Freaking all of them.
-L
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
3 Ways College Is Basically "The Hunger Games"
4 ways, if you count ridiculous facial hair.
It's not the best time to be among the rising generation. There are (allegedly) no jobs, trillions of dollars of student loan debt, generally inept people in charge, it's a lot to take in. Gambling your future on the idea that a four-year college degree is going to somehow dig you out of the hole you're thrust into by today's world is a frightening concept that thousands upon thousands of college students are presently risking anyway because maybe they'll get lucky and get a job so they can finally be their own person. The whole college experience is no longer a definite road to greater success, and is instead more like the teenage death tournament depicted in the overly popular Suzanne Collins novel, "The Hunger Games".
"Ooh, hurry up with the list, son" --Woody Harrelson, regular reader of this blog probably.
Point #1: Freshman Orientation
"Yes, we're all very excited to be here."
Katniss Everdeen is a poor girl from a poor part of the country. She engages in illegal activity in order to barely support her little sister and her mother--who is notably unable to care for her awfully named daughters on her own. The father isn't around, which leaves Katniss alone in the world except for her sister Prim whom she loves, and co-criminal Gale. Once a year, the rich insufferable snobs from the capitol come to Katniss' dirt-poor town and offer two random individuals within a certain age range a great and terrible chance at escaping the hell-hole they've known all their lives. The capitol is going to parade Katniss around as a hero and send her to the Hunger Games, and hopefully we're dropping enough hints for you to pick up on them by now...
Hey kid, stick around afterward, we need you to fill out some paperwork so we can legally show your face to all those inner city voters. I mean Americans.
We aren't going to waste internet space on one more dumb article about how much we should hate the fabled "1%", because we're not convinced that all rich and powerful people are inherently evil; we are convinced that there's entirely too much political incentive in helping out a handful of poor kids for the sake of looking awesome in the spotlight. Politicians do this all the time-- all a campaign really is, at its core, is a year-long PR blitz engineered to convince as many voters as possible how unbelievably fantastic of a person the campaigning individual happens to be."The Hunger Games" easily conveys to a reader the idea of "look at how dumb this is, these rich capitol people thinking they look good but everyone actually sees right through them", but for some reason people often fail to recognize this in its non-ficticious manifestation. Spend a week or two in downtown Memphis and you'll realize how plucking a kid every so often from the ghetto and sending him to a university isn't going to do jack for the rest of the kids dropping out of high school everyday.
Point #2: Picking A Major
Whether this is from the movie or Arizona State's homecoming parade, nobody can say for certain.
Upon Katniss' arrival to the big city there's a parade for all the various districts, each specializing in different goods supplied to the capitol; these goods line up nicely with majors offered at a university. District 3 represents electrical engineering, District 8 is interior design, Districts 9, 10, and 11 are all agricultural science, and so on. Some goods (and, in turn, some majors) are more significant than others. The electronics district is much better off then Katniss' mining district or any of the agricultural science kids. Also, the other kid from her district is an art major, which sucks for him because that means he's totally going to die. He kind of knows it already.
Art majors are like real-world red shirts.
"Surviving" the Hunger Games is akin to surviving out in the real world, paying off a massive student loan, or in any way overcoming any burden placed on the backs of struggling college kids in today's economic climate. The short time the contestants (students) are given to train in their respective strengths is all they have before being pitted against each other in the Hunger Games tournament, which we will treat as though it represents the world after graduation. We're not claiming that Collins meant her books to actually mean any of this, as so many awful english teachers are wont to do with so many works of literature, but we are saying teens competing in a ferocious killing competition and searching for a job post-grad isn't as different as we'd all prefer it to be.
Point #3: Most Students Waste Time Developing Useless Talents
The Training Center is where the 24 Hunger Games tributes develop the skills they already naturally excel in, usually ignoring the level of usefulness that skill holds when it comes time to surviving the tournament (which is like, life, remember). Katniss is blessed with a natural talent that will give her a fair advantage over many of the other students, though the privileged students are obviously still better prepared and generally superior in most areas due to their lifetime of training for the games. They know it too; the jerks already know they've got a far better chance of "surviving" out in the tournament (getting hooked up with a job, affording a nice home, whatever "winning" life means to you).
At the end of their time in the university/training center, the contestants are graded according to how well their superiors think they'll do in the games. These judges don't know the kids all that well and base everything they believe a contestant is capable of off a relatively short test considering how ridiculously large the impact of the test is on what's left of the kid's life. The test score will directly affect how many "sponsors" the contestant receives in the game-- sponsors in the hunger games come in the form of gift baskets of medical supplies, weapons, and other invaluable advantages over the other contestants.
Sponsors are like real-life cheat codes.
In life, those sponsors are high-powered references on a resume or a connection with the boss of a major company, any advantage that others are guaranteed not to have since it is specific to an individual. Just as a Hunger Games contestant's arbitrary "score" (which is given by somewhat uninterested judges) directly impacts that contestant's chances of receiving sponsors and therefore surviving the game, so too does a lazy college professor's grade on a vague final exam have such lasting effects on a student's career post-graduation that though small, it can mean the difference between landing a job and beginning a promising career, and being back at a parent's house working at Papa Johns. Did we just equate living at home and delivering pizza with being stabbed in the throat by a teenage girl? Yes, we did.
-L
Thursday, July 11, 2013
The 3 Most Distressing Trends In Movies
Matthew McConaughey almost had a spot all to himself on this list.
The following is, as always, posted for the viewing pleasure of all who come visit this blog in search of laughs, creative insights, and references to all things awesome. It is also our open letter to Hollywood people-in-charge, because we have some things to say to you, and it's best if we're direct about it.
Dear Hollywood,
#3 Your Definition Of A Hero Emerging "Victorious" Sucks
Unless you're Benedict Cumberbatch, this doesn't look much like "Winning".
Since when did the hero need to just simply survive the 110 minutes of movie run-time in order to be considered "triumphant"? Call us old-fashioned, but protagonists used to have three primary duties:
1. Save the girl, then proceed to
2. Beat the bad guy, and therefore
3. Save the city.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but your movie heroes have been doing an absolutely awful job at these things for like a couple of years now. This summer alone featured hero after hero acting like he "won" or whatever, ignoring the fact that the bad guys totally kicked their trash. Consider Star Trek, which first featured a major bombing of a London library, followed by a successful attack on the Star Fleet headquarters where all the high-ranking officers got killed except the other bad guy, the admiral with the super warship. Then the small city-sized super warship crashes into the actual city-sized city of London, effectively crushing several square miles of the city in a matter of seconds (it just dropped out of space after traveling at 3x the speed of the USS Enterprise's hyperspeed, so consider it lucky the whole planet isn't just an impressive collection of lifeless space dirt).
"First, I will snap the neck of the man on the left, I don't like his ears...then the big man in the back I shall throat punch to death while I shoot his gun at the other two...I wonder what I'll cook for lunch later? Perhaps salmon..."
Yes, by the end of the movie Chris Pine is breathing and the second most successful galactic terrorist ever is frozen in his tube of sequel-enabling sleep, but only after pulling off three major attacks that resulted in millions of casualties and a shock to the world's economy so bad it probably wouldn't recover. Captain kirk didn't get the girl (the admiral's daughter), the bad guy is only sort of gone momentarily, and the city is irreparably flattened. It's a good thing our heroes are leaving Earth for a five-year mission to the great beyond, because Earth is pretty much done-for after the events of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Maybe that's why you called it "Into Darkness" in the first place, but something tells us nobody there in Hollywood is that clever.
And Star Trek is far from the only culprit. This summer's "Man of Steel" was the best re-imagining of Superman in several decades, but all those buildings Clark and Zod awesomely punched each other through aren't going to fix themselves. The estimated life lost during those mega-battle sequences numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and the physical damage is professionally estimated to be $700,000,000,000, or roughly the equivalent of 13 World Trade Center attacks (which is an appropriate fact to insert here only because both Star Trek AND Man of Steel both made shameless visual allusions to the tragedy).
Could just be us, but Morpheus and Trinity seem a little wussy before they escape the Matrix.
The same folks who put that number together also guess the total economic impact would be around 2 trillion dollars, a number so high that most of us little people aren't entirely convinced isn't just made up.
The trend goes on and on. Every Transformers movie, Iron Man 3, even Fast 6 when that tank is crushing cars with people in them on the highway. You people who make these movies are looking the other way when it comes to the loss of "unimportant" lives because you think it may get in the way of your super cool action sequences. Don't even get us started on "Pacific Rim".
Look, to be honest none of us had the patience or the Excedrin it would take to sit through "Pacific Rim", but we're guessing you tried to focus more on the alien monsters from the deep fighting our man-made transformer robots and mankind "Canceling the apocalypse!", and spent considerably less time accepting the fact that at that point, the apocalypse hasn't been cancelled, it's inked a deal for 12 seasons and a movie.
And if you think it's just this summer, we'd like to let you know that we haven't forgotten that in the gritty Batman reboot, BatBale does NOT save the girl, does NOT beat the bad guy, and does NOT actually save the city. And the Avengers wrecked all of New York. Hollywood, the good guy only wins by saving us all. Us! The little people who aren't superheroes! We want a hero to kick the alien army's butt so that the world is saved-- who cares if the hero is the last one standing on the planet Earth? We don't want Clark Kent to beat Zod because of good versus evil, we want him to beat Zod so he doesn't destroy all of mankind in order to rebuild his own race. Bruce Willis wouldn't have "won" in Die Hard if the terrorists succeeded in their plot but John Mclane somehow escaped-- that would have been stupid to a frustrated-punch-aimed-at-the-wall degree. You win by stopping the bad guy from doing evil things, not by catching him after he's run out of ideas.
"I already blew up your hospital and I'm about to blow up your girl. But good job putting me in prison."
World War Z gets a pass because it was actually about the apocalypse and the decline of humanity, it didn't ignore the colossal loss of life; that was the focus of the film. The focus of these other movies is "Explod-yActionPunchingSuperpowersCGIBudgetMichaelBaySEQUELCLIFF-HANGER".
#2 You Hardly Ever Know The Appropriate Number Of Sequels
Maybe we're the only ones that have a problem with this, but it just feels so ridiculous to say "Name of movie SEVEN, part two". Obviously recent years have seen a rise of sequels, since the idea is that if a movie makes money, why not make that same movie again and make more money. We get it. You're a business. You're going to make the least risky, highest grossing movies you can dream up. We get it. Despite original movies and movies properly adapted from books being great surprises and refreshing to us frequent moviegoers who like a new story and new characters from time to time, there's nothing wrong with a good sequel; we would never suggest that a new chapter in the Riddick series is anything less than awesome. But you have got to figure out when to fold em, Hollywood.
This year alone there will be at least five horror sequels nobody wants, including Paranormal Activity number freaking five (also Haunting In Connecticut 2, Inisidious 2, Texas Chainsaw 3D, and the hilariously titled film "The Last Exorcism...part 2). Another Grown Ups, another Sin City, whatever, those can be easily ignored. But Percy Jackson 2? Why? Because people love the books? People loved the first book when the first movie came out and you still didn't make any money. What changed? Your motivation for extending Twilight and The Hunger Games and The Hobbit into more movies than ought to be necessary was a money-making strategy that, while awful, is also at least successful so it makes business sense. Filming a second Percy Jackson will be about as profitable as when you guys cranked out Garfield 2.
What a world we live in, that can see projects like a second Percy Jackson movie funded, but the Sarah Conner Chronicles will never get to deliver on its amazing setup for a new season because despite its popularity, the money wasn't there.
What a world we live in, that can see projects like a second Percy Jackson movie funded, but the Sarah Conner Chronicles will never get to deliver on its amazing setup for a new season because despite its popularity, the money wasn't there.
A tale every Summer Glau fan is painfully familiar with.
So if you want to make The Hobbit three movies long, fine- do your thing, people like The Hobbit. The Hunger Games has a lot going on in the next two books, take all the time you need to tell the story correctly. But the fact that you seem pretty serious about delivering us a "Cars" sequel titled "Planes" about an airplane who's scared of heights, directly after showing us your stupid trailer for your new racing movie about a snail who wants to be fast and race in the Indy 500, concerns us. And we're probably not the only ones.
**You'll notice we didn't link to either of those two movie trailers; it's because watching them makes you feel like your brain is being wrung like a dirty washcloth.
#1 At No Point Have You Ever Given Us A Spectacular Medieval Epic
You know what's sad? That picture right there is from Skyrim, which is a video game, which is not a movie, because movies for some reason aren't allowed to be good when they involve dragons. Hollywood, jump on the medieval nordic bandwagon. Dragons are "in" right now, no time would be better. You want a quick list of the all-time best movie-dragons off the top of our heads?
1. Maleficent
2. The one from "Pagemaster"
3. Eddie Murphy in "Mulan"
4. The ones in "How to train your dragon"
5. The one John Hurt voiced in TV's "Merlin"
You'll notice something about that list; they're all freaking animated (except John Hurtdragon, but that was on a TV show and doesn't count as a movie dragon). Why is this such a problem? People like knights, they like fighting, everyone thought Russel Crow's Robin Hood was pretty cool. King Arthur wasn't bad. "A Knight's Tale" is a guilty pleasure movie for many. If you're seriously unconvinced that a movie about knights and dragons wouldn't be massively successful if done properly, you must have your heads further up your collective butts than we all assumed because it's been pretty difficult lately to miss the entire Game of Thrones subculture George RR Martin wrote into existence.
"Aye always 'ated crossbows..." --actual line
Game Of Thrones is hot right now, and it will continue to be so until everyone realizes that there truly won't be any semblance of a happy ending and everyone will end up murdered or married to the wrong people, except Arya (because if she dies, all Martin's fans will throw his books out and start a different series). Game of Thrones has been injected into the main vein of pop culture, and its tie-in video game "Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" is also on the map for being possibly the most popular and complex virtual sandbox ever created. The story-lines and visuals of modern videogames and BBC shows are outdoing any medieval tales currently set to film. Each of these explores the ancient mythos of dragons and the supernatural with the foundation of medieval society supporting the elements of the story and adventure. And yet, we are without a single good movie about any of this subject matter. The closest you guys in Hollywood got to giving us a blockbuster medieval epic was in 2002 when you released "Reign of Fire".
You know what? Eragon did totally suck. That's obvious without ever even watching the movie. All you need is this screenshot.
Insert whichever "Never-Ending Story" joke you like best here.
That's the dragon this movie's based on? Not gonna see it. It's that simple. The girl in second period econ can draw up a better dragon than that.
This is a genre dying for a gritty re-imagining. Get the rights to the Eragon series, or the Prydain series, or something else we haven't heard of yet, and make it awesome. It's not just nerds who play "magic" in their parents' basements keeping Game of Thrones alive; it's got a shockingly large fanbase. It's so easy, just follow the same equation (family conflict, Peter Dinklage, disloyalty, power struggle, Sean Bean dies). You figured out sports movies decades ago: Gene Hackman is a coach, the team is the underdog, they overcome each other and then their opponents and then they win!
Why is it so hard to get this one right? You know in Harry Potter IV when Harry is flying away from that monstrous CGI dragon? That dragon looked better than the following four films in that series. When people read the books, they all came across some side comment about Ron's older brother Charlie off in a foreign land raising dragons and every single person was like "HOLD up, we're reading about some entitled punk boy and his friends breaking into the adult books section of the school library instead of the probably awesome adventures of Charlie Weasley and his wild dragons? That would be a MUCH better book!"
"No, more angsty scenes! dragons aren't angsty, we want angst!"- Producers
There were only two major movies that recently featured dragons in any sort of major role; Beowolf, which supposedly had a dragon but nobody noticed because all anyone could talk about was seeing half-animated Angelina Jolie somewhat naked; and The Hobbit, which didn't really include Smaug at all, and in the book Smaug isn't really a go-getter, he's more like the Jabba the Hutt of dragons. This is a tragedy, an unmined source of great movie material. Fantasy is in. There are like four television shows about classic fairytales on right this minute. You've been trying out things like Jack the Giant Killer, Hansel and Gretel, and two different Snow White movies-- you're edging towards a fairy tale renaissance anyway. Just give it a chance. Clive Owen's King Arthur was a pretty solid movie, but that's a franchise right there that could run for at least a trilogy of movies.
Holy crap what a great movie.
Take into account these principles, people will take notice. Make us proud, Hollywood.
-L
Saturday, July 6, 2013
This Post Has Nothing To Do With Disney Films
This photo has absolutely nothing to do with the following article.
We're taking a small break from our movie-related posts to remind everyone that this blog can actually be about anything, not just about how much The Little Mermaid sucks. Today we're exploring an intriguing idea expressed earlier in the week by the diverse and often wildly creative AskReddit subculture. This idea has sparked almost 11,000 comments to date, and inspired our writers to explore various angles of thought traditionally reserved for science-fiction authors and people who play the SIMS computer games. The idea in question was simply this:
If you could choose one statistic to be displayed over everyone's head, what would it be?
Take a second. Think it over.
Take a second. Think it over.
"Number of duckface pictures on Facebook profile" would be a rather telling stat.
On Reddit, the comments ranged anywhere from inventive to sinister to fifty different versions of "How likely it is the person in question will sleep with me". We decided to post the best answers we could come up with here, though we must note that since we don't have the patience to skim all 11,000 responses, some of these may have been suggested already in the Reddit comment section. We'll do our best to acknowledge this throughout the article.
Also for the sake of this article, we're assuming two things- the statistic you choose would also appear above your own head, and everyone's would be visible to everyone, no loopholes and no way of hiding it in any way. With that as our framework, let's brainstorm...
#7. Practical Information
We'll start simple- what if people's names were just up there for all to see? Even more exciting, what if someone's profession or age or weight was up there? Well that's boring. We can tell many of those things without any sort of glowing indicator. There's so many more creative statistics to be thought through, like if someones annual net income was public knowledge. Could you imagine? Okay sure, only negative things could come from this; jealousy from most, false superiority for the rest. Crime would go way up, kidnapping and such would be perhaps more of a hazard for the wealthy. College grads would see bums doing way better than they are and become bums themselves. All in all just unhappiness would come from knowing precisely how much more broke we are than our neighbors.
Personal info is just a plain, boring way to explore this possibility.
#6. Mind-Reading Options
The first thing most of you thought of probably had something to do with exposing truths people want to keep hidden. How would the world be changed if above everyone's head was the steadily increasing number of an individual's total lies told, perhaps broken down in a week/month/all-time format? Politicians would be in the middle of a campaign speech and "ding" their number would all of a sudden jump up. Legal proceedings would definitely be less of a nightmare. You wouldn't have to worry about carrying ID or anything, since you could prove your identity with your word and nothing else. Unfortunately, we'd likely become a society of half-truths and extremely creative questions. We'd all get really good at masking the intentions of our questions and the full truthfulness of our answers; in other words, all of mankind would become politicians. So in the end, this is a crappy option.
Also, if everyone's actual thoughts appeared above their head in a little thought bubble for everyone to read, scrolling constantly like a teleprompter, we could safely assume that everyone would just stay away from each other. The privacy of the mind is one of the most under-appreciated gifts we have, and we need it to function as a people.
If one day evolution suddenly spazzed out and a little glowing statistic appeared above each of us, we're hoping it's not purely exposing our innermost thoughts, or else the world will suddenly look like the post-apocalyptic wasteland Hollywood's been selling us on for the past decade.
#5. Mortality Type Things
A ticking clock with someone's remaining time on the planet would be interesting, but in the end just a disaster for everyone. Remember the movie "In Time"? Yeah mostly it was a metaphor for the 1% of ultra rich people in the world, but there's still some elements of what the future would be like if everyone knew how much time they had left, and that is a future of crazy people and a lot of really bad "time" puns. Even without the element of time being used as a currency, knowing how much time you've got would basically make anyone without much time left a possible terrorist looking to go out with a literal bang because they're unable to handle their pending expiration.
It would also create new classes of people, since people with a long time left would likely make friends and eventually form a subculture with those others who also have blessed longevity. This makes the class of people with a short time left essentially the "poor", and there's nothing they can do to get out of their situation except take their frustration out on the rich people with lots of time left, which will be impossible because by definition those people with lots of time won't reach their end for a while yet.
This would also call into question lots of religious stuff about fate and destiny, but since this is the internet we are literally not allowed to discuss religious topics.
Excuse us, but we couldn't help noticing that you are a terrible human being.
We'll start simple- what if people's names were just up there for all to see? Even more exciting, what if someone's profession or age or weight was up there? Well that's boring. We can tell many of those things without any sort of glowing indicator. There's so many more creative statistics to be thought through, like if someones annual net income was public knowledge. Could you imagine? Okay sure, only negative things could come from this; jealousy from most, false superiority for the rest. Crime would go way up, kidnapping and such would be perhaps more of a hazard for the wealthy. College grads would see bums doing way better than they are and become bums themselves. All in all just unhappiness would come from knowing precisely how much more broke we are than our neighbors.
Personal info is just a plain, boring way to explore this possibility.
#6. Mind-Reading Options
"If only an amateur freelance internet writer would ask me to out, we could grab some pizza"
- Gal Gadot, probably.
- Gal Gadot, probably.
The first thing most of you thought of probably had something to do with exposing truths people want to keep hidden. How would the world be changed if above everyone's head was the steadily increasing number of an individual's total lies told, perhaps broken down in a week/month/all-time format? Politicians would be in the middle of a campaign speech and "ding" their number would all of a sudden jump up. Legal proceedings would definitely be less of a nightmare. You wouldn't have to worry about carrying ID or anything, since you could prove your identity with your word and nothing else. Unfortunately, we'd likely become a society of half-truths and extremely creative questions. We'd all get really good at masking the intentions of our questions and the full truthfulness of our answers; in other words, all of mankind would become politicians. So in the end, this is a crappy option.
Also, dates would pretty much be like the only good scene from "The Invention of Lying".
Also, if everyone's actual thoughts appeared above their head in a little thought bubble for everyone to read, scrolling constantly like a teleprompter, we could safely assume that everyone would just stay away from each other. The privacy of the mind is one of the most under-appreciated gifts we have, and we need it to function as a people.
If one day evolution suddenly spazzed out and a little glowing statistic appeared above each of us, we're hoping it's not purely exposing our innermost thoughts, or else the world will suddenly look like the post-apocalyptic wasteland Hollywood's been selling us on for the past decade.
#5. Mortality Type Things
Your love will never last.
A ticking clock with someone's remaining time on the planet would be interesting, but in the end just a disaster for everyone. Remember the movie "In Time"? Yeah mostly it was a metaphor for the 1% of ultra rich people in the world, but there's still some elements of what the future would be like if everyone knew how much time they had left, and that is a future of crazy people and a lot of really bad "time" puns. Even without the element of time being used as a currency, knowing how much time you've got would basically make anyone without much time left a possible terrorist looking to go out with a literal bang because they're unable to handle their pending expiration.
The 'Les Misérables' sequel is going to be awesome.
It would also create new classes of people, since people with a long time left would likely make friends and eventually form a subculture with those others who also have blessed longevity. This makes the class of people with a short time left essentially the "poor", and there's nothing they can do to get out of their situation except take their frustration out on the rich people with lots of time left, which will be impossible because by definition those people with lots of time won't reach their end for a while yet.
This would also call into question lots of religious stuff about fate and destiny, but since this is the internet we are literally not allowed to discuss religious topics.
#4. Personality Details
Imagine if the word "Overrated" hung over Dwight's head all the time. It's not hard.
This one could be fun. There are several details a person would rather keep hidden that still wouldn't totally wreck our society. Imagine people walking around with a one-word descriptor above their head articulating their personality type? Granted, that'd kind of be a waste since we humans are pretty good at judging that without needing any sort of sign. So what about someone's favorite song or movie? Well that wouldn't work for the major portion of the world's population who don't spend their lives wasting away indulging in constant entertainment.
An idea proposed on Reddit suggested that someone's "experience points" should flash when they discuss a certain topic. We like that idea, maybe if on a scale from 1-100 someone's real world knowledge of a topic was there for all to see. Basically, the more you actually do something and learn from it, the higher your number will climb. Does that make sense? No....? Okay how about this; it's like if life were "Skyrim".
"Ooooh"- Everyone
It would largely eliminated those tools who talk about subjects they have no clue about, and would give added importance to seeking out knowledge on an individual basis. It would make everybody regain the passion for learning we all lose at age 11. It would be a better system to discern the good, honest politicians from the ones we have now. It may also give people who are extremely intelligent in their respective fields more license to be a complete jerk about it, but that's pretty much the world we live in already.
"Yeah, a Harvard education is available online now for free, but I actually went there"
It wouldn't be all bad though. You'd know who you could take advice from and who was just trying to sound smart. And there's a bonus for the dating world; if a girl starts talking about "Pretty Little Liars" and her XP meter jumps to 98, you know you've gotta get out of there. Guy starts talking about Kardashians and his number reads 84? Ditch him.
Girl nails the lyrics to Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" with 100 above her head? She's a keeper.
#3. Outside-The-Box Thinking
One of the more creative posts on Reddit suggested that hanging above everyone's noggin should be the exact GPS coordinates of whatever it is they are looking for at that moment. To us that can mean anything from lost keys to the best pizza in town to a soul mate, who hopefully has GPS numbers that match your location, because that might suck otherwise. An extremely dark but admittedly telling number suggested by a different Reddit user is the percentage of people worldwide that would be wiped out if the individual in question had the power to destroy anyone who didn't live up to their standards. Interesting how a few religious and political leaders would fare in such a world.
Another interesting detail would be if someone's total lifetime distance travelled was shown, you could learn a lot about a person that way. Of course, airline pilots and astronauts would take up all the cool points and leave none for the rest of us.
Like that's not already happening anyway.
Tagging along with this traveling idea, maybe the most interesting thing to see a total stranger sporting is the number of degrees that separate them from you. Imagine being in an airport and seeing lots of fives and sixes and sevens and then someone totally random with a two or a three. Because this number would obviously change according to perspective, you may be four degrees away from Bruce Willis while your girlfriend is only two. Because you have no way of knowing others' connections, this could obviously be lied about, but it would still make TV shows a little more fun to watch.
#2. The Universe's Big Joke
One of the first suggestions mentioned in the original thread this question appeared in was the idea of a completely arbitrary number, random in every way, just as a way of completely messing with the world. Scientists and psychologists would work to figure out what the numbers represent, while our culture attempted to segregate itself over which numbers illicit an aura of superiority. Odds and evens would be common, like right-handed and left-handed people. But prime numbers, oddly repeating sequences like 121212 and the unfortunate soul who gets 666 will all be investigated by a host of mathematicians, criminal psychologists, and a few religious heretics.
#1. The Best One
As far as we can tell, there is one stat that would be both informative, slightly secretive, and wouldn't completely rip our planet apart. On a scale of 1-100, a person's happiness level, updated each moment. This would have elements of mind-reading, since you couldn't lie about how you're feeling and maybe that wouldn't be a good thing. But you'd know who to avoid on a certain day, and which waiters and waitresses really aren't in need of your whining (hint: it's all of them). Maybe the most important aspect of this is you could tell how much of an effect you can have on people, for good or for ill. You could watch your significant other's number go up a little when they walk in the door, and you could tell what makes people truly happy. You could ask the people consistently hovering in the 90s what their secret is. You could help out your friend who sank into the teens for an unknown reason.
There's still some degree of privacy involved, but it would make the world even more of an interesting place.
There's endless possibilities to consider; more statistics that we haven't discussed, more consequences of the ones we have, and lots of good reasons why it's for the best this isn't a reality. Still, the idea of knowing things we usually don't get to see is an intriguing one, and makes you wonder how much about yourself you normally keep hidden from the world.
Alright enough of that, we'll be back to movies and other hilarity in no time, check back here soon.
-L
"You guys! Olivia Wilde is a two! WHO DO WE KNOW THAT KNOWS OLIVIA WILDE?!
#2. The Universe's Big Joke
One of the first suggestions mentioned in the original thread this question appeared in was the idea of a completely arbitrary number, random in every way, just as a way of completely messing with the world. Scientists and psychologists would work to figure out what the numbers represent, while our culture attempted to segregate itself over which numbers illicit an aura of superiority. Odds and evens would be common, like right-handed and left-handed people. But prime numbers, oddly repeating sequences like 121212 and the unfortunate soul who gets 666 will all be investigated by a host of mathematicians, criminal psychologists, and a few religious heretics.
"I, the universe, shall give Steve the number 0, because I seriously don't like Steve."
#1. The Best One
As far as we can tell, there is one stat that would be both informative, slightly secretive, and wouldn't completely rip our planet apart. On a scale of 1-100, a person's happiness level, updated each moment. This would have elements of mind-reading, since you couldn't lie about how you're feeling and maybe that wouldn't be a good thing. But you'd know who to avoid on a certain day, and which waiters and waitresses really aren't in need of your whining (hint: it's all of them). Maybe the most important aspect of this is you could tell how much of an effect you can have on people, for good or for ill. You could watch your significant other's number go up a little when they walk in the door, and you could tell what makes people truly happy. You could ask the people consistently hovering in the 90s what their secret is. You could help out your friend who sank into the teens for an unknown reason.
You could watch tens of thousands of people's happy meters zip to 100 at the same time.
There's still some degree of privacy involved, but it would make the world even more of an interesting place.
There's endless possibilities to consider; more statistics that we haven't discussed, more consequences of the ones we have, and lots of good reasons why it's for the best this isn't a reality. Still, the idea of knowing things we usually don't get to see is an intriguing one, and makes you wonder how much about yourself you normally keep hidden from the world.
Alright enough of that, we'll be back to movies and other hilarity in no time, check back here soon.
-L
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Part III: Critical Analysis of Disney Princess Films
In case you're wondering what this is all about, first go here and then here, so that this conclusion to our critical summaries of Disney princess movies can end with the appropriate amount of catharsis and awe. Once you're finished with Parts I and II, grab a snack, get comfy, and enjoy the final entry in this systematic trampling of your favorite childhood films.
Hey, remember that time when Cinderella had to leave that party early before all her fairy magic wore off? Neither do we, because we were too busy watching Mulan kill hundreds of invading huns with an avalanche. "Mulan" is an awesome movie. Solid music throughout, a complete lack of obnoxious side-characters in favor of an Eddie Murphy dragon and a cricket, a legitimately frightening villain, and the second best animated training sequence ever created (first best). Mulan kicks butt, and really our only criticism of the movie as a whole is her dishonorable addition to the Disney princess canon.
You see, "Disney Princess" isn't just a categorization or title, it's actually the name of a media franchise owned by the Walt Disney company, created basically as a way of promoting their most popular heroines and making sure that every little girl in America buys a Cinderella lunchbox (and heck, even some of the little boys, since it's 2013 and we're so over gender stereotypes). The "Disney Princess" is a brand in every sense of the word. So see if you can spot what's weird about this picture:
"Brave" is a "Disney Pixar" film, it says so right on the poster. What that means is over the course of the movie, you'll be able to spot the brilliant glimmers of Pixar's genius unfortunately cloaked by the dull unimaginative storyline dragging the rest of the movie down. Pixar does things a certain way, and before Disney bought them that way was a process that always involved a new original story and a tradition of exceptionally creative movie-making. Disney bought Pixar in 2006, and immediately began pumping out sequels and slapping the trusted Pixar brand on movies like "Cars 2". Disney and Pixar don't exactly get along since the two share very different standards; Pixar relies on creative excellence and an established reputation for being awesome in order to be successful, while Disney manufactures pre-packaged family-friendly movies with less regard for originality, since they've got so much money it just doesn't matter. Pixar is the Indie music scene with the rare real talent, and Disney is the major record label with the cash and the hookups to get their mediocre pop-sensation's song playing on every radio station every ten minutes, whether people like it or not.
So when it comes to "Brave", you watch the first fifteen minutes which is both hilarious and exciting, and you think you know where the movie's going; Merida is a princess who would rather be a warrior, and is pretty awesome at rock-climbing and archery and all the stuff she shouldn't enjoy because "she's a princess" (Jasmine, Ariel, and Pocahontas all sympathize). So naturally, you think she's gonna run away and have adventures and kill that seriously possessed bear from the beginning of the movie to prove her prowess as a warrior or something.
1998- "Mulan"
Mulan is expected by her society to be a docile bride-in-training, but her personality is too independent and outspoken for that load of nonsense. Instead, after her elderly father is called to the fast-approaching war with the Huns because he is the only male in the family, Mulan literally picks up her father's sword and runs away to ancient Chinese bootcamp, where being a huge klutz repeatedly gets her into trouble. She'll be sentenced to death if she's discovered impersonating a male soldier, but she takes the risk in order to save her father from inevitable death at the hands of the Huns. You'll notice we didn't really make fun of anything about this movie in this paragraph. That's because the only problem with Mulan is the fact that she was somehow considered dull enough to be a "Disney Princess" in the first place. Because Mulan is freaking awesome.
Hey, remember that time when Cinderella had to leave that party early before all her fairy magic wore off? Neither do we, because we were too busy watching Mulan kill hundreds of invading huns with an avalanche. "Mulan" is an awesome movie. Solid music throughout, a complete lack of obnoxious side-characters in favor of an Eddie Murphy dragon and a cricket, a legitimately frightening villain, and the second best animated training sequence ever created (first best). Mulan kicks butt, and really our only criticism of the movie as a whole is her dishonorable addition to the Disney princess canon.
You see, "Disney Princess" isn't just a categorization or title, it's actually the name of a media franchise owned by the Walt Disney company, created basically as a way of promoting their most popular heroines and making sure that every little girl in America buys a Cinderella lunchbox (and heck, even some of the little boys, since it's 2013 and we're so over gender stereotypes). The "Disney Princess" is a brand in every sense of the word. So see if you can spot what's weird about this picture:
The first thing you ought to notice is that Belle is the only true Brunette beauty in the whole lineup,
but that's not really what we're getting at.
Sparkling victorian-era dresses, tiaras, flowing locks of professionally done hair, supermodel posing... and then Mulan, all the way in the back looking around thinking "What the heck am I even doing here?". Seriously, she wears the "Are you serious?" expression of one who is far too cool to be hanging around that lot of girly-girls. In every way, Mulan does not fit the mold of the "Disney Princess".
First, she is the only member of this glittery group of gossips that isn't a princess at all. Out of the current eleven official Princesses, eight are born royalty. Two more (Belle and Tiana) marry into a royal family. Pocahontas is a princess, but also the only other lady in the group besides Mulan who doesn't wear a flowing ball-gown, and is therefore thrust to the back of the line-up and hidden by more colorful and traditional princess stereotypes. Mulan isn't of royal birth, and doesn't demonstrate anything in common with the personalities of those bland rodent-serenading princesses from pre-1989, nor does she demonstrate the desire to break out of her pampered life and have wild adventures like the popular females from the '90s. Mulan doesn't run away in search for adventure, she runs away to blast the villain Shan Yu right in his ugly face with a rocket so her father can live out his days in peace.
Mulan kind of has a complicated relationship with general Li, because things often get complicated when the guy you have a crush on leaves you in the frozen wilderness to die. Nevertheless, a budding romance begins at the very end of the film. Since this is the Disney universe, we'll go ahead and assume they marry (we're told this in fact does occur at the end of a sequel we shall refuse to acknowledge) in which case she still isn't a princess in any way. So we hear you arguing "Well she's still the female lead and any female lead in a Disney movie is a "Disney Princess", right?
Wrong on all accounts.
Without giving away too much of our next article, "The Forgotten Princesses", there are plenty of awesome Disney females who got snubbed by the princess club.
For example, where's Jane? "Tarzan" was released the summer after "Mulan", and Jane wears the dress, has the spunk, and woos the king of the whole freaking jungle. Tarzan was a box office success, unlike "The Black Cauldron" (*sigh*.....poor Eilonwy....we hope some studio buys the rights to "The Chronicles of Prydain" soon, babygirl). The only reason we can think of not to include Jane is that her story parallels Belle's in many ways, and they look kinda similar.
But Jane's absence from the elite eleven isn't nearly as shocking as fan-favorites like Esmerelda (who was denied membership on the grounds of her being a whore) and Meg from "Hercules", who was probably offered a spot on the roster and turned it down because screw princesses.
This is a point we'll have to explore in a future article, but for now it should suffice to simply acknowledge that being a female lead doesn't get you into the club. You've got to avoid having any semblance of a cool backstory, you can't be a box office failure, and most importantly you must keep the group's ethnic diversity ratio intact. Also, you can't be based off of anyone in real life because Disney won't pay the royalties to add you to their official Princess brand.
So as far as we can tell, Mulan wasn't added to the lineup because she was an actual princess, nor was she added just because she was the female lead of a successful movie for the Disney animation studio. She was likely elected to the elite group to increase the diversity Disney has been trying so hard to achieve ever since clever observers started blasting the animation studio in school projects and uploading their resulting homework to Youtube.
2009- "The Princess And The Frog"
Speaking of diversity. This is what happens when Disney attempts to apply everything they learned in their 80 years of animation into one movie, assuming that if all the right elements are in there, it will be successful. The result was a movie that nobody thought was bad, but was forgettable and only noteworthy for its unique southern setting. Tiana, who is a revamped Cinderella with attitude, is working two jobs so she can open up her own restaurant, just like every girl...uh...dreams. She's inspired by her dead father, which should surprise nobody by now (of the elite eleven, only four princesses have both a mom and a dad. Two of those four princesses are raised to adulthood outside of their royal home by a third party. Mulan only has both parents because she made it so).
A prince comes to town, and a voodoo guy turns him into a frog because the plot demanded it. Tiana kisses him and (SPOILER) is also turned into a frog. They have adventures in the bayou and lots of cajun laughs are had. At the end, the annoying firefly becomes a star and the two frogs get married in a swamp. Then they kiss, and since Tiana is now married to a prince, she is a princess and therefore breaks the froggy curse. Seriously. Meanwhile the evil voodoo witch doctor is killed by shadow demons in accordance with the longstanding nightmarish Disney tradition.
The problem with "The Princess and the Frog" is that we've all seen this movie before, in every other Disney movie ever. It's just not a classic, Tiana and the prince aren't memorable characters like Jasmine and Aladdin or Belle and Beast. It also suffers from being only the second best adaptation of this fairytale.
2010- We Finally Get To Bash "Tangled"
Where to begin? "Tangled" is the Disney adaptation of Rapunzel. You know the story, a helpless princess is locked in a tall tower far, far away from civilization, waiting for the day she is to be rescued by-wait what? She's not locked in the tower at all? She's just up there....painting? Oy. Let's go back to the beginning...
There's a magic youth-preserving flower that only an old enchantress knows about. "Enchantress" here doesn't mean the same thing it does in "Beauty and the Beast", since in "Tangled" the enchantress really doesn't display any magical abilities. Like, at all. The wife of the generic king falls deathly ill and the king searches the wilderness for the fabled magical flower, which he somehow finds and boils into a medicine for his wife, who then gives birth to a daughter with hair infused with the flower's magic.
The "enchantress" steals the baby girl out of her crib--this being the first of at least three examples of the palace's complete lack of security (#2 crown gets stolen, #3 capital fugitive escapes)--and runs off with her so that she can stay young, prompting a dramatic search for the king's only child and her kidnapper. The king's men, who miraculously located one tiny flower in the vast countryside just thirty seconds prior in the film, are now unable to locate a massive freaking tower, which, as far as we can tell from watching the movie, is about a day's ride from the palace.
First, she is the only member of this glittery group of gossips that isn't a princess at all. Out of the current eleven official Princesses, eight are born royalty. Two more (Belle and Tiana) marry into a royal family. Pocahontas is a princess, but also the only other lady in the group besides Mulan who doesn't wear a flowing ball-gown, and is therefore thrust to the back of the line-up and hidden by more colorful and traditional princess stereotypes. Mulan isn't of royal birth, and doesn't demonstrate anything in common with the personalities of those bland rodent-serenading princesses from pre-1989, nor does she demonstrate the desire to break out of her pampered life and have wild adventures like the popular females from the '90s. Mulan doesn't run away in search for adventure, she runs away to blast the villain Shan Yu right in his ugly face with a rocket so her father can live out his days in peace.
Against literally any other princess, we'd be rooting for this guy instead.
Mulan kind of has a complicated relationship with general Li, because things often get complicated when the guy you have a crush on leaves you in the frozen wilderness to die. Nevertheless, a budding romance begins at the very end of the film. Since this is the Disney universe, we'll go ahead and assume they marry (we're told this in fact does occur at the end of a sequel we shall refuse to acknowledge) in which case she still isn't a princess in any way. So we hear you arguing "Well she's still the female lead and any female lead in a Disney movie is a "Disney Princess", right?
Wrong on all accounts.
Without giving away too much of our next article, "The Forgotten Princesses", there are plenty of awesome Disney females who got snubbed by the princess club.
For example, where's Jane? "Tarzan" was released the summer after "Mulan", and Jane wears the dress, has the spunk, and woos the king of the whole freaking jungle. Tarzan was a box office success, unlike "The Black Cauldron" (*sigh*.....poor Eilonwy....we hope some studio buys the rights to "The Chronicles of Prydain" soon, babygirl). The only reason we can think of not to include Jane is that her story parallels Belle's in many ways, and they look kinda similar.
Eilonwy; opinionated and independent several years before Disney decided that was "OK".
But Jane's absence from the elite eleven isn't nearly as shocking as fan-favorites like Esmerelda (who was denied membership on the grounds of her being a whore) and Meg from "Hercules", who was probably offered a spot on the roster and turned it down because screw princesses.
"Do I look like I want to be a part of your little girls' club?"
This is a point we'll have to explore in a future article, but for now it should suffice to simply acknowledge that being a female lead doesn't get you into the club. You've got to avoid having any semblance of a cool backstory, you can't be a box office failure, and most importantly you must keep the group's ethnic diversity ratio intact. Also, you can't be based off of anyone in real life because Disney won't pay the royalties to add you to their official Princess brand.
So as far as we can tell, Mulan wasn't added to the lineup because she was an actual princess, nor was she added just because she was the female lead of a successful movie for the Disney animation studio. She was likely elected to the elite group to increase the diversity Disney has been trying so hard to achieve ever since clever observers started blasting the animation studio in school projects and uploading their resulting homework to Youtube.
2009- "The Princess And The Frog"
Speaking of diversity. This is what happens when Disney attempts to apply everything they learned in their 80 years of animation into one movie, assuming that if all the right elements are in there, it will be successful. The result was a movie that nobody thought was bad, but was forgettable and only noteworthy for its unique southern setting. Tiana, who is a revamped Cinderella with attitude, is working two jobs so she can open up her own restaurant, just like every girl...uh...dreams. She's inspired by her dead father, which should surprise nobody by now (of the elite eleven, only four princesses have both a mom and a dad. Two of those four princesses are raised to adulthood outside of their royal home by a third party. Mulan only has both parents because she made it so).
A prince comes to town, and a voodoo guy turns him into a frog because the plot demanded it. Tiana kisses him and (SPOILER) is also turned into a frog. They have adventures in the bayou and lots of cajun laughs are had. At the end, the annoying firefly becomes a star and the two frogs get married in a swamp. Then they kiss, and since Tiana is now married to a prince, she is a princess and therefore breaks the froggy curse. Seriously. Meanwhile the evil voodoo witch doctor is killed by shadow demons in accordance with the longstanding nightmarish Disney tradition.
The problem with "The Princess and the Frog" is that we've all seen this movie before, in every other Disney movie ever. It's just not a classic, Tiana and the prince aren't memorable characters like Jasmine and Aladdin or Belle and Beast. It also suffers from being only the second best adaptation of this fairytale.
2010- We Finally Get To Bash "Tangled"
Where to begin? "Tangled" is the Disney adaptation of Rapunzel. You know the story, a helpless princess is locked in a tall tower far, far away from civilization, waiting for the day she is to be rescued by-wait what? She's not locked in the tower at all? She's just up there....painting? Oy. Let's go back to the beginning...
There's a magic youth-preserving flower that only an old enchantress knows about. "Enchantress" here doesn't mean the same thing it does in "Beauty and the Beast", since in "Tangled" the enchantress really doesn't display any magical abilities. Like, at all. The wife of the generic king falls deathly ill and the king searches the wilderness for the fabled magical flower, which he somehow finds and boils into a medicine for his wife, who then gives birth to a daughter with hair infused with the flower's magic.
The "enchantress" steals the baby girl out of her crib--this being the first of at least three examples of the palace's complete lack of security (#2 crown gets stolen, #3 capital fugitive escapes)--and runs off with her so that she can stay young, prompting a dramatic search for the king's only child and her kidnapper. The king's men, who miraculously located one tiny flower in the vast countryside just thirty seconds prior in the film, are now unable to locate a massive freaking tower, which, as far as we can tell from watching the movie, is about a day's ride from the palace.
It seems like it would be hard to miss.
Rapunzel grows up in that tower, never touching grass beneath her feet or leaving the tower for any reason for 18 solid years. Don't worry though, it's not like she's locked up there in shackles plotting her R-rated revenge on the old enchantress (what disney villain would ever be so cruel?). Instead, she paints and plays games and even sings a song about all the activities she entertains herself with day after day, and never once decides captivity was bad enough to ever just, you know, leave. I'm sure the king and queen will love hearing about all the times the enchantress left her unattended for days at a time and she just stayed up in her tower anyway.
Enter Flynn. Flynn is cool. He points out to the princess that, um, yeah she can just leave if she wants, and they set out to return to the palace, neither of them aware that Rapunzel is the missing princess. There's a really awkward song in a bar that reminds everyone it's trying to be a musical movie even though it's not. Flynn repeatedly out-awesomes everybody on-screen, though Maximus does his best to keep up.
Enter Flynn. Flynn is cool. He points out to the princess that, um, yeah she can just leave if she wants, and they set out to return to the palace, neither of them aware that Rapunzel is the missing princess. There's a really awkward song in a bar that reminds everyone it's trying to be a musical movie even though it's not. Flynn repeatedly out-awesomes everybody on-screen, though Maximus does his best to keep up.
"Maximus, you and me in our own spinoff movie, what do you say?"
The evil enchantress, who displays no more evidence of being evil than any over-protective mom, convinces the dim princess to go back to the tower where she finally figures out she's the princess, and then Flynn comes to rescue her and immediately gets shivved. Credit the enchantress one thing, she doesn't sit around bantering about how she's going to kill someone, she just stabs them real good and they die. Flynn's dying breath escapes him as he slices off Rapunzel's hair, which causes the enchantress to wither away and fall out of the tower's window. Flynn pretty much dies, fortunately Rapunzel cries unicorn blood tears and Flynn is brought back from the great beyond.
Overall the movie trades back and forth between being a light but forgettable comedy, and a tired played-out musical movie about a girl and a boy who somewhat reluctantly fall in love. But Rapunzel is based on a classic fairytale, and thus the princess was added to the Disney princess canon anyway, since the movie was the third most successful Disney film ever in North America, behind "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast". Tangled made just under 201 million dollars on this continent, just 59 million dollars short of the film's estimated budget.
Wait, what?
Holy crap, making "Tangled" cost $260 Million dollars?! Is that not alarming you? Maybe we should put that number in perspective. "Tangled" is not only the most expensive animated film ever made, it is the second most expensive film of all freaking time. "Avatar" cost about 20 million dollars less than Tangled, and was lauded by all to be a cinematic and visual masterpiece, a technological wonder by most standards. And for twenty million more we got.....Tangled? Seriously? You give Peter Jackson 260 Million dollars to work with, you know what he gives you in return?
2012- "Brother Bear"....wait, oops...."Brave"
Overall the movie trades back and forth between being a light but forgettable comedy, and a tired played-out musical movie about a girl and a boy who somewhat reluctantly fall in love. But Rapunzel is based on a classic fairytale, and thus the princess was added to the Disney princess canon anyway, since the movie was the third most successful Disney film ever in North America, behind "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast". Tangled made just under 201 million dollars on this continent, just 59 million dollars short of the film's estimated budget.
Wait, what?
Holy crap, making "Tangled" cost $260 Million dollars?! Is that not alarming you? Maybe we should put that number in perspective. "Tangled" is not only the most expensive animated film ever made, it is the second most expensive film of all freaking time. "Avatar" cost about 20 million dollars less than Tangled, and was lauded by all to be a cinematic and visual masterpiece, a technological wonder by most standards. And for twenty million more we got.....Tangled? Seriously? You give Peter Jackson 260 Million dollars to work with, you know what he gives you in return?
This.
Eleven hours of undeniably epic live-action adventure, an awe-inspiring adaptation of perhaps the greatest fantasy universe of all time, a trilogy of movies laced with A-list actors and colossal battle scenes on a more massive scale than anything ever attempted. The Lord of The Rings movies created an entire elaborate world, based on books that practically invented an entire genre. For the same amount of money that funded the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, Disney brought us.......Tangled. Maybe it's just us, but when we watched "Tangled", we noted a seriously disappointing lack of Balrog.
"Brave" is a "Disney Pixar" film, it says so right on the poster. What that means is over the course of the movie, you'll be able to spot the brilliant glimmers of Pixar's genius unfortunately cloaked by the dull unimaginative storyline dragging the rest of the movie down. Pixar does things a certain way, and before Disney bought them that way was a process that always involved a new original story and a tradition of exceptionally creative movie-making. Disney bought Pixar in 2006, and immediately began pumping out sequels and slapping the trusted Pixar brand on movies like "Cars 2". Disney and Pixar don't exactly get along since the two share very different standards; Pixar relies on creative excellence and an established reputation for being awesome in order to be successful, while Disney manufactures pre-packaged family-friendly movies with less regard for originality, since they've got so much money it just doesn't matter. Pixar is the Indie music scene with the rare real talent, and Disney is the major record label with the cash and the hookups to get their mediocre pop-sensation's song playing on every radio station every ten minutes, whether people like it or not.
So when it comes to "Brave", you watch the first fifteen minutes which is both hilarious and exciting, and you think you know where the movie's going; Merida is a princess who would rather be a warrior, and is pretty awesome at rock-climbing and archery and all the stuff she shouldn't enjoy because "she's a princess" (Jasmine, Ariel, and Pocahontas all sympathize). So naturally, you think she's gonna run away and have adventures and kill that seriously possessed bear from the beginning of the movie to prove her prowess as a warrior or something.
But then it just turns into the plot from "Brother Bear" except for it's Merida's proper mother who is tricked into transforming into a big ol clumsy bear (insert Mother Bear joke here). And then all the hilarity and clever moments from the first fifteen minutes fades into a distant memory and "Brave" ends with a whimper. If there's one member of the elite eleven princesses who doesn't seem like she belongs there, Merida almost seems more out of place than Mulan. We've already established that merely being a princess isn't what gets you "in", so the fact that she's a member of the club was probably in the interest of marketing purposes and nothing else. Brave was cool for a little while when you thought the story was going to actually be clever and hey, scottish accents are always a plus. Brave was just disappointing, for all the things it could have been.
This marks the bittersweet end of our analysis of the various Disney Princesses from the past 80 years, but if you think it's the last article we'll post about Disney movies, worry not; we have projects underway in the draft room that you may enjoy. This series of articles has been our most successful and most viewed to date, so keep telling your friends about this blog and check back soon for more updates.
-L
This marks the bittersweet end of our analysis of the various Disney Princesses from the past 80 years, but if you think it's the last article we'll post about Disney movies, worry not; we have projects underway in the draft room that you may enjoy. This series of articles has been our most successful and most viewed to date, so keep telling your friends about this blog and check back soon for more updates.
-L
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