It’s not just the shell, it’s what’s inside that counts
I didn’t think they would screw it up that bad, but they did.
Now let’s pause a bit and say, before we start caterwauling about this version versus that version, that there may be some real cultural differences that would cause thematic or idea loss in transfer to another culture. Having paid lip service to that, I will go on to say some of the biggest themes in the original was lost not by cultural differences but by misunderstanding or just plain ignoring them.
Yes, there are spoilers here. Many spoilers.
The live-action 2017 Ghost in the Shell was already steeped in controversy even before the film was released in the casting for the main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi. A Japanese or at least Asian actress should have played the part, the criticism goes, not a white actress in the Hollywood mold no matter how much box office she’d pull in. Still, if you have to hire a white woman, you could do a lot worse by not casting Scarlett Johanssen, given her performances in Lucy, Her and Under the Skin. Plus, that voice – there’s no mistaking her for anyone else.
Mamoru Oshii, the director of 95 Ghost, has said it the Major is a cyborg with an artificial body so it doesn’t matter what she looks like on the outside (or who plays her). If that’s the case, why is she even female? And why so voluptuous, especially for an androgynous being? It could just turn out that if you’re going to put a human brain into shell, it might be better psychologically to match gender characteristics to the sex of the donor. Some people might not be able to relate to a robot or android or cyborg who doesn’t look human, but then there’s the problem of the “uncanny valley” wherein an android or robot or cyborg looks mostly human but not quite, thus eliciting feelings of revulsion among other humans [cf. Polar Express]. (Honest Trailers went ahead and censored the Major’s fake nipples in the 95 Ghost video apparently because they looked too real and elicited not revulsion but other physiological reactions, at least for the men. For women, I dunno. I wonder if anyone has even asked them.)
But that’s not the first question that should’ve been asked, and that question is “Why do you need to do a live-action movie in the first place?” Hollywood is going full speed ahead on this and damn the torpedoes. Disney’s got Beauty and the Beast this year, Jungle Book last year, Lion King in the future, and many, many more in the farther future. Wasn’t the original good enough? Is there some shortcoming in the original animation that disappoints and leaves viewers unfulfilled? (In the case of Jungle Book, yes; the other two, no.) Plans are afoot to do this live-action baloney to another Japanese anime, Akira (and if there are gods in this universe, please don’t let that happen). Just because you have the technical capability to redo your animated films into “reality” doesn’t mean you should. Go find or write a new, original story and dazzle us with that.
Alas, Hollywood finds it easier to remake something than start from scratch for the big movies. It speaks to the financing and risks associated with making big films, but also people who grew up with watching the original films saying “I can do better.” Turns out, that’s not always the case.
The 1995 Ghost in the Shell was a thrilling ride into future, with human-machine interfaces and technical gizmos and the electronic cityscape. The Major is a combination of human brain in a cyborg shell, and she begins wondering about her past and her future. In the meantime, she and her colleagues in Section 9 are trying to find out who’s hacking personal memories and making supposedly free-will humans do their bidding. Along the way, the film gets philosophical on what it means to be human in the face of encroaching technology.
In Japanese anime (and the manga sources for many of the films), time is set aside for philosophical introspection, often in slow, meditative scenes without dialog. We’re given time to breathe and ponder before the next action sequence. Not so in in an American film. Introspection is outward, not inward, usually explored with another character even if that character is never seen again.
We get little introspection in 17 Ghost as opposed to 95 Ghost. Gone from 95 is the scene where, as the Section 9 crew loads weapons and prepares to face the enemy, Togusa asks why he, as a mostly human mundane police detective, was recruited by Section 9. Because they need the outlook from a different perspective, he’s told. Gone is the scene when the Major is riding a slow ferry along a canal, taking in the cityscape as music plays in the background. She spots a woman who looks amazingly like her in an office building. It’s just the Major’s expression telling us she has many, many questions about herself, but not a word is spoken. In 96 Ghost, the Major never really finds out about her past, or if she even has one. In that film, the past isn’t as important as the future.
In one of the main scenes of 95 Ghost, the Major goes diving in the river. Batou, one of her Section 9 colleagues, asks her why she does it if it frightens her and she says fear is one reason why; not many things can scare a cyborg. They get philosophical, and at one point he Major speaks in an odd voice. The scene is in 17 Ghost, but bereft of philosophy from the secondary voice. The conversation is just surface, no introspection.
The 2017 Ghost also is afflicted with a Hollywood disease of Everything Has To Be Explained. Example: I was perfectly satisfied with the knowledge that a small band of rebels managed to steal the plans for the Death Star; I didn’t need to know who they were or how they did it. But now we have an entire movie explaining it. I was OK with knowing Han Solo was a smuggler and a rogue, but now we’re going to have an entire movie to explain how he got there. (More profits for Disney being another motive, of course).
17 Ghost is all about the Major’s backstory, something 95 Ghost only hinted at. She finds out she’d been lied to about her origins. She’s egged on by a mysterious hacker who’s also killing the scientists involved, as it turns out, in the creation of the cyborgs. This leads to the big, bad corporation that made her first by murdering her and stealing her brain. She’s the 99th effort to meld mind and machine, the other 98 being failures, some of them her friends who were killed in the same raid she was. So the CEO becomes the real bad guy — big cliché No. 1– and she has to turn rogue in her search for Truth – big cliché No. 2. (On a motorcycle – big cliché No. 3.) We also find out how Batou, a colleague from Section 9, lost his eyes and had them replaced with super-tech lenses. I was satisfied not knowing in 95 Ghost; indeed, I thought he’d had the procedure done voluntarily.
One thing we – meaning Hollywood – should have learned by now is that translating anime into live action has some real problems. So it is here: The Major’s body looks heavy and awkward, as opposed to lithe and limber in 95 Ghost. (Both versions make the same mistake, though. When the Major lands on a roof, it partially collapses under her because of her weight. But why? By the time the movies are set, newer materials should be available, materials that are strong yet light and flexible. Remember, when the Major starts one of her super-human runs, she’s got to accelerate all of that mass. Yet neither movie shows that as a problem.)
The neon-lit megacity with tall skyscrapers, huge blocks of residential towers, small open-air food vendors and giant advertising holograms has now become its own cliché. Blade Runner started it in 1985, though Japanese manga had been moving in that direction. But more movies have been slavishly copying it. Blade Runner was a breakthrough in showing the gritty, multicultural, techno-city of the near future, but the time has come for someone to break that mold and show us something different.
References to The Matrix and Blade Runner are obvious for the 2017 version. One influence not mentioned, though, is Dark City (1998), especially the scene where the doctor is about to wipe out the Major’s memories with some kind of a hypodermic needle. However, the doctor changes her mind and instead gives the Major something to fight back with. Sound familiar?
17 Ghost tosses the biggest main theme of 95 Ghost, that of the future of human and machines, the future that Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have been warning us about. The villain in 95 Ghost isn’t really a villain; he’s an artificial intelligence created in the lab. He escapes because he wants to answer that same question: Who am I? He discovers Major Kusanagi, and is intrigued by her because of her human-machine split. In the end, they combine to form an entirely new life form. “Where does the new mind go from here?” she asks as she looks out over the city.
None of that in 17 Ghost. The Major (given another name for most of the movie; it’s only later does she realize her real one) tracks down her past, finding her mother and realizing that the bad AI was one of her fellow artists that the evil corporation killed. “I’m not ready to leave,” she tells the AI, so she stays and remains the same. We last see her standing on a roof, same pose as at the beginning of the film, ready to fight for justice. And so begins Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. No new life forms, no new experiences. Just the old human conditions and experiences.
I almost walked out of this, but I waited because I wanted to see the end. I knew I was going to be sorry, and I wasn’t disappointed. The 95 Ghost in the Shell isn’t a perfect movie, but it does bear rewatching. The new version cut and paste many scenes from the first, but it sucked all the life and intrigue from them. The 17 Ghost does get one thing tight, and that’s the caring the personnel of Section 9 have for each other. There are some nice visuals and performances, but none of this is enough to save it. The soundtrack by Clint Mansell is OK, but they tossed the original music except for a little sample over the credits.
Again, we have to ask: Was this necessary? Can’t we leave well enough alone?
The ‘Star Wars’ juggernaut is about to squeeze your wallet thinner than a light-saber beam
With the special showings to privileged people and backers just hours away and the general opening for everyone else days away of the new Stars Wars movie, The Hype Awakens Revenge of the Corporation The Monetization of Fandom The Force Awakens (hereinafter known as Star Wars 7 or SW7), a review of the protocols to ensure that the common consumers are given the fullest opportunity to spend as much as they can and beyond and will do so with the correct attitude. That is, with open wallets and shut mouths.
Corporations with no connections to the movie business whatsoever, as they have been doing all of 2015, will be doing promotions both serious and silly as per orders and guidance from the Walt Disney Company. As the time for the suckers common movie fans to be allowed to view the movie approaches, these efforts will increase this week until almost everything else has been pushed aside and all media outlets, personal blogs, online sites, TV commercials, podcasts, “factual” programs on the few remaining radio stations and “neutral” articles appearing in the few remaining newspapers will have some kind of mention of Star Wars as many times as possible. Intrusions of unwanted and unsanctioned “news” material‑ presidential campaigns, climate change, terrorism, interest rates, food poisonings at chain restaurants, police-citizen clashes, immigrants, natural disasters and such ‑ should be expected, but Disney representatives will be working closely with media CEOs and their minions to assure that not too much time is wasted on those issues and time better spent presenting articles and related material about the Star Wars 7 movie. Non-cooperating media venues will be cut off from future coverage ‑ including but not limited to press junkets, one-on-one interviews with Disney celebrities, access to “leaks” ‑ of Star Wars, Marvel Universe, Pixar, Muppets or any Disney-owned entertainment venues for a period not less than ten years (by which time, it is felt, such discordant organizations will have faded away).
(And sometimes, help just falls out of the heavens ‑ so to speak ‑ from the unlikeliest places. Last week, a NASA scientist discussed how to build a Death Star out of asteroids. Don’t you just love those “scientific” nerds?)
Beginning at the Thursday, Dec. 17 first screenings and continuing until the end of the year, special crowd control officers will be deployed to theaters across the country to ensure that no less than 90 percent of common customers buy tickets for Star Wars 7. Although some officials at the company and associated investors would rather see a higher mandatory percentage, it is felt that allowing some customers to see other movies opening/still playing (sort of like standing on a beach as a hurricane come ashore, as it were) will count as a public-relations gesture to show that the Disney company can be lenient. (Besides, a Disney film, Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, is one of those movies still playing. Unfortunately, it needs the help as it is not performing to Disney standards. This is unacceptable and an internal review has already been launched.)
There have been rumblings among stockholders and other investors that the income from the already released Star Warts Wars 7 merchandise has not generated enough billions of dollars, that many were expecting trillions. The Disney company urges patience; after all, the movie, as of this date, hasn’t even been released yet. The mountains of cash are still to come, believe it.
The campaign since the announcement that SW7 will be a reality has worked well. Anticipation is at a fever pitch, and thanks must be given to the PR and marketing departments. The little tidbits that have been allowed to dribble out have caused massive reactions among what’s laughingly called “fanboys.” (It has been hysterical to watch). And in another brilliant move, film reviewers will not be given advance screenings so their judgmental articles about the film won’t be seen before the mass audience is snookered lured ordered allowed in. Who needs ’em? Yeah, fuck you, movie reviewer, and the Prius you rode in on.
***
So I’m not a real fan of Star Wars (hey, really? gosh). You may see the above as a cynical take on studio motives, but I say there’s more than a few grains of truth in there. Ever since the original Star Wars in 1977 became a monster hit, the reaction by money people switched from “What the hell is this??” to “Cash cow, we gotta get our hooks into it.” Entertainment became a strictly a secondary consideration.
Now, George Lucas definitely set out to make something entertaining. The first Star Wars film ‑ A New Hope, as it later became known ‑ made such an impact because Lucas was in love with old science fiction (hereinafter called SF) movies, serials and old TV shows and he made the world in the movie look like something that could exist, solid and real, not something automatically cheesy and ridiculous. The story itself is as old as humanity, as has been mentioned ad nauseam. Being a “space” adventure adds nothing to this story: Light sabers are swords, Jedi masters are wizards, X-wings are horses, the Millennium Falcon is a pirate galley, the Emperor is an evil witch-king, the Death Star is a windmill, Princess Leia is a damsel in distress. (Yes, admittedly, a kick-ass damsel, but stop and ask — how many other women are there in the original trilogy?)
The packaging was part of the appeal, the characters were another. The hero, Luke, is as bland as heroes in these stories tend to come, but, again, as usual in such stories, he’s surrounded by characters who are much more interesting. The plot? Callow youth reluctantly goes on journey that ends with the collapse of the social order and he’s hailed a hero for causing that.
(In this discussion of the Star Wars films, I do not include the prequels or whatever they’re called. They made such a mess of what the original trilogy had established that I just pretend they don’t exist.)
So, what can we expect from the third trilogy? More of the same. This isn’t an independent film exploring the vagaries of human emotions . This is an action franchise. The plot , as based on what’s been discussed all over the web and seen in the trailers, is about some kind of resistance fighting some kind of empire-leftovers. Dogfights ‘twixt A-wings and TIE fighters are in the mix. (In the trailers, some of these take place in the atmosphere of a planet, so they look at least a little realistic. These kinds of dogfights cannot happen the same way in space, but I have a hunch that’s going to be ignored just as it was in the originals.) Looks like there’s going to be a scene in a cantina, maybe even the same one as in the first movie. (SW7 supposedly takes place 30 years after Return of the Jedi, so if the cantina is still in business, that’s a remarkable accomplishment. Those wretched examples of scum and villainy sure are loyal.)
And there are new things, too. Can’t afford to piss off the merchandisers. There’s a droid call BB-8, a rollicking, rolling machine whose purpose I can’t fathom. And is that a love interest for R2-D2, all pink and cute? (Will there be a love scene ‘twixt the two? Better hope not.) And what about C3PO? Is he just his irritating self, no love interest for him? And while the X-wings and TIE fighters are leftovers from the originals, they’ve been “updated,” so of course that means a whole new toy line. Don’t want to be caught with 30-year-old versions, do we? And, of course, all sorts of other machines, weapons, space ships, characters too numerous to mention. So fanboys, get them wallets open. Time’s a-wastin’!
What SW7 won’t have is Darth Vader (unless they go the comic-book superhero route and say “He’s not really dead, he just looked it.”) Vader is one of the greatest villains to menace the heroes on-screen. Even my jaded self remembers the thrill when he first stepped through the smoke to the thomp-thomp of John Williams’ music. Man, I had high hopes for him. I didn’t want him to be human, I wanted him to be a physical manifestation of the evil Emperor’s hate, coalesced into this humanoid form that cannot exist outside of the mechanical suit. A truly evil being, with no remorse and no humanity whatsoever. Alas, he was just someone’s dad who once gave in to lust and thus allowed himself to be turned to the dark side. (See, teen-agers? Stop that fooling around before it’s too late.) So with Vader dead (we think), we need a new villain. The trailers have showed us some guy in a dark mask vowing to continue Vader’s work. See? More of the same. Vader-light will give the heroes hell until he’s taken down by those same heroes. Luke Skywalker might be that hero, but since we haven’t seen Luke in the trailers we don’t know what he’s been up to these last 30 years.
One of the things I’m hoping for in this new trilogy is a career boost for John Boyega. (His character is Finn, an odd name for the SW universe. Could be worse, though, he could’ve been Capt. Phasma (Capt. Phasma? Sounds like someone out of those cheesy ’50s TV SF shows). Boyega was terrific in Attack the Block (2011) as the guy who first causes alien monsters to invade his neighborhood, then takes the lead in getting them out, even to sacrificing his own freedom. That character had an edge, an uncompromising sense of right. Those rough edges probably have been sanded off for SW7, but I hope he stashes the money from these movies in the bank and then chooses some challenging parts in future movies. Luck, Mr. Boyega.
What Should Happen in SW7 but is Highly Unlikely: The rebels, after successfully bringing down the Empire, have split into factions and the years spent years fighting among themselves have finally resulted in a government that in order to solidify its position, turns into something worse than the Empire ever was. (The Empire grew out of trade disagreements; this government rose out of ideological conflict.) In order to try to regain the ideals and hopes ( a new new hope, in other words) of the original rebellion, a new rebellion flares with Princess General Leia in command. A new generation of young rebels answers the call, including at least one new force-sensitive warrior, who has to face a new almost-Sith lord, Luke Skywalker He is such an emotional wreck that the new Emperor-wannabe has twisted Luke’s mind into believing what he’s doing is righteous and correct. Instead of destroying Luke, she (yes, please, let the new Jedi warrior be a woman) helps him see where it all went wrong and after a painful self-examination and purge of the dark side, turns around and tries to save the new rebellion and redeem himself.
And what of Han and Chewbacca? I have no clue. The trailers show them back on the Millennium Falcon, but why? That ship was a wreck in the original trilogy, 30 years later it should be scrap. And if it had been kept up, perhaps the current owners aren’t too happy about giving it up to these old dudes with vainglorious boasts about the old days and their part in the Empire’s demise. Perhaps Han went rogue again, abandoning Leia and any children, and he and Chewie went back to their old smuggling ways and Han is now the new Jabba. Redemption is required all around.
Well, as you can see, my ideas have nothing to do with the actual SW universe. The fans must be placated, they must like the new Star Wars, otherwise they might not shell out as much of their money as they’re supposed to. Yeah, that’s cynical, but I will allow that the movie might have a few nice surprises for me. I also have no doubt it will be an entertaining, wild romp in the SW universe and just might well bring a totally new take to the story.
However ‑ keep this in mind, padawan. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (awakens? I thought the force was a big part of the New Hope-Strikes Back-Return pantheon; where’s it been the last 30 years? wouldn’t a better title be The Force Re-awakens?) was directed by J.J. Abrams. The same J.J. Abrams who destroyed the Star Trek franchise.
Just sayin’.
Of Plasticine dinosaurs and muddled storytelling
If you’re going to tell a story that suggests the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed, then you should be prepared to follow through and explore the ramifications of that idea.
If you’re going to let several million years pass before your story begins, you should allow for “nature” to progress for all living creatures, not just a few. All of your creatures should be subject to the same rules that all of the other living things — plants, animals, birds, insects, bacteria — are subject to. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a misshapen ecology.
You’ll end up with The Good Dinosaur.
(Spoilers coming)
Basically, the film makes no sense as a story. It’s beautiful to look at, and an occasional interesting moment arrives and leaves, but overall it looks like the result of one of those “I know!” ideas that people have and they get all excited and have what they think are dynamite ideas and they work hard on them, but no one ever steps back and says “I don’t think the pieces are connecting very well.”
Pixar being Pixar, they never do things by half measures, as seen in the incredible landscapes that are based on U.S. government geological maps and data of Wyoming and Montana. It’s not all one-to-one correlation, there are made-up mountains and rivers and such, but the real places served as a base for software programs. Real mountains rise in rocky splendor, real rivers flow through canyons with liquid movement, real trees make up the forests, real clouds from puffy to intimidating thunderheads fill the skies — or so it looks. A common reaction from a viewer might be “I’ve been there.” Maybe not that exact spot, but you’ll be reminded of a hike, or camping in a forest, or fishing in a favorite river bend, or climbing up mountain sometime in your real life.
The details don’t just apply to the grand landscapes, either. One scene takes place in a shallow river edge where the water is just a few inches deep. We see how the light dances on the water surface, we see the sunshine reach the flattened, smooth stones that line the riverbed and we see it all bathed in a golden glow of late afternoon light.
Exquisite.
But then we see a toy dinosaur made of green Plasticine as if some kid had dropped it there. Its skin is a smooth, featureless shape, its toes are just lumps of clay and its face looks like it was drawn by a 10-year-old.
The story was written for 10-year-olds, too.
Well, let’s be fair. While the story is typical Disney-Hollywood fare, it’s been around since someone thought that morals and lessons are important ingredients for stories. A frightened youth loses/has already lost one or both parents must face his, hers, fears and learn how grow up emotionally and mentally in the world. This generally requires a journey, help from unexpected friends, advice from an old sage or two, a threat or two to be overcome, and a triumphant return home.
The twist here is the youngster is a dinosaur, an apatosaurus named Arlo. True to the story, he’s the runt of the litter, and as the runt, he’s afraid of everything, including the family “chickens.” His older brother, Buck, and sister, Libby, dump on him for being such a weenie. He botches every task his father assigns him in trying to make a man dinosaur of Arlo. Poppa builds a corn silo, and it’s good, so he gets to put his mark — a footprint — on the side. Buck chops down trees with his tail, and it’s good, so he gets to make his mark on the silo. Libby plows the field with her face, and it’s good, so she gets to make her mark. Momma does something extra — she’s the mother, what extra does she need to do? — and gets to put her mark on the silo. Arlo is a dweeb so he doesn’t get to put his mark there. (Buck and Libby, being competent and obedient, are like all the competent and obedient siblings in these stories: They don’t get to go on an adventure. They stay home and do extra chores to make up for the missing runt. That’s what you get for being normal, people.)
So — Poppa gives Arlo one last chance: trap the critter that’s been eating the family’s winter stash, then bash his head in with the club he’s going to be holding in his mouth. Of course, Arlo fails, and Poppa finally gets mad and makes Arlo come with him to chase after the critter. In the chase, Arlo gets hurt — of course — and Poppa gets swept away in a flash flood. Of course. Arlo, wracked with guilt, vows to do better, so the next time the critter shows up, he chases him and falls into the river and is swept away. Let the adventure begin!
This is a story that could be told with anyone — and, apparently, any thing — in the title roles. There is nothing in Good Dinosaur that shows how putting dinosaurs as the central figures can change the story. It’s just humans in dino disguise. But, it’s the meteor, see? It missed, and —
That’s the “I have a great idea!” moment. The meteor missed, and everything changed. Except it didn’t. As has been pointed out elsewhere. these dinosaurs never got the advantage of natural selection, the process that favors physiological change that gives a species an advantage in survival. They don’t have hands (except for the T-rexes and we all know how funny their hands are, giggle snort), they don’t walk on two feet, they don’t shrink in size so they don’t need as much food to survive the winter, they don’t even evolve feathers or fur. (Some raptors have a few feathers, Pixar’s bone to evolution, but even after all these millennia, the raptors never developed the ability to fly.) So they’re stuck with plowing the fields with their faces ’cause they didn’t develop many tools, either. To water the crops, they must suck in great amounts of water and blow it all back out like land-borne whales. They lift rocks and branches with their teeth, and, as Buck demonstrated, use their tails to cut down trees. (And those tails slice through easily, despite not having developed any bone or a hardened shell.) We see woven ropes knotted around containers, but we don’t see how the weaving is done. They’ve built themselves a dugout house — which has to be packed pretty full when everyone’s home — but we don’t see any outhouses. Maybe they just poop in the river. (It’s like in Pixar’s Cars — the characters drive up to the gas pump but have no hands or arms to pick up the nozzle, jam it into their own sides and squeeze the trigger. Some things humankind is not meant to know.)
This is where evolution got the dinosaurs when the meteor missed — hardly anywhere. The most realistic dinosaurs in the film at the beginning when we see the errant meteor blaze a trail overhead and some grazing dinos look up for a moment, then go back to grazing. That scene looks like it was stolen lifted borrowed from the “Rite of Spring” section of the first Fantasia movie.
Everything else gets to evolve, though. Trees — both evergreen and deciduous — flowering plants, fruit-bearing plants, insects, birds (wait — birds? did some dinos evolve after all?) snakes (with hands, no less) and insects. Especially fireflies. Oh, the dinos do love them fireflies. In fact, maybe only fireflies. I saw no clouds of stinging flies, no dino blood-sucking mosquitoes, no biting ants, no multi-legged horrors crawling out from under a rock just as you’re dropping off to sleep.
The biggest beneficiaries of evolution in this universe are the mammals. This is actually where Good Dinosaur got a few things right. In the days of real dinosaurs, mammals were small, timid creatures trying to avoid getting stomped/chomped by the ruling species.
But this is not the world of real dinosaurs, or dinosaurs that act like real dinosaurs.
Tyrannosaurus rex has become to be known, through the fossil evidence, as a fearsome meat-eater. According to Pixar, though, if left alone they would evolve into — cowboys, complete with folksy, western accents and slang. Oh, they’re big and have huge teeth, but they evidently they don’t eat their own kind (i.e., other dinosaurs). They fight off rustling raptors by chomping down on them hard — then hurling them away. After a hard day of rustler flinging, they sit around a campfire and tell tall tales. And what are they cowboys of? Big, hairy, shaggy beasts — mammalian beasts. You’re supposed to read “buffalo” here, but “cowboys” is a Texas thing, don’t y’all know, so we’re gonna call ’em “longhorns.” And longhorns they are, a sort of amalgamation of buffalo and steer. Well, then, you ask, did horses evolve so that the “cowboys” could have something to ride on? No, they did not. The T-rexboys must chase the herd on foot. We also don’t see them, y’know, chowing down, either. Do the T-rexes slaughter the beasts, then roast them over an open fire? Or do they just jump on one and rip the thing apart with their teeth and swallow raw chunks, including the innards? Alas, we never find out. Someone decided such questions are too intense for young viewers, but I’d bet money some of those young viewers are asking that very question.
So there are some large mammals in this world. Which brings us to another set of mammals, without whom we’d have nothing to empathize with: humans. (Did the filmmakers, in addition to saying “what if the meteor missed?” also ask “what if humans walked with dinosaurs?” which opens a whole other paleontological/theological can of worms.) Remember that critter that kept getting into the dino family food? That was a feral boy, age indeterminate, who doesn’t talk, doesn’t walk on two feet, scratches himself and thumps the floor with his rear leg like a dog, and howls like a dog. He’s an orphan, of course, lost and alone, so he makes friends with the clumsy dinosaur, helping him find food, protecting him from threats such as the snake-with-hands, and goading Arlo into action, usually by biting him. However, as feral as he is, he’s still civilized enough to wear a breech clout (made of bark and leaves, evidently). All the humans wear something, though the “domesticated” dinosaurs don’t. (They don’t have genitals, either, so reproduction among them is one of those mysteries humans etc., etc.) We can’t have naked humans in a Hollywood movie, even feral ones (Mowgli, Tarzan), but it makes the dinosaurs that much more cartoony, separating them from the humans. The dinosaurs may be civilized, but they’re reptiles, after all, they’ll never amount to much. Later, when the boy meets a pack of humans, they all have clothes, too. Where do the clothes come from? Do the humans have a pact with the T-rexes to get the pelts of the longhorns who ended up as dinner? Are there other large mammals around that the humans hunt? Have humans developed tools to make them? The short scene with them gives us no clues.
And, yes, I said “pack” of humans. The humans communicate by howling, and they move mostly on all fours, However, their evolution gave them the same arms and legs we have now, which have developed to help us stand. We no longer are built to move like that, despite we see on the screen, and it looks difficult. Still, the last we see of the boy he’s standing on his own two feet. (If that isn’t a metaphor for the whole movie, I don’t know what is.)
All of the mammals, human and otherwise, fit better into this world than the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are these plastic creations superimposed on the landscape; the mammals live in it.
Well, anyway, the boy — eventually we learn his name is Spot, arf, arf, arf — saves Arlo’s butt and they become fast friends. (Spot is more interesting as a character than Arlo, IMHO.) Arlo learns bravery and finds maturity by in turn rescuing Spot from ravenous pterodactyls, a flash flood (again) and against all other odds the writers can think of and —
Spoiler: Arlo goes home, and because he did something good, gets to put his mark on the silo next to Poppa’s (those prints are mud, how do they stay put in the rain?) because he’s now a hero because he saved the life of the boy who’s head he was supposed to bash in ’cause the boy was stealing their winter food but because Arlo failed to do that, he and Poppa had to try and catch the thief but they got caught in a flash flood that killed Poppa which made Arlo very sad and angry and later chased the boy again but got lost and without the help of the thief he would have starved to death, been trampled or killed in a flood and so he saved the thief from being eaten/drowned but was man dinosaur enough to send the boy with his own people and finally made his way back after the harvest was in. Yup, he deserves a mark all right.
Dude, you’ll probably be saying, you’re putting way too much into this, man, it’s just a cartoon. And you’d be right. On the surface, the film can be a delight for all of the things we expect in a Pixar movie. But there is also something missing, something that pulls against the movie as a whole.
Pixar filmmakers are known for their meticulous and thoughtful preparation and production, not afraid to revamp or shut down a film they don’t think is working. This one reportedly got one of those revampings, but I think they went off on the wrong track. Instead of going where the idea took them, they put on the brakes and switched to an easier route. Questions they should have asked: After 65 million years, what would a dinosaur society look like? What would the dinosaurs themselves look like? Can tools really be used by picking them up in your mouth? (Though Arlo later does knock a pterodactyl out of the air by throwing a club that way)? Would humans develop a canine sense of smell and locomotion? Would humans and dinosaurs really get along? (Or, as Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, would they just eat us?) Instead, they gave us a kiddie cartoon with some of the most realistic settings ever seen in an animated movie. They pulled back from where the idea was taking them in favor of just another coming-of-age story. They spent a lot of time and effort in getting the settings perfect, but they are not extrapolations of landscapes of the age of dinosaurs. Walt Disney constantly was trying to make animated films “real,” but sometimes going real undermines all the other elements of the film. Realistic mountains and clouds, but cartoony dinosaurs, the central element of the film. It does not work.
There was so much potential here that was lost. I just wish the creators had the courage to follow some of the more interesting aspects of their great idea.
The Spandex brigade begins its annual flight to the movieplex
Once again, the silly superhero season is upon us.
As the Avengers prepare to battle that Ultron thing (at least in the U.S.; in some markets overseas the battle has already been joined), more superheroes will be coming out of the screens in the movie complexes and the toy stores and the fast-food joints and whatever other merchandising the companies have in store. There will be more this summer, this fall, this winter, next spring and on and on and on until the third for fourth decade of the 21st century probably. Back in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s of the last millennium, we had been waiting for flying cars; instead we got flying Spandex-clad superheroes.
Superheroes or superhero-related shows haven’t all been relegated to the summer, television has had a bunch of such shows going on for a while to mixed success. But it’s summer, and that mean big, bombastic movies, and so we’re getting ’em, like ’em or not.
I suppose the big one is Avengers, Age of Ultron. I gather the plot is about Tony Stark screwing up and instead of making a robot mind to aid people instead makes one that decides to just replace them all. Leave it to the movies to tap into our collective angst: Big Important Thinkers such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have been warning us that Artificial Intelligence might be a dangerous thing to be messing with. Yeah, when’s that ever stopped us?
As I’ve said before, I’m not all that charged up by superheroes. The stories just repeat themselves ’cause it’s easier to recycle an old villain that come up with a new one. I will to admit enjoying — and also being a bit surprised — by one or two or three. Captain America: The Winter Soldier mostly; to a lesser extent the first Avengers movie and The Guardians of the Galaxy. The latter two, though, were less interesting because they dealt with some amorphous threat from outer space while Winter Soldier stayed on Earth and dealt with real, imminent threats to privacy and government overreach. That made it more immediate and more topical, a rare thing in superhero movies.
As a tiny counterpoint to the big Marvel release this week, DC has been dropping trailers for its next big film, Batman v. Superman, which has nearly a year to go before we see the whole thing. No, it doesn’t look promising, but at least it does seem to be addressing a big issue from the end of Man of Steel, the wanton destruction of the city and the deaths of thousands. We’ll have to wait to see if it’s just a trailer-tease or if the issue is really addressed, but I like to think that the makers have been pressured to respond by the criticism about that ending. (Evidently the Avengers do sort of mention the destruction that occurred at the end of their first movie, but they’ve also evidently moved their battles overseas. Less of a problem if it’s some foreigner’s city that gets flattened.)
The Batman trailer also illustrates a pet peeve of mine (outside of being, dark, colorless, hopeless and dreary), and that’s how superheroes get a pass on the laws of physics. When Superman started in the comics, he was just a powerful man. He didn’t fly, he just leaped pretty far. Gradually, he gained the ability to fly (along with X-ray vision, super breath, super hearing, etc., etc., etc.) Now he not only flies, he hovers. How the hell does he do that? If science fiction writers tried to do that with their protagonist, they’d be laughed out of the convention unless they had a sound, plausibly scientific explanation. Even fantasy writers have to keep their magic consistent, so if they give the hero hovering ability, it better have a solid root in the general magic realm. So superheroes are neither SF nor fantasy, but a class of genre fiction all their own. Akin to myths, legends and gods — yea, verily I say unto you, superheroes are the new gods for the allegedly rational 21st century.
Despite what Warner Brothers, DC, Marvel and Disney would have you believe, those superheroes aren’t the only ones around. Other comics, other novels, even a couple of movies have explored more rational attempts at explaining superheroes and how they work. However, I’m going to focus on one, a series worth reading because it explores how having super powers can be a curse and how so-called heroes can have feet of clay. That’s the Wild Card series edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass. There are several books out and the latest, Lowball, has just been published.
I also lied because I’m going to plug another different take on superheroes, and, yes, it’s my own book, Tyranny of Heroes. (This is my blog and I’ll shill my books if I want to.) My superheroes don’t mess around, they take over the word, they kill their enemies and they make sure everyone on the planet behaves themselves. And, of course, they change history, which is explored by an underground what we would call blogger, except the Internet is closely controlled by the Supers, so our underground writer has to resort to more prosaic methods. (Remember mimeograph machines?)
Information on getting the e-book is available at the right where you see the cover. (And, OK, I’ll admit it, I’m looking for some sales here. I think it’s a good book, and if you agree, please tell your friends. But please give it a try.)
Like it or not, Disney ‘s ‘Frozen’ deserves the animated-film Oscar
Update March 2: Frozen got the Oscar, Let It Go got the best song Oscar, but Disney’s short film, Get a Horse, didn’t. That Oscar went to Mr. Hublot. Nice to see an outsider get this one.
A Disney animated film is up for an Oscar, no surprise, but no film from Pixar is, which is … shocking.
I know many people disdain Disney animated films as products of the big fantasy factory that shovels out carefully calculated products geared first, to make lots of money and second, earn a bunch of awards. Plus, they perpetuate the “girls should be princesses” trope, or they’re full of sappy songs, or they’re wrecking the source material. All perhaps true in one form or another in the past, but this year the studio released a film that pushes back against some of those tropes.
Frozen will deserve the win beyond being just a Disney film. It’s already won the best-film Annie from the International Animated Film Society (IAFS), which is animators giving other animators awards.
At first glance, the Disney “princess” factor is in full play here with not one but two princesses, daughters of the king and queen of Arendale. Princess Elsa possesses the talent to create ice and snow at the wave of her hand, while her sister, Anna, doesn’t (why one has it and the other doesn’t is never explained; it’s one of those things you just have to go with). When they are girls, Elsa accidentally injures Anna seriously enough to require some odd rock-borne magic from the chief of trolls to save her life.
To prevent this from happening again to Anna or anyone else, the king and queen lock Elsa away with instructions to suppress her power, to never use it again, to never let anyone else see it, to deny its existence. (Fill in your favorite metaphor here.) The king and queen go on a journey, but their ship sinks. Elsa, the oldest, becomes queen, but on her coronation day, she refuses to approve Anna’s marriage to handsome Hans. In the ensuing argument, Elsa’s power is unleashed and she flees, leaving Arendale locked in a permanent winter. Anna, believing she was the cause of Elsa’s anger, chases her to try get her to come home, but that leads to more disaster, which plays out to the point where Elsa is about to be executed by a usurper to the throne.
Two princesses? Throw in a comedy relief from a talking snowman and an clever deer sidekick, some songs, and we’re off again rolling merrily along on the Disney marketing juggernaut. Another brilliant success for the giant corporation swallowing everyone’s childhood.
Except—there are things going on here that keep the film from being Just Another Disney Cartoon. There are lessons to be learned, especially about throwing yourself at the first handsome prince you see. And that favorite “true love will save you” theme Disney loves to milk again and again gets a different interpretation here. Both of these add a dimension to Frozen that moves the film from the usual Disney offering into something more complex—and much more satisfying. Even the sappy songs get a remake. The Oscar-nominated song Let It Go is not just a princess pining for her prince to show up and carry her off to a “happily ever after” ending but a bold statement about acceptance of self against all opprobrium.
Is any of this due to the influence of Pixar? Pixar was cleaning Disney’s clock with the Toy Story series, Monsters, Inc., Wall-E, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Cars—films that were winning Oscars almost every year. So, to handle the competition, Disney bought Pixar. Two Pixar executives, John Lassiter and Ed Cantwell, became Disney animation executives and brought some of the Pixar operating procedures along, and it seems to be paying off. The last few Disney animated films have been big improvements over earlier ones that didn’t do so good (Atlantis, Treasure Planet). Tangled showed the seeds of this change when Rapunzel, known for her long, long, blond hair, sacrificed it all for her “true love.” The film was sassy, funny, a bit subversive, and had one of the best horses in animated films.
Then came Wreck-It Ralph, which should have won the Oscar for best animated feature for 2012. Yes, Vanellope von Schweetz can be irritating, but the film has heart and soul. It lost to Brave because Brave was a Pixar film and Pixar films are always better than Disney, right? Not this time. Brave was gorgeous to look at, but it was flawed in story and character. It just did not rise to the usual Pixar heights. Normally, we’d expect the same kind of situation this year, but (horrors!) Pixar’s 2013 film, Monsters University, wasn’t even nominated. (It did not deserve to be. A pleasant film, but it didn’t break any new ground like its predecessor did.) And then we find out that Pixar isn’t going to have a film at all in 2014.
Does this mean Disney is sucking the life out of Pixar? Has Disney decided that the best way to deal with the upstart is to hollow it out and transfer the creativity to it? Will Pixar be relegated to making more hum-drum sequels to Cars and Monsters, Inc.? I prefer to believe Pixar delayed its next film because it wanted to ensure the film lives up to its standards. Pixar does has a couple of interesting-sounding films in its release schedule, so I’m not ready to give up on them completely. But I am concerned.
These three films—Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen—represent yet another renaissance for Disney studios, the first since the Little Mermaid–Beauty and the Beast–Lion King–Aladdin tetralogy of the late ’80s, early ’90s. For a while, the quality was slipping (except for the really subversive Lilo & Stitch) until these came along. I just hope the creators are careful and don’t slavishly imitate these in their future films. Signs of a formula are evident already: Frozen‘s princesses as children bear a resemblance to Vanellope of Wreck-It Ralph; as adults, they resemble Rapunzel of Tangled; Olaf, the talking snowman of Frozen, resembles in both design and sound King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph; the handsome prince of Frozen shares the same DNA with the handsome thief of Tangled; Sven, the reindeer of Frozen, has a lot in common with Maximus, the horse in Tangled. And though no one stopped and sang in Wreck-It Ralph, Tangled and Frozen are harbingers of the return of songs to Disney animation movies. That’s OK, mostly, but it can be overdone.
Frozen has been in development for a long time. James B. Stewart, in his 2005 book, Disney War, about the Michael Eisner years at the studio, describes a creative meeting of animators he was allowed to attend with Eisner on June 11, 2003. Among the films discussed was one based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale The Snow Queen, something that had been in the works long before then. That’s now Frozen, the gender-neutral name given because studio execs are convinced boys won’t go see a film about girls. That’s why the tale of Rapunzel was called Tangled. It’s all reportedly based on the not-so-good showing of The Princess and the Frog, but I doubt giving that film a neutral name (Day of the Frog? The Magic Frog? The Frog and I? The Frog Dairies? Beauty and the Frog-beast? The Little Frog-maid? The Frog King? Froggie Goes a-Courtin’?) would have attracted that many more boys.
(As last year, a Disney short cartoon is also nominated. When Get a Horse, which precedes Frozen in the theaters, starts, you think you’re going to see an old black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoon resuscitated from the vaults, but then characters start falling out of the cartoon as if they were landing in the theater. When this happens, the characters are in color and rendered by computer much more realistically [as much as a talking mice standing erect wearing shorts or skirts can be]. Kudos to the directors, Lauren MacMullen and Dorothy McKim, for making an engaging little blast from the past. The problem is, it will probably get the Oscar simply because it’s a Disney film. I just wish some of the independent and student animators would get more recognition in this category.)
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If Frozen has any competition, it’s going to be The Wind Rises, perhaps Hayao Miyazaki’s last film (he’s said this before). Miyazaki is the genius behind Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and many other Studio Ghibli films. The film might be handicapped by its subject matter, the man who developed the warplane known as the Zero, which was one of the weapons that allowed the Japanese Empire to conquer so much territory in World War II.
Why that topic? It indulges Miyazaki’s love of flying, something that works its way into almost every Miyazaki film. Plus, it’s a story about holding onto one’s beliefs and persevering despite setbacks and roadblocks, another favorite Miyazaki theme.
This is all based on what I’ve read about The Wind Rises because I haven’t seen the film. It doesn’t open here until Feb. 28, two days before the Oscar show. Miyazaki won the writing award Annie from IAFS (though he wasn’t there to collect it) which is why this film could rain on Frozen‘s parade.
(One of three lifetime achievement awards IAFS handed out this year went to Katsuhiro Otumo, who directed Akira, the film that kickstarted (to coin a phrase) the anime boom in the United States. His films are what we think of when we say “Japanese anime” [see Steamboy and Metropolis, where he was the screenwriter], This year, Possessions, one of the four films in Short Peace, an anthology of Japanese short films Otumo helped produce, received an Oscar nomination for animated short film. Otomo’s contribution, Combustible, was shortlisted but not nominated.)
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The Croods (Dreamworks Animation) makes no attempt to copy a Disney princess. The teen-aged Eeep isn’t a tiny-waisted, perfectly coiffured, shy and delicate thing, she’s a rough-and-tumble stone-age girl with a yen for adventure. She’s stocky, has a low forehead, freckles and a wide face. She’s engaging, though, showing that with little effort, not all women have to look like models to succeed. The design of the characters won an Annie, which was a nice recognition for this film.
The story essentially is about the clash of Neanderthals and more “modern” humans, such as the Cro-Magnons. This isn’t stated, but the brutish, timid nature of Eep’s family is contrasted against the new guy, Guy (clever, huh?), who has a forehead, narrower features and knows how to make shoes, build fires and can lead them to the Land That Won’t Blow Up. We get very little of Guy’s background, why he’s alone and where the rest of his tribe is. (There’d better be some others, otherwise Eep’s brother, Thunk, is left forever without a mate because the Croods seem to be the only survivors of their people. This certainly makes it easier [and less expensive] for the producers, but it does leave a lot of holes in the story that viewers might ask themselves at the end.)
The best word I can find for The Croods as a film is amiable. It doesn’t break new ground, the characters for the most part are enjoyable to watch and the story of a family trying to cope with huge changes in environment, immigration and acceptance of outsiders. Sometimes the slapstick gets a little much, but it stays on track for the most part. There are several entertaining moments, such as the one spoiled by the trailer when Eep gets her first pair of shoes. That moment is funny, but it comes in a larger scene where it turns out that in order to make it to the new land, the family, which to this point didn’t worry about their feet much, finds that protecting them suddenly is a matter of survival.
At the end, though, The Croods does what Disney films do all the time and that is shy away from the sad ending. This might be because of some execs and staffers once worked for Disney, but also keep in the mind Steven Spielberg is a partner in Dreamworks and Spielberg has an aversion to sad endings. In The Croods, the father, Grug, who has evolved from a man who protects his family from any kind of change to a man who reluctantly accepts it and then does whatever he can to ensure the family’s survival, is facing death by volcano. We get a few minutes of the family grieving, but then father appears almost miraculously unhurt. It undermines the story, because the last scenes are of the family gamboling in their new home, with the unanswered question are they the only humans on the planet? And from this bunch the rest us evolved?
Oh, the humanity.
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Despicable Me 2 (Illumination/Universal) is about change, too, with the continuation of the development of Gru from evil villain to loving father. In the first Despicable Me, because he was pretty well into his life of villainy, it was an easy arc to follow as he fell in love with the three orphan girls he’d originally adopted as part of an evil plot and his willingness to throw it all over for their sake. Now that that’s been established, any follow-up is going to lose that edge.
So it is with DM2. Gru seems to be happy with his lot as a dad, taking good care of his charges. Having him fall back to his evil ways and ignoring the girls is right out as a plot line, so something else has to explain why he would get back into the game. So we have him being recruited against his will by the Anti-Villain League or something to help thwart the nefarious plans of some other bad guy (who, it turns out, also is a father but what the relationship with his son is and what happens to him at the end isn’t really explored except for a gratuitous scene to make him hateful).
This means most of the film is taken up with Gru as Dad. Gru must go underground, but here “underground” is a shopping mall, giving an excuse to include the girls. And have one fall for a boy, giving Gru’s father-instincts something to work against.
The film is given over to Gru’s new life, sometimes too much so. Yes, the girls do have a father now, but they also need a mother. So a new character whose only purpose is to eventually become that mother is introduced. Fortunately, Lucy Wilde is a fairly eclectic figure, confident, competent and ditzy all at the same time. This appeal prevents her from becoming just a one-note character. And, of course, the girls fall in love with her and she with them, so there will be no evil-stepmother stuff here.
And, of course, there are the minions. What a marketing masterstroke! Disney must be jealous. Little fuzzy creatures with their own language whose main job seems to be just being utterly silly. In DM1, they were assistants in the evil plots; in DM2, they’re assistants in cleaning house, watching the kids and producing the inedible jelly that Gru chose as his means to become a legitimate businessman. But the bad guy comes up with a way to turn the cute yellow guys into awful purple evil minions who can chomp on anything (and who must have super-duper digestive systems). But Dr. Nefario, who had left Gru’s employ over the bad guy-good guy thing, saves the day when he realizes what the jelly really can do.
DM2 is pleasant enough; no real challenges here. It has excellent visuals, especially when thousands of purple minions are climbing the building trying to get Gru. And there are some genuinely funny moments and lines in here, showing that writers, animators and other creators aren’t just phoning it in despite this being a sequel. Among the many pieces of old songs you’ll hear are original works by Pharrell Williams, who adds a distinctly different flavor to the usual animated soundtrack. Disney could take a lesson here.
A pleasant enough film, but does it have a chance to beat Frozen or The Wind Rises? No. If it does, though, like The Croods, it’ll be one of those big upsets a lot of people like to see in the Oscar races.
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The fifth nominee is Ernest & Celestine (GKIDS), which I haven’t seen. It’s available only on Region 2 DVD (which is pretty much everywhere else but the United States), though Amazon says the Region 1 DVD will be released in June. UPDATE 23 Feb.: The film opens March 14 in New York and Los Angeles (that coastal thing again) then expand to the rest of the country with an English-language soundtrack.
The film looks like a traditional hand-drawn animated film, but these days, it’s hard to tell. The story is about the relationship between a bear and a mouse in a world where bears live on the surface and mice in the underground tunnels and both hate each other. It looks good and it’s been getting high praise from the film festivals it has played in.
If it doesn’t win, and it’s unlikely to, the nomination at least brings attention to it, the same way it did for The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and The Secret of Kells (2008). Both certainly differ from the American style of animated films, but both are outstanding examples of animation possibilities. (But they were foreign, you see, and Americans generally don’t like foreign films, and so they would have been overlooked without the nominations.) The producers of Ernest & Celestine are the same ones who produced both of those films, so we can probably surmise that the quality of the film will be good.
And who knows? Lightning might strike. And it wouldn’t upset me that much, either.
Terry England 