Re: Utada Hikaru may resume activities in Spring 2016
That isn't exactly what I meant, either. The many (and it is many) fans of Utada in the west that became fans because of Kingdom Hearts don't see her that way, and many did start following her career closely after S&C.
I'm saying that it is the one thing your average person will say when her name is mentioned. It won't be "Oh she's that amazing Japanese singer/songwriter known for her big hits like "First Love" "Automatic" "Final Distance" "Be My Last"." People aren't even going to mention her English albums. It is almost always "Simple & Clean".
If that's indeed the case props to those as they then truly appreciate Utada herself as a performer.
Of course that song may be an identification symbol, no doubt, but to derive from that a sort of obligation/foregone conclusion that KH 3 would/has to get a new work from her
does sound more like wishful thinking.
They aren't, but did Christopher Lee ever ignore his LOTR fans despite his dislike of being remembered primarily for it? If he was truly upset with the situation, I doubt he'd have returned for the Hobbit. He had a great respect for LOTR especially since he knew Tolkien and believed the novel franchise was one of the best literary contributions of all time.
Did the Beatles ever stop performing "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be" because they hated the fact that their fans knew them primarily for these songs?
I can even use Leonard Nimoy as an example of this. He hated being known as Spock. He wrote a book about how he was not Spock. Then later on he accepted it. It was the reason fans loved him, it was why they followed his career, it was the motivation for him to expand his horizons as a photographer, poet, musician (lol), and director, and in the end he loved being Spock.
So why would Utada ignore her fans? The ones who became loyal because of her work for Kingdom Hearts? Why ignore the MASSIVE buzz about hoping she'd return for KH3 whenever her name is brought up in the news in relation to new music?
It'd be one thing if we knew she wouldn't be asked and that there wasn't that many people clamoring for her return (Nomura himself included). Nomura didn't draw that art and write that message for nothing to come of it. The fact is that there are thousands of people clamoring for her to return for KH3.
If at the end of all things her and Disney could not come to an agreement, then that's fine, but her large western following wasn't born from nothing.
When looking at the whole package of Lee's career he was way too much of a professional to let himself get truly upset
and had actually several roles he was famous for. You're right with LotR, as he actually had much fun with his involvement in the franchise, he even continued to voice Saruman in many LoTR video games. For the Hobbit I recall that Peter Jackson himself actually made sure to set filming schedules as such that Lee would be most comfortable for his parts, actually allowing his scenes to be shot in Britain so Lee didn't have to travel to New Zealand in his advanced age.
Not that I'm aware of, the only thing I do recall is that the Beatles eventually refused to give anymore live concerts at all, and that had to do mostly with obnoxious fans.
Nimoy did indeed a whole U-turn, yep, although I can't say I blame his initial attitude to the issue because it can be really harmful to one's career if one is reduced to just one or two roles they played, regardless how successful they were.
I'd say that correct answer would not be that he wasn't Spock, but that he wasn't
only Spock.
I'm far from insinuating that Utada would go and say deliberately "screw you" in ignorance, but I get the vibe that exactly this "massive buzz" being made is blowing the whole situation out of proportion. Call it another case of overhyping and fostering overblown expectations if you want, something
especially the KH fandom is by now infamous for.
I'd say that has something to do with marketing purposes, as stating from the get-go that they won't even consider to ask her to return would again be bad PR for both Disney and SE.
I don't think Universal will let Disney get away with lowballing Utada, and Disney has been a bit more easy to work with these days
I don't think anybody actually associates the series as a whole to Utada. To look at it like that is looking at this entire situation wrong.
It's about the sum of all of the parts. Every game has had Utada's songs in it, regardless of being the same songs from KH1 and KH2. To suddenly not have it for KH3 would be a weird missing piece of what has been established as a recognizable part of the series.
It'd be like if suddenly Shimomura cut out "Dearly Beloved" as the main theme and made a completely new one. It's a part of the whole of the series.
I'll give them that they loosened up quite a bit since the 90s and early 2000s, yet Disney remains to be a rather difficult employer it seems.
Just recently I read in a German newspaper that many actors/stars, including Harrison Ford, are not really that satisfied with how Disney handles the new Star Wars films, especially when it comes to literally dictating them how to conduct interviews.
It certainly comes over as this in some instances though considering the hype made around Utada when all she did was was provide
one song (two when counting KH 2) out of
hundreds for the work.
Yea, and people went and complained loudly about that at almost every corner, lol, sometimes openly dissing Utada for not making a new song for every newly released KH game like a bunch of entitled brats.
I'd argue that the real wham episode would be if Shimomura would be replaced as main composer for the series as a whole, as that would affect more than 90% of the series music.
But then again, Final Fantasy also survived the departure of Nobuo Uematsu, however hard
that was at the beginning.
I think fans could survive with a new singer and theme song if Utada doesn't return.
This is probably the main gist of what I'm meaning to say as well.
If Utada decides to give it another run, fine, but if she doesn't it doesn't mean the end of the world
nor would there be any reason to hate her for it.
