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Patrick R

"Cars sucks." - A Pixar Thread

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Right through Pixar's films I'm not really expecting any of it to be about Social Justice or progressiveness. I'd be surprised if they made many decisions that weren't about expedience or making a more interesting/emotional story, as much as I like that read on it.

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Death of the author. Riley becomes the second gender-queer Pixar character after Slinky.

 

EDIT: And while I'm writing fan-fiction, the Inside Out sequel is about Riley exploring their gender expression with the help of the queer community of San Francisco, and the whole film is an exploration of trans* identity and also they lose all the re-heated Psychonauts jokes.

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the second gender-queer Pixar character after Slinky.

 

OMG explain please.

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So A Bugs Life. It was okay? It looked better then I expected it to. But the whole thing felt like a pixar mad lib. I suspect that will be a theme going forward honestly. Here's the start of my live tweeting if anyone cares: https://twitter.com/VAbsurda/status/693630825644994560

 

Also, this thing is about an ant colony right? So all the ants are related right? So is this a movie about insect incest?

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The best question to ask in any Pixar movie is "Do the characters...fuuuuuuck?"

 

You know those Cars? Do they, like, fuuuuuuuuuck?

Do Wall-E and Eva...well, y'know...fuuuuuuuuuck?

 

Do the feelings in Inside Out...well, um...do they fuuuuuuuuck?

 

When Bo-Peep is talking about getting someone else to watch the sheep tonight...do she and Woody, well I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is, not to put too fine a point on it, but, like, do they........fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck?

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I was going to make a joke about about how do they fuuuuuuuuck? seems to be a not insignificant portion of the Zootopia marketing campaign but I remembered that that's not a Pixar movie so.

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So I got a little ahead of myself and watched Toy Story 2. I really liked this one so I'll probably collect my thoughts and post something next weekend, but in the meantime here's the start of my live tweeting: https://twitter.com/VAbsurda/status/693975693021958144

 

I doubt anyone is reading those but I find it's a good way to keep track of my thoughts as I watch the movie so I'm going to keep doing it.

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My partner writes a film blog about depictions of fat characters. It's good! They are a much better writer than I am.

 

They recently wrote an article about fat characters in Pixar movies, basically creating a scale of depictions that range from indefensible (Heimlich in A Bug's Life) to questionable (Sadness in Inside Out) to admirable (Russell in Up). I think it's really good.

 

(Wall-E, they will have to grapple with on it's own at a later date.)

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So, we've been discussing Toy Story 2 since Monday, and... hmmmmm.

 

Personally, I thought Toy Story 2 made much more sense than the first part. And Pixar's essentially just turning the plot of number one around. Buzz knew all about his backstory and nothing about toydom and its rules. Woody, however, knows jack about his backstory and is the toydom law preacher extraordinaire. That may even be more strange than the Buzz Lightyear ignorance conundrum, or at the very least not quite in line with the idea. With Buzz (and all the Buzzes in TS2) we're supposed to believe that all toys come with an all encompassing knowledge of their franchise backstory pre-baked into their brains. Woody seems to have zip.

 

Woody has a backstory dating back more than 40 years, and was created in that time. He has kept his one true name all through that time. Was Woody handed down from generation to generation? Do you guys remember your actual favorite toys being 40, even 50 years old? Was Woody's first owner ignorant of the franchise? Has Woody simply forgotten due to old age?

 

Or maybe it does illustrate how things change in the world of toys. When Woody was created, there usually wasn't any IP or backstory tied to human/anthropomorphist toys that much, so maybe Woody just wasn't so tied to his backstory that it was ingrained in his being. If I understood correctly, the Woody figure was created to sell the cereal, and not the cereal created as Woody series merchandise. Things are so wildly different today, and Buzz Lightyear still serves as a prime example of how an established IP influences (and maybe even reduces) creativity in child's play.

 

Maybe in 50 years, little Ray and Fin action figures face similar identity problems. :)

 

Regardless of logic, I loved that 50s Woody TV show with its perfect protagonist projection figure, I loved the collector and the fairly implicit message that toys don't belong in a museum, but in the hands of children. To think that Andy will go on playing with a few handmade figurines that might be sold for a few ten thousand bucks in the crappy world of adults, that's an actually calming thought.

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I'M SUCH A FOOL. Fixed.

 

I thought Toy Story 2 started next Monday. I'll watch it soon.

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Okay, just to be absolutely precise. :P

 

January 4th - 17th Toy Story

January 18th - 31st A Bug's Life

February 1st - 14th Toy Story 2

February 15th - 28th Monsters, Inc.

February 29th - March 13th Finding Nemo

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Just watched it. While it's fun enough and has lots of inventive stuff (especially in the Toy Barn), it feels like one long chase sequence. In the first film, the drama and comedy is driven by internal conflict (ie a new toy is introduced, Woody is threatened); here it's Woody being kidnapped and everyone going to get him and we don't have an ending so let's end with a concert! Also, that sappy Jessie musical number is just so maudlin and out of place.

 

Random thoughts:

 

My favourite part of this film is the memory of watching it at the cinema and hearing a kid wail at Buzz Lightyear having his top half exploded right at the start.

 

I suspect this will only mean something to UKers of a certain age, but the airline porter who shouts "Hold it! More bags coming from the terminal!" is voiced by children;s tv presenter Andi Peters as part of an item he was doing on the movie for the BBC.

 

Robert Goulet performs Squeaky's singing voice. Breaks his strong Beetlejuice - Scrooged - Naked Gun 2 1/2 form imo, but they can't all be winners.

 

EDIT: oh, re. Woody's name, Andy's mom tells Al that Woody is a family heirloom. Plus I don't think the implication is that the show was a by-product of the cereal, but I could be wrong. Also, there's a potential bit of explanation for the inconsistencies in Buzz's rules - the still-delusional Buzz tells him that it's a Starfleet command that all cadets remain in hypersleep (ie packaged) so perhaps initially he thinks of it as a directive that he plays dead while humans are around (not that I'm so bothered by these living toy inconsistencies as some!)

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Sorry, I'm a little behind but we finally grabbed A Bug's Life and I watched it twice.

 

It sucked. It reminds me of those second rate CGI movies on Netflix like Thunder and the House of Magic or Turtle Tale. Every character is a lazy stereotype and nobody is likeable. I was expecting to see at least some Pixar magic but it was all just really generic and all of the bugs were completely interchangeable. There was nothing about how the ants or grasshoppers (or any of the other bugs really) acted that really came across as ant-like or grasshopper-like and instead they seemed to just rely on lame visual gags to define the bugs. The caterpillar is a ravenous fat guy, the praying mantis is a magician, the two rolling bug guys are foreigners that don't understand what anyone is saying, and of course the flea runs a fucking flea circus.

 

Even if they did do a good job with the bugs though and actually made characters you didn't want to see immediately squashed by a giant foot, this movie still just has the worst and most pointless story. The grasshoppers have more or less enslaved the ants and are forcing them to gather up food as an offering. Why? So the ants don't realize that they outnumber the grasshoppers and step out of line. I really can't figure out what the issue is here though because the grasshoppers have all the food they want in other lands and the only reason the ants would rise up would be to fight their oppressors. So the grasshoppers' logic basically boils down to them just wanting some lower beings around that they can be assholes to without repercussions. Never mind the fact that there is no analog to this in the real world and grasshoppers and ants probably couldn't give two shits about each other (not sure why they couldn't conjure up some actual insect conflict that might resemble something in the real world).

 

Then there is the mechanical bird. Flick convinces the whole ant colony to go along with his stupid plan to build a mechanical bird out of leaves and twigs. It was maybe kind of cool when the little woodland critters did something similar in Once Upon a Forest but it was fucking stupid here. Suspension of disbelief has its limits and I begrudgingly gave the movie the benefit of the doubt that yeah, if there was somehow a genius ant that built a mechanical bird and knew enough about aerodynamics, and knowing ants can lift multiple times their own body weight, that maybe they could get the wings to flap by rowing the little oars inside the body of the bird. But then my brain exploded when I saw the flea light a match and use his flea body weight to shoot a jet stream of lighter fluid at the bird and light it on fire. Nope, that's not how that works.

 

The worst part of all of this is how utterly pointless it all was. Flick is the worst main character I've seen in a long time. He makes mistake after mistake and does far more damage than he does good and yet one stupid speech at the end wins him the princess and convinces all of the rest of the ant colony to industrialize so they can partake in all the leisurely activities they always wanted to do. I always hated ants before but after seeing this movie I hate them even more.

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So I was discussing A Bug's Life with one of my co-workers and he completely disagreed with my assessment and loves the movie because it is apparently a big homage to Seven Samurai. I hadn't heard anyone bring that up here but if that's true, does that somehow make this a better movie than it otherwise comes across?

 

I've noticed this thing with film criticism where a lot of movies and shows that seem kind of generic and uninteresting to me tend to be lauded by huge swaths of people simply because they reference other classic movies or have some apparent awareness of film culture. Like that weird lizard man X-Files episode the other week that my wife and I absolutely despised and had to turn off but is apparently everyone else's favorite episode because references to classic X-Files. Or that movie Rango that was just drab and boring to me but highly regarded by others because references to western movies. Maybe if I watched a ton more stuff I would be able to frame these types of movies/shows differently and appreciate the artsiness of it but I'm not so sure that if I went into A Bug's Life with prior knowledge of Seven Samurai that that somehow would have made it a better movie. 

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So much hate for Pixar's best film. Y'all be clownin'!

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So I was discussing A Bug's Life with one of my co-workers and he completely disagreed with my assessment and loves the movie because it is apparently a big homage to Seven Samurai. I hadn't heard anyone bring that up here but if that's true, does that somehow make this a better movie than it otherwise comes across?

 

I've noticed this thing with film criticism where a lot of movies and shows that seem kind of generic and uninteresting to me tend to be lauded by huge swaths of people simply because they reference other classic movies or have some apparent awareness of film culture. Like that weird lizard man X-Files episode the other week that my wife and I absolutely despised and had to turn off but is apparently everyone else's favorite episode because references to classic X-Files. Or that movie Rango that was just drab and boring to me but highly regarded by others because references to western movies. Maybe if I watched a ton more stuff I would be able to frame these types of movies/shows differently and appreciate the artsiness of it but I'm not so sure that if I went into A Bug's Life with prior knowledge of Seven Samurai that that somehow would have made it a better movie. 

 

A Bug' Life is just one in a long series of movies with a plot that's based on Seven Samurai. It's actually closer to Three Amigos, because in Seven Samurai the protectors of the village are (mostly) actual samurai, where in Three Amigos they are actors pretending to be great warriors. Beyond the basic plot, there are no meaningful references to the Kurosawa film. At least, none that I could pick up.

 

And, to speak to your broader point, I think it is less that a reference makes something automatically "good" and more that people who have seen a lot of a certain kind of film grow a taste for it. It's not so different from certain genres of video games, where some mechanics might feel completely backwards and esoteric to people who haven't played a lot of them. In the same way, if you haven't developed a taste for spaghetti westerns, there are aspects of them that could put you off them.

 

Also there are plenty of people who just like references. Let's call them the "hey, it's Calvin and Hobbes drawn as Han and Chewie on a t-shirt, awesome!" contingent.

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Seems fair. I like my references too. But references or not, A Bug's Life is Pixar's worst film (sorry Twig). Which I guess still makes it an above average kids movie.

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I watched Spaceballs long before I first watched Star Wars. And boy did and do I love Spaceballs. Because the plot and the characters have their own legs to stand on instead of just latching on to something else that's moving at its own pace, in its own direction. The hommage itself never makes a movie great, I think.

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In a similar vein I've heard a lot of people over the years act like The Lion King is some kind of amazing work of cinema because it follows the basic plot of Hamlet, therefore it's high art.

 

By extension so is Home Improvement.

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