dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-11-03 11:50 pm
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-11-03 11:50 pm
Wreck-it Ralph
I wasn't actually very impressed by Paperman (the animated short preceding the film) for a few reasons:
-Musically, it felt cheap
-I was extremely disappointed that the animation was cel-shaded 3D and not just 2D animation. I know 3D is cheaper, but it's just a short, guys. Would it have been so hard?
-The really stereotypical gender roles established even by this simple, five minute short were really offensive to me. Let's list them quickly:
*the man was required to initiate the romance
*the man's face is not traditionally handsome; he has a big nose, and normal-size eyes. He is drawn to look like a skinny, tall, gawkish person. He's stylized, but mostly looks human. By contrast, the woman has the same demure petite perfect hourglass figure as every Disney princess. She also has eyes much larger than makes sense proportionately for her face (in what is actually a more classic Disney style) and no facial imperfections at all.
*while the man is stubborn and has to be dragged into things, the woman is portrayed as immediately going along with the mystical "event" that brings them together for the romance that the man wanted.
*the entire thing is a male-oriented wish fulfillment story, since the woman is not portrayed as having any interest or further thought about the paper. She is more concerned with making her train than the paper that blew into her face.
I am actually particularly annoyed that the woman is portrayed as immediately going for the mystical whatever crap. I am really sick of the stereotypical assumption that women are "wise and faithful" while men are "intelligent and strong".
As for Wreck-It Ralph itself, the movie was all right, but I was unfortunately sitting next to a little girl who shit her pants halfway through the film and spent a large part of it trying not to breathe while her parents ignored her noises of complaint and desire to alleviate her problem. I particularly hate her mother for slapping her hand away when she tried to grab mommy's arm to explain that she had had an accident. Argh.
Wreck-It Ralph features yet another kinda clueless dumb guy who's not good at expressing his emotions and just wants to be loved by everybody else. He's too passive aggressive to just straight up tell them what he wants, and because of the way that gets framed, a very legitimate complaint (you all treat me poorly and intentionally exclude me because I'm different, for reasons COMPLETELY BEYOND MY CONTROL) gets not only ignored, but thrown back in his face at one point of the movie by one of the privileged characters who he has temporarily inconvenienced.
I will say this now: despite this, Wreck-It Ralph isn't the main character of his own story. Which is good, because I felt like the device set up for his character growth was a little half-assed. Wreck-It Ralph is actually the story of Vanellope von Schweetz, who is adorable and voiced by Sarah Silverman.
Things I liked about the film:
-the buddy relationship between V and Ralph
-the cameos of actual video game characters (though I was a little sad at how small some of them were, but that's completely okay since it means an actual movie was had, and not just a parade of out-of-context references)
-the focus on Ralph's desire not to run away from home like a child, but to return home as someone he could be proud of. Despite my problem with his inability to articulate himself, I really liked that Ralph's response to a negative part of his life was to desire to improve that part of his life, rather than run away from his problems or deny that they ever existed.
The story wasn't particularly new (especially since Winnie the Pooh, The Velveteen Rabbit, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and so on already exist and have tread extensively the ground of imaginary things that have special secret lives when we're not looking), but it was still fun and covered the kind of ground that can still be enjoyable even if you've heard similar stories a hundred times. I really liked that the "outside, there are real people looking in!" POV character was a young girl gamer instead of a boy, (setting aside the secondary complaint that she was a white, blond girl in a movie that had two non-white characters total, as far as I could tell. Baby steps, I guess.) because it meant that the movie did touch on the fact that video games appeal to people regardless of gender. I was a little disappointed that the plot went where it did, but to tell you why I'm going to have to go into spoiler mode, so check out under the cut.
The one big thing I didn't like about the film was that Lady Marine fell into a traditional romance with Fix-it Felix. (She had a name but I can't actually remember off of the top of my head, which I think is important to note because if it had been said more than three times in the film I might have remembered it.) Yes, that's right, once again the stereotype has been replayed that the badass action hero lady ACTUALLY secretly is a tender weak female inside who desperately wants a man to take charge and be her hero.
Of all the tropes that have come from attempts to actualize the idea of female heroes, this is the one that angers me the most. It's NOT that women can't have romance without suddenly losing their badassery, mind you-- it's the false implication that there is ONLY one acceptable way to have a romance, and that that is between a man and a woman, wherein the man is the "hero" (dominant, decision-making partner) and the woman is the "damsel" (submissive, compromising partner). This is just a straight up unequal and unhealthy style of relationship. If they could at least have had her CONTINUE to be in charge while having her romance with the man (pulling them out of danger instead of being pulled; initiating the kiss without having one "stolen" first; ALL the little body language things that turn a fictional relationship into a heterosexual male oriented fantasy) it would have been fine. But what's being played for laughs here just isn't funny to me, because it's not a joke-- it's just the reality for every female character in every movie, tv show and video game I see, these days. It's depressing.
Anyway, down to the muck and grime of my big disappointment in the plot.
And let me preface this by reminding everyone who might think this means I hate the movie with the very true statement that Disney makes good movies and great movies; the problem with this movie is that it's only good, and could have been better.
The big problem I have is that Vanellope's predicament became about 100% less interesting when it turned out that she was NOT secretly the virus-bug that Lady Marine was hunting down, and I'll tell you why.
1. The villain was the Candy King
For the villain of the film to turn out to be the Candy King, who is actually the very person that was mentioned as the prime example of someone choosing to game-hop in the context of the movie, is just too tidy. This is the kind of critique I was getting back in sixth grade on my creative writing, and I think it's really good advice. When you put in foreshadowing, you CAN'T immediately follow up on it or it feels forced. Good writing is essential in any entertainment media and I don't think that that's something the USA really focuses on as a society, let alone in movies-- but when you have crap writing, you get crap movies.
Why should the Candy King be the villain? He's nonthreatening and kind of shallow as a character. On the surface, he's just the guy in charge of the game. When it turns out he doesn't even belong there, and he's (in yet another use of Hollywood's dizzying oversimplification of how hard it is to do computer programming) manipulating the static code of an already made video game to try to fit himself in somewhere that he doesn't belong, it's all just to make a good excuse for why the candy-kids are so MEAN to Vanellope. This allows for a deus-ex-machina that spreads to pretty much the entire plot from there on out, which is just sad. Rather than have any meaningful interactions with any of these characters-- or really any characters other than Vanellope herself and Ralph-- we get an excuse for the bullying Vanellope and Ralph both have to endure because of their different social status. (Take your pick: they're both homeless in the context of the story, which is definitely something there's an unkind social stigma against; they both are treated with some racism, where Ralph's "race" is badguy and Vanellope's "race" is being 'glitched'.)
I don't think having the Candy King to tie in the whole "Turbo" story is interesting as a plot twist. It's definitely well-trod ground, to boot, and my main qualm with it is that it's just too damn convenient. It's like a bad ghost story you heard in second grade:
"And the hash slinging slasher came to a restaurant just like this very restaurant on-- what day is it?"
"Tuesday."
"--On a Tuesday niiight~!"
"Oh my god! TONIGHT is Tuesday night!!"
2. The villain SHOULD have been the space marine woman
And I'll tell you why. Space Marine woman was programmed to single-mindedly and doggedly hunt down and destroy her enemy, no matter the cost. Her enemy was presumably dangerous and insatiable, and just as shallowly programmed as she was. (Sidenote; the creepy face anatomy I was complaining about in Paperman can also be seen in Lady Marine's facial structure, alas.)
She had the potential to be developed as a really interesting character (and MUCH more important to the plot) if she was actually the villain-- not because she was secretly evil, but in that less directly threatening way where she was a villain because of her code of honor. This would work BECAUSE...
3. Vanellope should have been the bug that Lady Marine was looking for.
Yes, that's right. And this is why: We already know that the bugs become what they eat, very literally, because we saw what happened in the previous scene. So a baby bug falls into the icing, and eats some candy stuff, and becomes one of the candy people. Now the bug has a reason to be interested in Ralph, to be interested in his medal, and to be interested in trying to become a part of the game. From the rigid standpoint of "there couldn't possibly be an extra character because of the game code", it makes just as much sense for the main character of a video game to mysteriously have been replaced by someone who looks nothing like that character as it does for there to be, say, a half-coded character design that could be borrowed by a so-called virus (the bug). I also think it's worth pointing out that Vanellope's character design looks to be intentionally vague as to whether she could secretly be the bug or not, because she's in green and black, the same colors as just about everything in the space marines universe.
This not only gives Vanellope and Ralph something in common (realizing that they don't want to be the villain in the game), it gives an unexpected depth to Lady Marine (who refuses to even consider that the bugs might not all just be mindless drones if they had the opportunity) who is unwittingly killing hundreds of thousands of these things a day. Vanellope now has real stakes; if she can get in the game permanently, then she's safe from the marine. If she can't, what's the point of going back? She'll just be instantly killed.
This is a real problem in my mind with recent Disney movies. There have been several that just don't have a very well-defined character as the villain that kind of let me down in that area; Princess and the Frog and Brother Bear come to mind, though I do think Tangled was a good reprieve from that. Princess and the Frog had the potential for a good villain in the voodoo man, but just sort of let it fall flat in the face of the real conflict. In a way, this is the problem. It's like someone in the writing department KNOWS you can have conflict without appointing a villain, but someone else feels like a villain is required for the formula and insists that we have one. (So my solution is, at least make the villain a good villain if you're going to keep having them.)
But anyway-- if Vanellope was the bug, and Lady Marine felt honor-bound to kill her whatever the cost, then you have a perfectly legitimate conflict. The glitching can indicate that Vanellope doesn't belong there yet, even if she will by the end of the movie, and now there's an actual, serious conflict here that brings Ralph and Felix into conflict again as well. Ralph has befriended Vanellope and can relate to her desire to have a chance at life on equal, fair footing. Felix is just smitten with Lady Marine, and has always had it easy in life. Now a conversation has to happen between them all about what's fair and what's not. Why should some people get to live in comfort, and others accept that it's their "code" (read: destiny, fate) to have lives they'd rather not have? The same sort of compromise could still occur in the end.
4. Setting that theory aside, however, if they wanted Vanellope to be a princess, they should have had her in the princess outfit on the side of the game as foreshadowing. Or just not done the fucking dress.
The princess dress was just stupid. Additionally, fuck you, Disney. If it was the Candy King she should be the Candy Queen. It's your fault that Queens are portrayed as evil, which is inherently sexist since Kings are under no such restriction. For shame.
5. And most importantly, regardless of whether Vanellope was the princess and didn't know it because she thought she was a glitch, or secretly the bug, why the hell would anyone want to be friends with the racers after they'd treated her the way they did?
I kind of strongly disagree with the implicit message of "you should forgive people who cruelly bully you and destroy the things you pin your hopes and dreams on" in the way that this was handled. Vanellope is being ostracized and picked on by the other racers and yet still seeks their attention, and this is what she has in common with Ralph. In Ralph's case, these people are actually capable of being nice, but he never talks to them so they haven't got any idea what kind of person he is beyond the actual gameplay-- so they assume he's mean and act accordingly (the "badguy" racism mentioned earlier). But Vanellope actually endures a lot of cruel teasing for a very real problem that she has by these kids in one extended scene. I definitely think it's nice that Vanellope was able to turn that disadvantage into a strength in the context of the show-- very similarly to Toph in Avatar: the Last Airbender-- but I also think it's important to keep in mind that sometimes the differences we have that are beyond our control really don't go away, and it's still not okay to make fun of people for those differences. The whole thing handled an issue that's pretty serious more tongue in cheek than I think it should have. Considering that the teasing Vanellope receives is really more on par with the kind of teasing a child with a mental handicap might receive, I found it pretty uncomfortable for her to just shrug it off and be all pals with the kids. Particularly, there just wasn't enough evidence of Taffyta shown as capable of being anything but petty and cruel, which reinforces another negative stereotype (about the 'mean, pretty girl') while also leaving me to wonder why anyone would want to be her friend.
I'm not saying I want everybody to abandon her at the end-- that's bad too-- but I would have liked to see more character depth there to at least give me a good reason for the 'why?'
But that's basically the meat and potatoes of what I thought they could really have done better in the movie with a relatively small amount of effort. Fixing the body language in the extremely lukewarm 'joke' romance would have done wonders for improving the hilarity and the chemistry of that relationship. As it was, Felix acting all George McFly was funny, but inappropriate since Lady Marine specifically rejected his advances. He then failed to respect her request, and then she maaagically fell in loooove with him! Pass. This is why I dislike romance as a genre; these sorts of "romances" are anything but romantic.
-Musically, it felt cheap
-I was extremely disappointed that the animation was cel-shaded 3D and not just 2D animation. I know 3D is cheaper, but it's just a short, guys. Would it have been so hard?
-The really stereotypical gender roles established even by this simple, five minute short were really offensive to me. Let's list them quickly:
*the man was required to initiate the romance
*the man's face is not traditionally handsome; he has a big nose, and normal-size eyes. He is drawn to look like a skinny, tall, gawkish person. He's stylized, but mostly looks human. By contrast, the woman has the same demure petite perfect hourglass figure as every Disney princess. She also has eyes much larger than makes sense proportionately for her face (in what is actually a more classic Disney style) and no facial imperfections at all.
*while the man is stubborn and has to be dragged into things, the woman is portrayed as immediately going along with the mystical "event" that brings them together for the romance that the man wanted.
*the entire thing is a male-oriented wish fulfillment story, since the woman is not portrayed as having any interest or further thought about the paper. She is more concerned with making her train than the paper that blew into her face.
I am actually particularly annoyed that the woman is portrayed as immediately going for the mystical whatever crap. I am really sick of the stereotypical assumption that women are "wise and faithful" while men are "intelligent and strong".
As for Wreck-It Ralph itself, the movie was all right, but I was unfortunately sitting next to a little girl who shit her pants halfway through the film and spent a large part of it trying not to breathe while her parents ignored her noises of complaint and desire to alleviate her problem. I particularly hate her mother for slapping her hand away when she tried to grab mommy's arm to explain that she had had an accident. Argh.
Wreck-It Ralph features yet another kinda clueless dumb guy who's not good at expressing his emotions and just wants to be loved by everybody else. He's too passive aggressive to just straight up tell them what he wants, and because of the way that gets framed, a very legitimate complaint (you all treat me poorly and intentionally exclude me because I'm different, for reasons COMPLETELY BEYOND MY CONTROL) gets not only ignored, but thrown back in his face at one point of the movie by one of the privileged characters who he has temporarily inconvenienced.
I will say this now: despite this, Wreck-It Ralph isn't the main character of his own story. Which is good, because I felt like the device set up for his character growth was a little half-assed. Wreck-It Ralph is actually the story of Vanellope von Schweetz, who is adorable and voiced by Sarah Silverman.
Things I liked about the film:
-the buddy relationship between V and Ralph
-the cameos of actual video game characters (though I was a little sad at how small some of them were, but that's completely okay since it means an actual movie was had, and not just a parade of out-of-context references)
-the focus on Ralph's desire not to run away from home like a child, but to return home as someone he could be proud of. Despite my problem with his inability to articulate himself, I really liked that Ralph's response to a negative part of his life was to desire to improve that part of his life, rather than run away from his problems or deny that they ever existed.
The story wasn't particularly new (especially since Winnie the Pooh, The Velveteen Rabbit, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and so on already exist and have tread extensively the ground of imaginary things that have special secret lives when we're not looking), but it was still fun and covered the kind of ground that can still be enjoyable even if you've heard similar stories a hundred times. I really liked that the "outside, there are real people looking in!" POV character was a young girl gamer instead of a boy, (setting aside the secondary complaint that she was a white, blond girl in a movie that had two non-white characters total, as far as I could tell. Baby steps, I guess.) because it meant that the movie did touch on the fact that video games appeal to people regardless of gender. I was a little disappointed that the plot went where it did, but to tell you why I'm going to have to go into spoiler mode, so check out under the cut.
The one big thing I didn't like about the film was that Lady Marine fell into a traditional romance with Fix-it Felix. (She had a name but I can't actually remember off of the top of my head, which I think is important to note because if it had been said more than three times in the film I might have remembered it.) Yes, that's right, once again the stereotype has been replayed that the badass action hero lady ACTUALLY secretly is a tender weak female inside who desperately wants a man to take charge and be her hero.
Of all the tropes that have come from attempts to actualize the idea of female heroes, this is the one that angers me the most. It's NOT that women can't have romance without suddenly losing their badassery, mind you-- it's the false implication that there is ONLY one acceptable way to have a romance, and that that is between a man and a woman, wherein the man is the "hero" (dominant, decision-making partner) and the woman is the "damsel" (submissive, compromising partner). This is just a straight up unequal and unhealthy style of relationship. If they could at least have had her CONTINUE to be in charge while having her romance with the man (pulling them out of danger instead of being pulled; initiating the kiss without having one "stolen" first; ALL the little body language things that turn a fictional relationship into a heterosexual male oriented fantasy) it would have been fine. But what's being played for laughs here just isn't funny to me, because it's not a joke-- it's just the reality for every female character in every movie, tv show and video game I see, these days. It's depressing.
Anyway, down to the muck and grime of my big disappointment in the plot.
And let me preface this by reminding everyone who might think this means I hate the movie with the very true statement that Disney makes good movies and great movies; the problem with this movie is that it's only good, and could have been better.
The big problem I have is that Vanellope's predicament became about 100% less interesting when it turned out that she was NOT secretly the virus-bug that Lady Marine was hunting down, and I'll tell you why.
1. The villain was the Candy King
For the villain of the film to turn out to be the Candy King, who is actually the very person that was mentioned as the prime example of someone choosing to game-hop in the context of the movie, is just too tidy. This is the kind of critique I was getting back in sixth grade on my creative writing, and I think it's really good advice. When you put in foreshadowing, you CAN'T immediately follow up on it or it feels forced. Good writing is essential in any entertainment media and I don't think that that's something the USA really focuses on as a society, let alone in movies-- but when you have crap writing, you get crap movies.
Why should the Candy King be the villain? He's nonthreatening and kind of shallow as a character. On the surface, he's just the guy in charge of the game. When it turns out he doesn't even belong there, and he's (in yet another use of Hollywood's dizzying oversimplification of how hard it is to do computer programming) manipulating the static code of an already made video game to try to fit himself in somewhere that he doesn't belong, it's all just to make a good excuse for why the candy-kids are so MEAN to Vanellope. This allows for a deus-ex-machina that spreads to pretty much the entire plot from there on out, which is just sad. Rather than have any meaningful interactions with any of these characters-- or really any characters other than Vanellope herself and Ralph-- we get an excuse for the bullying Vanellope and Ralph both have to endure because of their different social status. (Take your pick: they're both homeless in the context of the story, which is definitely something there's an unkind social stigma against; they both are treated with some racism, where Ralph's "race" is badguy and Vanellope's "race" is being 'glitched'.)
I don't think having the Candy King to tie in the whole "Turbo" story is interesting as a plot twist. It's definitely well-trod ground, to boot, and my main qualm with it is that it's just too damn convenient. It's like a bad ghost story you heard in second grade:
"And the hash slinging slasher came to a restaurant just like this very restaurant on-- what day is it?"
"Tuesday."
"--On a Tuesday niiight~!"
"Oh my god! TONIGHT is Tuesday night!!"
2. The villain SHOULD have been the space marine woman
And I'll tell you why. Space Marine woman was programmed to single-mindedly and doggedly hunt down and destroy her enemy, no matter the cost. Her enemy was presumably dangerous and insatiable, and just as shallowly programmed as she was. (Sidenote; the creepy face anatomy I was complaining about in Paperman can also be seen in Lady Marine's facial structure, alas.)
She had the potential to be developed as a really interesting character (and MUCH more important to the plot) if she was actually the villain-- not because she was secretly evil, but in that less directly threatening way where she was a villain because of her code of honor. This would work BECAUSE...
3. Vanellope should have been the bug that Lady Marine was looking for.
Yes, that's right. And this is why: We already know that the bugs become what they eat, very literally, because we saw what happened in the previous scene. So a baby bug falls into the icing, and eats some candy stuff, and becomes one of the candy people. Now the bug has a reason to be interested in Ralph, to be interested in his medal, and to be interested in trying to become a part of the game. From the rigid standpoint of "there couldn't possibly be an extra character because of the game code", it makes just as much sense for the main character of a video game to mysteriously have been replaced by someone who looks nothing like that character as it does for there to be, say, a half-coded character design that could be borrowed by a so-called virus (the bug). I also think it's worth pointing out that Vanellope's character design looks to be intentionally vague as to whether she could secretly be the bug or not, because she's in green and black, the same colors as just about everything in the space marines universe.
This not only gives Vanellope and Ralph something in common (realizing that they don't want to be the villain in the game), it gives an unexpected depth to Lady Marine (who refuses to even consider that the bugs might not all just be mindless drones if they had the opportunity) who is unwittingly killing hundreds of thousands of these things a day. Vanellope now has real stakes; if she can get in the game permanently, then she's safe from the marine. If she can't, what's the point of going back? She'll just be instantly killed.
This is a real problem in my mind with recent Disney movies. There have been several that just don't have a very well-defined character as the villain that kind of let me down in that area; Princess and the Frog and Brother Bear come to mind, though I do think Tangled was a good reprieve from that. Princess and the Frog had the potential for a good villain in the voodoo man, but just sort of let it fall flat in the face of the real conflict. In a way, this is the problem. It's like someone in the writing department KNOWS you can have conflict without appointing a villain, but someone else feels like a villain is required for the formula and insists that we have one. (So my solution is, at least make the villain a good villain if you're going to keep having them.)
But anyway-- if Vanellope was the bug, and Lady Marine felt honor-bound to kill her whatever the cost, then you have a perfectly legitimate conflict. The glitching can indicate that Vanellope doesn't belong there yet, even if she will by the end of the movie, and now there's an actual, serious conflict here that brings Ralph and Felix into conflict again as well. Ralph has befriended Vanellope and can relate to her desire to have a chance at life on equal, fair footing. Felix is just smitten with Lady Marine, and has always had it easy in life. Now a conversation has to happen between them all about what's fair and what's not. Why should some people get to live in comfort, and others accept that it's their "code" (read: destiny, fate) to have lives they'd rather not have? The same sort of compromise could still occur in the end.
4. Setting that theory aside, however, if they wanted Vanellope to be a princess, they should have had her in the princess outfit on the side of the game as foreshadowing. Or just not done the fucking dress.
The princess dress was just stupid. Additionally, fuck you, Disney. If it was the Candy King she should be the Candy Queen. It's your fault that Queens are portrayed as evil, which is inherently sexist since Kings are under no such restriction. For shame.
5. And most importantly, regardless of whether Vanellope was the princess and didn't know it because she thought she was a glitch, or secretly the bug, why the hell would anyone want to be friends with the racers after they'd treated her the way they did?
I kind of strongly disagree with the implicit message of "you should forgive people who cruelly bully you and destroy the things you pin your hopes and dreams on" in the way that this was handled. Vanellope is being ostracized and picked on by the other racers and yet still seeks their attention, and this is what she has in common with Ralph. In Ralph's case, these people are actually capable of being nice, but he never talks to them so they haven't got any idea what kind of person he is beyond the actual gameplay-- so they assume he's mean and act accordingly (the "badguy" racism mentioned earlier). But Vanellope actually endures a lot of cruel teasing for a very real problem that she has by these kids in one extended scene. I definitely think it's nice that Vanellope was able to turn that disadvantage into a strength in the context of the show-- very similarly to Toph in Avatar: the Last Airbender-- but I also think it's important to keep in mind that sometimes the differences we have that are beyond our control really don't go away, and it's still not okay to make fun of people for those differences. The whole thing handled an issue that's pretty serious more tongue in cheek than I think it should have. Considering that the teasing Vanellope receives is really more on par with the kind of teasing a child with a mental handicap might receive, I found it pretty uncomfortable for her to just shrug it off and be all pals with the kids. Particularly, there just wasn't enough evidence of Taffyta shown as capable of being anything but petty and cruel, which reinforces another negative stereotype (about the 'mean, pretty girl') while also leaving me to wonder why anyone would want to be her friend.
I'm not saying I want everybody to abandon her at the end-- that's bad too-- but I would have liked to see more character depth there to at least give me a good reason for the 'why?'
But that's basically the meat and potatoes of what I thought they could really have done better in the movie with a relatively small amount of effort. Fixing the body language in the extremely lukewarm 'joke' romance would have done wonders for improving the hilarity and the chemistry of that relationship. As it was, Felix acting all George McFly was funny, but inappropriate since Lady Marine specifically rejected his advances. He then failed to respect her request, and then she maaagically fell in loooove with him! Pass. This is why I dislike romance as a genre; these sorts of "romances" are anything but romantic.