#apparently they're trying to shoot for a disney+ release

[apocalypticavolition]

1,000 Greatest Films: Le voyage dans la lune

Every January, They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? puts out a list of the 1,000 greatest films of all time as voted upon by film critics everywhere, or at least lots of places someone in the Anglosphere has access to. 1,000 is a lot of films, but what if someone watched all of a year's list? And what if instead of doing it in ascending or descending order (that is, from 1 to 1,000 or the other way around), they did it chronologically? There's a 0.0001% chance we'll find out and that chance grows with every post I make, so here's post #1!

Le voyage dans la lune, or "A Trip to the Moon" (did the translators not know that the English word for "voyage" is, y'know, "voyage"?), is the earliest movie in the 2025 TSPDT list. Released back in 1902, it's a fanciful account of how humanity might reach the moon and what they might find there, directed by legendary French director George Méliès, whose name I will be copy-pasting because as an English speaker, accent marks scare me.

Méliès, born in the 1860s, of course predates film by some years and came to it through his love of stage magic. Having purchased the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, a rather dated site, Méliès was constantly trying to innovate in his field to draw new crowds. At the end of 1895, he was able to attend a private demonstration of a cinematograph and clearly fell in love. Unable to purchase the device exhibited, he performed the most desperate act a Frenchman could and went to London to find the supplies he needed and then modified his equipment to create his own film camera.

Where others saw the camera as a way to create non-fiction accounts of the world, Méliès was the inventor of the popcorn flick. His many films were initially focused on the magic tricks he pioneered, using the camera to create fantastic illusions of size and distance. He also made films that greatly enhanced magic tricks, like a variant on the vanishing act (via a trap door), enhanced by using the camera's ability to cut and splice to add a skeleton to the scene until the vanishing lady reappeared. Then like any mad genius, he built a film studio and promptly dedicated himself to every genre of film he could think of. He was so successful that he pissed off known hack Thomas Edison, which of course in my book is all you need to be a suitable candidate for sainthood.

I'd like to say that Méliès invented the idea of making a film of a book, but even with the amount of research I have done into this subject (zero), I'm pretty sure that's not true. Nonetheless, in 1902 when he made La voyage dans la lune, turning books into film was a pretty new idea! Plus, Méliès took the time to turn multiple books into a single fifteen minute film, which is an idea that Disney's Marvel Studios won't be having until the 2040s, so he's way ahead of the curve.

The primary source of his inspiration is Jules Verne, the first Frenchman to write sci fi (probably; again, research is not what I'm interested in doing here), but possibly in honor of his journey across the Channel for film equipment, this film takes something from Englishman H. G. Wells as well (maybe the first English MAN to write sci fi but not the first English person). Both had written about the possibility of going to the moon, but hoo boy if this film is anything of an accurate adaptation neither one had the least clue how that was going to happen.

As the film is only fifteen minutes long, I'll summarize it scene-by-scene, which I certainly won't be doing going forward because fuck that. A bunch of old sage types with three pretty lady secretaries are having an astronomy meeting and one of them proposes going to the moon. All these characters apparently have names and crap but none of that was in the movie so I'm not going to go into that, especially since their names are very dumb. I want to say they're Barbershop, Nostalgia, Frisbee, Alpha, Microscope, and Paraphernalia?

So Barbershop (played by Méliès himself) takes over the chalkboard and says, "What if we built a cannon that's bigger than Greenland and shot a gigantic cannonball at the moon, wouldn't that be cool?" and everyone's like "Sure it's cool but is it in the budget?" and ultimately they decide that they can make it work as long as they don't spend any money on leggings for any women involved in the project so they take off their robes and wizard hats and put on badass longcoats and get to work...

...a phrase which here means have a bunch of other dudes build a gigantic capsule for them. Did I mention this film is in color? Méliès had it painted because color film obviously didn't exist in 1902 and let me tell you it's garish as hell. The capsule is red and everyone's in yellow or green depending on where they're standing and it keeps changing because of course handpainting frame-by-frame means no color is consistent from millisecond to millisecond.

So yeah we see there's this huge pit with smoke rising out of it and a thousand industrial buildings surrounding it and I think that's the launch site but when we get there everything's nicely horizontal and there's dozens of sexy babes who wait patiently for our "heroes" to load into the giant bullet and then they push it into the cannon. Everything is framed very much like it's still onstage; the cannon firing is technically a different scene that's clearly meant to be the same place just rotated 90 degrees and it would never work in theater but it does work for this medium. So they're fired out of a cannon and we see that the moon has a face and they crash into one of its eyes. If you've forgotten what that looks like...

Wait, this is from something that came out a hundred years later, but close enough. This one little bit is iconic and everyone rips it off, and honestly they're right to do so. I know that the man in the moon is a metaphor and I still find the image of us shooting his eye out to be hella iconic.

Our "heroes" get out of their bullet and are tired from the journey so they make camp, which is not to imply they set up tents because they don't. This might have made sense because of course the moon has no air and thus no weather, but they piss off some Greek Gods or something and get woken up by snow and have to hide in a mushroom cave, a position made somewhat untenable by the fact that their gear turns into more mushrooms.

And then an alien attacks! And you know, yeah it's a dude in a suit and it's all very silly. It's even more silly when it turns out that the smallest bit of blunt force causes the alien to explode in a puff of smoke. But I actually dig this bit! Hollywood is filled with silly costumes for dudes to wear and pretend their aliens and frankly they are all pale imitations of whatever the hell this Selenite was up to. He was alien despite having clearly human anatomy and I was digging his wild animal ways. Apparently he was played by an acrobat, so my advice to anyone wanting sci fi aliens is to get acrobats. Very sad he was smacked out of existence, frankly I was rooting for the other aliens that captured Barbershop and his buddies.

In the most realistic sequence of the movie, our white Frenchmen find themselves in the throne room of the non-white alien people and promptly enact a genocide against them, then flee. They then return to the capsule, and just as you're about to ask "Wait how can they get back, there's no giant cannon on the moon", it falls from a cliff into the Earth's ocean, so that's a giant cop-out. Well okay, I guess predicting an ocean return is pretty neat but still. The film ends in tragedy, with the French astronomers given a parade to celebrate their crimes while a single solitary alien is kept as a slave for the rest of his life.

No, seriously! This film is making fun of imperialism and I'm not just reinterpreting it with a cynical 21st century eye. I'm as surprised as you are. Barbershop and co. are consistently portrayed as vainglorious idiots who have no appreciation for the wonders of the world around them. Méliès worked for a leftist publication La Griffe before he got into film and the statue the "heroes" get at the end, with the alien turned into a bug-eyed monster, is right out of his earlier cartoons.

But does a message that resonates with me, a viewer entirely out of time, plus the invention and refinement of a variety of special effects techniques really make this movie worth of being one of the greats of all time? Well, Edison pirated it immediately, the goddamn bastard who had better be burning in hell, and so did half a dozen others. And the fact that it predates...

...sigh...

Birth of a Nation

...ugh...

...means that it's doing its own thing with its film techniques. Like I said, it feels like an attempt to directly turn theater into film, with just enough going on that it doesn't feel shackled to this. Sadly, Méliès himself didn't see this as his best film, and even more sadly the film he liked best is probably lost or at least only accessible in a storage closet in some BBC outpost in sub-Saharan Africa, but luckily for the picky watchers like me that film was a "serious historical drama" so that might be for the best.

After all, La voyage dans la lune is a spectacle. It's not meant to be an edifying experience or a serious exploration of the human condition, you're meant to appreciate the effects! And sure, the effects of 1902 are childlike gibberish compared to the magic of 2025 but dammit, if you aren't a spoiled brat you can appreciate what the magic was. Yeah, half the scenes have painted backdrops, but they try so hard to use props to make it all flow together so you don't notice (you do, but if you were a hundred years younger maybe you wouldn't). And bits like the astronomers standing atop the "buildings" as they get ready for the launch are fun!

In the early 1900s, film was hella new. Barely a decade before, an audience had been convinced that they were about to be killed by a movie about a train! Méliès produced a movie that is child-like, but it makes sense because no one knew how to make films yet. La voyage dans la lune is eclipsed (I'm not sorry) by many films that come after it, but so few of them would have been able to work at all if Méliès hadn't put in the work beforehand. So, in the grand scheme of things, I agree with the critics: this is absolutely one of the greats. It might even deserve a ranking higher than 458, which is where it ended up this year.

So, that's movie 1/1000. 999 to go, and I'll be honest up front and say that there's actually at least 1,000 to go even now because I will be damned if I skip movie 2 in a particular trilogy where movies 1 and 3 are on the list. If any other closely knit series like... well I won't tell you, but maybe you can guess... have intermediate films cut out, I'll put them in too, just to keep up.

But that's some ways off. Next time, we jump from 1902 to the next decade. Specifically, 1915. At least I'm getting it over with quickly! My next post in this series will be for Kavid Kark Kriffith's disgusting but tragically influential film Birth of a Nation.

Ugh.

[bearpillowmonster]

I know you see Moana 2, this year no less, but really it's not all that exciting. One of the reasons Moana was so good in the first place is because it was from Jon Musker and Ron Clements, who literally made the Disney Renaissance and Moana was their last film. Plus we had Lin Manuel Miranda basically at the top of his game because this made the most name for him, only after did he get all these other hit roles to play in the music department or even acting and well, none have hit as hard, so he's apparently not coming back.

I'm not discrediting whoever takes these people's place, I'm sure they do great work, which the director was already announced and he also did Raya which...brings me to Disney's most recent track record. They just haven't been doing so hot with good movies, I think maybe Encanto actually made a splash and everything else has been received mostly poorly. So who's to say how Moana 2 will be any different.

They also announced a series of other projects that were in the works and their release dates with Inside Out 2 and rough years for other sequels and a whole frickin Disney universe in Fortnite, you think this is a joke?

But you have to realize why they're doing this, why today just all of the sudden, I mean it's just a bit odd that- OH MY GOODNESS

They're baiting you. They're trying to cover up as much as they can saying "Look, look what we have in store this year, forget all about a few hours ago and what's to come later on." It's all so obvious, it's all so planted, even talking about it makes me cringe because it obviously worked to a degree. Don't let Disney trick you, talk about how they could very well lose this battle, give them a fight.

(It was also Disney's Quarter 1 Earnings Call but it's all so coincidentally placed, tell me it doesn't have SOMETHING to do with it. They had to have known it was coming and scheduled around it or even hastily posted the stuff that should stay under wraps)

Don't give in to the shill, resist their corporate branding. I mean how blantant can it be when they flex their companies all over Fortnite, there's literally an island with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Fox, ESPN, their flipping cruise line and Disney+, that's horrifying. How corporate can you get? Even from just a design standpoint and this is coming from a Kingdom Hearts ride-or-die, they actually take care of their worlds and properties that they choose and then incorporate it into a story without trying to straight up market to you, it's that simple, KH fans know that Disney is just the side-piece to an already delicious meal. Fortnite won't be that. It will never be that. I don't care if you can access Disney+ inside a video game to watch with your friends (doesn't that go against what you cracked down on?) I don't care what maps or characters you have and it really goes to show that they don't give a flying f- anymore.

Nintendo wanted Samus in Fortnite as well as Epic Games but Nintendo wanted it exclusive to Switch (which isn't really possible given the nature of the game) but it goes to show that they're picky about what they choose to do and they can be. Back in the day, Kingdom Hearts had to fight to even get Mickey to appear and instead we got a 2 second silhouette and it was awesome. Now they're tossing him out like candy, yeah his copyright basically expired but then we have the violence factor. You shoot people...with guns...in Fortnite. You straight up murder people then dance over their corpses which would've been the pig's behind back then, every news station would be covering it saying that it's trying to corrupt children (those darn video games at it once again) and so Mickey isn't in a fighting game. But here we are. They censored Epic Mickey so that it wouldn't look too scary. But here we are. They've given up, they'll loan out to whoever offers the money because they're weak. I know it's hard but-

Get the old regime out and bring in a new brighter future, one not so corrupted by money and corporate ideals.

[kinghorsehead]

YO THE TRON 3 SCRIPT IS DONE???

[gerryconway]

Burton's Revenge.

After a miserable time at the movies last night, I've come to the conclusion that Tim Burton's grim and joyless "Dumbo" is an auteur triumph.

SPOILERS AHEAD. (Though for this movie, "spoiler" is descriptive as well as a warning label.)

I don't recommend "Dumbo," but I admire it. Burton has accomplished something almost startling with this film: he's made a movie that is about as unsubtle a "f**k you" to both his corporate sponsors and the audience as one could get without actually superimposing "F*CK YOU!" on every frame. Contempt for Disney and for the audience that gobble up the company's live action remakes of classic animated films oozes from every shot, every scene, and in particular, from the entire second half of the movie. If some films are a love letter, this is hate mail. Tim Burton clearly hates how Disney is exploiting the animated films he cherished as a child, and "Dumbo" is his bitter revenge.

Why am I sure "Dumbo" is the angry vision of a furious auteur and not a well-meaning misfire? Because I respect Tim Burton as a filmmaker too much to believe this movie isn't exactly what he wanted it to be.

Burton has been making films for thirty-five years, and though the films he's made lately haven't been quite as quirky and strange as his earlier movies, they still display the control of a man who knows what he wants to achieve, and how to achieve it. You might not like where he goes, but he knows how to get you there. So, "Dumbo," with all of the issues I'll mention below, is exactly the movie Burton wanted it to be.

The question is, why? Why would Burton want to make a movie so driven by rage against audience and corporate sponsors both?

And why "Dumbo"?

If you've seen Burton's interview with Ray Harryhausen, available on some of the Blu-ray reissues of Harryhausen's films, you're reminded of how much of Burton's vision of filmmaking is informed by his still-childlike appreciation for simple wonder. As he sits with Harryhausen and plays with the saucer models from "Earth vs the Flying Saucers," Burton looks and sounds like a five year old kid gawping in awe at a shopping mall Santa Claus. He still loves the things he loved as a child, and he becomes a child again in their presence. His joy is sincere.

The man who felt joy and wonder in the presence of Ray Harryhausen could never have produced the grim, joyless, misery-soaked downer that is "Dumbo" unless he was trying to say something about the destruction of his own childhood sense of joy and wonder.

I think "Dumbo," in its not-so-thinly veiled critique of the cruelty of corporate exploitation of children and nostalgia, is Burton's attempt to tear down the structure he helped to build.

It was Burton's own remake of "Alice in Wonderland" that set the current live-action remake frenzy in motion, remember. Whatever you may think of that movie (I like it for its weird and subversive charm), there's no question it was enormously successful and clearly inspired the corporate minds at Disney to authorize a wholesale ransacking of Disney animated classics as fodder for subsequent live-action redos.

As a loving fan of those original classics, I think Burton must have been horrified by what he'd unleashed. He couldn't have felt otherwise. Again, look at his interview with Harryhausen. The kid in him cherishes joy and wonder. Whatever virtues the Disney live-action remakes have, with the exception, I'd say, of Burton's own "Alice," joy and wonder aren't an apparent high priority for the filmmakers involved. If anything, most of the remakes are drained of wonder by the translation from the imagined to the tangible.

Which brings us to "Dumbo."

The original "Dumbo" is a slight, one-hour fairy tale, centered entirely on a baby elephant with big ears who can fly, and cast almost completely with talking and singing animals. With the exception of a thoughtless racist element, it is a film of charming childlike innocence with a simple message about the strength of mother and child love and the power we gain when we let go of emotional crutches. ("I need a feather to fly.")

This is not a movie that demands a live-action remake, or even, in its story elements, supports the possibility of one.

And, in fact, Burton's "Dumbo" isn't a live-action remake-- it's an angry, passionate argument *against* such a remake. The baby flying elephant is a MacGuffin in Burton's "Dumbo"--not the emotional core of the story. There are no talking or singing animals, no other fantasy elements, not even a hint of fairy tale atmosphere. From a character point of view, I'd argue, there is no emotional core: none of the "live" characters in Dumbo have any emotional resonance at all. They are all bleak and joyless and broken, emotionally dead, barely responsive to the world and the story supposedly taking place around them. One of them, a little boy, has no character existence at all-- I'm not sure he's even named, and he could be removed completely from the film without any discernable impact. For a filmmaker with Burton's skill set such a failure to develop even marginally interesting characters with a vital stake in the story is inexplicable-- unless it was intentional.

I think it was intentional.

I think "Dumbo" is an act of auteur subversion, one of the most breathtaking acts of creative defiance since "Citizen Kane," though certainly far less successful as a piece of entertainment. In fact that may well be the movie's most defining artistic characteristic-- its complete unwillingness to entertain.

It really is a remarkable achievement. To trick Disney into financing and releasing a major motion picture which savages everything about the company's approach to its classic films, and, in addition, to its entire corporate raison d'etre, is a stunning accomplishment. What a trick. I imagine the script reads very different from what Burton shot-- it's possible to describe something one way, shoot it another, and edit it all together to produce the opposite effect from what the screenplay suggests. Because there's so much CGI involved, Disney executives probably never realized what Burton was doing until final cut. And that, in itself, is part of Burton's savage attack on Disney's corporate methodology. The further film executives get from true hands-on creative involvement in the films they make-- through increasing dependency on CGI and post-production manipulation-- the less they really know about the movies they're making. The very power to ham-handedly rework a mediocre director's work in post allows a master director to hide his intentions until it's too late to reverse them. By the time Disney executives possibly realized what Burton was up to, if they ever did, they'd sunk too much money and time into his version of the film-- and had no choice but to either scrap the movie entirely or release it as it is. Given the exigencies of corporate finance, and the apparent belief on the part of Disney executives that the appetite for live-action versions of beloved animated classics is insatiable, releasing Burton's hate mail movie was ultimately the only logical thing to do.

In the end, "Dumbo" isn't a good movie. It probably was not intended to be. It's Tim Burton's angry rant against making movies like itself. It's a slap in the face to the people who financed it and the audience who shows up for it. As a work of protest it's kind of admirable. As a film-going experience, as I stated above, it's a miserable two hours.

You've been warned. At least now, if you see it, you can "enjoy" the movie for what it is-- a scream of contempt, an artist setting fire to the gallery displaying his work. Personally, now that I've defined it... I think I like it.

YMMV.