This year, the Disney Group ushered in a bumper box office harvest, in addition to the help of its "latecomers" such as Pixar and Marvel, the contribution of the group's elders, the Disney Animation Studio, founded in 1923, should not be underestimated. "Zootopia", released in March this year, not only won the global box office of $1 billion, but also the reviews were also acclaimed.
Surprisingly, with the Christmas schedule of movies approaching, Disney Animation Studios broke with the convention of one new work per year in recent years, launching the second film of the year, "Moana", which was released in Chinese mainland and North America at the same time, and was scheduled for November 25, colliding with the fierce "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them".
On the one hand, this makes people worry about the film's box office prospects; on the other hand, it reflects Disney's confidence in this new film. Their high score of 8.3 on IMDb and their 99% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as of press time) also prove that their confidence is absolutely well founded.
The "arrogant" demigod Maui is armed with a weapon ready to attack.
Moana and Maui witness the magic of the magic fish hook.
"Ocean" is not only fantastical, but also fun
Moana, the protagonist of Ocean's Adventures, is the daughter of the chief of the small island of Moturuni in the South Pacific. Despite her yearning for the sea, there is an unwritten rule on the island that no voyages are allowed to avoid danger. However, the environment is getting worse and worse as the demigod Maui stole the jewel of the goddess of the sea a thousand years ago.
In order to save her people, Moana went to sea at the behest of her grandmother to find Maui, trying to persuade him to return the gems. However, the narcissistic and fearful Maui is unwilling to cooperate, coupled with the coconut pirates and powerful sea monsters that are killed halfway, Moana is repeatedly faced with the choice of giving up or continuing.
The animated films released in China this year seem to have a special relationship with the sea, before "Finding Nemo 2", "Big Fish and Begonias", "Song of the Ocean", and "Ocean Adventure" is the fourth one. Leaving aside the Chinese-style "Big Fish begonias" and the hand-painted "Song of the Ocean", compared with the "Finding Nemo 2" which is also a 3D animation, how is the "sea" in "Ocean Strange" different?
Compared with the "reality" of "Finding Nemo 2", "Ocean's Edge" presents the subtle changes in the movement of the sea in different lights, but also gives it a personality charm: it will play with Moana, and it will also punish Maui a little when he is not speaking or acting. In the words of Andrew Milstein, president of Disney Animation Studios, "70% of the film's graphics are about the sea, but it's not just the background, it's an important character in the film." ”
Since it is set on the ocean, other supporting characters are naturally locally sourced, such as the pirate legion that brings trouble to Moana and Maui, which is derived from the coconuts that can be found everywhere on the island. Although they are villains, they are not fierce at all, but there is a contrast.
According to directors Ron Clements and John Musker, one of the artists on the creative team was obsessed with George Miller's Mad Max, which inspired the coconut pirates who designed each face differently.
The maiden Moana "tamed" the demigod Maui.
The young girl Moana wears a garland on her head and has a gentle gaze.
There is no cheesy romance, only the unique flair of the South Pacific
In recent years, Disney's animation has favored independent, tough women as the protagonists, whether it's Elsa in Frozen or Judy in Zootopia. Moana in Ocean's Ocean's Ocean is also one of these categories, and her special feature is that she is not the blonde European princess we are familiar with, but the daughter of a Polynesian island chief, and the spirit of adventure is rooted in her bones.
Directors Ron Clements and John Musk expressed their desire to reflect the growth experience of a young girl searching for herself through a purely adventurous story, so they did not consider adding a romantic plot at the beginning of the creation.
Although it is easy to empathize with the experience of growing up, the cultural background of the South Pacific island country where the protagonist Moana is located is still very unfamiliar to many Audiences in the East and the West.
Five years ago, when the creators first visited Tahiti, the locals said to them: "For many years, we have been gradually swallowed up by your culture, can you not be conquered by our culture even once?" This sentence made them determined to show the culture of the Polynesian Islands as realistically as possible in the film.
To this end, they later went to Maria Island, Samoa, Fiji and other places to collect wind. So we see in the film how the people of the island nation work, what songs and dances they sing and dance, and how Polynesian tattoos are done.
In order to be as close to the character as possible, the region has also become a factor that must be considered when looking for voice actors. As a result, Auli'i Cravalho, a newcomer from Hawaii, 16,000, stood out. Due to the fact that there are many singing segments in the film, the original creative team planned to find another singer to sing in addition to Moana's voice actors, but Olivia's good voice line made them decide that the song part would also be played by her.
As for another important character, Maui, "Boulder" Dwayne Johnson is the perfect choice. Not only is he of Polynesian descent himself, but the Polynesian-style tattoos on his body also coincide with Maui's.
Directors Ron Clements and John Musk revealed that Johnson himself was excited about dubbing Maui, which on the one hand made him aware of where his roots were, and on the other hand, it gave him the opportunity to show his singing voice. Although he had previously tried his singing skills in "Saturday Night Live", it was even more special for him to be able to sing in the movie.
Anyone who has seen the trailer for Ocean's Edge should be able to feel the extraordinary sound of the soundtrack. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Tony Award winner for the musicals Hamilton and Life in the Highlands, and Mark Mancina, a Grammy-winning composer who has scored for The Lion King and The Speed of Life and Death, integrate upbeat, passionate, and intense Pacific Island music into the song and background music, complementing the film's magnificent landscapes.
The young girl Moana and the demigod Maui stage a farce along the way.
The chicken's eyes widened, and it was hard to hide its fear.
The little pig is chubby and cute, always "out of the situation".
The coconut robbers were arrogant.
The gorgeous turn of the two-dimensional animation master
Disney used "the original team of The Incredibles and Zootopia" as one of the selling points of "Ocean's Edge", the former's two directors Don Hall and Chris Williams as assistant directors in the film, and the latter's screenwriter Gerald Bush wrote the script. But for animation fans, the film's two directors, Ron Clements and John Musk, are also famous.
During their more than 30 years at Disney, the two created animation masterpieces such as "The Little Mermaid", "Aladdin", "Hercules", "Star Silver Island", "Princess and Frog" and so on. All of these works have an IMDb rating of more than 7, and it can be said that none of them have failed on their resumes.
However, it should be pointed out that these brilliances are all due to the era of two-dimensional hand-drawn animation, and "Ocean's Edge" is the first CG animation of the two.
2009's "The Princess and the Frog," while acclaimed by critics, was less than ideal at the box office; coupled with the fiasco of 2011's Winnie the Pooh, Disney eventually abandoned two-dimensional animation.
In 2013, Disney announced the abolition of the hand-drawn animation department on which it made its fortune, laying off 150 people, including seven veteran hand painters who had worked on everything from The Little Mermaid to The Princess and the Frog.
At the same time, for those hand-drawn animation directors who remain at Disney, such as Ron Clements and John Musk, they also face a career crisis.
"Not every two-dimensional hand-drawn animation director has been able to successfully transition to CG animation director, but Ron and John have done it." Andrew Milstein, president of Disney Animation Studios, admitted in an interview with the media at the "Ocean's Edge" conference in Shanghai this month, "For those directors who are willing to learn new technologies, Disney will provide everything possible to help." ”
This combination of the director team of "bringing the old with the new" may be the perfect strategy that Disney can think of to make the successful transition of the meritorious two-dimensional animation director to the CG animation director.
On Friday, in a remote video interview with Shanghai media, Ron and John also said that the two did have a difficult time learning to make CG animation. Especially in the project launch stage, hand-drawn animation only needs a pen and a few pieces of paper to depict the character image; while CG animation must build a three-dimensional character image at the beginning, but also design the environment in which the character is located, and then test the effect of movement.
Although everything was difficult at the beginning, in the process of production, they also saw many advantages of CG animation, many effects that two-dimensional hand-drawn animation can not do, such as the texture of the sea water in the film, The image change of Maui, etc.
Ron said he personally believes disney doesn't close the door forever for two-dimensional hand-drawn animation, but CG is the most correct choice for Ocean's Edge.
In addition, "Ocean's Edge" is not completely without hand-drawn elements, and the tattoo on Maui's moving storyboard and the "mini Maui" on it, which represents the superego, were painted by Eric Goodberg, a hand-painter who had depicted the elven image in Aladdin. This is the first time since the prevalence of 3D animation that 2D images have been successfully grafted onto 3D characters.
As the last animation introduction film of 2016, "Ocean Adventure" will land on the Chinese mainland in three modes of screening mode of 2D/3D/Chinese giant screen from November 25.