Miraculous: The Movie
Okay, so as I mentioned yesterday, we stayed up until midnight last night to see if Miraculous: The Movie had French audio on Netflix. The rule was, if it was 95 minutes or shorter, we would watch it. Otherwise, it was too long, and we needed to go to sleep. Heck, I was even already falling asleep while we were watching Adoration (sorry, Adoration; we've just been so tired), so I wasn't even sure staying up until midnight was a good idea. But I hit my second wind at about eleven, and then midnight came along.
So we checked the Netflix. And oh my goodness, there it was with French audio and everything and EEEEEEEEEEEE!!! ...It was 102 minutes. But it was right there and it had French audio and everything! And we really prefer to watch movies at nighttime for a more movie-theater-like experience (closing the blinds really just doesn't have the same effect), but we didn't want to wait until night fell again, so...we watched it.
And then we let ourselves sleep two hours late, so everything felt a little bit off, and the movie is kind of like an alternative version of Miraculous, and then we worked on the Miraculous manga, which is another alternative version of Miraculous, so today has kind of felt like some bizarro alternate dimension most of the day. Like when you dream about going to a place you go to all the time in real life, but in your dream it's a completely different place that claims to be the same place. And we couldn't do anything to wake ourselves up and come back to our own world, because we had work. It's been kind of a rough day. Fun, though. And fortunately, work went well.
As for the movie...well, we didn't love it. One of the likely reasons for this is not the movie's fault. It's the nature of works in translation, especially works that have song lyrics. There were several elements of the film that had us going, "I'm not sure that makes sense..." But the movie is a musical, and some of the most important character moments--the times when Marinette is explaining her motives, or having big realizations--happen in song. And that's cool; we like musicals. But the thing about songs in translation is that, when trying to fit words into a melody, and have them rhyme, sometimes you stray a little too far from the original meaning. So the character motivation wasn't always clear.
To make matters worse, we didn't always read the subtitles for the songs. Athena says, "Even when I told myself I should do that, I just still didn't." As for me, I tried to read the subtitles occasionally, but then they didn't really make sense, so my brain was like, "Why bother?"
But there's another reason we didn't read the subtitles, and this one is the movies fault. Oh my gosh, it made me so so so angry. And if we'd paid attention to the publicity, we probably would have already known, but we wanted to avoid spoilers, so we avoided publicity! We already knew we wanted to watch it--why do we need to watch trailers that are designed to entice us to watch it? Of course, we couldn't avoid the publicity entirely, so we did see the signs, but we didn't want to believe them.
So we weren't taken totally off guard, but we were still extremely disappointed to learn that the original voices of Ladybug and Chat Noir don't get to sing any of the songs. It was such a disappointment! All we want is to watch our favorite voice actor in a musical singing songs! Is that so much to ask!? First Vivo lets us down, then Cats (I know Cats came out sooner, but we watched it later), and now even Miraculous? The very franchise that alerted us to his existence in the first place!? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?
I mean, we can still hear him sing in the first Christmas special, and Perfection, and Emotion. In fact, we did wonder if all the singing in season five was designed specifically to let him sing, and now that we know he wasn't allowed to sing in the movie, we suspect it even more strongly. Especially as we go over the movie again (we can't just watch it; we are poring over the thing) and notice all the times Chat Noir sings his lines. I especially love when he sings, "I'm the boy of your dreams!" He's so cute.
So the singing voices of Ladybug and Chat Noir did give us an unfair bias against the movie pretty early on, which is part of why we're studying the movie again, so we can have a more fair opinion of it. But more to the point as far as the trouble with all the important character moments happening in song. We weren't reading the subtitles anyway, because we were like, "They don't mean anything--the translation changed things in order to rhyme!" But another problem was that, when Marinette or Ladybug started singing, her voice was so different from her speaking voice that our brains just went, "Oh, this is a background song," and forgot to register that the words were important to the story. It didn't help that they actually didn't give us subtitles for Adrien's first song, and it was all in his head so he wasn't singing it out loud, so it was treated very much like a background song.
And because of all that, there are a lot of things in the movie that have us going, "Hey, that doesn't work!" at first, and then, upon realizing that it could just be a translation issue, we go, "...but I have to check." Actually, the best example of this is from a part that wasn't even a song! So they didn't even need to worry about rhythm or rhyme, but they still made it confusing!
It was at the funfair, when Ladybug and Chat Noir finally work together so Ladybug manages to knock down all of the Magician's cards and Chat Noir catches the Mime's bullet. Chat Noir opens his hand, and we see the Mime's invisible bullet, but maybe it's because I was up too late, or maybe it's because the bullet was invisible (but had some shadowy, special-effecty-ness), but it looks like there's some special effects going on with Chat Noir's hand that may or may not be consistent with using Cataclysm. And the English subtitle has him saying, "Our powers." And then they both said, "Stronger together!" And that made it seem like when they're together they can finally use their superpowers? Or something? I'm not sure.
But on more careful inspection, we realized that what Chat Noir really said was, "He was right." He could be referring to Master Fu or Plagg, but he was referring to someone who had told them they'd be stronger together. And since they'd just done a really cool teamwork thing, and effectively defended themselves and each other as a result, they both realized that he was right, and they're stronger together. But by having the line as "our powers," it sent my brain in the wrong direction, as I explained above. And once again, we lament our reliance on imperfect translations. So Athena's studying French harder.
Anyway, that all being the case, our opinion of the movie is not yet fully formed. As alluded to earlier, we did start watching it again, but. We are pausing the heck out of that thing. Almost every single line. ...Okay, not really. But I am not exaggerating when I say it took us an hour and a half to get through the first fifty-five minutes. If we had tried to get through the rest of it, we would have been up super late, which is not an ideal situation on a day when you feel like you're living in a bizarro alternate dimension. So we stopped the movie and reset our brains by watching Weredad instead.
One thing I can say for sure though, and that is I am offended by how they portrayed Plagg. Best Kwami was reduced to a walking fart joke, and I do not approve. (Nobody's looking for my approval. ...Except me.)
But I can also say one positive thing for sure. Visually, it was a beautiful film. I would use it for wall art, definitely (I'm not sure that's a compliment, but what I mean is, it really is very nice to look at). The voice acting was amazing, as well, of course.
And those are our preliminary thoughts on the movie. We'll have more once we've completed our study.
Today I'm thankful for getting to watch the Miraculous movie, getting to hear the French version of the movie (mostly; there are a few bits where the audio does strange things), surviving today's bizarro alternate dimension, getting to hear Adrien sing in season five, and getting to sleep in tomorrow.
So we checked the Netflix. And oh my goodness, there it was with French audio and everything and EEEEEEEEEEEE!!! ...It was 102 minutes. But it was right there and it had French audio and everything! And we really prefer to watch movies at nighttime for a more movie-theater-like experience (closing the blinds really just doesn't have the same effect), but we didn't want to wait until night fell again, so...we watched it.
And then we let ourselves sleep two hours late, so everything felt a little bit off, and the movie is kind of like an alternative version of Miraculous, and then we worked on the Miraculous manga, which is another alternative version of Miraculous, so today has kind of felt like some bizarro alternate dimension most of the day. Like when you dream about going to a place you go to all the time in real life, but in your dream it's a completely different place that claims to be the same place. And we couldn't do anything to wake ourselves up and come back to our own world, because we had work. It's been kind of a rough day. Fun, though. And fortunately, work went well.
As for the movie...well, we didn't love it. One of the likely reasons for this is not the movie's fault. It's the nature of works in translation, especially works that have song lyrics. There were several elements of the film that had us going, "I'm not sure that makes sense..." But the movie is a musical, and some of the most important character moments--the times when Marinette is explaining her motives, or having big realizations--happen in song. And that's cool; we like musicals. But the thing about songs in translation is that, when trying to fit words into a melody, and have them rhyme, sometimes you stray a little too far from the original meaning. So the character motivation wasn't always clear.
To make matters worse, we didn't always read the subtitles for the songs. Athena says, "Even when I told myself I should do that, I just still didn't." As for me, I tried to read the subtitles occasionally, but then they didn't really make sense, so my brain was like, "Why bother?"
But there's another reason we didn't read the subtitles, and this one is the movies fault. Oh my gosh, it made me so so so angry. And if we'd paid attention to the publicity, we probably would have already known, but we wanted to avoid spoilers, so we avoided publicity! We already knew we wanted to watch it--why do we need to watch trailers that are designed to entice us to watch it? Of course, we couldn't avoid the publicity entirely, so we did see the signs, but we didn't want to believe them.
So we weren't taken totally off guard, but we were still extremely disappointed to learn that the original voices of Ladybug and Chat Noir don't get to sing any of the songs. It was such a disappointment! All we want is to watch our favorite voice actor in a musical singing songs! Is that so much to ask!? First Vivo lets us down, then Cats (I know Cats came out sooner, but we watched it later), and now even Miraculous? The very franchise that alerted us to his existence in the first place!? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?
I mean, we can still hear him sing in the first Christmas special, and Perfection, and Emotion. In fact, we did wonder if all the singing in season five was designed specifically to let him sing, and now that we know he wasn't allowed to sing in the movie, we suspect it even more strongly. Especially as we go over the movie again (we can't just watch it; we are poring over the thing) and notice all the times Chat Noir sings his lines. I especially love when he sings, "I'm the boy of your dreams!" He's so cute.
So the singing voices of Ladybug and Chat Noir did give us an unfair bias against the movie pretty early on, which is part of why we're studying the movie again, so we can have a more fair opinion of it. But more to the point as far as the trouble with all the important character moments happening in song. We weren't reading the subtitles anyway, because we were like, "They don't mean anything--the translation changed things in order to rhyme!" But another problem was that, when Marinette or Ladybug started singing, her voice was so different from her speaking voice that our brains just went, "Oh, this is a background song," and forgot to register that the words were important to the story. It didn't help that they actually didn't give us subtitles for Adrien's first song, and it was all in his head so he wasn't singing it out loud, so it was treated very much like a background song.
And because of all that, there are a lot of things in the movie that have us going, "Hey, that doesn't work!" at first, and then, upon realizing that it could just be a translation issue, we go, "...but I have to check." Actually, the best example of this is from a part that wasn't even a song! So they didn't even need to worry about rhythm or rhyme, but they still made it confusing!
It was at the funfair, when Ladybug and Chat Noir finally work together so Ladybug manages to knock down all of the Magician's cards and Chat Noir catches the Mime's bullet. Chat Noir opens his hand, and we see the Mime's invisible bullet, but maybe it's because I was up too late, or maybe it's because the bullet was invisible (but had some shadowy, special-effecty-ness), but it looks like there's some special effects going on with Chat Noir's hand that may or may not be consistent with using Cataclysm. And the English subtitle has him saying, "Our powers." And then they both said, "Stronger together!" And that made it seem like when they're together they can finally use their superpowers? Or something? I'm not sure.
But on more careful inspection, we realized that what Chat Noir really said was, "He was right." He could be referring to Master Fu or Plagg, but he was referring to someone who had told them they'd be stronger together. And since they'd just done a really cool teamwork thing, and effectively defended themselves and each other as a result, they both realized that he was right, and they're stronger together. But by having the line as "our powers," it sent my brain in the wrong direction, as I explained above. And once again, we lament our reliance on imperfect translations. So Athena's studying French harder.
Anyway, that all being the case, our opinion of the movie is not yet fully formed. As alluded to earlier, we did start watching it again, but. We are pausing the heck out of that thing. Almost every single line. ...Okay, not really. But I am not exaggerating when I say it took us an hour and a half to get through the first fifty-five minutes. If we had tried to get through the rest of it, we would have been up super late, which is not an ideal situation on a day when you feel like you're living in a bizarro alternate dimension. So we stopped the movie and reset our brains by watching Weredad instead.
One thing I can say for sure though, and that is I am offended by how they portrayed Plagg. Best Kwami was reduced to a walking fart joke, and I do not approve. (Nobody's looking for my approval. ...Except me.)
But I can also say one positive thing for sure. Visually, it was a beautiful film. I would use it for wall art, definitely (I'm not sure that's a compliment, but what I mean is, it really is very nice to look at). The voice acting was amazing, as well, of course.
And those are our preliminary thoughts on the movie. We'll have more once we've completed our study.
Today I'm thankful for getting to watch the Miraculous movie, getting to hear the French version of the movie (mostly; there are a few bits where the audio does strange things), surviving today's bizarro alternate dimension, getting to hear Adrien sing in season five, and getting to sleep in tomorrow.