Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
Spirited Away
No consistent world, cringy behaviour of the main character, love story out of nowhere, you can’t have a plot twist if you didn’t have any previously established lore. It felt a bit like a dream that was trying to take itself seriously as an actual story.
Spirited Away, and to some degree all Ghibli stuff leans very heavily on a shared cultural Mythos. It doesn’t do exposition in the same way that zombies or angels aren’t explained; everyone knows that stuff because we all grew up with a million references.
i agree with you, and i pretty much felt the same the first time i watched it. plus, Chihiro feels like a very reactive character, driven from one errand to the next, and nothing feels really earned.
however, my opinion changed a little bit, because i got to see its theatre adaptation on stage. this is more or less my first time seeing a stage play, so it was a very new, and different experience for me. basically it is a big make believe, because unlike film or animation, what you can do with props on stage is very limited. i had to try very hard to turn the analytical part of my brain off, otherwise the whole thing will just be ridiculous. and that somehow made it a lot more enjoyable.
so i guess what i am trying to say is, don’t think too hard about it? 🤷
HOT TAKE
hella disagree upvote
how dare you
Upvote
Why?
Edited my comment
I gave up on spirited away half way through it.
Ghibli it’s very hit and miss for me, it’s either really amazing or really tedious and boring.
It’s weird, because I loved Spirited Away upon first watching it. But I can’t do it anymore. It’s like you say, a dream with no consistency. I let it fool me once, but now I’m lucid and see through the facade.
That’s not to say I think it’s bad, per se. It’s still beautiful, and fascinating, and has a great score… But for me personally it has no re-watchability for precisely the reasons you mention.