#also usually wolves are depicted as gray/white so points for that

[dellinah]

A random (and spoiler free) review of The Bad Guys (2022)

(By a South American that got to see it early)

Living in this hellhole apparently has a few positive sides to it, and one of them is that we get furry movies sooner (as the same happened with Zootopia, for some reason)

And since The bad guys came out today around here, of course I dropped everything to go check it out. Bc who cares about the things I need to do when there's a new furry movie in town. Heck yeah

So...

It's pretty fun, actually. I enjoyed it a lot. More than I thought I would. 7/10.

Keep in mind I might be biased (as is everyone) bc not only it's a furry movie (and I am a shameless furry) but I am also a major Dreamworks fan. Dreamworks movies shaped my childhood even more so than Disney, and I have the fondest memories with a lot of them. So a part of me already liked the movie before watching it, bc it'd been a while since we got a Dreamworks original, and the last time I was actually excited over a release from them was How to train your dragon 3 a few years ago. So yeah, just knowing that this was a Dreamworks original that seemed good and had potential got me hyped!

The thing about Dreamworks that makes them great to me is how they will grab seemingly silly concepts and do them with heart. Kung Fu Panda (esp 1 and 2) and HTTYD (1-3) are comedy movies with crazy premises that end up having incredible characters and story arcs in the end. Same with Shrek. And I love that. I love how a movie about a panda played by Jack Black can be so mature, I love how a boy and a dragon can have such a beautiful relationship, how an ugly ogre can end up being a great tale of true love, how puss in boots suddenly has a mom he doesnt want to let down. That's what they do best, and I love them for it

So where does The Bad Guys fall in that concept and how does it hold up against Dreamworks' greatests?

Well, let me start by what they did right:

THEY DIDN'T TELL EVERYTHING IN THE TRAILERS!!

I think everyone who has seen the trailers has an idea of what the plot is going to be like. But unlike most of the trailers for movies today, TBG's trailers actually don't show all of the story and a great part of it was kept a surprise. So whatever the story you thought of is, let me tell you: there's a bit more to it and it's not played as straight forward as I thought it would. There's a few twists that I didn't see coming and I didn't always know where it was going. It's still somewhat predictable, but you'll be surprised more often than not. That was SUCH a relief

Another thing:

They get the obvious twists out of the way fast

The writers knew which parts of the story would be the most predictable and instead of pretending not to know and treat their audience like dumbasses, it was pretty self aware of its sillyness. So anything too predictable happened in the beginning, or as soon as possible, instead or them waiting till the third act for the obvious twist like nobody had seen it coming. I applaud them for that, honestly. I dont think a story being a bit predictable is bad, but acting like it's a super secret major twist instead is pretty annoying and condescending. So congradz on that

Its fast pace and the animation

Not much to say, it's really good. The animation is cartoony, they move in a very fun way, not always realistic but never being uncanny either. I LOVE the animation, the fur texture, the EXPRESSIONS. The movie is so expressive. Yet they know the scenes that need a slower, quieter tone. Which is good, because...

The movie actually has a few heartfelt scenes that I really liked

Now, this is not HTTYD or Kung Fu Panda levels of heartfelt. But there are a few scenes and concepts that work really well and are really nicely done. Sometimes it's just a character sitting down in silence, and I like that. I like that they don't try to be overdramatic and just let quiet moments be quiet

And... *sigh*. My friends are gonna call me out for this, but I SWEAR I dont mean it only in a furry way. But:

The wolf is easily the best part of the movie, and that is both good and bad (like him)

Mr. Wolf is a fun character. He's layered and he has internal conflicts, and has a personality that works with the other characters. He is the main character of the movie, and you can tell people put a lot of love and care into him and building him up throughout the movie. Honestly, I love him a lot

Unfortunately, this gets me to what I didn't like about the movie

Many of the main characters don't really feel like they got much of a personality other than being Mr Wolf's friends. Especially where conflict was involved, I get the feeling that a lot of what they did was more "we're doing this bc the plot demands we do it" instead of "we're doing this bc we have reflected on it and this is how we feel"

Following that pattern, a few of the themes the movie brings up are a bit surface level as well. While having a solid storyline and pacing, it feels like it never goes deep into the smaller conflicts and concepts it brings up. It's like a more surface level Zootopia. I think it does lack little touches in dialog/world building that would give it that special Dreamworks touch. So while still being a silly premise with a bit of a deeper meaning like Kung Fu Panda, I think it fails to analyze the complexity of some of the things it brings up so that it could explore it fully. Such as the whole "I'm a big bad wolf, and that's all everyone will ever see me as" from the trailer. I wish it was a bit more explored, but for what it was, it still got into it well enough. It's a bit difficult to explain without spoiling it all, but yeah. I feel like it could have gone deeper than it did, but it's not flat either. Somewhere in between

Overall, it's a very fun movie with a solid storyline and small conflicts that I think have a great lesson behind them. While I wish it did a bit more than what it did and it didn't explore the premise as well as other Dreamwork movies did, it's still heartfelt. I enjoyed it a ton, and I will watch it again for sure. Not sure how useful this was, but I have thoughts and will share them

One last thing, THE MOVIE ADDS LITTLE ANIMAL TOUCHES TO THE CHARACTERS AND I LOVE THAT. Growling, tail wagging, ear scratching, molting, etc. Any anthro media that does that has points with me, bc I love it. So yes, shameless bias, shameless furry, I love wolf tails and teeth.

[caveartfair]

Why Are There No Great Female Werewolves?

Werewolf in the Wildflowers, 2/10, 2017. Julia Oldham Marta Hewett Gallery

It begins as a gooey lesion on his forehead. He reaches into the wound under his ripped skin, grimaces in agony, and pulls a bullet from his skull. The flesh begins to pulsate, throb, bubble, and turn a sickly gray; his eyes roll up in exquisite pain. Claws emerge from his fingertips, and a slimy mouth and nose thrust slowly, so slowly outward from the rest of his face, as sharp canine teeth burst through his gums.

Eddie Quist has transformed into a werewolf.

This scene is from Joe Dante’s 1981 film The Howling, and is as delightful as it is disgusting; it’s one of the many brilliant film sequences depicting the lycanthropic transformation. Werewolves reveal the inner beast lurking in all men, and have been a beloved subject in folklore and entertainment for centuries.

In 2013, Eric Diaz, writing on Nerdist.com, ranked filmic werewolf transformation scenes—the worst being the goofy, fluffy, Chewbacca-ish morph of Oz in the 1990s TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the best being David Kessler’s shift, aided by robots and sophisticated prosthetics, in the 1981 film An American Werewolf in London. There’s one thing that is the same in every one of the ten scenes: The werewolf in question is a man.

Where are all the great female werewolves? Other than the occasional few over the years, there is a marked dearth of them represented in literature and film. When envisioning famous male werewolves, there’s certainly no lack. We can point to young Bertrand Caillet from the famous 1933 horror novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore; Scott Howard from the 1985 movie Teen Wolf; Remus Lupin of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter-verse; Wilfred Glendon of the 1935 film Werewolf of London; Lawrence “Larry” Talbot of the 1941 film The Wolf Man; and Jacob Black, the hunky teen werewolf from Stephenie Meyer’s 2005–08 Twilight books (and subsequent films).

There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called “werewolves” tortured and burned at the stake were female.

Still, many of the tales that have trickled down from this period of history to the present day focus on celebrated male werewolves who ravaged villages, the most famous of whom may be the German farmer Peter Stumpp (sometimes written as Stubbe or Stumpf). That gentleman made a dastardly deal with Satan himself in order to become a werewolf, murdering and consuming the flesh of good Christian villagers, even his own kin. He was tortured ruthlessly, and his mistress and daughter were flayed alive and killed alongside him.

We remember Stumpp, yet so many of his female peers are long forgotten. In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it.

Woodcut depicting the execution of Peter Stumpf in Cologne in 1589. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

There’s also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they’re sterile, an aberration, or—most galling of all—they don’t even exist.

Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine—strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism—we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity.

To be fair, there are a few examples of literary female werewolves from the past, such as White Fell, the femme fatale from Victorian author Clemence Housman’s 1896 novel The Were-Wolf. But the majority of werewolf women in popular culture are much more recent inventions. The Twilight Saga’s Leah Clearwater plays a somewhat interesting (but ultimately very minor) role in Meyer’s books. It is revealed that she is probably sterile, and an anomaly among the pack members, who are all male. Debbie Pelt appears in several seasons of HBO’s vampire drama True Blood, which ran from 2008 to 2014, as a pathologically jealous female werewolf and an antagonist of the series. She’s usually seen in her human form, and occasionally as a majestic white wolf, but never as anything in between those two forms.

Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld, an urban fantasy novel series of thirteen books written from 2001 to 2012, stars female werewolf Elena Michaels, a complex and sympathetic character straddling human and werewolf worlds (she’s also the sole female werewolf who has abnormal control over her transformations). Grace Brisbane is the smart and extremely likable main character of the young adult series The Wolves of Mercy Falls, written between 2009 and 2011 by Maggie Stiefvater, and she becomes a werewolf at the end of the first book. Like both Debbie and Leah, Grace is either a teenage girl or a full wolf, and never an amalgam of the two.

Julia Oldham, Werewolf and Her Sister, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Julia Oldham, Werewolf Driving her 1969 Datsun Roadster, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

The female werewolf is indeed becoming more popular, but there are still crucial differences and prejudices at work. A quick internet image will find popular female lycanthropes in their human forms much more often than their wolf or part-wolf forms, whereas the same search for male werewolves will result in many images in all stages of their transformation, however horrific. Many of Armstrong’s Otherworld covers depict beautiful, thin women in erotic positions, and rarely show wolves. This is significant, because it highlights society’s expectation that women remain hairless and normatively beautiful—even when they are werewolves.

Lycanthropy has clearly been stolen from women over the years, and yet, while the condition is indeed connected to many supposedly “masculine” traits, the state of werewolfism is also very similar to menstruation. According to most werewolf narratives, the wolf cycle follows the lunar month, and is characterized by behavioral and physical changes caused by chemical fluctuations, much like the menstrual cycle.

Think of it this way: During menstruation, tissue is produced and then expelled from the walls of the uterus to an abject space, the vagina, which is neither entirely outside nor inside the body. Similarly, a werewolf’s transformation involves production and expenditure of tissue, and a confusion of inside and outside, as the surface skin of the human-phase werewolf ruptures, turns inside out, and grows hair.

This uncanny similarity is not typically broached in stories about male werewolves, however. One reason might be to prevent men from having to consider their own menstrual cycles and radical, fleshy femininity as they imagine themselves as werewolves.

Julia Oldham, Transformation 1, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Ginger Snaps, a 2000 Canadian film directed by John Fawcett, does intertwine lycanthropy, menstruation, and sexually transmitted disease through its main character, Ginger, who is attacked by a werewolf when she gets her first period. As she begins her transformation, she menstruates heavily, grows hair from her bite, and becomes sexually aggressive. She passes lycanthropy to others through unprotected sex, and begins to murder humans and dogs in her neighborhood.

The character Ginger is pretty revolutionary, if also campy and grotesque, but she’s also completely unsympathetic; through her werewolfism, her sexuality becomes aggressive and violent, and she loses any human qualities she once had. Crucially, throughout much of the film, Ginger remains girlish and sexually alluring; the viewer doesn’t see Ginger-as-Werewolf until the final moments of the film, right before she is killed by her younger sister. Yet again, a woman is denied her physical wolfness.

A particularly poignant female werewolf character can be found in issue 40 of Alan Moore’s 1985 comic series Swamp Thing. Phoebe, a woman struggling with a sexist husband named Roy and a raging case of PMS, is seen buying feminine pads in a grocery store. She returns home to a small gathering of friends, and after listening to one too many of Roy’s obnoxious and offensive comments, she painfully and juicily transforms from a beautiful woman into a huge, powerful werewolf. Her wolf form rips out of her body through her orifices, leaving a human skin behind, and she is poised to kill Roy.

She spares him but goes on a wild rampage, destroying an adult bookstore and a supermarket. Touching minds with Swamp Thing, she declares, “I am woman. I seek release from this stifling place that has been built for me,” and in the ultimate act of frustration and rage, impales herself on a knife display that cheerily advertises, “Here’s good news for housewives!” Dying, Phoebe again becomes a human woman and asks Swamp Thing to bring her body outdoors, where she can expire peacefully.

Illustration by Laurence Housman from Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf, 1896. Photo via Project Gutenberg.

Illustration by Laurence Housman from Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf, 1896. Photo via Project Gutenberg.

If Ginger and Phoebe are any indication, female werewolves who show their true werewolfishness can expect little more than a violent, tragic end.

However, lycanthropic ladies may yet have their heyday. A 2015 entry on the blog Nerdy Werewolf celebrates 22 recent “Lady Werewolves from Film & TV,” which is very promising. There are various such lists, evidence that there is at least interest in the female werewolf. Again, though, the images of the characters that are often mentioned are largely of beautiful women in human form. Some of the lists bear titles like “Top 20 Sexiest Female Werewolves of All Time,” and obviously focus on the hot human bodies of werewolf women.

We are used to seeing both women fall in love with hairy, bestial men, from the monstrous prince of Beauty and the Beast to Tom Selleck. And it works for same-sex couples, too: In T.J. Klune’s sweet, punchy coming-of-age werewolf novel Wolfsong (2016), feisty wolfishness is a joyous component of the blossoming romance between two teen boys, Ox and Joe.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a future when men will be comfortable swooning over the sexiness of huge, hairy, monstrous women. It is worth holding out hope, however, that in our ongoing werewolf renaissance, it’s certain that many more films, books, and TV shows starring female werewolves are being written and produced. That means more possibilities for women to reveal their inner and outer wolves—hair, teeth, and all—with pride.

from Artsy News