Most Recent Disney Movie I Saw

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 27 and the topic is “Most Recent Disney Movie I Saw”.

I think I used this image already this month.
Either way, good movie.

 “Zootopia” was a smash hit earlier this year and it was the last Disney movie—that is to say, Non-Marvel and Non-Star Wars—that I saw and it is going to be my movie of the year.  There are other movies that might have taken that if I had the time and drive to watch them, but I only have so much money.  Besides, I like “Zootopia” so much I think it is pretty secure on the pedestal.

I haven’t seen “Muana” yet.  I am sure I will like it when I get to it.  I live in an area where movie tickets are kind of overpriced.  Even a matinee with student rates only takes it down to 9 dollars.   Double what that would be in Tallahassee, my previous berg.  Not convenient.

Just for reference, I saw “Zootopia” on Netflix after twice trying to rent it and getting a bad disk.  Reason #2,000,000,000,000 that hard media is going to die out.  I actually saw this after seeing “Finding Dory”, which is also a good movie, go watch it too.

The Plot

The plot of the movie “Zootopia” goes as follows: Officer Hopps must enlist the help of a conman in her search for several missing people tied to mysterious incidents of violence.  Along the way she must face off against the lack of respect she gets from being the only small mammal on the police force.  Traditionally most of her comrades in blue are multi-ton weighing giant mammals like Rhinos and Water Buffalo, and there is an omnipresent air of discrimination as many feel she lacks the muscle to get things done.

Let’s just go ahead and try to outline the things I liked about the movie and give examples.

First Thing: It’s Funny

The movie has good humor, starting off with a children’s play emphasizing the sort of silly production values those usually have, coupled with a clear statement of the movie’s theme.  This is an excellent way to put forth exposition, you start off with a narration of the distant past, which turns into a modern day lesson on the past, the change of venue wakes up the audience and keeps them engaged.  Another movie that used this technique was “Serenity”, Joss Whedon’s swan song for the show “Firefly” which is simultaneously one of the best shows ever, and one of the most overrated now that its hypothetical greatness has been proselytized endlessly in nerd culture.  Getting off topic.

“Zootopia” moves from the school play to confrontations with systemic internalized prejudice, and external prejudice.  Pointing out these hang overs from prehistoric times of barbarism still hang around.  Thru practical example existing prejudices are shown after having the foundation explained, all flowing effortlessly into one another.  The movie even pokes fun at the idea of parents trying to discourage behavior they see as fruitless via what sociologists call, “The crab bucket mentality”, but these parents are still nice and positive people so they do not want to say “no” outright.

Parents, can't encourage bad ideas, but can't crush dreams.  A razor thin line to walk.

Stu: Judy, you ever wonder how your Mom and me got to be so darn happy?

Judy: Nope.

Stu: Well, we gave up on our dreams, and we settled.  Right, Bon?

Bonnie: Oh, yes.  That’s right, Stu, we settled hard.

Second Thing: It’s Exotic

The primary location of the story is a city divided to accommodate the numerous types of sentient animal contained within it.  The locations are vibrant and varied.  There is an area that is scaled up for large animals like Giraffes and Elephants and an entire micro-city for the mice and voles.  There are divisions for jungle, forest, tundra, desert, and the grand cityscape that blends elements in subtler ways.

Like the over world of a Nintendo game.

IT IS COOL.  And I thought going in that I would hate it as being too tortured a concept.  I imagined it being cheesy but the twisted logic of the setting has it make a great deal of sense.  This is the sort of—I won’t say “silly”—but “high-minded” consideration that I appreciate.

I hope this sort of thought is put into science fiction and fantasy projects Disney might make going forward—a Disney iteration of “Babylon 5” maybe—As the varied visuals add so much to the movie.  I like traditional fairy tales that take place in one environment type, but this is so different that it was refreshingly different.

Third Thing: It’s Exciting

“Zootopia” is primarily a mystery story.  There are missing animals, signs of violence, and a government conspiracy.  The unraveling of what is going on and why adds tension to the narrative, clues are dispensed at regular intervals so that the audience takes in and processes the information like the characters do.  You don’t feel cheated as you do with some mysteries that seemed to be holding back information.

Beyond mystery, there are chase scenes in the context of being a police officer, and it is some daring action.  Judy is a tiny little bunny, but she is so agile, fearless, and fast she manages to move almost like Spider-Man and in one memorable scene makes smart use of her movements to turn her opponent’s strength against him.

There is a neat little juxtaposition when she and a suspect (who is a weasel) fight in the micro-city of mice and voles.  She and the weasel are like Kaiju, compared to the tiny residents, knocking over multi story buildings.  While the rest of the time she has to get by fighting people much larger than her via escape, regroup, and counter attacking… you know, like a cop who is out gunned and getting back up.

Also, little known stereotype: Cops eat donuts.

Fourth Thing: It’s Paced

The script is rock solid in regards to unveiling information and character development.  Beyond the technical proficiency the SUPER complex racial and gender themes running thru this elevate it to that next level of story telling you always hope to see in a family movie.  I do not want to discuss specifics, it is a mystery film, so I am trying to be more general with the praise for this element, instead letting the examples in the other entries illustrate.

Fifth Thing: The Themes

I keep seeing people (morons) trying 1-1 comparisons of the material to real life, completely ignoring that the movie is not entirely about simple racial stereotypes applied to animals.

Applying straight 1-1 racial stereotypes to different species… say, making all the Hyenas black people, would have bad implications.  The closest they come to this is one scene in which a crime boss is portrayed as Italian.  And I have to ask, when it is a straight up reference/homage to “The Godfather” is it still racist?  Is “The Godfather” racist to Italian people?  Because at this point it is all a little weird, mostly because I am so tired of that movie being referenced.  Whatever.

My point is, that people are too hung up on RACE as the issue this movie hits on.  Race is there, no denying that, but these strawmen are missing another element: there are also a lot of gender issues too.  You don't see a lot of female officers on the police force in this movie.  I don’t actually remember any beside Judy, and she is forced into the role of meter maid.  There is some commentary going on there and it might be too subtle as it is not getting mentioned very often.

And Judy has some culture shock too.

But beyond that there are other forms of stereotyping that ascribe only to the animals in the setting.  Even between non-predatory species stereotypes and pre-conceptions exist as there is a big scene about how, "An elephant never forgets, man" even as that stereotype is not shown in action and completely subverted.

There is also a thing about the effects of drugs on a community?  I put a question mark because there are drugs, but they are inflicted, not voluntarily consumed.  So that message is a bit muddled.  There is also a “Breaking Bad” reference, though that almost felt out of place.

The whole thing is supposed to be allegorical, but not simplistically so.  It is supposed to make you think.  Unlike other racially charged projects of the past that I have talked about in this blog series.

No Numerical Position: My Only Identifiable Complaint

The only complaint I have is that the movie ends with a godawful Shakira song that has nothing to do with anything.  Would it have been too hard to license "Man in the Mirror"?  Or was that too obvious?  The movie is about discrimination and that is the quintessential song about discrimination and prejudice.  Like, right on the nose that is the obviously better song for this situation.  Whatever.

The Other Thing: Beg for Attention

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So tell me about the last Disney movie you saw.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Favorite Disney Sequel

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 26 and the topic is “Favorite Sequel”.

This wins almost by default.  Aside from animated series (many of which were admittedly well produced), direct to video hack out garbage, and several live action entries (for instance, the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe) Disney has never been in the business of making sequels.  Because they have been fools.

 

They seem to be making up for lost time though.

One and Done

I do get Disney’s logic.  They make a product, release it to theaters, make their profits, and then move on.  Home video was not a force in the 40’s, why would Disney shoot to make a sequel to a film when the children who liked watching it had already moved on to other activities.  Billy has moved on to playing baseball, and Edith is into watching Billy play baseball—because it was the 40’s and title 9 didn’t exist—those kids are not going to watch “The Sword in the Stone II”, a sequel to a film they saw 5 years ago.  And you couldn’t count on a VHS copy to be in circulation to get Billy and Edith’s younger siblings to watch and know what it was “The Sword in the Stone II” was even a continuation of.

It is the same reason comic books from that era are so rare and expensive, nobody archived this stuff.  It was cheap and disposable entertainment to be chewed up and spit out like the gum a lot of it was packaged with.

 

I don't think I will provoke controversy by saying that this is the most logical choice for sequels of Disney's early films.
This movie didn't even have a round table, Lancelot, Mordrid, or the Grail.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

This “disposable” line of reasoning is dead as Nat King Cole.  Ongoing stories and sequels are all the rage today because people’s brain are so inundated with garbage every waking moment that having any product with a glimmer of familiarity is seemingly the only way to punch thru the intellectual haze.

Even original properties are derivative as hell.  “The Nice Guys” was one of the best original movies released this year and it is just a modern take on 70’s buddy cop movies.  It is great, go watch it if you are old enough to look at boobs, but you can’t tell me it is “original” because the idea of a hard edge thug and a doofy detective teaming up is about as old as ideas get, I think that is what Cain and Able was originally going to be about before the author decided to make it grim dark.

I don't think people know what originality is anymore.
Doing the EXACT SAME THING, but painted yellow.
That is not original.  That is distinct.

Arguably the most original films I can think of produced in the last 5 years were “Cloud Atlas”—a movie I love and it bombed—and “Jupiter Ascending”—which is a mess, but not nearly as bad as people claim.

This is a Disney blog.  I am very out in the corn right now.  Point is, Disney has always been using classic public domain stories and turning them into movies with their own production ability and with their own twists.  But they haven’t done a lot of sequels in the theaters.  “Zootopia” and “Frozen” will probably change that, but till they do there is really only one contender for this title.

Favorite Sequel

“Toy Story 3” is the best sequel.  Not a lot of competition in this category.  It is the ultimate culmination of what the first movie’s theme was, dealing with being phased out of a child’s life, and what was continued in the second movie with wanting to be a small part of many people’s lives hoping that would fill the emptiness.

“Toy Story 3” goes that step further, it is not just about dealing with it, it ends it.  The toys are passed to a new owner who will take care of them and treasure them from then on, and Andy goes off to college and gets to feel like shit every time he comes home to his empty room during the holidays.

:'-(

This movie is a treasure and for the longest time it would be punching WAY below its weight class when the only other competitor is maybe “Rescuers Down Under”, but I am not even sure that came out in theaters, and while it is a great and fun movie it DOES NOT have the depth that “Toy Story 3” has.  Period.  Hard stop.  I will broach no rebuttal.

The Rebuttal

            “Finding Dory” is a great movie.  It is beautiful to look at, full of colorful characters, and from what I am told it does explain elements set up in “Finding Nemo” for Dory.  I say, “from what I am told,” because I haven’t seen “Finding Nemo”.

            As to whether it is the superior sequel to “Toy Story 3” is an opinion I could see someone having, but I do not have the same emotional connection to the characters that others may have.  Seeing the stories of Dory and the others continue is not as intriguing to me as they are to fans of the first film.  And I write that as someone who really liked “Finding Dory”.

            I felt happy-sad watching the touching reunions and personal triumphs of Dory in the movie, I laughed at the octopus, seals, otters, and whales.  It is definitely worth seeing even if you have not seen “Finding Nemo”.  But I can’t judge it as a sequel.

 

Pixar?  You trying to weaponize cute imagery or something?

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

My Review of "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation"

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Score: 8/10 (I wrote this back when I was fonder of giving numerical scores)

            For a while this was my favorite movie of 2015 and if the villain had been more memorable, cut back on the adoration of Tom Cruise, get rid of the 10 words of romantic crap, and have the ending be a little different and it would have been.  None of these items are individually bad enough to sink the movie, no one of them “needs” to be fixed, but each could be fixed to elevate the movie.

            The action in “MI5” is fantastic, chases are tense and fast; the hand to hand combat feels impactful; and the buddy comedy between Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise is great (they should work together more).  I liked the female lead, she is charismatic and projects competence in what she is doing.  I liked the gadgets and jet setting around the world.  I liked nearly everything.  So now that I have pointed out the positive highlights let me flesh out my previously mentioned complaints.

The practical effects and stunts are also super fun.

            The villain is just a growling skinny guy in a suit.  His motivations for why he is doing what he is doing are never explained (yes I know WHAT he was doing, but the WHY is unclear).  He tends to kill underlings too frequently in some instances and not at other times which seems more prudent.  His first appearance shows his willingness to get his hands dirty in the field, but for most of the movie he sits in front of a laptop.  What I am saying is that he comes off inconsistent.  It doesn’t help that his actor (who I am sure is quite talented) was in “Prometheus” and that might have tainted my opinion of him.

I'm a geologist.
Sure you are sport.

           The adoration of Tom Cruise needs to be mellowed.  There is a scene in which Alec Baldwin talks for two whole paragraphs about how awesome and dangerous Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is.  It feels like something Cruise says to himself in the mirror at the end of the day as a personal pep-talk of how awesome he is.  In the movie it sounds awkward at best and it is too long.  You know what it could be shortened to?  “Ethan Hunt is a dangerous disavowed field operative who is after you, he has killed better protected people than you and infiltrated more secure locations than this.  Be afraid.”  Boom.  Done.  Less is more.

            The 10 words of romantic crap needs to be shed.  Tom Cruise is 50+, it is weird for women in their late 20's and early 30's to ask him to run away with them.  It only happens once in this movie in a scene that leaves it kind of ambiguous as to whether the offer is romantic, but it still comes off as odd.  Otherwise the female lead and Cruise have zero romantic chemistry and display zero attraction to one another.  It felt out of place.

The guns built to look like flutes and tonfas are quintessential spy gadgets.
And women wearing clothing that shows off their legs is quintessential sex appeal.
Also, the character's name is Faust.  DO YOU GET IT?

            And the ending, SPOILERS obviously.  Since the bad guys are planning to use the millions and millions of dollars in the hidden accounts to fund their own terrorist criminal activities and the US government wants to defund the IMF.  I was expecting the end of the movie to be Ethan and company using the money in the hidden accounts to fund a rogue IMF hunting down and eliminating the terrorists who had signed on to be a part of the bad guy organization.  Instead they just get reinstated by the government.

Considering how many times the IMF has been dissolved or had traitors in it, having it officially dissolved makes more sense.  And it works as a set up for the sequels.  “Mission Impossible: Freelance” sounds like a perfectly hokey title that explains exactly what they need it to.  What is more, my idea makes sense in the world.  Ethan shouldn’t want to work with the USA anymore, he has his own handpicked team, resources, an enemy, and too many reasons to resent and distrust his previous supervisors in the US.  He should want to be a white hat rather than a government triggerman.

            END SPOILERS.

My Review of "Kingsman: The Secret Service"

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Score: 8/10 (I wrote this back when I was fonder of giving numerical scores)

 

The movie's advertising was not very good and almost stopped me from watching it.

This was the first great movie I saw in 2015.  A well-paced action movie with lots of humor and some underlying themes that gave it some impact.  It was colorful and took itself as seriously as it needed to, and with only a few hiccups here and there that kept it from being a classic.

I feel that this movie was a true shot in the arm for the spy genre and provided another example of how Rated-R movies are financially viable when not released against a cluttered field. (This was a rather soft R in my opinion, no nudity, very little blood, it could have gone a lot further.)

Let me talk about one issue that stood out for me that I imagine most people would not have even noticed, the dog scene.  There will be spoilers for this, and since I am recommending the movie to anyone who likes rougher action comedies, stop reading here and go see the movie, that way I can complain about a minor point without you having it niggle at you while watching.

The tone can be a bit all over the place.
They really needed to settle on a level of nudity and lewdness and stick to it thru the movie.
Having an anal sex joke to punctuate the movie is a bit strange.

 SPOILERS: during the movie there is a sizable training portion to locate a new agent for the Kingsman and the recruits are required to pick a dog to raise… and you know where this is going, a classic “kill the puppy” part of the training.  Here is the issue, the test does not make sense in the context of the movie and the character traits they are looking for.  And for that matter the idea of secret agents at all.

Our hero, Eggsy is told to murder his pet with a provided firearm and chooses not to do so, it is then revealed that the gun was loaded with blanks, the test was to see if Eggsy could follow orders.  They tell Eggsy that the Kingsman never take a life without reason… But Eggsy did not know that.  The test should be whether a recruit would refuse a bad order given to them, “take a life without reason”, and the blanks would be to avoid killing the dog should the recruit follow the order which would be taking the wrong position.

The obvious right answer is, "No, I will not kill an innocent animal for no reason.

Want to know why that bothers me so much?  Because I went to a police academy and during one training exercise we are told to shoot a cut out of a person, that person is holding a coke can and is no threat.  I and 1 other person, out of a 20+ class were the only people to not shoot the harmless civilian.  YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SHOOT.

What is more the movie proving that to be the correct response, Eggsy does not follow bad orders and that allows him to thwart the bad guys.  So the test is shit.  I would mind less, but it is a plot fulcrum, there is no reason this backwards way of thinking should still be in the movie.

END SPOILERS.

Most Underrated Disney Films

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 25 and the topic is “Most Underrated Movie”.

You know, I give so little thought to Christmas.  I could have reordered my blogs this month to talk about "Nightmare Before Christmas" on Christmas (or Christmas Eve) but I didn't think to.  That was a bit of an oversight.

            I am however willing to point to two movies that I feel are underrated, the first of which came out relatively recently and the other is a forgotten about gem of a film that came out when I was itty bitty.

            First up is “Brave”, the story of a teenage girl who has the gall to not want to get married, flying in the face of pretty much all previous princess characters in the Disney lineup.  She is an able bodied and headstrong fighter with the most awesome hair I have ever seen in an animated character—and I say that as someone who is familiar with and a fan of “Tangled”.

I can't remember the context of this image.
That face could say a lot of different things.

The plot is one of reconciliation with a parent with whom very different life goals and personal priorities have caused a split good bones on which to lay the stories flesh.  And there are monstrous bears.  Bears are serious business.

            It is not perfect.  While I like the setting, characters, premise, and overall plot, some things were not really my cup of tea.  The final confrontation is weak, a character only alluded to earlier in the film shows up as a final boss but has no presence and is not a threat for the rest of the movie.  I feel like there could have been some other monster or supernatural threat in the movie that could have hovered over it all and been there at the end for a boss battle.

I like standing stones and fog choked moors as a visual motif.
The green says, "Alive", the fog says, "Mysterious", and the stones say, "Ancient" and "Unnatural".

The setting as indicated by the presence of the wisps had the potential to be spookier rather than adventurous, I might have liked the movie more if it had gone that way.  But those complaints are kind of thin and amount to asking for more of what was already in “Brave”.  And that is the type of complaint that doesn’t really ring true with me anymore.

The second movie and one that I feel should not be as forgotten as it is, “Duck Tales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp”.  This film is a damn near perfect adventure film, fits right in with the tone of the “DuckTales” series and is both hilarious and fun.

Should have named the genie Bob Cratchit.

The plot is a typical adventure set up.  Scrooge and his family go looking for a lost treasure and find a genie’s lamp.  They are hunted by a sorcerer who has an amulet that would allow him to have endless wishes.  It is actually structured kind of similar to “Aladdin” or “The Mummy” and I wonder if that contributed to it being left behind when the nostalgia train picked up steam, that it is merely a fantastic entry in a much longer series while others were stand alone and released in a bigger push.

I don’t have any complaints about this movie aside from it being hard to get a good copy of it.  It is 26+ years old, they are actually rebooting the “DuckTales” brand with a whole new cast (a cast that I think looks amazing).  So, “Duck Tales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp” and the rest of the 80’s series is soon to be recalled only in the context of a precursor.  Much like the classic Disney cartoons of old.  An artifact with value, but not something that gets looked at too often.

 

The new one's animation looks much better too.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Most Over Rated Disney Movie

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 24 and the topic is “Most Overrated Movie”.

I almost gave this to “James and the Giant Peach” but then I recalled that a good 20% of that movie is in live action and decided that DQ’d the mean spirited thing.  I only went for it initially so I wouldn’t keep talking about the same damn thing again.  The ultra-mega hit that so dominated the world that they are redoing the theme parks to better incorporate the IP into them.  Who has a song that everyone has heard a million times—because the song is the best thing in the movie.  Of course I am talking about “Frozen”.

BUT I’M TIRED OF TALKING ABOUT “Frozen”.  I can’t even turn this into a top 5 in an interesting way, or find some new angle to come at the topic.  Disney is a pretty up-front about itself company and I can’t really scratch any deeper on this.  “Frozen” has awful bad guys, mediocre protagonists, stupid decisions driving the plot, and while the animation at first struck me as awesome—the snow looks great—it did not hold up to scrutiny as the character models (especially the women) are interchangeable and the houses look almost like doll houses (They look fake in the sense that they were poorly animated).

She cries funny.

This thing made a billion dollars.  It is in the top 50 for animated movies on Rotten Tomatoes.  IT IS A MERCHANDISING EMPIRE ALL ITS OWN.  I can’t see a movie with a greater disparity between its quality and the amount of praise it received.  IT WON BEST ANIMATED FEATURE.

            Blergh…

            What about high hopes?  While “Frozen” was reworked around some ideas (it has actually been workshopped since Walt was alive) I don’t think that Disney thought it would be the titan that it is.  What did they imagine to be their crowning achievement that amounted to little?  What was the most overrated by the company that ultimately underperformed because of inflated expectations?  Well, the answer is just around the riverbend.

            At the time of its creation “Pocahontas” was being seen as the sort of classic, “we’ve done this right before, we’ll do it right again” romance that would certainly be the hit of its era.  Animators jumped ship from working on “The Lion King” to work on what was sure to be the more successful project.  Jeffery Katzenberg, one of the most important and powerful entities in all of animation held this belief.  IT WAS A RARE MISSED MARK FOR HIM.

            I am a child that grew up in the 90’s, and if there is one thing I remember about going to school in the 90’s it was the ever present specter of white guilt that hovered over all of the curriculum of the era.  I remember learning all of the different tribes of North America in elementary school, how there were longhouses, teepees, and the sandstone Pueblo housing in the south west.  I recall learning about gender roles, property rights, some of the managerial styles of tribal life.  I went to field trips that emphasized Indian mounds.

This was no fun.

In Middle School we spent so much time dwelling on the Trail of Tears, by which I mean I learned that it was a sad and morally repugnant event in history, but I couldn’t tell you the year it happened, the events that led up to it, the events that followed, or who was president at the time, but I knew white people should feel bad about it.  It was a shallow view of history to say the least and I would even say it made me more of a bigot growing up.  You know what fought back against that idea?  The positive and inclusive steps pop-culture was taking to make minorities more prevalent and respected, which is why I don’t bitch about it now when they cast minority actors in more and more blockbuster movies.

            Keep in mind I know that my white forefathers were absolute bastards toward the Native Americans, and that there were many tribes and cultures that populated the Americas before they got there, but the strange BS mysticism and reverence of a vague Native American spiritualism that sprung up and the odd revulsion toward the explorers and pioneers of white America, that was doing no one any favors.  “Pocahontas” has that shit in spades.

"What the hell tree has purple leaves?" -Pocahontas

            There are a few good—albeit preachy—songs to complement the flowing animation, but overall you should NOT make a movie about the longest term genocide in history and frame it as a bullshit simplistic miscommunication between two people because of WANTING GOLD.  Ultimately the tension is resolved by… I honestly have no idea.  No substantial resolution to the underlying tensions are reached.  You can point to Pocahontas stopping the execution, but that didn’t answer any of the issues that still existed… Which I guess is a good explanation for why the Indians would ultimately be wiped out.

            “Pocahontas” is not the cultural touchstone that “The Lion King” became, and compared to “Beauty and the Beast”, who it was emulating—with an epic romance and tons of sidekicks— “Pocahontas” is a joke.  I am sorry, but the best romances are about strong FLAWED characters going thru arcs via contact with one another and becoming better people.  Having two perfect characters—John Smith and Pocahontas are annoyingly flawless—politely talk out the issues existing between two sides in a war because they want to bone each other IS NOT GOOD DRAMA.

"Want to see if my carpet matches my drapes?" asked Jon.
"What's carpet?  What're drapes?" asked the mysterious native woman.
"Oh yeah, gonna have to use different pick up lines in this country," realized John.

            There are about a trillion tumblr nerds wanting to talk about how this movie is sexist or racist but you can ignore all of that because the real problem as far as I am concerned is how flat everything is.  Pocahontas is a pretty princess whose biggest concern when not frolicking in the forest is that she is being pressured to marry a guy who is noble, good looking, and liked by her entire community.  Boo-fuckity-hoo.  John Smith is the swarthy adventurer who has seen the world and conquered it all with his good looks, skill, and bravery, the guy probably has a trail of bastards and broken hearts from Cairo to Santiago.  I’m having déjà vu as it is another case of Boo-fuckity-hoo.  NEITHER OF THESE PEOPLE HAVE ANYTHING TO OVERCOME!

            I don’t even know these characters’ motivations.  Let’s compare a few protagonists from other movies.

Belle, “I want to see the world, the one beyond the little village I live in”.  How does she do this?  “All I can afford is to read books about that world”.

Hercules, “I want to prove myself worthy of my birthright as a god”.  How does he do this?  “I will fight evil, protect the innocent, and bring glory to my name.”

Rapunzel, “I want to go outside.”  How does she go about this?  “I go outside as soon as I have a—let’s call him ‘willing’—guide so that I will be relatively safe.”

"Tangled" sure as hell has a greater grasp on the idea of romance than "Pocahontas".

These Characters have goals and do things to accomplish those goals.  What is the goal of each of the leads in “Pocahontas”?  I don’t know.  What do their actions indicate might be their goal?  Getting some strange from an ethnicity they haven’t been with before.  Capital.  Wonderful protagonists.

Whatever.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Worst Disney Classic

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days).  I have done a 30-day challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is a mess).  I did another one just this year in August on Video Games, that one was better, go read it after this one, all of it.  Or don’t, no pressure.

            Today is day 23 and the topic is “Worst Classic Movie”.

“Classic”

Classic means pre-1980 in my mind.  I do realize that while that predates my existence on Earth by some years there are many people who remember the good old days of… Not having cell phones, personal computers, GPS, and the trillions of technological conveniences that we have now?  Whatever.

Point is, I have to set some arbitrary barrier on what I am looking at because Disney is in the business of making instant classics.  Classics that will still be selling copies of holo-disks or VR simulations or whatever else format will be used in the dystopian future we are all marching toward just a little bit faster now.  That is why the concept of the Disney Vault allowed them to sell lots of VHS copies of “Pinocchio” and “Bambie” in the 90’s.

What unspeakable horrors lay within this unhallowed walls?

To say that “Toy Story” or “Tangled” are not classics would be silly, so how far do you go back?  I went with the idea of, “Anything before the decade I was born, that way there is less chance I saw it even on tape.”

My Pick

This has more to do with its status as nothing.  No one who saw this film thought about it ever again.  I know I have seen it, but aside from one scene of a butler picturing himself being rich I have zero other memories of the film.  So it is the “worst” in the sense that it is the “least”.

I can't remember what this movie is about, but I am sure I would hate it.

“The Aristocats” is a movie I am betting most people would have to google to confirm that it exists.  Don’t bother to watch it, because I am fairly certain it is not a real movie and will in fact steal parts of your mind and only leave you with vague memories of… Something to do with wealthy cats?  Doesn’t matter.

As far as I am concerned “The Aristocats” might as well be about the King in Yellow.  I am not interested in trying to revisit something that looks like the lesser counterpart to “Oliver and Company”, another film you probably have to google to know what I am talking about.

Why should I worry?

Why Should I care?

That movie at least had some lively pop music in it.

            Share your own thoughts on this in the comments.  I know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products, and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry. 

I picked Disney stuff just because I knew there was so much of it to talk about and it lends itself to discussion in the comments.  So please, tell me how my opinion about cartoon movies is biased and how your opinion on cartoon movies is objectively right.

______________________________

If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.