I Had A Random Thought...

[tegan]

Oh right. That one too then. And there's probably a bunch of direct-to-DVD TV movies or something.

[Professor Video Games]

If that's the case they should get rid of the animated category, that makes very little sense.

 

While I agree in theory, the result would be few to no animated films getting any recognition whatever.

[tberton]

That's exactly how I feel, the emotional hand that an adult might appreciate was played right off right off the bat and then you end up with a bunch of junk that is too stupid for children and everyone else.

 

To me Up is sort of a perfect testament to the California circle jerk and everything that's wrong with U.S. animation now. It's all packaged in this neat formula that is created for the sole purpose of making something for all ages to enjoy. You can't have anything too scary as that would scare kids who are too young, you can't have anything too talky or grounded as that will bore every kid, and you can't have any kind of action outside of the obligatory chase sequence and light comedic violence and/or a dance sequence ending the movie (as Dreamworks does).

 

I guess The Iron Giant and whatever Dreamworks was attempting in the 90s failed financially and also marked the final end of an era in the 80s where we had a lot of animated films with more dark or heavy sequences that were thrilling to me as a kid whether it was a bad movie or not. Also the beauty of The Iron Giant is it's written and directed as more of a grounded live action film (also has swearing not intentionally cut), and is not afraid of using fantastical elements when necessary, which is something animation can be great at instead of spending 80 minutes focusing on talking fish with their fish problems or something.

 

But I also dislike pretty much every Pixar movie besides the first Toy Story and aspects of the Brad Bird stuff, so I guess that may say something.

 

You obviously know more about animation than I do, but how do you reconcile the bolded statement with something like Toy Story 3, where the main characters stare into the mouth of hell, hold hands and accept their impending death?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Because some stuff breaks through in specific pieces of content but generally broad premises and ideas are heavily moderated.

[syntheticgerbil]

Probably! The important thing is that it gets Muntz out of the way without making any of the characters responsible for his death, which is why so many Disney villains die by falling.

 

While I agree in theory, the result would be few to no animated films getting any recognition whatever.

Meh, they don't have much going for 'em anyway. The ones that are of note tend to be made internationally and... those never win anyway because the judges don't see them. Their kids only drag them to what has coloring books and action figures and that's animation.

You obviously know more about animation than I do, but how do you reconcile the bolded statement with something like Toy Story 3, where the main characters stare into the mouth of hell, hold hands and accept their impending death?

Don't know, didn't see it. I most likely never will. Was it actually hell like All Dogs Go to Heaven hell or just like the furnace from Home Alone?

[syntheticgerbil]

 

Hey so... why are they not already melting?

[Patrick R]

You can't get points for having characters accept their mortality if it's immediately reversed and they live forever and then there's another 10 minutes where they get a curtain call because let's hear it for how great these characters are, this intellectual property of Disney is, anyway here's a couple more decades of Toy Story stuff, all you wonderful people.

 

It's weird to me that people don't get that Toy Story 2 was already about the toys accepting their mortality. Toy Story 3 is just less graceful, subtle and ballsy about it.

[Merus]

You obviously know more about animation than I do, but how do you reconcile the bolded statement with something like Toy Story 3, where the main characters stare into the mouth of hell, hold hands and accept their impending death?

 

Because in Toy Story 3 the entire movie is building up to that - it's a movie about accepting death and accepting change.

The important moment is not when they're sliding into the trash compactor, it's when they decide that there's nothing else to be done and they'll go out together. Lotso is the villain because he refuses to accept that his time is passed.

The bit where it's a kid's movie is when they get rescued with something that's almost a deus ex machina and they get a second life. A less constrained film would let it happen, and then find a way to show the absence left by that loss. You move on, but you've left your memories behind.

 

On the other hand, I will not argue with Pixar forcing Totoro as a character in any future Toy Story work.

 

It's weird to me that people don't get that Toy Story 2 was already about the toys accepting their mortality.

 

No it wasn't. Toy Story 2 was about mortality, but the villain in that one was someone who'd accepted their mortality. In Toy Story 3, the villain was someone who refused to.

[tegan]

As far as deus ex machina go, one that pays off on a silly joke made almost twenty years prior is pretty good.

[Badfinger]

Bringing it back to the Academy Awards, I learned from the Bombcast that Speedtree won an Oscar. This basically forgives all the garbage that the show is, and awards.

[Patrick R]

No it wasn't. Toy Story 2 was about mortality, but the villain in that one was someone who'd accepted their mortality. In Toy Story 3, the villain was someone who refused to.

 

The moral of Toy Story 2 is "Look, one day Andy will be done with us and leave us in a box somewhere but that is fine, we embrace that as opposed to living forever in a sealed case where no one loves us."

[Merus]

Sure, but there's a very big difference between saying 'we'll die one day' and 'we'll die today'.

[Blambo]

I thought Toy Story 3 was "denying death is delusional", Toy Story 2 was "the dangers of rejecting life in the face of inevitable death", and Toy Story was "belonging is life affirming and always mutual, and uniqueness is overrated". The first movie serves as thematic bedrock for the two sequels in that the problems/villains of the sequels were caused by a lack of belonging, and they're both opposites on the what-do-we-do-about-dying spectrum.

Or it's about toys that come to life and how wacky that is

[Twig]

A Bug's Life is better anyway.

[Patrick R]

Sure, but there's a very big difference between saying 'we'll die one day' and 'we'll die today'.

 

In terms of the broad thematics of "accepting one's mortality" in an animated kid's movie it doesn't seem that big. It's not like Toy Story 3 is Amour and it's about the fine details of the horror of actively losing one's life. Granted I haven't seen Toy Story 3 since I saw it in theaters, so I could very well be missing something, but to the best of my memory that movie isn't about the toys dying. They don't die. If it is in fact about accepting one's mortality (as in "we'll die today") then my point about taking it back still stands because they don't die. At the end of Toy Story 3 they are in the same place as they were at the end of Toy Story 2, except with way more good years of being played with ahead of them.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Death can be symbolic. Their relationship with Andy dies, the only they clung to desperately even as he clearly lost interest in toys because he naturally grew out of it. The film starts with them all essentially pining for the good old days.

Then they go to day care, where they can essentially have an arrested development with kids always there to play with them but no meaningful relationship to be had. They have sort of accepted their break up with Andy but they're staying on the rebound because they never got closure and that makes them wary of beginning a new life.

At the end, they accept their symbolic death because they're marching toward it inevitably. They're pulled out of the furnace because they've learned the important emotional lesson that sometimes you have to accept the end even if you desperately don't want to. Then they have their closure with Andy and move on to a new life with the little girl at the end of the movie.

By contrast, 2 is about people who are still in a functioning relationship fearing the potential end so much that they prematurely try to seal themself off from connection. (note, Pete was in a box for most of that movie)

[Ben X]

The furnace moment in Toy Story 3 was one of the main reasons I disliked that film. It's so tonally inconsistent with what the TS films have generally been up til then, it sticks out as badly as that awful song in the second movie.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Yeah I think tonally it was weird and ham fisted.

[Dewar]

It's weird that it worked so well for me at the time, but looking back it's so clumsy. I guess it's a credit to the animators that they can strike an emotional note in me that completely bypasses my logical mind realizing how faff it all is.

[Patrick R]

Death can be symbolic. Their relationship with Andy dies, the only they clung to desperately even as he clearly lost interest in toys because he naturally grew out of it. The film starts with them all essentially pining for the good old days.

Then they go to day care, where they can essentially have an arrested development with kids always there to play with them but no meaningful relationship to be had. They have sort of accepted their break up with Andy but they're staying on the rebound because they never got closure and that makes them wary of beginning a new life.

At the end, they accept their symbolic death because they're marching toward it inevitably. They're pulled out of the furnace because they've learned the important emotional lesson that sometimes you have to accept the end even if you desperately don't want to. Then they have their closure with Andy and move on to a new life with the little girl at the end of the movie.

By contrast, 2 is about people who are still in a functioning relationship fearing the potential end so much that they prematurely try to seal themself off from connection. (note, Pete was in a box for most of that movie)

 

Ah, ok, then we just disagree what the films are about fundamentally about. I think they are literally about mortality, not about relationships. The imagery in Toy Story 2 (like all the broken toy arms dragging Woody down the black hole of the trash can) is all about oblivion and death.

[Merus]

I think it works the first time because they do a great job of selling that Pixar absolutely intend this to be the end of their characters. It's undercut, I think fatally, by knowing that they're getting out of it.

 

I enjoy massive tonal shifts more than most people, though. I crave the whiplash, especially in works that don't otherwise try very hard for poignancy.

[Spenny]

I thought a good word for when how you kind of enjoy the smell of your own fart would be a smellfie.

[Apple Cider]

I am listening to back episodes of Idle Thumbs, from 1 going forward and I had a completely waste of time idea to report on news that episodes touch on and then give an updated scoop on how said game or console eventually sorted out, a billion years later. I guess I am mostly just fascinated about hearing old game news and KNOWING how it ENDS. Time travel is real, folks.

[JonCole]

I'd read that.

[eot]

I got a haircut today and it took 80 minutes. I don't even have difficult hair or a complicated hairstyle. Now, that's certainly on the longer end, but I still don't understand how people get it done in 10 minutes.