Great piece. I enjoyed it. It comes on the heels of something I was discussing the other day with a friend. You might want to do a study of it... I mentioned to her that I had just seen a movie in which the opening credits were a couple of minutes long. The reason? There were ELEVEN (count 'em...) companies involved, and each one wanted its name up there on screen, AHEAD of the title and of the the stars. Opening credits these days go something like this:
--LOGO OF Company A
--Company B
--Company C
--Company D ("A Company E company")
--In Association With:
--Company F
--Company G
--Company H ("a Company I company") production of...
--A FILM BY
--Company J
--A Company F Production
--(TITLE OF FILM, or STARS)
It often seems as the the title of the film is an afterthought.
I love the grandiosity with which these frequently fly by night companies announce themselves, the slow reveal of the logo. I often think about the process through which the logo came into being. Who designed it? How much was he/she paid? How many revs did it go through? With what excitement was it received? “Yass we’ve got a logo now, we’re a real film company, success is inevitable, yass, YASS!!!”
At least in part, I attribute the longer titles to a need on the part of studios to make sure cinema-goers know what franchise a film belongs to. I don't know if this is because audiences have gotten dumber, and need to be bludgeoned with information lest they not realize a new film from their favorite franchise has been released, or if studios simply think this is the case.
If you look to the long-running franchises of the past, they often made no mention of the franchise in the title. Star Wars may be where it all started. I, and all my friends, knew that The Empire Strikes back was Star Wars part 2, even though neither the word star nor wars appeared in the title, but just in case, the title was framed by those words. "Star The Empire Strikes Back Wars" read the poster.
Of the 14 Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, only 5 feature the detectives name in the title. Apparently, audiences were able to figure out that Pursuit to Algiers or The Pearl of Death were Sherlock Holmes films, but today they'd be titled Sherlock Holmes: Pursuit to Algiers and so forth.
James Bond is an even better example. None of the 25 (27 if you count the 2 not made by Eon) mention Bond in the title. Again, audiences were able to intuit his presence without being told they were going to see James Bond, Agent 007: A View to a Kill.
Godzilla's name typically shows up in film titles, but not always. I don't think Invasion of Astro Monster did any worse because potential viewers avoided it because they didn't know it featured Godzilla.
This makes sense. Though I wonder if there is another factor. Because of reduced attentions spans, do the studios just assume people will make their movie selections with no other information than the title? Who can read any more than 83 characters these days? This comment/note is 347 characters. I'm going to guess that NO ONE will read it.
This article was excellent, but I'd like a little more 'granularity': could we get a breakdown on the number of films that actually include the colon within their credit sequence, and those that do not? While many of these films are listed on IMDb with a colon or feature a colon in their advertising, when you actually sit down and watch them...there's no colon. Being as anal-retentive as I am, this has long annoyed/bugged/puzzled me.
I've noticed the reverse in anime. A lot of more recent releases seem to have shorter titles, like "Frieren", "Bubble", "Great Pretender", "Eden", "Pluto" etc.
Older ones tend to be longer: "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" and other stuff in the franchise, named as the base title + movie + title of movie (1 word, like "Rebellion"), "Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Bladeworks" (+ the rest of the Fate series), "The Asterisk War", "A Certain Scientific Railgun" (and the rest of the A Certain series, including one with "the movie")...
Sure, but Frieren is just shorthand for Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, which is the full title. It would be interesting, though, to see if your impulse is correct that there are fewer subtitles now.
That said, I'm not sure they're be shorter overall, if only due to the unending wave of isekai titles. "Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon" isn't exactly concise, but at least it doesn't have a colon.
Yeah, I don't keep track of much anime outside of Netflix, so my perspective is very biased lol
I'm pretty sure you had a minimum budget requirement for a movie being counted in this post, so it'd probably filter out a lot of isekais with overly long titles and commas (which I think are even worse than colons)
Yeah, that's fair. If you limit it to movies, the predominance of colons may be a product of how many anime movies are offshoots of established series.
Great piece. I enjoyed it. It comes on the heels of something I was discussing the other day with a friend. You might want to do a study of it... I mentioned to her that I had just seen a movie in which the opening credits were a couple of minutes long. The reason? There were ELEVEN (count 'em...) companies involved, and each one wanted its name up there on screen, AHEAD of the title and of the the stars. Opening credits these days go something like this:
--LOGO OF Company A
--Company B
--Company C
--Company D ("A Company E company")
--In Association With:
--Company F
--Company G
--Company H ("a Company I company") production of...
--A FILM BY
--Company J
--A Company F Production
--(TITLE OF FILM, or STARS)
It often seems as the the title of the film is an afterthought.
Thanks for an interesting piece. --je
I love the grandiosity with which these frequently fly by night companies announce themselves, the slow reveal of the logo. I often think about the process through which the logo came into being. Who designed it? How much was he/she paid? How many revs did it go through? With what excitement was it received? “Yass we’ve got a logo now, we’re a real film company, success is inevitable, yass, YASS!!!”
At least in part, I attribute the longer titles to a need on the part of studios to make sure cinema-goers know what franchise a film belongs to. I don't know if this is because audiences have gotten dumber, and need to be bludgeoned with information lest they not realize a new film from their favorite franchise has been released, or if studios simply think this is the case.
If you look to the long-running franchises of the past, they often made no mention of the franchise in the title. Star Wars may be where it all started. I, and all my friends, knew that The Empire Strikes back was Star Wars part 2, even though neither the word star nor wars appeared in the title, but just in case, the title was framed by those words. "Star The Empire Strikes Back Wars" read the poster.
Of the 14 Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, only 5 feature the detectives name in the title. Apparently, audiences were able to figure out that Pursuit to Algiers or The Pearl of Death were Sherlock Holmes films, but today they'd be titled Sherlock Holmes: Pursuit to Algiers and so forth.
James Bond is an even better example. None of the 25 (27 if you count the 2 not made by Eon) mention Bond in the title. Again, audiences were able to intuit his presence without being told they were going to see James Bond, Agent 007: A View to a Kill.
Godzilla's name typically shows up in film titles, but not always. I don't think Invasion of Astro Monster did any worse because potential viewers avoided it because they didn't know it featured Godzilla.
This makes sense. Though I wonder if there is another factor. Because of reduced attentions spans, do the studios just assume people will make their movie selections with no other information than the title? Who can read any more than 83 characters these days? This comment/note is 347 characters. I'm going to guess that NO ONE will read it.
This article was excellent, but I'd like a little more 'granularity': could we get a breakdown on the number of films that actually include the colon within their credit sequence, and those that do not? While many of these films are listed on IMDb with a colon or feature a colon in their advertising, when you actually sit down and watch them...there's no colon. Being as anal-retentive as I am, this has long annoyed/bugged/puzzled me.
Are there any movie titles with a semicolon?
Interesting question. The only one I could find quickly was this Beastie Boys concert documentary "Awesome; I Shot That!"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488953/?ref_=kw_li_tt
This is the type of stuff I crave. Thank you
I've noticed the reverse in anime. A lot of more recent releases seem to have shorter titles, like "Frieren", "Bubble", "Great Pretender", "Eden", "Pluto" etc.
Older ones tend to be longer: "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" and other stuff in the franchise, named as the base title + movie + title of movie (1 word, like "Rebellion"), "Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Bladeworks" (+ the rest of the Fate series), "The Asterisk War", "A Certain Scientific Railgun" (and the rest of the A Certain series, including one with "the movie")...
Sure, but Frieren is just shorthand for Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, which is the full title. It would be interesting, though, to see if your impulse is correct that there are fewer subtitles now.
That said, I'm not sure they're be shorter overall, if only due to the unending wave of isekai titles. "Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon" isn't exactly concise, but at least it doesn't have a colon.
Yeah, I don't keep track of much anime outside of Netflix, so my perspective is very biased lol
I'm pretty sure you had a minimum budget requirement for a movie being counted in this post, so it'd probably filter out a lot of isekais with overly long titles and commas (which I think are even worse than colons)
Yeah, that's fair. If you limit it to movies, the predominance of colons may be a product of how many anime movies are offshoots of established series.