Stoker here folks. So I was reading Kilian’s article on “Krod Mandoon” and “Harper’s Island” when his comment about the last film he saw struck home. Kilian made mention of the fact that the last movie he saw was “Monsters vs. Aliens” and that he would likely see “Up” next. This is all fine and dandy, I have absolutely no problem with taking the family out to see a kid friendly cartoon but I am a bit concerned that things have gotten a bit too friendly in the past years.
When I was a wee child, I remember going to cartoon movies and seeing things that kept me up at night sweating in terror. How many of us cowered in fear at the thought of characters like Maleficent, Scar or Jafar? These were characters of true terror; murderers, thieves and schemers. It now seems, though, that all of the villains in cartoons have to be incredibly over the top, they no longer posses that evil which so permeated the cartoons of the past. A look at the winner for the Academy Award in animation this year proves my point. The villain in “Wall.E” was nothing more than a castrated version of HAL. I think that the time has come to bring the fear back to children.
It is this fear of villainous characters that teaches the young about evil. I will admit at this moment that I hated “Wall.E” I know that people are going to instantly say that I am a heartless person with no taste but lets break this thing down a bit. “Wall.E” was essentially nothing more then a hyper didactic exercise. The entirety of “Wall.E”, viewed from my standpoint, was a lecture on how humanity is screwing up the world. Every human in the movie is over weight and slovenly. On top of that the film seemed rather self impressed. The viewer is left for untold minuets to watch as the super rendered character rolls through scene after scene in silence. In a world filled with powder puff cartoons I had lost my interest.
That was, however, unti, I saw the trailer for “9”. It seems likely that most of you out there have not yet seen a trailer for “9”. I myself go to the movies at least every other week and still have not seen the trailer (which has been out for months) on the big screen. The world presented in the trailer is one that seems to be filled with real danger. In a post apocalyptic society a group of dolls, made out of what appears to be burlap, must fight against all means of mechanical beasties in order to survive.
The film is being produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. I am a huge fan of Burton’s work, but it is the inclusion of Bekmambetov that really gets me excited. In the United States Bekmambetov is almost a nobody. His only American made film was the James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie movie “Wanted”; a visually stunning work that did so, so at the box office. In Russia, however, Bekmambetov is a huge name, having directed the “Nightwatch” film franchise. Bekmambetove’s work is unique, it has a visual style all it’s own, a style that was honored with nominations this year at the Academy awards. I believe that one day he will be a huge name in American movies.
The voice casting is also superb, a whose who of cult favorites. In the mix are Crispin Glover as 6, Martin Landau as 2, and John C. Reilly as 5. These are actors who, over the years, have gained great respect for the work that they have done in various quirky films.
The trailer’s general greatness is solidified through the use of the heavy metal tones of Coheed and Cambria. The driving bass rhythms and face melting guitar riffs of the song “Welcome Home” fuels the excitement of the images that flash before the viewers eyes. If, in the long run, the film isn’t as good as I hope it will be, at least I got to see true skill in the making of a trailer. So without further ado I give you “9”.
Stoker
Hated WALL-E, eh? How does it feel to have terrible taste? Best reviewed film of last year and voted one of the top animated films of all time routinely at this point. Perhaps a hard look at yourself is in order before you diss something that is clearly superior in quality to just about everything out there. PS: Having a villain that doesn’t walk around spouting one-liners and trying to take over the world is a good thing in fiction, it means a lack of shallow idiocy on the writer’s part.
i kind of liked the attempt that wally had with so many minutes of silence. to me it seemed like the crew was actually trying to get kids to have a longer attention span by making them pay attention to actions rather than one line jokes that flood animation, i dont see that very often. i mean even in comics if i can find someone who can keep me interested from panel to panel for over a page i am stoked to be reading it, i like it when they illustrate points. i also thought the real threat of fat humans fucking everything up due to gluttony and narcissism was right on. 9 does look promising for sure.
Thanks Stoker for bringing this to my attention! I’m going to have to make sure to see this one on my rare trips to the big screen.
I 100% agree with Stroker about that Wall-E movie. It isn’t just about the CG effects, and the crap load of money poured into that thing. There are moments in that film that are good but if the film is as Stroker stated “a hyper didactic exercise.” How often does a poor film have decent spot in it, usually pretty damn often but its mired in the drudge. We’re not 3 year olds here, and even though it was kinda marketed to an older crowd that doesn’t make it fit another generation. You still can’t get away with making it for one group, and selling it as something else. It just doesn’t work. The villians of the film doesn’t have to be cliche to be evil, or scary, nor do they have to be comical, either.
I’d say I agree with c. On the one hand, it takes balls to make an animated childrens film with almost no dialogue, and probably a lot of arrogance to think it could be pulled off.
On the other hand, isn’t Pixar about the only studio with said balls/arrogance enough to attempt it, and also enough skill to pull it off.
The nature of the film, its message, etc. was going to turn people off out of hand. I don’t really buy the whole “Buy n Large = Walmart” argument in that, really, the movie wasn’t about consumerism as a means to destruction. That had already occurred before the movie began. I think it was really about two things:
1. Humanity’s ability to overcome obstacles, even those we created.
2. “Humanity” as a concept, can exist outside of carbon based life forms.
I don’t believe that it can be boiled down to just a “didactic exercise” really because, if so, it would have been a film about humans destroying their home planet and not about humans having created an artificial intelligence (Wall-E) with the ability to recognize how precious life is and, accordingly, openly want to protect it.
Also, I don’t think that the computer in Wall-E is a rehash of HAL. HAL evolves into something other than what he was created for. The shipboard computer, really, is just following his orders. He isn’t the evolved tool that HAL is…in fact, that would be Wall-E, only to opposite effect.
Like I said, it wasn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and I appreciate the sentiment that there is a need for truly evil villains. There are, we would all agree, clear cut cases of what is right and what is wrong and I believe it is beneficial for children to be presented with such and understand it. To that end, I am very excited about 9…but not for my 2 year old daughter.
I also believe, however, that exposing children to a more complex and nuanced portrayal of what evil is (in Wall-E, what is most evil is humanity’s willingness to blindly turn its eye from the problems it is creating on its own) can be equally informative as it challenges children to critically think through the narrative they are watching.
I do think that there has been a shift in storytelling style over the last few years. As some of you may know, my wife and I collect disney pins. I collect nightmare before christmas and she collects disney villians. The disney and disney/pixar films just haven’t had any really marketable villians. You just don’t see the same kinds of pins you see for the classic villians. It seems like the shift is to more of an internal struggle with one’s self or a more complicated sense of evil. Some of the issue could be that villians in recent movies have more motivation than villians of the past. Look at someone like malificent who just wants to take over the world versus someone like syndrome who is a butt hurt fanboy. There is a sense of a more rounded villian which makes them a little less evil as you may relate to them in some way.
The same thing happened with star wars. Darth vader lost a little of his edge once you saw him as a whiney momma’s boy.
The characters in the movie are given so much screen time just moving around the screen because movement and phsysical expression is the language of this movie. The two main characters, WALL-E and EVE, only speak a total of three different words combined. How else, not just as an animator but more importantly as an animator moving away from being “self-impressed” with your medium and developing into a storyteller after years of experimentation and numerous CG animated films, how else would this deepened and matured sense of storytelling demonstrate courtship and the affection that grows between these two characters when none of the words between them are “I am lonely,” “I want you,” nor “I love you?”
It is a humbling task, whose results can be seen as a compliment as a challenge to our cognitive abilities as an audience.
HEROES & VILLAINS at the same Lounge.
As someone else has pointed out in a previous response to this blog post, we are seeing more rounded characters in villains as opposed to the one-dimensional characters that have filled the role of antogonist at times. Those acts which we may call heroic and those which we call monstrous essentially come from the same places in characters: fears and vulnerabilities. Bruce Wayne feels powerless, therefore he empowers himself and overcomes his fears by training himself and dressing himself up as a bat. Feeling betrayed and powerless, Iago chooses to act and destroy Othello and his entire world around him. The impetus to act comes from similar places, and it is a more mature outlook that accepts that the world and those who make events happen in them, are more complicated than flat caricatures. It is the storyteller who presents the flat and stereotypical who lacks confiedence in an audience, and essentially respect by diluting characters as such. I think at least.
PS: While I understand why you call the film “hyper didactic,” I do wish to point out that calling it overly self-impressed while using that phrase in the same post seems a bit ironic to me.
Furthermore, the movie also incorporates satire into it’s narrative, a form that requires by it’s very nature to point out the follies of a person or group of persons. It is a dangerous society that cannot laugh at itself and the possible truths and contradictions of how they live with themselves.