Here’s a list of Disney Live Action Remakes that I enjoyed:
Cinderella (2015)
The Jungle Book (2016)
Pete’s Dragon (2014)
Here’s a list of Disney Live Action Remakes that I did not enjoy:
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
The Lion King (2019)
Now, I could go into each and explain the things that I did and did not like about each movie (and certainly, there were things I did and did not like in each one), but given the amount and the general structure of these remakes, plus general quandary that are the Alice and Maleficent live action films, there is a question that mostmany some people ask which is:
Today marks the 90th anniversary of the premier of “Steamboat Willie”, which Disney marks as the birthday of one Mickey Mouse. Mickey is a bit hard to write about, because what do you say? Walt was very good at writing a story, and his story about Mickey is more or less the story of the company itself. With Mickey as the company mascot, the two are so entwined that to tell the history of one precludes the other. Mickey is such an iconic symbol he is recognized across the world, as recognizable as the Buddha, Jesus, and the Coca-Cola logo.
But he’s also a character.
He’s been in shorts, in films, on TV, on radio, in comics– if Disney could make it, Mickey was on it. Lunch boxes. Toothbrushes. Gas masks. There is a definitive character to him, a distinctive “Mickeyness” that he has no matter where he is.
“…the effect of that huge surface environment, on you, personally, is vast. The effect of the program is incidental.” – Marshall McLuhan
“The medium is the message” is one of those concepts that sounds too simple considering how big and important it is– kind of like how E = mc2 doesn’t look to be the groundbreaking revolution of 20th century physics that it is. “The medium is the message” is about how the mediums and technologies change our lives in a more immediate and concrete sense than any one idea, even looking across history. Which had more impact, Martin Luther’s 95 theses or Gutenberg’s printing press? Which was more important, the Ford Model T or the assembly line? Which shaped the 20th century more, Einstein’s theory of relativity or the atom bomb? McLuhan focused on the transition of popular media from print (books, magazines, etc.) to electronic (radio and television). His point was that the invention of the television and its use as a commercial home appliance had a more direct and immediate impact on our culture than any individual program televised. It’s not that the programs don’t matter, it’s that the technologies through which those ideas travel are often overlooked in favor of those ideas.
So why am I talking about a theme park?
James Cameron’s Avatar was… not a good movie. I mean, yes, it’s gorgeous and the technology used to create the film is fascinating, but as a movie? Can you name five characters from Avatar? Or describe the plot in a sentence without using the words “Pocahontas” or “FernGully”? Avatar is actually one of the most clear examples of “the medium is the message”, in that the plot and ideas of Avatar matter far less to the world writ large than the impact of the technologies that were used and developed in its filming. Avatar changed the way we make movies far more than it did any particular aspect of storytelling. So when Disney adapted the world to a theme park, it actually made more sense than it seemed. Avatar was always more about immersing the viewer in its environment than its story, which makes it perfect for the medium of theme parks.
SPOILER WARNING: I will do my best to avoid major spoilers, but as with any review, it’s a bit buyer beware. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t get angry with me if you think I’ve spoiled something.
So, I definitely wanted to talk about Infinity War this weekend, and I was wondering what I might talk about outside of a straight review or a breakdown of my reaction to it, but I was given a great assist from The New Yorker, of all places.
In "Avengers: Infinity War," characters aren’t introduced; they just show up, and their behavior is entirely defined by the template set for them in other movies. https://t.co/meiJo0iQ4g
And yes, technically he’s right, but reading through the article it’s clear that all of these things that he’s saying that are technically true (none of the characters have proper introductions, it feels like the season finale of a TV show, the ending compels the viewer to put on the next part) are, I think, supposed to be interpreted as negative. But these criticisms are rather dismissive to all the people, films, and characters that allowed this movie to be made, like Homer, The Ten Commandments, and Buck Rodgers.
Those things do fit together in this context, of course.
F for Fake and Ratatouille are kind of the same movie.
I mean, no, they’re not exactly the same. But they’re both mostly about someone taking credit for another person’s art, with strong critiques of the commercial business of art and a subplot deconstructing the relationship that art critics and other art experts have with artists and their creations. They’re even both directed by highly respected auteurs trying to salvage a project that the original director couldn’t complete. It’s just that one of those auteurs is Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) and the other is Orson Welles (Citizen freaking Kane). The conclusions that both of the films come to are disparate, but contradictory.
First, a bit of plot summary. Ratatouille is a film about a rat that manages to become the head chef at a Parisian restaurant that somehow used to have 5 stars despite the Michelin rating system only going up to three stars. He achieves this by pulling the hair of his hapless human companion, which controls the human like a marionette. It’s my favorite PIXAR film of all time. F for Fake is an Orson Welles mostly-non-fiction film that is about two of the most notorious fakers of the 20th century. The first is Elmyr de Horay, an art forger that specialized in the post-impressionists, particularly Picasso and Modigliani. The second, and more famous of the two, is Elmyr’s biographer Clifford Irving, who also wrote a best-selling, but fake, autobiography of an even more famous man– a business tycoon by the name of Howard Hughes.
The things to unpack in these films are mostly the questions that they raise about the nature of art and art criticism. Kyle Kallgren’s review of F for Fake begins with the question “Is there such a thing as fake art?” I would posit that both films say the answer is “no”, but for different reasons.
From character archetypes last week to character analysis this week. One of the favorite pastimes of Harry Potter fans (other than complaining about Harry Potter stuff) is sorting characters who are not in Harry Potter into the four Hogwarts houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. There are a few schools of thought as to how to go about this. The simplest is the way that it appears to happen in the books — heroes in Gryffindor, villains in Slytherin, smart people in Ravenclaw, everyone else in Hufflepuff. This, to many, is quite reductive and does not fully encapsulate the complexities of what the houses have come to represent. However, this is also how the houses are seen within the general public due to the nature of how the books were written. Sorting characters is as much literary analysis and, specifically, character analysis, as much as it is kinda fun.
Warning: I’m probably going to directly quote both history of japan and history of the entire world, i guess which will probably involve stronger language than is usually on this blog.
Bill Wurtz’s history of japan was released on February 2, 2016 and had 1.7 million views in two days. It is a nine minute video detailing about 42,000 years of history with a focus on the Japanese archipelago and it’s…
odd.
His sophomore attempt was even more ambitious– history of the entire world, i guess is almost 20 minutes long and covers everything from the Big Bang to now. It hit 3.2 million views in 24 hours. Both documentaries are representative of Wurtz’s artistic style. His body of work in context with itself presents a unified form, even with wildly varying content.
And it is the relationship between form and content that I want to talk about.
“Superman is dead. Superman remains dead.
And we have killed him.” —Kyle Kallgren
There’s a reason that Wonder Woman is the best film out of the whole of the DCEU. Wonder Woman wasn’t afraid to admit that their main character was a god.
The heroes of the DC Comics company have always been more god-like than their Marvel counterparts. From the Teen Titans, to the New Gods, to the Amazons, gods and god-like imagery have permeated the universe. Even Batman, the lone Übermensch of DC’s trinity, is still a keystone to the entire DC universe, which is pretty god-like, in my opinion.
But we’re not here to talk about the princess or the bat. We’re here to talk about him.
Character motivation is possibly the most important aspect of narrative writing. Without character motivation, there’s no plot. And while narrative art without plot does exist (just ask Dziga Vertov or Godfrey Reggio) most books, films, tv shows, stage productions, and other things that we tend to associate with the art of language (as opposed to visual or musical art) has some kind of plot. And the most basic of these plots? Character wants something, has to overcome obstacles to get it, and either succeeds or fails. Luke Skywalker wants an adventure, he leaves the planet, blows up a Death Star, and becomes a hero. Indiana Jones wants to find the Ark of the Covenant, he contacts an old girlfriend, flies to Egypt, and the Nazi’s faces melt. Prince Hamlet wants to avenge his father’s murder, he grapples with his mental illness, distances himself from his social circle, and then kills King Claudius, but dies in the process.
Character motivations can change over the course of a story, usually as a “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing. You also can have unmotivated characters that are notable in their lack of motivation. But most plot consists of the motivation of the protagonist coming directly into conflict with the motivation of the antagonist, or the motivation of society, or the motivation of the universe itself sometimes. Figuring out your protagonist’s motivation is entangled in the plot and conflict of the story.
I’m going to look at a few different stories with varying complexity in terms of motivations and how they work, because unlike my other writing advice, figuring out your own character’s motivation is individual to your character and story. You can list a million different stories that have a million different characters with a million different motivations. I’m looking at these stories, but there are plenty more examples to look at if you’re having trouble.
Sometimes, the Internet takes you to some interesting places. It was a Tumblr post that brought my attention to an amateur animated show on YouTube called No Evil. It’s a show about a group of anthropomorphic animal spirits that live just outside the rival villages of Hatfield and McCoy. The show is also steeped in American folklore, tradition, and mythology. It incorporates it into the characters and plot– almost everything can be traced back to these stories.
The closest comparisons that I can make to how this works is to the shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time, aired on NBC and ABC respectively. Grimm and Once Upon a Time rely on the audience knowing the fairy tales and Disney films that they’re based on so that the writers can get to the police procedural/MMO crossover story that they actually want to write. No Evil does something different– it doesn’t assume that you know the characters and stories, but it doesn’t (necessarily) spell it all out either. Instead, it introduces characters and story elements that support the main plot, and makes that the compelling force behind the show. The only exception to that I can think of is a retelling of the story of Mahtigwess and Lusifee which reveals some backstory for those characters.
The main difference is the source material, and actually using the main characters of the folktales as the main characters of the show. Perhaps because of this, No Evil seems to have a bit more focus than the other shows, especially once the plot starts. Structuring the show like that might also be a product of a general audience’s unfamiliarity with the stories.
10/11/2019
What Great Cover Songs and The Legend of Zelda Can Teach Us About the Disney Remakes
valeriemclean1919 12tone, Arin Hanson, Beauty and the Beast, Disney, Egoraptor, Michael Eisner, Movies, Power Rangers, Sequilitus, Star Wars, The Jungle Book, The Legend of Zelda, The Lion King, The Nerdwriter About Film, About Other Art, About Writing 0 Comments
Here’s a list of Disney Live Action Remakes that I enjoyed:
Here’s a list of Disney Live Action Remakes that I did not enjoy:
Now, I could go into each and explain the things that I did and did not like about each movie (and certainly, there were things I did and did not like in each one), but given the amount and the general structure of these remakes, plus general quandary that are the Alice and Maleficent live action films, there is a question that
mostmanysome people ask which is:“Why remake these movies at all?”
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