A review, mostly of previews
Jun. 19th, 2010 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilLast night we went to see Toy Story 3. We knew it was the one movie we needed to see in the theater, instead of waiting for the DVD, because Ryan has recently become a gigantic fan of the first two movies, begging to watch them ad nauseum, pointing out the characters whenever he sees pictures of them anywhere - "Bu Lila!" "Woodwe!" "Buleye!" And he was thrilled. The rest of us enjoyed it too. How rare for the third movie in a series to be of such high quality - not only does it explore the themes of the previous films without just retreading them, it goes beyond and deepens them. I'm not going to give a prolonged review because I wouldn't be able to help talking about spoilers, but I'll just say this. It occurred to me recently that the Toy Story universe functions very nicely as a metaphor for parenthood, with characters whose greatest happiness comes from watching children grow and be happy, regardless of whether they are appreciated or not. (I'm surprised I haven't seen many reviewers mention the parenthood thing, which, to me, seems self-evident. I mean, these filmmakers are obviously parents, right? All I've seen is nonsense about post-consumerist anthropomorphizing of objects. Sheesh). Anyway, Toy Story 3 goes along with that metaphor quite well, but it also reverses it, so that Andy also has a sort of parent relationship with his toys. (I read a review that claimed that Andy became irrelevant. It made me hopping mad. How could they interpret it that way? Good grief, I've got to stop reading reviews). Let's just say that I had tears pouring down my face by the movie's end. I was smiling too, though. Great stuff.
But what I wanted to write about, mostly, was the previews. As I mentioned before, I don't get to the theaters very often, so I don't see a lot of trailers. Only the ones that are so famous, I hear about them and watch them online. It was interesting to see what trailers they thought people would be interested in at a Pixar film. Mostly cartoons.
It seemed odd to me that there were two separate movies with supervillains cast as the protagonists - "Despicable Me" and "Megamind." I understand the idea of subverting tropes, but you know what? When it shows up in two movie trailers like this, one right after another, it's really become a trope on its own. Meh. "Megamind" looks like it might be good for a laugh or two, but I'd rather have a regular, non-subverted hero to root for. Anyway.
Speaking of subverting, the trailer for Tangled leaves me with lots of reservations. I love the Rapunzel story, always have, if only for its supreme weirdness (a rope of her own hair? Really?), so I'm leery of just how much they're messing with it. They're focusing more on the guy, turning him into...a thief. Ambiguous hero, again. Sheesh. Are they trying to avoid the whole Disney Princess story? Whatever. I do suppose it's wise to embrace the utter silliness of her hair rather than try to present it seriously. I still have hopes for it, though - if nothing else, I want Disney to keep trying out fairy tale movies. It's all about story. Animation is nice and all, but without a strong story, it falls flat. Why can't they figure this out from watching Pixar? Oh well.
There was a truly bizarre one about owls, some sort of fantasy adventure about Guardians or something. It looked very pretty, though I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell one furry owl from another, cutesy voices notwithstanding.
And then there was the inspirational sports story in the same vein as Miracle and The Rookie. This one's about Secretariat. Yawn. I probably wouldn't even remember the trailer if not for the incredibly annoying, oxymoronic tagline - "The impossible true story." No, you can't do that. Either it's impossible, or it's true. Not both. Did you mean "impossibly true"? Still stupid, but not quite as bad. Impossible true story. Yes, tell that to my stupid smart monkey, who's wearing an ugly pretty hat. Okay, I'm done now.
Incidentally, I've never been one to get more excited about a movie when it claims to be based on real life. Too often it turns into an excuse for the movie not being very interesting and/or coherent. A good story is a good story, regardless of whether it happened or not. And most of the good adaptations of real life events play pretty fast and loose with the actual happenings, because, you see, they have to make a story out of it. It doesn't come ready-made for filming just because it actually happened. Even documentaries have to be cleverly edited. I guess I'm defensive about this because people tend to give books/movies/whatever more validation the closer they perceive them to be to reality. On the far, derided end of the spectrum is speculative fiction, with the much touted realism on the other, favored end. Blah. All fiction is fantasy. It's not about whether it's real, it's about whether it contains truth. Different things. It's about the ability to think metaphorically.
Wow, sorry for the rant. To sum up, Toy Story 3 was fantastic, I wish people would think more metaphorically and stop assuming they're clever for following the trope of subverting tropes, and Impossible True Story is a silly tagline. The end.
But what I wanted to write about, mostly, was the previews. As I mentioned before, I don't get to the theaters very often, so I don't see a lot of trailers. Only the ones that are so famous, I hear about them and watch them online. It was interesting to see what trailers they thought people would be interested in at a Pixar film. Mostly cartoons.
It seemed odd to me that there were two separate movies with supervillains cast as the protagonists - "Despicable Me" and "Megamind." I understand the idea of subverting tropes, but you know what? When it shows up in two movie trailers like this, one right after another, it's really become a trope on its own. Meh. "Megamind" looks like it might be good for a laugh or two, but I'd rather have a regular, non-subverted hero to root for. Anyway.
Speaking of subverting, the trailer for Tangled leaves me with lots of reservations. I love the Rapunzel story, always have, if only for its supreme weirdness (a rope of her own hair? Really?), so I'm leery of just how much they're messing with it. They're focusing more on the guy, turning him into...a thief. Ambiguous hero, again. Sheesh. Are they trying to avoid the whole Disney Princess story? Whatever. I do suppose it's wise to embrace the utter silliness of her hair rather than try to present it seriously. I still have hopes for it, though - if nothing else, I want Disney to keep trying out fairy tale movies. It's all about story. Animation is nice and all, but without a strong story, it falls flat. Why can't they figure this out from watching Pixar? Oh well.
There was a truly bizarre one about owls, some sort of fantasy adventure about Guardians or something. It looked very pretty, though I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell one furry owl from another, cutesy voices notwithstanding.
And then there was the inspirational sports story in the same vein as Miracle and The Rookie. This one's about Secretariat. Yawn. I probably wouldn't even remember the trailer if not for the incredibly annoying, oxymoronic tagline - "The impossible true story." No, you can't do that. Either it's impossible, or it's true. Not both. Did you mean "impossibly true"? Still stupid, but not quite as bad. Impossible true story. Yes, tell that to my stupid smart monkey, who's wearing an ugly pretty hat. Okay, I'm done now.
Incidentally, I've never been one to get more excited about a movie when it claims to be based on real life. Too often it turns into an excuse for the movie not being very interesting and/or coherent. A good story is a good story, regardless of whether it happened or not. And most of the good adaptations of real life events play pretty fast and loose with the actual happenings, because, you see, they have to make a story out of it. It doesn't come ready-made for filming just because it actually happened. Even documentaries have to be cleverly edited. I guess I'm defensive about this because people tend to give books/movies/whatever more validation the closer they perceive them to be to reality. On the far, derided end of the spectrum is speculative fiction, with the much touted realism on the other, favored end. Blah. All fiction is fantasy. It's not about whether it's real, it's about whether it contains truth. Different things. It's about the ability to think metaphorically.
Wow, sorry for the rant. To sum up, Toy Story 3 was fantastic, I wish people would think more metaphorically and stop assuming they're clever for following the trope of subverting tropes, and Impossible True Story is a silly tagline. The end.
