already be seen that this is still a classic Hollywood story that praises the love of the family - human love is always the greatest and most powerful, and although the gods are perfect, this perfection is indifferent. At the end of the film, Kubo uses the power of love to transform his "evil" tenjin grandfather into a mortal with eyes.
Many people describe this film as a "Western story cloaked in the shell of the East", and the slightest flaw is that today, it is difficult for us to simply use "East" and "West" to divide cultural values, and people's perspectives on the world have long been diversified and complicated. We can only say that from this film we can see a part of the Asian culture that European and American creators understand- it is about life and death, human nature and divinity, family and love, where we come from, and so on.
Theme Kubo's eyes are also our eyes
In recent years, such European and American animation films with Asian elements have abounded, such as "Mulan", "Kung Fu Panda" and so on. For Chinese (or Asian audiences such as Japan), due to the particularity of the creator's identity, the Asian culture we see in the film has actually been defamiliarized, which is no longer the Asian culture that we are directly exposed to in our daily life, but the Asian culture in the eyes of Westerners. In this sense, this cultural misalignment alludes to the meaning of "eyes" in Legend of the Magic Strings. Human beings look at people with their eyes, and also use their eyes to perceive the souls of others, and the emotions and value judgments in the soul will also be conveyed to our minds through the "eyes". The "eye" is an intermediary here, just as when we watch a movie, we see the world both through our own eyes and through the eyes of others. In the story of "Legend of the Magic String", the protagonist constantly tells the story, which forms a mirror image with us who watch the story. Mom tells stories to Kubo, and Kubo tells stories to the world. Some of the legends in the story become a reality, and some stories that are concealed change the face of the original story.
The cultural and philosophical significance of The Legend of the Magic String is much more interesting than the theme of the story. The film was translated as "Cool Treasure: Legend of the Magic Strings" and "To Catch the Demon Death Squad" in Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively, and before it had a more approachable name called "Kubo and the Second String", I probably wanted to call this film "Kubo's Eyes" more.
■ Director talk
Akira Kurosawa influenced me the most
Travis Knight, director of The Legend of the Magic Strings and CEO of Lycra Corporation
Q: The film is also based on Asian culture, how did you conceive the story at that time?
A: When I was a child, I especially liked to listen to my mother tell me stories, and I loved fantasy and adventure themes, so I decided on this general direction, and then filled it with content, characters, character personalities, etc. I also love Japanese manga, and I want to bring together all the things I like, such as fantasy, stop-motion animation, samurai stories, and Japanese art. I can see myself especially in the role of Kubo, an artist, a musician, and a storyteller, and his journey from a child to an adult is very similar to my experience.
Q: What difficulties were encountered in making a film? Laika's animation is relatively dark, have you considered the acceptance of children?
A: There are many challenges in the script link, to ensure that the story is meaningful, to establish a distinct worldview and theme; to create a film is a great challenge for us, because we have never done such a large-scale film before, and we have also designed many scenes for this imaginary world, such as ice and snow, huge monsters, underwater eye gardens, etc. To do these details in place is very complicated. As for the style of the dark department, we do not make requirements for the child's intelligence and maturity, this film is family-oriented, blending life, joy, pain, darkness and warmth, children can handle and understand many things, and it seems to be working well.
Q: What works have been borrowed from the film? Is there a director who has had a great influence on you?
A: The director who has had the greatest influence on me is Akira Kurosawa, who is one of the founders of modern cinemas, and his scheduling, lighting, and editing have impressed me very much, for example, "Seven Samurai" has inspired me a lot. There is also Hayao Miyazaki, whose perception of the film is worth investigating deeply. I have also seen Zhang Yimou's "Hero" many times, and I have learned how to use oriental elements to be smooth and flowing, which has also given me a lot of subtle influences.
Q: There are a lot of sets in the movie, and the style difference is also very large, which is a rare stop-motion animation, so which scene takes the most time?
A: Some people say that "Legend of the Magic String" is like a road movie, every place is a new scene, and doing stop-motion animation is definitely hoping to recycle the environment set, but the movie finally returns to the opening place. Snow and beaches full of fallen leaves are difficult. The most troublesome thing was the origami world in Kubo's illusion, where it was all made of origami, and we used miniature models, digital models, physical dolls, and CG renderings... In short, all the technology you can think of comes in handy.
Q: There are many seeds of classic magic films in the story told in the film, what kind of classic works have inspired you?
A: Fantasy works do have some routines to learn from, from Harry Potter to The Lord of the Rings, and even Star Wars. I didn't want the plot to be too conventional, so I set up a lot of unexpected twists, and if you look closely, you can see that the villain Moon King in The Legend of the Magic Strings hid the Star Wars Easter egg when he designed it.
Author: Qu Bu Mao