Isle of Dogs - a 2018 stop motion film by Wes Anderson

See it! You won't regret it.

I'm still kind of uneasy about the cultural stereotyping controversy. And you didn't answer my question.

edited 11th Apr '18 7:21:00 PM by ElSquibbonator

Ah, that's why I haven't been seeing it in my theater.

So how much do you think it could end up making?

Does this movie have subtitles? I know there are some characters that are Japanese- the last time I saw a movie that had some dialogue in subtitles, they weren't in english so I couldn't read them as I am currently living in a non-english speaking country

It doesn't. And I'm still trying to figure out what its budget was.

The movie technically doesn't have subtitles, but it does use a lot of In-Universe translation methods to inform the audience, from English words being paired next to the Japanese script on documents to actual translators in a UN-esque setting. On a few occasions you may go through about 5-10 seconds of someone speaking unsubtitled Japanese before moving on to one of those translation methods, generally meaning that even though you don't know exactly what they said the intention is still clear. The majority of the film is still the dogs speaking English to each other, so it's not like the entire movie is translations and flash cards.

So, it went wide release today. It's already made $19 million in limited release alone; how much do you think its opening weekend is going to add to that?

The lead dog Chief, voiced by Bryan Cranston, is a black fur dog and an acknowledged stray who didn't have an owner when he was deported to the island. The other dogs in their cliche were all domesticated and respond with trained obedience to Atari, while Chief was apathetic and even threatening to Atari "I warn you, I bite!" A little over halfway through the film Chief and Atari get separated from the others, Chief gets washed by Atari and it's revealed that his fur is actually white and he looks extremely similar to Spots, Atari's dog he is looking for. When they find Spots it's revealed that he and Chief are long lost brothers.

I saw a similar Twitter post on how offensive the "cannibal dogs" were and made no real mention of the circumstances of why they were cannibals.

Akira Creator Katsuhiro Otomo drew a poster for the movie.

What's actually pretty cool is how the movie is titled Inugashima in Japan, which literally translates to Dogs on the Island.

So why are people who never watched the film are complaining about stuff that they don't know about without context? This shit too with the "cultural appropriation" mishap. Actually reading the replies there made me unsurprised too. Probably the same folks who yelled "racism!" and "cultural appropriation" on a kimono festival... that are sponsored by Japanese people.

edited 15th Apr '18 8:38:28 PM by Ookamikun

The post was a query for context. We got context. So that's that.

That sounds strawman-like. They clearly aren't the same folks because it's a discussion about potential Black-insensitive imagery (and not the only possible image), not Asian-insensitive imagery. Plus there are legitimate reasons to protest that a Japanese-sponsored kimono festival might engage in appropriation^note for instance, excluding Asian-American contestants in favor of white ones, but that's a completely different topic.

edited 15th Apr '18 8:57:48 PM by Tuckerscreator

Sorry if I went on a tangent, I just it that you get the usual suspects when dealing with movies like this. And especially people are playing up the Mighty Whitey even though from the film's context it was less about that.

And for the kimono festival that problem is less about the cultural appropriation but management racism it seems. And yeah they're different people obviously, but I was just reminded of that.

The interesting thing is that while watching the movie I was kind of apathetic about it, the movie was entertaining enough but I think in some ways I was distracted by the imagery (Wes Anderson's famously symmetric framing plus the general stop motion animation) to really appreciate the story. I think it should be obvious the movie has immense immigrant/segregation undertones, and a real plus to the overall movie is showing that there is divergent opinions and goals going on throughout the story. It is surprisingly complex, especially when we finally come across the cannibal dogs, their one act of cannibalism was more of a Mercy Kill and they were immensely ashamed of doing it, and being largely test animals from an abandoned lab meant they were more broken (literally and figuratively) than the other dogs on the island. The analogies of different ethnic groups transplanted onto dogs make the story actually quite universal, rather than targeted exclusively towards Japan^note As said, entire portions are done in Japanese by native speakers, and the film really utilizes Japanese culture to give the film a lot of personality, which was probably the main reason for choosing it as a setting.

As a result I think that any uncomfortable subtext that people see in the film is intentional, the end message is about how easy it is to "de-humanize" an ethnic group, something near every society is guilty of at one point or another.

I'm going to have to wait until the DVD comes out in order to see this, work has been a pain for me. I am hearing a lot of good things about this movie.

The movie comes out in China today, making it the first Wes Anderson movie ever to get a release there. Japan, Russia, and Germany get it next month. It's getting very good reception in all of those places (especially China, considering it's the Year of the Dog there), so I'm holding out for a worldwide tally of perhaps $70 million.

edited 17th May '18 2:40:09 PM by ElSquibbonator

So I finally watched it (aired here, limited release) and wow I'd argue this is better than Fantastic Mr. Fox. Really great visuals and the dialog is well delivered.

I honestly don't get the racism angle since it is foreshadowed (and actually nice twister there with Chief), and that the dogs with him didn't really change their behavior with him, so I didn't get the "he suddenly gets respected". And Tracy doesn't really feel like a Mighty Whitey as much as just being out of culture. Hell, she's barely a blip to Atari who drove the most of the plot. My main gripe is that Chief's pack kinda became irrelevant towards the final act.

Also I was wondering why this got rated PG in my country but then I realized it had stuff like metal parts being stuck on a kid, kid bleeding and injured, and that transplant scene.

edited 1st Jun '18 11:30:42 AM by Ookamikun

Apparently this movie's budget was $25 million, according to this tweet (not sure how reliable it is, though): https://twitter.com/platypusrex256/status/992145452937052161

If this is true, then the movie has already doubled it! That is huge news. This makes Isle of Dogs the third successful American adult animated movie in as many years—the previous two being Sausage Party and Loving Vincent (the latter of which was a British-Polish co-production). In other words, animated movies aimed at adult or teenage audiences really do seem to be becoming a "thing".

Though this was less raunchy and more serious in that regard. And to be fair the only "mature" part here was the gore.

The fact still remains, though. We've never had this many successful PG-13 and R-rated animated in such a short time since Ralph Bakshi's heyday in the 1970s.

I'm mixed Chinese, not Japanese, but I can empathize with people's concerns about Orientalism in the film. The Japanese setting is more of an exotic backdrop than something that feels integral to the film, and the fact that the Japanese characters speak unsubtitled Japanese in a movie made for western English speaking audiences adds to that problem.

edited 13th Jun '18 11:13:32 AM by CaptainCapsase

Speaking of which, is there any word on how well it's doing overseas? Box Office Mojo lists it as having earned $62 million worldwide, but some of its entires for various countries—notably China and Britain—haven't been updated in weeks. Taking that into account, it's possible that it's passed the $70 million mark worldwide.

Also, do we have any idea what it's budget is? I imagine it wouldn't be much higher than that of Fantastic Mr. Fox. The closest thing I can find to a solid figure is a single tweet. But that just raises more questions than it answers. Like, why has no one who worked on the movie mentioned the budget? Where did the person who made the tweet get that number? And why is it so much less than what Fantastic Mr. Fox cost?

edited 24th Jun '18 10:30:18 PM by ElSquibbonator