Pixar

[Builtgypsy]

Y'know, they're a sneaky bunch over there at PIXAR. I watched UP the other day, and I've finally caught on to their game. PIXAR movies are not happy movies for audiences of all ages to enjoy. They are the crippling study in the human condition of people who have been denied everything in life, and how they learn to cope with it.

Toy Story 1 & 2? Abandonment, depression, the futility of life without creating your own happiness.

Finding Nemo? A father loses his wife and all his children except one, and then loses that child as well.

The Incredibles? Domestic dispute, marriage problems, kids caught in the middle, depression, despair, hitting rock bottom, murder, torture, revenge. I mean the guy thinks his entire family is murdered, then the children are told they're going to try and be murdered, I mean damn.

UP, Monster's Inc. Ratatouille, Wall-E, they're all the same. There's humor, but the worlds aren't internally funny. These are some damn depressing movies, and the only saving grace is the redemption the characters are given in the end.

[binx_19]

yep they are some F-ed up movies.

[UberGoober]

So you're saying Pixar is going to make a movie about my life story?

[Builtgypsy]

Originally Posted by UberGoober

So you're saying Pixar is going to make a movie about my life story?

They'll turn you into a kangaroo, because they haven't touched Australia yet.

[binx_19]

a kangaroo that rapes wallabies.

[UberGoober]

Originally Posted by binx_19

a kangaroo that rapes wallabies.

Tell me, how is that transcendent? Will I be reformed by the end?

[PhilB]

Originally Posted by Builtgypsy

Y'know, they're a sneaky bunch over there at PIXAR. I watched UP the other day, and I've finally caught on to their game. PIXAR movies are not happy movies for audiences of all ages to enjoy. They are the crippling study in the human condition of people who have been denied everything in life, and how they learn to cope with it.

Toy Story 1 & 2? Abandonment, depression, the futility of life without creating your own happiness.

Finding Nemo? A father loses his wife and all his children except one, and then loses that child as well.

The Incredibles? Domestic dispute, marriage problems, kids caught in the middle, depression, despair, hitting rock bottom, murder, torture, revenge. I mean the guy thinks his entire family is murdered, then the children are told they're going to try and be murdered, I mean damn.

UP, Monster's Inc. Ratatouille, Wall-E, they're all the same. There's humor, but the worlds aren't internally funny. These are some damn depressing movies, and the only saving grace is the redemption the characters are given in the end.

Good children's stories have always been like that. Compared to the classic fairy tales (the real versions), those are nothing. Heck, compared to Harry Potter they're all pretty tame. Kids don't need (or want) boring stories about fuzzy bunnies. Small children love repetition; every parent has to put up with the toddler who wants to watch the same movie over and over, every day. My niece's favorite movies -- the ones she wanted every day between the ages of 2 and 3 -- were Terminator II, and Predator. Let 'em have Toy Story.

PhilB

[binx_19]

Originally Posted by UberGoober

Tell me, how is that transcendent? Will I be reformed by the end?

i gave an idea, now someone else has to go with it

[Builtgypsy]

Originally Posted by PhilB

Good children's stories have always been like that. Compared to the classic fairy tales (the real versions), those are nothing. Heck, compared to Harry Potter they're all pretty tame. Kids don't need (or want) boring stories about fuzzy bunnies. Small children love repetition; every parent has to put up with the toddler who wants to watch the same movie over and over, every day. My niece's favorite movies -- the ones she wanted every day between the ages of 2 and 3 -- were Terminator II, and Predator. Let 'em have Toy Story.

PhilB

The Harry Potter books are absolute shit. To paraphrase another British author, there's no story, just a bunch of plot holes strung together. But never mind that. Fairy tales have always been frightening ordeals, dealing with everything from rape (Sleeping Beauty) to...well, it works out to pointless suffering for the sake of a damn stupid moral, but torture in the original The Little Mermaid. I've always hated fairy tales; lessons from adults to children in how they better fit in and do as they're told or else evil, horrible things will happen, you better beware people who are different than you, so you better become as one-dimensional a person as these characters are.

The guy who heads PIXAR is friends with Hayao Miyazaki, the head of Studio Ghibli in Japan. Studio Ghibli films are released here in America via Disney. It's a very interesting juxtaposition, to see a movie from each studio back to back. PIXAR films are funny, but dark. Studio Ghibli films can be dark, but are ultimately films expressing wonder. In my opinion, Studio Ghibli does young adult movies better, despite the typical faults of anime movies. In these films, the children typically act mature and level-headed and are treated as more than children; in UP, Toy Story, Incredibles, you get children acting like bratty children and being treated as such.

I've mentioned Terry Pratchett before, and it's a perfect time to bring him up again (read him! read him, damn you people!). He has two trilogies of Young Adult genre novels. One is out of print, and the other is better than Harry Potter in every conceivable way. Someone summed up the differences better than me:

[PhilB]

The Potter books were fun. My wife and I read them aloud to each other. I wouldn't say they were great literature, but they did do a pretty good job of capturing the feel of teenagers in large events -- who will whine and do dumb things and hope the adults can fix it and all of that. And they weren't insipid. I did have some issues with the fact that Rowling didn't work out her theory of magic well, and this created some poor plot turns -- the magic was subordinate to the plotline, and thus functioned at any given moment however it needed to, to move the story along, without enough consistency. But other than that, I enjoyed them. I certainly think it's an exaggeration to say they were "absolute shit". They were at least better than Dan Brown, for instance.

PhilB