#not everyone knows the history behind the production of every major disney movie

[takeaguessbuddy]

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[queen-of-my-goofball-army]

My Relationship With Sherman Brother's Music

If you have talked to me for more than five minutes about Disney anything, odds are that I've brought up this duo of brother's, Richard M Sherman and the former Robert B Sherman. The Sherman Brother's were the only musicians and lyricists that were hired by Walt Disney himself strictly to work for his company. They were the only one's that regularly had a job there. They never knew what the next production would be but they knew that there would be one. They worked continuously through the 50's, 60's, 70's and into the 80's. Through those four decades they wrote some of Disney's best known musicals. They brought the idea of musical theater to Disney for the first time ever. They were the first team up to bring the stage to the screen.

If you have the same ideals as my dad, you prefer older Disney movies. You miss the way that it used to be back in the day and quite frankly I can't blame you. If there is one thing about older Disney that I miss greatly is the sense of musical continuity. Most older Disney movies sounded cohesive because 9/10 they were all done by one duo that duo being the Sherman Brothers. They had this style when it came to writing lyrics that made them feel more heartfelt and real. There songs were so memorable that to this day I'll catch myself humming them even if I hadn't heard the song in ages (most of the time that happens to me with I Wanna Be Like You from Jungle Book).

I grew up glued to television screens that played older Disney movies. Whether on the screen it was Sword In The Stone, Jungle Book, Winnie The Pooh, or my favorite thing that they ever touched Mary Poppins, there was always Sherman Brother's music coming out of my family's small television. Every child that grew up with Disney knows their songs but not many people really think about the substantial impact that they made on their lives. I, for one, know that these movies would not be the same without the music. While the relationship between the brothers might have been sufficiently turbulent towards the end, they had four decades of absolutely incredible work. There work has heavily influenced the way that I grew up and I really want to talk about that impact.

The further I go back in my life I can't remember a time in my life where I haven't been humming their songs. Music is something that was so uniquely older Disney that I think they've really struggled in the later years because of it. They no longer have a cohesive sound and are just going with whatever is popular. As much as I love Moana, it doesn't compare to the songs that The Sherman Brother's wrote. At least in my heart it doesn't. The beauty of their music was in it's simplicity. When I think about it, they were the only writing duo that tried their best to rhyme everything. Because when you rhyme words together, the lyrics become more memorable. You find them more hummable because their music sticks with you easier. For an example of this phenomenon allow me to show you one of my dad's favorite Disney songs.

https://youtu.be/qhwXgvOfJc8

(I grew up watching the misadventures of Merlin and Wart or Arthur. The music in this film is something that ties the movie together through either life lessons or comedic antics. I can't pack a bag for a trip without singing Higitus Figitus or Merlin's packing song. It's just something that I've done so many times by now that it feels wrong to not do it.)

The creativity in word usage where they were the only ones that trusted themselves enough to create their own words, whether it be Fortuosity a word that in their mind means good fortune that they use in The Happiest Millionaire, or everyone's iconic Supercalifragilisticexpialidcious from Mary Poppins, they were the only Disney lyricists that made up their own words. This would often happen the same with rhyming by the younger of the two brother's, Richard Sherman the piano player loudly banging out a lyric until something made sense to the more word conscious older brother, Robert Sherman. Despite their personalities being like somebody had tried to combine oil and water together to see what would happen and it eventually caused a pretty major fire, for four decades they were able to keep it together.

The older I get the more I look back on The Sherman Brother's lyrics and what they are able to convey through simple songs. The melodies were almost always simple paving the way for more complex and uniquely made up words. The songs are something that both kids and adults can find enjoyment in. Instead of just caving to something that would appeal to children but would drive the adults absolutely bonkers from hearing it so many times, they made sure that the song sequences would appeal to *families* not just kids.

I feel like this should be the time for Disney to hire a main team of writers and not switch them out every time that they make a new film. Lin Manual Miranda is brilliant and he's made the closest thing to Howard Ashman music that I fell in love with. But, he's just one guy. I love duo's that work for Disney because they're just stronger together. Richard and Robert Sherman were individually incredibly skilled but when you got a team of people behind them then you'd get something truly magical. Spending the last few years studying their work has only made me fall deeper in love with the way that they wrote music.

The Sherman Brother's are definitely two people that left their imprint on Disney history that I don't hear the passing by Disney fan mentioning a whole lot. I hope that I can bring some appreciation and my own personal history to this dynamic duo.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

What if Star Wars had tanked?

May 1977, 20th Century Fox distributes a really WEIRD movie.  It’s a science fiction fantasy story about medieval knight samurais in space with laser swords and fighter pilots.  Nobody expected it to be a hit, it seemed to be such a niche movie, one that would garner a small cult following then be swept under the rug by the other summer tent poles like “Smokey and the Bandit” or “The Spy Who Loved Me.”  To everyone’s surprise, it became an instant success, rocketing no name George Lucas from a no-name bush-league indie director into the echelon of A-list Blockbusters.  His idea for a decade spanning six part saga (two sequels, three prequels) was greenlit then and there, and the budget for Star Wars 2, now called Star Wars 5, was double what he was given for the original.  Star Wars 1, nor 4, was given the subtitle “A New Hope” to let audiences know it was just the beginning of a series, and the rest is history.

But in 1977, George Lucas was not as confident in his vision as he would soon become.  He figured, as every producer did, that his film would be a flash in the pan genre piece, something that would play in theaters just long enough to make it’s budget back, then disappear into obscurity.  In 1976, he planned for the worst.

Star Wars, like many other films of the day, was being given a novelization.  Before home media became ubiquitous, the only way people could experience the film was to see it in theaters or buy the book version.  Lucas hired a ghostwriter, Alan Dean Foster, to write the novelization of Star Wars 1, AND to create a tentative Star Wars 2 that could be adapted to the screen if the original film failed to meet his high expectations.  Star Wars 2, titled “Splinter of the Minds Eye,” was written to be as low budget as possible; no big set pieces, and for that matter no big sets.  Every scene had to take place in a set that the studio already owned, and couldn’t include any major space battles because there was no guarantee that the special effects would fit into the budget.  On top of that, it meant that none of the characters played by big name actors would be included; no Harrison Ford, no Alec Guinness.  Splinter was a bare bones story set entirely on what would essentially become Dagobah, and would have taken the franchise in an entirely different direction.  None of the story elements from Lucas’ dream sequel were included, and none of the plot twists either; there is no connection between “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” and “Empire Strikes Back,” and in fact, once Empire was released, Splinter was relegated to secondary canon because the official sequel had overidden it so the story no longer made sense.

But if Star Wars 1 had flopped, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye would have been made into the official sequel, and the story would have had to pick up where it left off; Lucas didn’t plot out a low budget version of Star Wars 3, so we can only speculate as to what may have happened.

In Splinter, Luke and Leia are going on a diplomatic mission to convince some neutral star systems to join the rebellion.  Their ship crash lands on a backwater swamp planet (called Mimban, a name eventually used for the World War I trench planet in the Disney movie Solo), which is roughly analogous to the Dagobah we saw in Empire.  Stranded on the swamp planet, Luke and Leia find their way to an imperial mining colony, get into a scuffle, and escape with the help of a Jedi witch named Halla.  The titular “splinter of the mind’s eye” is a broken fragment of a magical crystal, because this was the 1970s and crystals were a big thing in fantasy (the splinter was called the kaiburr crystal; this name would later be re-purposed in canon as the crystals used for lightsaber and Death Star laser construction).  The splinter is said to focus the force, allowing the wielder to become more powerful or something; it’s a MacGuffin, the book is vague as to what it actually physically does.  After a confrontation with locals, and a duel with none other than Darth Vader (in which Leia wields a lightsaber and Luke cuts off Vader’s whole arm), Halla takes over the role of Luke’s mentor to train him in the ways of the Force.

At this point in the series, Luke and Leia were never intended to be brother and sister.  It was clearly supposed to be a chivalric romance between a knight errant and his courtly love.  He is the royal bodyguard to the Queen of Alderaan (the entire Royal Family was destroyed in Star Wars 1, so Princess Leia should by all rights have been coronated as Queen Leia).  George Lucas added the twist that they were brother and sister well into production of Empire; in fact, in Empire he shot two scenes of Leia kissing Luke (one was to make Han jealous, the other was near the end, right after she rescued Luke from cloud city; I’m glad they cut the second one, because it undermines the fact that she literally just told Han that she loves him).  Han Solo himself is mentioned in passing, not even by name, just as some pirate Luke used to know who took his reward money from the first movie and went to pay off some debts.  If this movie had been made instead of Empire, there’s no guarantee that a Star Wars 3 would even be greenlit.

But if it had been, here’s what would have happened.

Darth Vader is not Luke’s father in this version; that too was a twist Lucas invented after the series took off.  So, in this version of Star wars 3, which I will call “Revenge of the Jedi,” Luke goes on a quest to slay the evil Emperor.  It’s a fantasy movie, in any other setting the point of the franchise would be to kill the main bad guy; imagine if Lord of the Rings had ended without the heroes destroying the ring and defeating Sauron, that would have made no sense.  In this version of the story, Darth Vader is just the archetypal Black Knight; tying back into the Japanese influence on the series, he is an evil Shogun, appointed by the Emperor to be the military dictator.  There would be more emphasis on fight choreography in this version, drawing influence from the works of Akira Kurosawa.  The word Jedi comes from the word for the Japanese film genre Jidaigeki, meaning ‘period piece,’ featuring samuri and ronin (for western audiences, “Ronin” are nomadic heroes, like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name, or the Road Warrior).

Revenge of the Jedi would end with a climactic fight scene in the Emperor’s palace, with Luke battling his way through the many levels, defeating wave after wave of imperial soldiers and those red guards fans love to care about even though they do literally nothing on screen.  The prequels we got in canon were bogged down with boring politics about trade federations and unions and guilds and alliances, but politics can be interesting if done well (and written by someone who isn’t George Lucas; the original trilogy we got was good DESPITE him, not BECAUSE of him).  Revenge of the Jedi would see Leia building an army, the rebellion becoming an actual superpower in the galaxy; the New Republic wouldn’t just be restored after the Empire was defeated, it would be restored during the war with the express intent of rallying neutral systems behind an actual government body against the Emperor.

Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father, but more importantly he committed genocide against Leia’s people, the survivors of which now live in diaspora.  Sound familiar?  “The Rebellion” isn’t a great name, but “the Alliance” is perfect because it evokes the Allies of World War II and shows that it is a galaxy-wide phenomena, not just a single splinter cell as depicted in the films in our timeline.  Luke wants to avenge his father, but if you’re insistent that the good guy isn’t allowed to kill the bad guy, you could have Vader go out the way he did in “Return of the Jedi,” turning back to the light side and sacrificing his life to kill the Emperor.  Everyone loves a redemption story, but Darth Vader really was a piece of shit and didn’t deserve to just get a free pass into Jedi Ghost Heaven because he decided to stop being evil five minutes before he died.

Maybe in this version of Star Wars 3, Harrison Ford returns for a cameo as a favor to George Lucas.  If so, he dies; Ford wanted Han to die in “Return of the Jedi,” and only agreed to do “The Force Awakens” if they finally killed him off then.  If he returns for “Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi,” he will sacrifice himself for the Alliance, going out as a hero.  After the Emperor is defeated, the threat doesn’t just go away; suddenly there’s a power vacuum, with all the admirals and regional governor’s vying to replace him.  In both pre- and post-Disney Star Wars, the Emperor had a son (Triclops in Legends continuity, and Rey’s dad in Canon), so he would be heir to his father’s throne; perhaps he is propped up as a puppet for the military leaders, or maybe he surrenders to the Alliance and allows his Empire to be balkanized into dozens of independent powers, as with the fall of every great Empire; Rome (East and West), Mongolia, China, Austria-Hungary, Britain, the USSR, the list goes on.

This Star Wars trilogy would not be the enormous franchise we know today, it would still be a very niche series with a cult following.  It would be a step up from the Planet of the Apes series; sure, people have heard of it, and there have been attempts to revive it in the modern day, but it’s not even close to being a tent pole of the modern cultural zeitgeist.  Nobody looks forward to the new Planet of the Apes movie every year, it’s not a multi-billion dollar multi-media enterprise, there’s no dedicated “Planet of the Apes Celebration,” no cartoons, no streaming service shows that everyone geeks out about online, no triple-a video games, nothing.  This version of Star Wars would be just another weird artifact of the 1970s.  Maybe there would be a push to release a sequel, Star Wars 4, in like 2007, but that would be closer to Rambo IV or Superman Returns or Tron Legacy.

There are dedicated fans, but it’s not the biggest movie of the year.

Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars 2: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1979)

Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi (1982)

Star Wars: Journal of the Whills (2011, a prequel set during the Clone Wars mentioned in the first movie)

[gillzilla]

A Treatise on the aTROSity, Including How Hope Came to Me in the Form of The Lego Movie 2, Knives Out, and Little Women

I will start out by saying that I have never made a real, detailed post on Tumblr, mainly because social media kind of scares me. But the Reylo community's amazing kindness, strength, openness, and willingness to speak the truth in their writing over the last week and a half is honestly what has gotten me through the heartbreak and depression caused by the stabbing in the chest that was this movie. I am one of the people who loves Kylo/Ben Solo because I have mental health conditions and an abuse/trauma history within my family, which is also why the holidays are hard for me, so a big thanks to the people in charge of the story for TROS for making it even harder this year. After a week and a half of legitimate mourning for the butchering of the themes of Star Wars and of all the characters, but particularly the sequel trilogy characters, I am ready to add my two cents to all that has already been written about this movie.

First off, I have not been a Star Wars fan for my whole life. My parents tried to introduce me to the original trilogy as a kid by taking me to see A New Hope in the movie theater for the 20th anniversary screening in 1997. I fell asleep for most of it and was terrified by the trash compactor scene, so you could say the movie did not resonate with me. It actually wasn't until Phantom Menace came out that I started to get attached to Star Wars. So many older fans love to shit on that movie, and it certainly has many flaws, but a lot of us who were around the same age as Anakin when that movie came out and are now adults have started to speak up about how the movie was a gateway into Star Wars for us. Anakin gave me a window into the Star Wars universe that I could understand and relate to. I could relate to Anakin being a kind-hearted kid who wanted to help others and just wanted adults he could look up to, and I liked the podracing scenes. As with every single other sci-fi/fantasy hero's journey story that I loved as a kid, I empathized with and related to a male hero. Now, the wooden dialogue/acting/directing of Attack of the Clones and the tragic ending of Revenge of the Sith that left me so emotionally devastated that I vividly remember calling my friend to tell her I was so depressed I couldn't focus on studying for my eighth grade English final, kind of took me out of Star Wars again. There had been a spark there, but at that point I figured, eh, I guess it's not really for me after all.

I didn't rediscover Star Wars until the end of the first semester of my freshman year of college. This was a very difficult time in my life, as I was in what I would now consider to be a mental health crisis that unfortunately lasted for five years because I was too ashamed and uneducated about mental health to seek out help. I was very, very lonely during that time. It was close to finals week and I was sick, so as I sat in my dorm room I decided, why not pop in those DVDs of the original trilogy that I got at Costco last month. After watching them, I remember thinking, "Why have I not been watching these my whole life???" The original trilogy hooked me after that point and I started watching the movies every year around Christmas in commemoration of my rediscovery of them.

I was just as surprised as anyone when I found out that Disney bought Lucasfilm and that they were going to make a sequel trilogy. I had thought there would never be any more Star Wars, so I was overjoyed, though tentative, because I knew that though I loved Star Wars, it also had a tendency to make missteps that were somewhat endemic to sci-fi/fantasy hero's journey stories, such as poorly written dialogue, emphasis on ridiculous plot points that took away from the deeper overall themes, lack of diverse characters, and objectification/misogyny against female characters (I do not like watching Return of the Jedi because I hate, HATE the Jabba's palace stuff for what they did to Leia, honestly they gave Leia nothing interesting to do in that whole movie basically, but that's a whole nother essay).

So I went into The Force Awakens not really knowing what to expect. But oh my god, was I blown away. I am not lying when I say that I cried for at least an hour after the scene where Rey and Kylo are both reaching out for the legacy saber and it goes to Rey as the music swells, oh my god. I FINALLY realized what it meant to feel seen in the stories that I loved. My whole life I had been attached to and empathizing with male heroes, because they were pretty much the only heroes out there. To see Rey as this amazing female heroine who was not objectified and was a compelling character with an intriguing backstory that I related to as a child with a trauma history who often grew up feeling lonely, and to see that she was going to be the main Jedi in this new trilogy, I was overjoyed. It gave me hope. And then, on top of that, we got Adam Driver. Need I say any more. So many people have written about what an absolutely incredible actor Adam is, and I swear he is the only actor who could have pulled off the role of Kylo/Ben. The first time I saw TFA I didn't catch all the nuances of the character and his dynamic with Rey, but something about him really intrigued me (and made me want to watch everything Adam had ever been in). My love for TFA led me to start investing time in the online Star Wars fandom, which I never considered myself to be a part of previously, as the fandom had always reeked of being a "no girls allowed" type of zone. I found out about amazing, female-led podcasts that I started listening to every week and whose hosts I value just as much as my friends. I also started following the Reylo fandom on Tumblr. Learning more about the mythology behind the sequel trilogy, including how the creators were writing Rey's story as a heroine's journey and her and Kylo/Ben as dual protagonists, added so much to my understanding of what was going on in the storytelling and gave me the words to describe why I was connecting with these stories so much. I can honestly say that Star Wars and the Reylo fandom generally have been instrumental in helping me to get through the last four years, which have been a very difficult and isolating period in my life.

And now I'm up to TROS. As so many have said, the vast majority of it is a steaming pile of trash. People have done such an amazing job of breaking down why this story and how it treated its characters and retconned the beautiful story and themes that Rian gave us in TLJ was so painful for us. Many have pointed out that this movie is a result of catering to the most toxic portion of the Star Wars fandom, the "dudebros." Going further, I want to state that, whether consciously or not on the part of the cis, straight, white, male writers/director/CEO of Disney, this movie is a reassertion of masculinist ideologies. I want to clarify that when I talk about "masculinist" vs. feminist ideologies, I am talking about how our society and culture defines "masculine" vs. "feminine" ideas, traits, etc. Gender has nothing to with biological determinism and is socially and culturally constructed. Masculinist ideologies include beliefs such as extreme individualism, competition, "us vs. them" dichotomies, and power and value being defined based on hierarchy, which necessitates the use of violence to perpetuate the hierarchy. Feminist ideologies include valuing community and collaboration, connection and empathy, the idea that every person has inherent worth regardless of their productivity, actions, mistakes, class, race, sexuality, etc., respect for all people, and an abolishing of hierarchies. Masculinist ideologies are those of the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy, which, as we can see playing out in various ways all over the world, has been rearing its head in a very obvious and ugly fashion the past few years (though of course it has been around for wayyyyy longer than that).

Anyone who has been reading the fantastic analyses of TROS by those in the Reylo community can likely see how TLJ and even the story as it was set up in TFA were communicating feminist ideologies. One big example of this is Kylo Ren/Ben himself as a character. As so many have eloquently described, this is a complex character that commits atrocities, but is shown to be a victim of immense abuse and trauma that was failed by everyone in his family when he needed them most. This is a character that, had he been able to have the full and well-written redemption arc that he deserved, would have had an extremely moving story of how toxic masculinity and masculinist ideology is destroying boys and men by keeping them from being full people who can express all of their emotions, be vulnerable, and be open to love and connection. Reylo resonates so much with me not because it is about Rey supposedly doing all the work to change Kylo in some sort of toxic, co-dependent way, but because Rey and Kylo/Ben were always equals to each other. They both pushed each other to be better, more whole people. The wonderful work that folks have put into analyzing the mythology behind the feminine and masculine symbolism in TFA and TLJ (again, to clarify, "masculine" and "feminine" being culturally defined terms), and even the more obvious original goal of the sequel trilogy for the force to finally be balanced by Rey and Ben themselves becoming balanced between dark and light all relate to these gender issues. Balancing the dark and light sides of the force is also about balancing the "masculine" and "feminine" aspects within themselves.

This is a beautiful message that has so many real world implications. In our world, for lack of a better term, everything "feminine" is basically shat on. Patriarchy hates anything "feminine." This is how sexism plays out, but it also has to do with the ideologies that we believe in, down to our basic understandings of empathy and whether or not people have inherent value. The world would certainly be a better place if the "masculine" and "feminine" were better balanced, specifically if "feminine," and feminist, ideologies were more valued. This is what makes TROS feel like a stab directly in the heart. This was a trilogy that clearly did have feminist messages, regardless of DLF's bullshitting about Star Wars being "for everyone." Star Wars has always been progressive, the original trilogy is about rebels taking on fascists for god's sake. DLF's pandering to the most toxic part of the fandom for TROS is therefore representative of a much larger cultural, social, and political battle that is going on around the world right now. We are at a turning point for humanity in which we are starting to face the devastation that has occurred due to masculinist ideologies being the most highly regarded and utilized by those in power, but those in power are also trying to maintain their power by strongly reasserting those ideologies. So I would argue that this is not just about one movie that I and many other people didn't like. This movie is a small representation of a much larger battle that we're fighting.

Now, that reassertion of masculinist ideology that was the stabbing in the heart of watching TROS has made me super, duper depressed for the past week or so because, as others have pointed out, it communicated to me that no matter how hard we fight, the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy will reassert itself and win in the end. It even re-triggered the pain I've felt over the past few years since our current president came into office in the U.S. However, as I near the end of this long treatise I would like to share the stories that gave me hope over these past few days. I re-watched The Lego Movie 2 the other day, and that story gave me hope. The "bad guy" in that story is a literal embodiment of toxic masculinity/masculinist ideology, and it ends with the male hero realizing that he doesn't need to sacrifice his humanity and connections to other people to be a hero, or even just to be a man. How to Train Your Dragon 3 also told a story about a male hero/leader that rejects masculinist ideology. Additionally, I was given hope by Rian's amazing movie, Knives Out, which I went to see solely because people on Tumblr recommended it (thank you folks!). Rian had a clear theme and vision for this story that was about exposing and dissecting what I would call "toxic whiteness," and what it does to a family and those around them. And lastly, I saw Greta Gerwig's incredible adaptation of Little Women today, and that gave me hope because one of its main themes is about the struggle that (cis, heterosexual) women have in asserting themselves as full humans with talents, dreams and goals for their lives outside of being in romantic relationships, but also wanting to have romantic relationships at the same time. As has been said by so many, "STRONG" WOMEN CAN FALL IN LOVE AND HAVE ROMANTIC/SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS. Feminism is about giving all people the chance to be fully human, and for heterosexual women that includes being able to have a relationship with a man and still be valued and respected for everything that we are outside of that relationship. The above mentioned stories, and others (She-Ra, Dragon Prince, AtLA & Legend of Korra, I'm sure there are others) give me hope that there are creators out there that are communicating feminist themes, even in big-budget movies that lots of people go to see. We need more of this. Tied to this is that THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY OF THE SEQUEL TRILOGY SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN/DIRECTED BY A WOMAN/WOMEN. Folks, we need the opportunities to tell our own stories. All of the diverse folks out there, if you are a creator, please keep on creating! We need you out there and we value all of the beautiful, integral work that you do!

So in sum, I'm not going to let what happened with TROS ruin my love of Star Wars or of the sequel trilogy. The story belongs to the fans now, and there are so many of us out there to care for it. You better be sure that I will never stop speaking up about how wronged we were by TROS, that is the hill I will die on. But I am not giving up hope and I hope that you will also join me in not giving up hope. As Poe stated so well in TLJ (with one minor adjustment), "We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn the [patriarchy] down." End of treatise.

[headlesssamurai]

Has everyone asked you about Jupiter Ascending?

@godzillaapproved

Yo, I ought to apologize to you for taking hella long to properly respond to this. It’s holiday season over thisaway, sure, but I ain’t nearly vain enough to assume just anybody gets why that can suck up a dude’s time. Reckon I’m sure there’s tons of national celebrations all over the world I’d never know about otherwise. Bah, I say! Going out and socializing is one of the few things more overrated than all those shitty Apple products. But yeh, in my case it was less the celebratory spirit of holiday festivities and more a sudden spike in workload, so my mental energy was roughed up by that, plus I was doing a new workout at the same time. Thus, whatever free time I had left was spent obsessively hammering away at the Steam sale items I’d recently bought. It’s like a coping mechanism. Well, that and cheap wine anyhow.

Regardless, regardless—holy shit what an obnoxious fucking way for me to open this up—this Ask of yours came at an unusually coincidental time. A friend and I have been meeting up every weekend to watch like semi-recent crappy movies just as a way to enjoy a bad drink and a good laugh. She likes to laugh, and I like to drink, so it works out. After working our way through every Transformers film by Michael Bay, then Cameron’s Avatar, Terminator: Genisys, The Amazing Spider-mans, Spielberg’s Crystal Skull, Ready Player One, and some of the more abysmal DC films, our last escapade into nonsense was the estimably hilarious Gods of Egypt, which reminded me of one of those excremental quicktime-event video games. You know, like Detroit Becomes Human or some shit like that (Oh wait, is it Detroit Coming of the Humans? Meh).

As luck would have it, like, the day before you asked me about it, the next film at which I suggested we take a crack was the Wachowskis’ own Jupiter Ascending, which my friend had not seen at that time. Nor had I, since first viewing it in theaters.

>>SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU CARE ENOUGH TO, UH… YOU KNOW, CARE

I was intrigued to give this movie another go. It’s struck me that I’ve got an odd streak of pleasantly enjoying movies a lot of people can’t seem to stand, or which some people even hate with utter vileness on the verge of hunting down the producers with a roll of duct tape, power tools, jugs of petrol, and a matchbook. I’ve enjoyed, for instance, Hardcore Henry, Elysium, and Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, all of which not one person I know in real life could offer a single word of kindness. After my first viewing of Jupiter Ascending, I was left to consider whether or not it was the sort of movie I should enjoy and allow others to hate and disparage, or if it just wasn’t that good. I recalled leaving the theater with a sort of “Hm” sound, and not much else. But given my history with rooting for an underdog, was I wrong? Is this movie actually good, or cool in some way? I couldn’t defy the sensation that I’d missed something.

The answer, it seems, is more complex than a simple yes or no. Then again, as Mason and Goat Han Solo often remind us, “there’s no nuance on the internet”, so even my assertion there about complexity may be in gross error.

For the unfamiliar, Jupiter Ascending is a science fiction tale with vibes of less-cliché aesthetic choices for its visuals, some cool references to UFO conspiracy theories, and aims at a more expansive universe that would no doubt have been further explored in sequels had this film been better received by audiences and critics. I’ll say outright, it’s a disappointment to me that we weren’t given the chance to see more films in this mythology, because there’s some really cool stuff going on in this weird, imaginative universe. The story centers upon the character of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), an average working-class young woman in Chicago who is shocked to discover not only that aliens exist but that she happens to be the reincarnation of a galaxy owning empress, which entitles Jupiter to ownership of a large portion of the cosmos, the least part of which is Earth itself. But as the Aussies say, something’s a bit suss about the whole affair, and the wondrous glamour of this technologically advanced universe is concurrently party to a dark truth.

An immediately intriguing element of Jupiter Ascending is its attempt to set-up something which, while perhaps greatly inspired by a few other fictional works, is an original property, not a sequel, reboot, adaptation of an existing work, nor a spiritual successor to something else. Rather than merely being intrigued by this fact, I also respect it, because high-concept science fiction films aren’t something a studio likes to go for unless they have a preexisting audience, like adaptations of a book series or something. So it’s always bold when someone can cobble together the resources to really take a chance on something like this, even if it isn’t well received. After all that’s how films like The Matrix, The Terminator, Ridley Scott’s Alien, George Lucas’ Star Wars, and John McTiernan’s Predator come to be in the first place. Another example, I didn’t quite enjoy The Last Witch Hunter, but I recall respecting that film’s risk in its attempt at a new property for similar reasons.

Irrespective of your own personal tastes as a moviegoer and consumer of science fiction, it can’t be denied that the Wachowski’s are measurably talented filmmakers. Their doubtless skill at framing shots, blending effects with reality to present an integrated experience, and choreographing action sequences with such lethal precision it’s always incredible to watch; all of these things can’t be argued, and this attentiveness for the craft is all very present in Jupiter Ascending. Toward the beginning of the movie, there’s an aerial chase sequence that promptly accelerates into one of the most engaging, gripping action sequences in memory, heavily fantastical sci-fi elements intermixed with almost Fast and the Furious levels of insanity. The sense of gripping speed alone as two characters cling to the outer hull of a spacecraft was helplessly intense and left me quite keen to see what else the movie had to offer further down the line.

Additionally we have some awesome art design and stylistic choices regarding the look of this sci-fi universe, both the appearance of aliens and the design of their technology was familiar and unique at the same time. There are beings referred to as “Splices” which are intermixes of humans and various animals, giving some people bestial characteristics which are just weird enough to be cool to me without verging over the edge into absurd territory. There are cybernetic enhancements, gravity boots, phalanx style energy shields, neural synthetic wings, motherfucking jet-bikes of course and, though I never would have dreamed, motherfucking lizardmen! That blew me away, dude. Others may think it’s stupid, but lizardmen are one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy creatures of all time, and they look so badass in this movie it was unbelievably awesome to realize I was actually seeing a proper lizardfolk on screen. With lizardmen and jet-bikes, Jupiter Ascending quickly marks two-out-of-five on my Generally Awesome Things I Like To See In Science Fiction list. It’s a real list, in my head, I swear.

The starship designs were inspired by art deco architecture in cities like Chicago, lending Jupiter’s cosmos a feeling more of Herbert’s Dune-iverse than something like Star Trek, which I appreciated since we don’t see that type of style quite as much. Top all that off with a fantastic score from Michael Giacchino and you’ve got some great tools to tell an awesome story.

So the thing is, it’s not just skin deep either, while the film does lean heavily on its visuals and action set-pieces, this is a genuinely interesting universe. Michael Bay’s Transformers, for instance, also has cool visuals, some passable action scenes, and dazzling special effects, but is it interesting? The answer is no. Because Bay’s movies, while briefly entertaining, are ultimately hollow. There aren’t any subdermal layers beneath the facade of spectacle. But in Jupiter Aescending there’s clearly something else going on, the touch of true filmmakers for one, yet also the potential for so much more. The groundwork, the craftsmanship and attentiveness is all here. It’s really what they choose to do, or not do, with that potential which ends up disappointing. Not, as in the case of Bay’s movies, the utter lack of potential for greatness from the start.

Though some fandom-card carrying ideologues may acerbically disagree, an acceptably comparable film whose potential for greatness was also mostly wasted for middle-of-the-road mediocrity is the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story, by Disney Interactive– I mean, by Disney behind the appropriated guise of Lucasfilm. Whatever else you think of that film, and while I agree from a mythological standpoint its very existence was in extremely poor taste, the talent, the production value, the mark of the craft was there. None of this was, however, capitalized upon to create anything truly profound. Jupiter Ascending’s unfortunate drawbacks are of a similar form.

I’d like to state emphatically however, I’m not trying to punish the film nor act as its apologist. Reckon I always end up saying this, but I am really just some dude. Sure, I read a lot of books and stuff, but that doesn’t appoint me some grand authority on the subject of fiction. These thoughts I try to convey in my write-ups are meant merely as opinions, framed in the form of investigating the quality of a film or game or whatever. To that end, I’m compelled to side with most folks in that, whatever else its got going for it, there’s some major deficiency holding back Jupiter Ascending from rising to a higher form of entertainment. So if the production values are high, where’s the casus belli all the angry critics are seeing here?

To puzzle that out, we ought first to determine by what criterion a truly good story is shaped. In that regard it’s likely the wisest to begin by reckoning what sort of story we’re dealing with here. Most people are wont to jump straight to the whole Hero’s Journey every dickhead YouTube reviewer read about in some sparknotes book while using the shitter at Barnes & Noble. But Joseph Campbell’s mimetic architecture isn’t the only sort of story that exists, not even in science fiction. Consider, for instance, anything written by H.P. Lovecraft, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, Philip K. Dick’s various works, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, or Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. These stories, while very sci-fi in their scope and measure, are far more introspective, and very contemplative when contrasted against fiction of the more traditional heroic adventure genre. Hell, even Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers while appearing a mindless war movie on its surface is fundamentally a cautionary allegory. While conquering adversity is certainly a theme of its own within each of these stories, the breadth of that adversity’s effect on the narrative varies wildly, as well as the nature of adversity each character must face. Other heavier components, like displacement, post-humanism, philosophical allegory, are also usually present in such stories.

All of this likely seems a bit excessive to point out, but I promise it’ll get relevant later. But, uh… yeh. The next time some liberal arts asshat tries to tell you there’s only one real way a story can go, you can be safely justified in telling them to get bent. I mean read, yeh, tell them to read more shit, and watch more movies. That’d probably be more productive. But also tell them to get bent, the fuckers.

There can also, however, be stories that blend styles. The 2004 rebrand of Battlestar Galactica incorporates several philosophical elements, self-reflective, and meditative thematic ideas into its narrative of what would otherwise be a fairly standard science fiction conflict in outer space. The Wachowskis’ own The Matrix is a perfect example of a classic hero’s journey which also incorporates introspective themes into its lore, plot, and mythology, wherein the internal conflict of the protagonist is just as important as whatever external adversity he is meant to overcome. Where Battlestar Galactica 2004 uses its thematic material to craft a sci-fi adventure story, The Matrix uses a sci-fi adventure story to explore its thematic material. Seen in that light, I think the Wachowskis wanted Jupiter Ascending to have similar weight to its narrative, but they ended up recycling a sort of “human harvest” idea already seen in The Matrix (and arguably done in a more engaging way).

Jupiter Jones herself is a catalyst for an inter-familial conflict within a wealthy interstellar hierarchy. Though alien races do exist, the most dangerous aliens happen to be humans themselves, extraterrestrial humans of course. In Jupiter’s universe, it turns out that the wealthy and powerful have the ability to live forever (an idea also explored in the Neftlix adaptation Altered Carbon), but only by seeding countless worlds with humans, then harvesting these humans like crops and breaking these millions of people down into a sort of primordial youth serum by which the lives of the affluent may be extended.

Advanced genetics in Jupiter’s universe are the highest form of technology, and it is stated in all the cosmos the most sought-after resource is time. This is the reason these advanced humans out among the stars are able to splice human and animal genes, essentially creating entirely new races, and the reason why Jupiter herself is seen as a reincarnation of a woman who once owned countless stars and planets. Genes, to the wealthy and powerful, have a near spiritual significance. Jupiter is referred to as a Recurrence, a person who is long dead but whose gene-print inconceivably reappears in someone who is born centuries or even millennia later. This is seen as a near miracle, and thus is recognized by interstellar law as a legitimate reincarnation, giving this new person the same rights and privileges, and inheriting all the property previously held by the deceased person whose gene print they share.

And that’s where the conflict comes up. Jupiter is sought out by three siblings of the Abrasax family, one of the most elite and powerful families in the universe, of which she is the reincarnation of their mother and thus entitled to re-inherit all of their resources and capital which they currently control. The kids are Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), the well-to-do, but compassionate one, Titus (Douglas Booth), the more two-faced of the three who acts innocent but is clever as a viper, and Balem (Eddie Redmayne), the stereotypical villain of the piece who seems to have nervous ticks and an inability to raise his voice above a certain octave except in times of extreme stress. Of course, since Jupiter’s now meant to control everything they currently own, none of the three Abrasax kids can be fully trusted. Jupiter doesn’t have to face these three one-percenters alone however. She is accompanied by Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) an ex-soldier and wolf-splice, known as a Lycantant, who is hired by Titus to safely retrieve Jupiter from Earth before his siblings can get to her. Caine’s former commanding officer, a bee-splice known as Stinger (Sean Bean) also appears from time to time, as well as officers of the Aegis, an interstellar law enforcement agency.

If you are having a hard time following the characters here, it’s probably because there just isn’t much to any of the characters other than what I’ve already written about them. And therein lies the primary flaw with this film. The characters aren’t interesting, and the greater tragedy is that the characters are written to be uninteresting. Where a ton of care and attention went into crafting the look, feel and depth of the wider universe acting as the story’s setting, the characters within this story are criminally underwritten.

Earlier, I went to great lengths to illustrate the wealth of variety throughout genres of science fiction, just how many different types of stories we might get within this narrative framework. The purpose of explaining all of that to such a degree was meant to show you that not everything has to follow the same narrative flow. Sometimes stories can be more abstract, less character driven, less action heavy. In that regard, a story exemplar like Blade Runner doesn’t really need to have strongly written characters because the interpersonal aspects of its journey are less important than its atmospheric setting and stylistic momentum. The gravitas comes from a different place than in stories which are more character driven.

However, if a story does want to give us something more conventional, then it’s extremely important that the characters are strongly defined, well established and, even if not likable, at the very least interesting. Though a bit out of this wheelhouse, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is notorious for featuring a dramatis personae of terribly vain, horrible sociopaths, but many of these characters are still written in a way that makes them interesting. Jupiter Ascending fashions itself as an epic space opera, a stylized adventure journey which goes from scrubbing toilets in Irving Park to rocketing through a wider spectacular galaxy. Within that story structure, the characters need to be given their proper attention, especially the protagonist. Only, this is not the case with this movie. In fact in Jupiter Ascending, the characters almost appear as afterthoughts, which is most unfortunate.

Despite being the protagonist’s love interest, Caine seems to have been given the most depth, as a literal lone-wolf personality, an orphan of a sort, a former soldier disgraced for an act of savagery, who longs to regain his military status as a Skyjacker, and was sprung from a prison called Deadland to rescue Jupiter from the clutches of filthy rich egomaniacs, a class of people he seems to utterly despise. Yet even Caine’s various portions of characterization are never fully explored, and he mostly serves as a vehicle to come dashing in and pluck Jupiter out of trouble over and over again. Secondary characters, other than Stinger (more on him later), are hardly there other than to function as a taxi service or exposition dump where appropriate, which is a shame since some of them have a great look but nothing else going on in the writing department to make them memorable. The Abrasax siblings are basically three different flavors of the same smug Soylent privilege, though Kalique seems to exist only to explain things for the benefit of the audience, and Balem seems to be accidentally memorable thanks to Eddie Redmayne’s unusual performance. Titus has some cool psychotic vibes with his underhanded motivations, slippery silver tongued bastard that he is, but even his role as the trickster doesn’t get its due in the end.

Stinger, Caine’s former commanding officer who is now an Aegis Marshal, is also written slightly deeper than even the Abrasax siblings. He took the fall for Caine’s misstep in the military, so he also lost his wings and was disgraced for it. Despite this, he is willing to help Caine and Jupiter throughout the story, and though begrudged he seems genuinely good at heart. Stinger’s point of interest however comes from his traits as a Splice between human and bee DNA. Yes, this leads to a funny line of dialogue, but there are some great examples of show-don’t-tell with Stinger, in that having bee instincts he seems superhumanly able to anticipate motion and react to it ridiculously quickly compared to most people. This ability gives him an edge in everything from fistfights to navigating massive fields of hunter-killer mines. This is hardly important to the plot, but I thought it was cool since it’s never stated outright, just displayed through his actions. Another example of a great idea that’s mostly left adrift.

Jupiter herself starts out as a typical protagonist for a Hero’s Journey. She’s a Jewish Russian immigrant who leads an unglamorous life cleaning bathrooms and tidying fancy homes for her family’s housekeeping service, apparently has bad luck with romance, and hardly ever has time to really do anything she enjoys. Typically, once these elements are presented, there will also be a revelation of something more intimate about the protagonist, her dreams and ambitions, something she longs to one day achieve, her hobbies or personality, perhaps a personal drawback or fear she wishes to overcome. But the most we get about Jupiter is that she wants to buy back a telescope which was once stolen from her astronomer father by the same thieves who murdered him (which we see early in the movie in an awkwardly directed scene). It’s not made clear if Jupiter herself has a genuine interest in astronomy, nor even what any of her interests happen to be.

This becomes a recurring problem throughout the film. Since no real internal conflict or personality of any kind is established for Jupiter, she isn’t led through any personal journey or self-exploration, nor anything which allows her to grow or evolve as the narrative opens up and accelerates. She’s basically just along for the ride, one of those wrong place wrong time sort of things. Her journey is entirely surface level, external forces dragging her around the stars without her having any real say in the matter nor agency of her own. She as very little idea of what she wants or who she is, from what we can tell, because we have no idea of those things either. Mila Kunis does a fine job with the material she’s given, but the material just isn’t much to run with, and if there is a drawback to her performance as an actress I promise in this case the fault is not with her.

The terrible lack of characterization hurts everything in the movie from its ethical conceits, plot momentum, all the way up to the romance subplot which only feels forced and lacking chemistry because the two leads aren’t properly written. They could have had chemistry, but its difficult for archetypes to interact without endowing them with personality. It’s a fundamental flaw from which all other flaws of the film stem because the personality, the character of the protagonist in this type of story is a fundamental element from which many other elements of the story stem.

Even towards the end, when Jupiter is forced into dangerous heroics and aggressive bravery it doesn’t feel like much of anything because for all we know she was brave all along, or maybe she wasn’t. We’re never given the chance to find out. Her larger moment of heroism comes not in a violent action of conquering the badguy (though she does beat him with a pipe later... in self-defense of course), but in refusing to compromise to Balem’s ultimatum, either resign her ownership of Earth or allow Balem to murder her family. It’s interesting to note that instead of rocking up and blowing his head off with a blaster, she just tells him to get fucked, which is a cool idea, non-violent protagonists are few and far between. Though the climax would have been far more satisfying had we gotten to know Jupiter much better before she gets to this point. Ultimately, the lack of strong characters make the progression of the movie feel awkward, and the denouement seems to come out of nowhere. It’s really too bad, since many facets of this film’s setup seemed to bear promise, and it’s more tragic than infuriating, leaving an audience with a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Like Jupiter herself, thematic elements are also only half-explored. The idea that genetics have advanced to such a point that life-regeneration has become a reality within this star-spanning civilization (albeit a reality exclusively available to the filthy, insanely wealthy) is an interesting idea, and there’s a lot of potential for the ethical quandaries related to that sort of technology, and what makes it possible. Yet little of this is given attention beyond the horror of Jupiter discovering the Abrasax family regularly kills billions of people for longevity and profit. Is their life-extending operation the only one out there? Or is it an industry? Are there black market dealers who develop and trade their own youth serum off the books? It’s all kind of muddy and little of it is given any explanation or nuance.

As we’ve established, Campbell’s hero’s journey isn’t the only way to go about a sci-fi story, but in Jupiter Ascending it’s like half-started without any of the follow-through, and the characters which should be the heart of the story are greatly lacking any depth. The film’s been compared to a Disney-style princess story, and even references Cinderella at one point, though it does seem to be aiming higher than this. Yet, the lackluster character writing and flat dialogue all make the story somewhat impotent, whatever its aim, leaving the movie looking like a majestically beautiful gild-feathered eagle, which just happens to be blind. Fun to look at, but has absolutely no idea where it’s going. I can’t articulate enough what a shame this all is, since there really are some cool ideas and sci-fi content here. I truly wish, as a sci-fi enthusiast, that Jupiter was truly able to ascend.

I’d recommend it as a fun romp through an intriguing galaxy, but it’s more useful as an example of how to get everything right with a movie, everything other than the thing that really holds it all together: a well-written protagonist. Still, I’m no intersectionalist, but it’s nice to see the girl get the guy at the end of the story, the way guy protagonists get to get the girl at the end of all their stories. That was a pleasant feeling, even if it wasn’t quite earned with everything come before it. Plus, you know; lizardmen, and jet-bikes. The Wachowskis are generally great at what they do though, just maybe have a tough time channeling it. Here’s hoping they can get back to us with something truly badass in future because the level of commitment to the craft seen in this movie is extraordinary, even if the reach exceeds the grasp in this particular case. 

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Star Wars: The great divide between fans and Disney

Since Disney purchased Star Wars in 2012, Star Wars movies and video games have not been meeting fan expectations. The displeasure of fans, particularly since Episode VIII, has been fueling a divide between the fans and Disney, a divide that has been getting worse because of misunderstandings of what fans want, and Disney releasing products that are falling well short of fan expectations. Disney has had problems with miscommunication, misleading information, and an overall misunderstanding of what fans want.

In what follows, I’m going to argue that, despite what the fans say, this is not all Disney’s fault (just like it wasn’t all Lucas’s fault when it was all Lucas’s fault) even though the majority of the blame lies with Disney. I’ll argue that the fans’ finicky nature makes them hard to please, and that, if we’re ever to love Star Wars again, the fans need to be realistic in their expectations and be patient with Disney. We need to give them multiple chances to get it right. And we need to trust that they can. But ultimately it is Disney’s job to solve this problem.

Star Wars Fans:

To fully understand this divide, we must understand the fanbase. The fans are very passionate; some fans even name their kids after heroes from this universe. They search for books, movies, and fan films to further explore the Star Wars Universe. The Fans bring Star Wars to life. They kept the franchise alive during the decade long hiatuses between trilogies. This intense passion makes high expectations for new film and video game releases. The fans believe that their concerns are not being heard and their expectations are not being met. On the contrary, Disney feels like meeting all of the fans expectations is unrealistic. But the responsibility to fix this problem lies mostly with Disney because they, as a company, are supposed to please customers. Disney will need to be creative in their storytelling but keep in the back of their minds what the fans really want, and if they don’t know, they need to do the research to find out what the fans want. Most of Disney’s Star Wars film and video game sales are sold to Star Wars fans and by listening to the fans, Disney will be more profitable and will repair this relationship. It is Disney’s job to earn the fan’s trust back.

Star Wars Movies:

Disney has felt the wrath of Star Wars fans, particularly with Star Wars episode VIII The Last Jedi (warning spoilers below, skip to the end of the paragraph if you do not want spoilers for episode VIII). Fans were excited with the announcement of a new Star Wars Trilogy starting in 2015. But Disney had the difficult task of meeting up to 30 years of fan expectations and theories of what happened to Luke, Leia, and Han. Luke was a broken, defeated man in episode VIII and fans were expecting him to be more invested in the galaxy and more powerful. They felt that Luke did not behave like he would have after episode VI. In episode VII, Snoke emerged as a mysterious villain without any backstory. The creators killed Snoke in episode VIII without offering any information about who he is. The fans felt let down that this mystery wasn’t solved and isn’t likely to be solved. The biggest mystery from episode VII was Rey’s parentage. Fans spent time pouring over footage trying to determine who her parents are. There were theories about her being a granddaughter of Obi-Wan, Palpatine being her father, Luke being her father, and there was even a theory about Rey being a reincarnation of Anakin. Episode VIII revealed that her parents were nobodies. The fans felt like her parents were going to be anyone from the list of fan theories and they were disappointed that her parents were not. Some fans were so angry that they started a petition to remake episode VIII. Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, said this about listening to the fans:

I feel like every Star Wars thing that ever gets made has a loud response, because Star Wars fans are passionate, and that’s awesome, I don’t think it’s possible if you're really telling a story you care about, it’s just not possible to be intellectually processing… what everyone else wants. Nor would it be a good thing, a healthy thing. I don’t think that’s a good way to tell a story.

Rian Johnson was basically saying that it is not a good idea to listen to the fans. The fans had so much lingering unhappiness from episode VIII that they started a movement to boycott Solo, the Star Wars movie that came out after episode VIII. Realistically the directors of Star Wars will not please everyone, but they should keep in mind what the fans want when creating Star Wars stories.

Star Wars Video Games:

While Disney works on the movie aspect of Star Wars, Electronic Arts works on the video game aspect. In 2017, Electronic Arts (otherwise known as EA) released a trailer for Star Wars Battlefront 2. The trailer showed new characters and different eras of Star Wars. This game seemed to be an improvement from the original Battlefront game EA released in 2015. Shortly before the release of the game, fans found out that main heroes such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader were locked in the game and the time it would take to accumulate the in game currency to unlock one hero would be around forty hours . Fans and gamers expect when you buy a sixty dollar game that they would have access to all iconic characters. Electronic Arts countered with a statement on Reddit: “saying that the high unlock requirements were meant to give players a sense of accomplishment,” this comment became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. EA then lowered the cost of heroes by 75 percent.

Not only did they lock heroes behind walls of time, they also had loot boxes,  (loot boxes is a reward system where you can spend real currency or fake in-game earned currency to get random rewards) which have a “chance” of unlocking these heroes. To make it worse, the progression system, where you can level up certain abilities for gameplay was based on the loot box system. This was frustrating for fans because they could not choose certain abilities which they preferred to be upgraded because it was randomized. EA is promoting a pay to win system where the more currency you spend the more likely you are to win in a shameless cash grab. The fans wanted a progression system where they can choose which abilities to upgrade. EA has since replaced the progression system about six months after the game came out.

Recently Electronic Arts announced that they would be releasing new Clone Wars content for Star Wars Battlefront 2, much to the fans delight. EA then posted gameplay pictures and the fans scrounged the pictures looking for clues. The fans found what looks to be a droideka. A droideka is a droid from the prequels, that folds into a ball to move around then opens up to walk and fight. Droidekas are formidable enough to even stop Jedi. The fans were ecstatic. 

Pcgamesn reported EA’s response:

Electronic Arts denied that it was a Droideka at all, suggesting that it was merely environmental clutter. Eventually in a post on reddit the developer admits that they loaded up the scene and discovered that it was indeed a Droideka – although it was an unused static asset that somehow made its way into the backdrop. It has zero integration into the game, with no active plans to put Droidekas into Battlefront 2.

The fans felt deceived, and to make matters worse the droideka was a character the fans had been wanting and asking for, for some time. EA needs to communicate better with the fans.

Battlefront 2 isn’t the only Star Wars game created by EA that has been met with controversy. Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefront 2’s predecessor, according to most fans’ opinions, is not a complete game. Star Wars Battlefront was considered incomplete because there wasn’t a lot of content upon release. When the game was released there was only four different locations, six heroes, and nine multiplayer game modes. There wasn’t a single player campaign or much offline single player content. EA then announced that they would be coming out with a season pass (a season pass is where a company comes out with a bundle of new content, usually separated into three or four releases at a few different times for a price). The season pass included eight new heroes, four different locations, along with four new game modes. The season pass fractured the gamers into 2 groups: people who have the season pass and those who do not. The people who have the season pass would play on the new maps and the people without wouldn’t have access to the new content. The separation of gamers would lead to longer wait times for matches and it would make the matches less full. Gamers and fans were disappointed because they felt that in order to get a full game you would have to pay 110 dollars. Fans would have wanted a complete game upon release, with more single player modes, and a fanbase that was not fractured into two groups.     

Since Star Wars was bought by Disney six years ago, there has only been two video games released and both have been controversial. Before this change in ownership, Star Wars video games came out almost every year. Not all video games released before the sale of Star Wars were received well, but the creators took risks in gameplay and storytelling. They looked to explore the Star Wars Universe. Fans want games that explore different parts of this Universe. They want games that have compelling heroes, interesting storylines and gameplay that allows fans to live out their fantasies. But fans have received games that aren’t creative and they miss the frequency of Star Wars video game releases. Disney and EA’s repeated failure to meet expectations has been increasing this divide.  

Star Wars fan’s passion have also increased the divide:

Some critics are stating that the fanbase is to blame for the divide between fans and Disney. They would say that Star Wars fans are toxic. They would point out the death threats sent by fans to Rian Johnson and Ahmed Best (Jar Jar Binks). They’d show the many careers Star Wars has destroyed such as Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker in episodes II-III) and Jake Lloyd (Anakin Skywalker in episode I). They’d display the harassment of people who are associated with Star Wars such as Daisy Ridley (Rey) and Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), both of whom decided to leave social media because of fans bashing them and their characters. George Lucas, the father of Star Wars eventually decided to leave the franchise by selling it to Disney. George did this because he felt that the world was against him, particularly after the backlash of the prequels. Let me be clear, it is never permissible to bully someone and that respect of opinions, respect of persons should be our priority. It is okay to dislike a character or an actor’s performance, but we should not attack the actor/actress. The critic’s argument appears to be incorrect because the people that are doing the bullying are the minority of Star Wars fans. Critics might also be ask, do the fans truly know what they want? Star Wars episode VII was criticized by fans for being too similar to episode IV and relying too heavily on nostalgia. Disney responded by making episode VIII radically different, and the fans replied saying that it was too different. Two explanations can be stated for this. First the fans might not know what they want but they need to figure that out, or fans might not be united enough for their desires to be heard, or maybe both.

Star Wars is big because of its fanbase. Not many franchises could survive three movies that terribly underperformed. But Star Wars fans need to be patient and realistic in their desires. We need to become more united so that Disney can easily hear us. Fans would like movies about Knights of the Old Republic with the Sith Triumverate, Darth Vader hunting jedi’s before episode IV, Kylo Ren’s backstory with Luke and the fall of the Jedi and subsequent turn of Kylo Ren. This is not supposed to be a bash on Disney and EA, if it wasn’t for you the fans wouldn’t be getting new movies, video games, or stories. But listen to fans and take into account their feedback and opinions. It is not realistic for Disney to appease all of the fans, and that is understandable. Listening is enough and would help Disney make more money and by doing this; Disney would close the divide.

[aion-rsa]

No Time to Die Festival Premiere Confirms James Bond Is Not Moving Release Date

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After taking their No Time to Die title to heart and moving the new 007 adventure from April 2020 to November 2020, and then to April 2021 and now back to the fall of this year, Eon Productions and MGM appear adamant: the 25th James Bond movie will be coming out this year, meeting its September and October release dates. And now, No Time to Die has added a film festival premiere to prove it.

MGM confirmed as much Friday when it announced No Time to Die will have its Swiss premiere at the Zurich Film Festival on Sept. 28, the same day as its UK premiere at the Royal Albert Hall, which is two days ahead of the movie’s slated UK opening on Sept. 30. This also signals the film will not be budging from its U.S. release date of Oct. 8. Bond is back, despite what many in the industry have speculated (and perhaps many more fans have feared).

This follows in the footsteps of Eon and MGM previously insisting at this month’s CinemaCon that No Time to Die would meet its theatrical obligations. Indeed, they apparently brought nine minutes of spectacular Bond footage to assuage concerned theater owners and exhibitors about their commitment. Nonetheless, some fans remained skeptical, not least because of the resurgence of COVID-19 thanks to the Delta variant. Former Eon Partner Sony Pictures even appeared to bank on another 007 delay when they moved Venom: Let There Be Carnage to Oct. 15, one week after Bond’s opening weekend. Perhaps this is another reason rumors abound that Venom 2 is about to be delayed again to January 2022.

Still, Eon’s determination to release No Time to Die in the early autumn of this year makes a certain amount of sense, and not just because longtime fans are desperate to see Daniel Craig’s final outing in the tuxedo. Rather it is the lack of interest from younger potential fans that’s possibly giving producers pause.

No Time to Die was of course the first major blockbuster to move as the breadth of the coronavirus pandemic was only beginning to be understood in March of last year. Before even Universal delayed F9 by 12 months, Eon had already pushed Bond back to November 2020, which would’ve made the gap between Craig’s last two Bond movies a full five years. Of course that proved to still be too close to COVID’s reach. So now No Time to Die is opening six years after 2015’s Spectre.

For context, there’s only been one comparable gap between Bond films in the franchise’s entire history: the time between License to Kill (1989) and GoldenEye (1995). The absence of 007 was so long in that period of time that many industry watchers thought the character had lost his relevancy, particularly with the Soviet Union and Cold War collapsing in the interim. Timothy Dalton, who starred in License, certainly felt the gap was too long to sustain his status as 007; he chose to bow out of GoldenEye, which had the unenviable task of reintroducing 007 to a new post-Cold War world and with a new face in Pierce Brosnan. One of the many reasons that film is remembered so fondly is it proved the skeptics wrong.

Now six years between Bond films has elapsed again, and while diehard fans remain faithful, entire younger generations of potential audience members have come of moviegoing age without seeing a Bond movie in theaters. I can attest that as an eight-year-old in ’95, my point of reference for James Bond before GoldenEye commercials was the cartoon James Bond Jr. Conversely, modern teenage and child moviegoers who dominate blockbuster audiences have been reared to expect a new Marvel Studios movie every three or four months—four of them will release in the back half of 2021 alone! Meanwhile it’s likely many current 16-year-olds today were too young to even be allowed in the theater for Spectre.

Delaying Bond again, and possibly widening the gap to seven years, risks the character’s visibility and popularity aging up and fading away, especially since there will likely be another decent chunk of time after No Time to Die’s release before the next 007 movie premieres—and that one will have to recreate the character from the ground up after Craig’s departure and record-breaking 15-year tenure.

Of course there remains the menace of Delta. Even before this latest variant began dominating headlines, Marvel’s Black Widow set a muted pandemic box office record of $80 million in July. This is a far cry from the numbers posted by, say, an Avengers movie, but it was in the ballpark of a 007 movie. 2015’s Spectre opened to $70 million, which was behind the franchise record of $88 million for 2012’s Skyfall. Granted, those numbers were posted pre-pandemic, and pre-Delta too, but Black Widow also had to compete against itself on Disney+’s Premier Access (and thereby all the instantaneous pirating that invites). By contrast, No Time to Die will be playing only in theaters and around the world for more than a week ahead of its U.S. premiere.

When more than two-thirds of 007’s box office is made from international numbers, there is a reason for Eon and MGM to be wary of relying too heavily on U.S. numbers. And if Delta really stands poised to make winter and spring 2022 as desperate a time or theaters as pre-vaccinated early 2021, it’s better to get Bond out now and remind everyone—including those who don’t already know—that nobody does it better.

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[thecinephale]

Best Movies of 2017

I’m so excited that many of the great films this year did so well at the box office and are such a big part of the awards conversation. I’m grateful that every year brings great works of cinema, but it’s even better when a bunch of people actually get to see them.

This is the first year I’m not counting miniseries. The lines are becoming too blurred between TV and film and also nobody needs me to say again how much I love Jane Campion and Top of the Lake: China Girl.

Still need to see: All the Money in the World, Berlin Syndrome, Graduation, Happy End, In the Fade, Loveless, Lovesong, Prevenge, Princess Cyd, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, A Quiet Passion, Slack Bay, Staying Vertical, Thelma, Woodshock

If your favorite movie isn’t on this list maybe I didn’t see it because a sexual predator was involved or maybe it was just a really crowded year with a lot of really good movies!

Honorable Mentions: -Battle of the Sexes (dir. Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton) -The Beguiled (dir. Sofia Coppola) -Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino) -Colossal (dir. Nacho Vigalondo) -Columbus (dir. Kogonada) -A Fantastic Woman (dir. Sebastian Lelio) -Good Time (dir. Josh and Benny Safdie) -Landline (dir. Gillian Robespierre) -Lemon (dir. Janicza Bravo) -Logan Lucky (dir. Steven Soderbergh) -Parisienne (dir. Danielle Arbid) -Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) -Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins)

15. Planetarium (dir. Rebecca Zlotowski)

The first two movies on this list got fairly bad reviews so take my opinions as you will. And I get why many struggled with this film. Not only is it dealing with a wide swath of issues, but it’s also doing so with a variety of different tools. It dabbles in the occult, but it’s not a horror movie. It’s a period piece, but feels of the present. It suggests romance, suggests betrayal, suggests familial tension, yet… But here’s what’s great. It’s gorgeous. With some of the best cinematography of the year (Georges Lechaptois), some of the best production design of the year (Katia Wyszkop), and easily the best costumes of the year (Anaïs Romand) it’s compulsively watchable. Combine that with Natalie Portman’s incredibly grounding performance and I was more than willing to go along with Zlotowski as she explored the history of images, the power of images, and the danger of images without committing to a conventional structure.

14. It’s Only the End of the World (dir. Xavier Dolan)

I don’t know how anyone could love Dolan’s other films and dislike this one. It’s such a perfect embodiment of Dolan’s career thus far. Dolan’s films are operatic because he understands that for individuals their problems are operatic. Pretty much every family has conflict, disagreements, scars, but that can’t be dismissed so easily when they are OUR conflicts, OUR disagreements, OUR scars. I love how much respect Dolan always has for that truth. The cast is filled with French cinema royalty and they fully live up to the material’s grounded melodrama.

13. The Lure (dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)

There’s one key reason this vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid works in a way that other adaptations fall short. Sure, the sheer audacity of that genre mashup makes for a fascinating and unique viewing experience. But what ultimately makes it work emotionally and thematically is that it’s about two mermaids. This was always intended as the initial concept was a horror-less, mermaid-less musical about the Wrońska Sisters (who wrote all the songs in this). But still Smoczynska and her screenwriter Robert Bolesto really manage to keep all that’s wonderful about the source material while contextualizing its complexity. I’ve softened on the Disney version over the years, but it still can be painful watching Ariel change herself for a man (especially when one of those changes is not speaking). Here the presence of her sister, sometimes judging, always worried, creates a circumstance that allows this film’s “little mermaid” to make the realistic mistakes of a teen girl in love with a boy and in hate with herself, without the filming giving its seal of approval. There’s no judgment one way or the other. It’s just real. All that aside this is a vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid. Like, come on. Go buy the Criterion edition!!

12. The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean)

This is the only film on this list that isn’t available to watch. I was lucky enough to see it at the New York Film Festival two years ago, then it had a one week run at Metrograph, then nothing. The real shame is that this isn’t some avant-garde headscratcher to be watched in university classrooms and backroom Brooklyn bars. This is a deeply humanistic, very accessible movie that almost demands wide conversation. And given its setting at an acting conservatory I especially wish all the actors in my life could watch it. Well, hopefully it pops up on some streaming site someday. But until then check out this early Alison Maclean short film that’s equally wonderful albeit wildly different in tone (this one is more like feminist Eraserhead): Kitchen Sink (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt58gDgxy9Q&t=1s).

11. Novitiate (dir. Margaret Betts)

The history of cinema is a history of queer subtext. But it’s 2017 and while it may be fun to speculate whether Poe Dameron is gay and I’d be the first to say “Let It Go” is a perfect coming out anthem, it’s no coincidence that the best queer allegories of the year ALSO had explicitly queer characters. This film in particular is so special because it’s both the story of a young woman’s repressed sexuality and a story about how faith of all things is comparable to said sexuality. Sister Cathleen’s mother does not understand her affinity for Jesus the way many parents do not understand their children’s sexuality or gender. While coming out stories are a staple of very special sitcom episodes, I’ve never seen one that captures the pained misunderstanding the way this film does. Part of this is due to wonderful performances by Julianne Nicholson and Margaret Qualley and part of it is that religion is oddly the perfect stand-in for queerness… even as it represses queerness within this world. The movie begins with a series of flashbacks that feel stilted and conventional in a way that’s totally incongruous with the rest of the movie. It’s unfortunate because otherwise this would’ve been even higher on my list. But this is Betts’ first film and the majority of it is really special. And while I do think she’ll make even better films in what will hopefully be a long career, this one is still really worth checking out. I mean, I haven’t even brought up Melissa Leo’s frightening and absurd (yet somehow grounded?) performance that makes Meryl Streep in Doubt look like Amy Adams in Doubt.

10. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

As marketing extraordinaire A24 has managed to spread this film to a wider audience, they’ve made a lot of fuss about this film’s political depiction of Florida’s “hidden homeless,” Baker’s approach of mixing professional and non-professional actors (shout-out to Bria Vinaite who deserves as much awards attention as Willem Dafoe), and how the film “feels like a documentary.” And while I’m glad this strategy has worked, I tend to balk at the tendency of marketers and critics alike to call any movie with characters who aren’t all rich and/or white “like a documentary.” But regardless of its realism which I feel in no position to comment on, it’s certainly a great film about childhood and fantasy and how sometimes it’s easier to be a parent to everyone except your own kids. And not to build it up too much if you haven’t already seen it, but the ending is truly one of the best endings in recent years, not only in and of itself, but how it contextualizes and deepens everything that came before.

9. Whose Streets? (dir. Sabaah Folayan)

This is an exceptionally well-constructed film. I feel like most documentaries in this style have great moments but show a lack of restraint in the editing room and/or struggle to find a clear narrative. But this film moves along at an exceptional pace while still feeling comprehensive. Every sequence feels essential even when the scope expands beyond the two central individuals. This can be credited in part to the editing, but the succinctness wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the footage captured. The intimate moments we’re able to watch are stunning and enhance the already high stakes of the surrounding film, the ongoing narrative of the country. This is an essential reminder of the humanity behind activism, the sacrifice behind news stories, and that for many people political engagement is not something to do with an open Sunday afternoon but a necessary part of survival.

8. Their Finest (dir. Lone Scherfig)

Easily the best Dunkirk-related film of the year, this is the rare movie about movies that doesn’t feel self-satisfied, but instead truly captures the joy of cinema and storytelling. It’s odd to me that romantic melodrama, a genre so celebrated when it comes to classic film, is often written off as fluff in contemporary cinema. Yes, this movie is romantic. Yes, this movie is wildly entertaining. But it’s also painful, it’s also telling a story of women screenwriters we haven’t heard before, it’s also showing how powerful art can be as an escape and a mirror in difficult times. If you’re interested in filmmaking and/or British people, check this out on Hulu. Gemma Arterton is really wonderful and Sam Claflin is good eye candy if you’re into that sort of thing.

7. Starless Dreams (dir. Mehrdad Oskouei)

This documentary about a group of teenage girls living in an Iranian “Correctional and Rehabilitation Center” is proof that sometimes the best approach to the medium is simplicity. Oskouei pretty much just lets the girls talk. But it’s truly a testament to his abilities as a filmmaker (and person) and the girls’ vulnerability and storytelling prowess that the movie remains compelling throughout. As the girls tell their stories it becomes clear that the center isn’t simply a prison, but also almost a utopic escape from the daily horrors they faced outside. Both options are so completely insufficient when compared to the lives these young women deserve this realization is enraging. And while the film takes place in Iran it doesn’t require a lot of effort to realize young women have similar stories and circumstances all over the world. This movie is on iTunes and I really, really recommend checking it out. The subject matter is heavy, but because the girls are allowed to determine the narrative it never feels maudlin or unbearable and at times is even quite funny and joyous.

6. Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau)

I really appreciated how Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl captured the all-consuming lust of teenagehood. So, um, think that movie, except cannibalism. A lot of cannibalism. I feel torn between being honest about how truly gross this movie can be and pretending otherwise because I really don’t want to scare anyone away. I’ll put it this way. It’s really, really worth it to watch this through your fingers if you even maybe think you could handle it. Because it’s just a really great movie about being a teenage girl, discovering sexuality, being away from home for the first time, having a sister, having a first crush, a first sexual experience, feeling completely out of control of your desires and needs. Hey, even Ducournau insists this isn’t a horror movie. So don’t eat anything beforehand, but definitely check this out.

5. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)

I hardly need to add any analysis to what has easily been the most talked about and written about movie of the year. But I just need to say that it makes me so happy that a socially aware horror movie (the best subset of my favorite genre) not only made a huge amount of money but is also considered an awards frontrunner. That is so wonderfully baffling to me and a testament to the greatness of this movie. Many great horror movies capitalize on people’s fear of otherness, but those who are othered in our society are much more likely to be victims than villains. That Peele managed to show this without ever feeling like he was exploiting real pain is truly an accomplishment. The tonal balance this film achieves is certainly something I’ll study when I make a horror movie writing back to Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, etc.

4. Faces Places (dir. Agnès Varda, JR)

Agnès Varda has spent her entire career blending fact and fiction, opening up her own life for her art. But there’s something different about this film which is likely to be her last. While so much of her work places her vivacious spirit front and center this film feels almost like a cry of humanity. Oddly enough I’d compare it to Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in that it seems to say, “Don’t fetishize my happiness, don’t mock my joy, don’t infantilize me, just because you can’t enjoy life like I can.” I look to Varda as the kind of artist (and person) I want to be in how open she always seems to be. But what this film made me realize is that part of that openness is how sad she can be, how angry she can be. Varda is often called “the grandmother of the French New Wave.” I guess this is the only way the film community knows how to contextualize a woman being the one to start arguably the most influential film movement. Varda is the same age as all those guys! She’s not the grandmother! She just happened to make a bold, experimental film about five years ahead of the rest of them. By ending with Godard, and pairing up with JR who is basically an incarnation of Godard and friends as young men, Varda is really exploring her place in film history and the world, and how difficult it is to be to be a pioneer. No country has more contemporary films directed by women than France and this is in a large part due to Varda. But being the one to create that path is exhausting. I realize I’m making what’s easily the most life-affirming, humanist film of the year sound like an angry, self-eulogy, but I think this aspect of the film and Varda’s career should not be ignored. If you’ve never seen anything by Varda, this film will read very differently, but still be wonderful (and honestly more joyous). I recommend seeing it, watching 20 of her other films, and then seeing it again.

3. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

The trailer for this film shows the main character, Elisa played by the always wonderful Sally Hawkins, doing her daily routine. Alarm, shining shoes, being late to work, etc. But even the redband trailer leaves out one of her daily activities: masturbating. Maybe it’s odd to associate masturbation with ambition, but the choice to show that early on and then repeatedly seems like a perfect microcosm of why this film is so great. It’s not afraid. Guillermo del Toro has made a wonderful career out of celebrating “the other” through monster movie pastiches, but this to me is his very best film because of how willing it is to be both clear and complicated. This movie is many things, but one of those things is a queer love story. And even though human woman/amphibian man sex is maybe even more taboo to show on screen than say eating a semen filled peach, this movie just goes for it. I’m not sure if this movie succeeds in everything it tries to do but I so deeply admire how much it tries. Not only is one of Elisa’s best friends gay, but we spend a significant amount of time getting to know that character and see that maybe his obsolete career hurts him even more. Not only is Elisa’s other best friend black, but we see how being a black woman affects her specifically in what is expected of her versus her husband. Fantasy and sci-fi often use real people’s struggles as source material for privileged protagonists, and while this film certainly does that, it works because the real people are still shown on screen. Also del Toro is a master of cinematic craft so this is really a pleasure to watch.

2. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

Before diving into this specific film it’s worth noting that this is one of six debut features on this list. It’s so exciting that we’re hopefully going to get full and illustrious careers from all of these people. But when it comes to Gerwig it feels like we already have. She has been proof that if the film community is going to insist on holding onto the auteur theory, they at least need to acknowledge that actors and writers can be auteurs. Gerwig is known for being quirky, but this really sells her talent short. She is clearly someone who has a deep understanding of cinema and, more importantly, a deep understanding of people. Part of being a great director is casting great actors and then trusting them and it’s so clear that’s what happened on this film (let me just list off some names: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith, I mean come on). They really make her wonderful script come alive. This is a great movie about female friendship and a great movie about mother-daughter relationships, but more than anything it’s a great movie about loving and hating a hometown. Even though I’ve only seen the film twice I think back on moments in the film like I do my own adolescent memories. They feel familiar even when I don’t directly relate to them. This movie feels big in a way only a small movie can.

1. Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees)

This is when my penchant for hyperbole really comes back to bite me in the ass. I use the word masterpiece way too much. But when I say Mudbound is a masterpiece I don’t just mean it’s a great movie I really loved that I recommend everyone see. I mean, it’s The Godfather. It’s Citizen Kane. It’s the rare movie that has a perfect script, perfect cinematography, perfect performances, is completely of its time, and will stand the test of time. If we ever get to a place where art by black women is justly celebrated it will be in the 2070 AFI top 10. It’s that good. Part of what sets the movie apart is its almost absurd ambition. It breaks so many movie rules (not only does it have heavy narration, but it has heavy narration from multiple characters), and yet it always works. I love small movies, I love weird and flawed movies, but there is something so spectacular about watching something like Dee Rees’ third feature. I’m so excited to watch this movie again, to study it, to spend a lifetime with it. I feel like it really got lost in the shuffle by being released on Netflix, but that also means right now it’s on Netflix and you, yes YOU, almost certainly have or have access to Netflix. So you could watch it. Right now. Watch it. Stop reading. Turn the lights off. Find the biggest TV or computer screen you have so you can really appreciate Rachel Morrison’s cinematography and watch it. It is perfection wrapped in a bow of perfection and I really must insist you watch it.

Television!

Still Need to Catch Up On: The Girlfriend Experience (S2), Queen Sugar (S2)

Honorable Mentions: -Big Little Lies -Broad City (S3) -Girls (S6) -Insecure (S2) -Master of None (S2) -One Mississippi (S2) -Orange is the New Black (S5) -Search Party (S2) -Shots Fired

10. Twin Peaks: The Return 9. Jane the Virgin (S3/4) 8. Transparent (S4) 7. Better Things (S2) 6. I Love Dick 5. The Good Place (S1/2) 4. Sense8 (S2) 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (S2/3) 2. Top of the Lake: China Girl 1. The Leftovers (S3)

[darrenfranich]

RIP, Star Wars

Of course Star Wars isn’t dead, you say, it’s going to live forever, didn’t you read that Wired story? But, counterargument: Something can be dead and still be here. Peter Cushing died in 1994, and he was in as many films last year as Rachel McAdams. Alec Guinness died in 2000, but if you ask people "who is Obi-Wan Kenobi in real life,” I bet the majority of people over 22 won’t say “Ewan McGregor.” Jesus, look how long ago Jesus died, how many times you think he came up in conversation today? The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past. But that doesn’t mean it’s the future.

A lot of people think Star Wars is still alive, that this franchise still has a pulse. Look at The Force Awakens, all those young people swinging lightsabers, wow a desert planet AND an ice planet AND a forest planet, two billion dollars! Look at Rogue One, haha that droid was funny, one billion dollars! A new trilogy! A Han Solo trilogy! Bounty hunter spinoff! Trevorrow! Trevorrow!

Message to everyone who said they loved Rogue One: You can never complain again about...

....Hollywood endlessly developing franchises, remakes and reboots and sequels and spinoffs, take that complaint out of your arsenal, you saw Rogue One so you gave them the ammunition...

...the Hollywood studios’ utter disrespect for filmmakers as anything but traffic-cop content creators...

...young filmmakers’ utter lack of interest in any human behavior not previously observed in the fantasy films they enjoyed when they were children, why develop your dream project for seven years, your pal Colin got all the money for Jurassic Park 4 and Star Wars 9...

...modern fantasy’s dedication to the Chosen One narrative, yes Jyn was a Chosen One even if she wasn’t a Jedi, her dad was SO IMPORTANT and her foster dad was SO IMPORTANT and she inspired the Rebellion to become a Rebellion, if you think Rogue One is about “normal people” go watch an actual movie about normal people sometime, go watch I, Daniel Blake, and if you don’t want to see I, Daniel Blake that’s fine, but consider the possibility that you know very little about real people and movies...

...actors’ inability to find a good movie to demonstrate their talents because they’re too busy chasing relevancy convincing themselves there is some honor in spitshining greenscreen melodrama, did you see fucking see Boyega in Attack the Block, god damn that is a fucking star, how much of this next decade will be Star Wars and Pacific Rim and surely someone on his team would love to fit in one more, look at Jennifer Lawrence, she just signed up for another X-Men even though she stopped caring halfway through First Class, “But Jennifer” her people said, “Passengers, Jennifer, Passengers,” hey for real no judgements and I like Pacific Rim, and I believe in anything sight unseen, I believe in Pacific Rim 2, I mean look at Christian he’s great and he did Batman and maybe this is my Batman is the rallying cry of every actor who does these movies, nobody ever dares to consider this is their Terminator Salvation, now go back and watch Terminator Salvation and marvel at how similar it is to Rogue One, it might as well be Rogue One, fucking Terminator fucking Salvation even did the whole digital-actor thing six years early and it actually looked better because the Terminator isn’t supposed to be a person, but people used to care when humans didn’t look like humans..

....and you can’t complain about the fact that Disney just fired the first good Star Wars directors since Irvin Kershner.

You can’t complain about any of this, because it’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s us, the people who see these movies. I didn’t like Rogue One, but I saw it, god damn me. This thing I’m writing is whose fault it is.

No, this wasn’t LucasFilm’s fault, although of course LucasFilm is just another lame Silicon Valley company pretending to explore bold new ground while actually just maintaining their consumer base with a religious dedication to the sacred trademarked IP. And of course LucasFilm is no better than any Hollywood studio, sorry George, we all know Hollywood can be awful place but the studios you despised didn’t just make Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and now all the studios have become just like you, all they want is their own Star Wars, look in the mirror, see the face behind Darth Vader’s decapitated helmet, recognize yourself, time to build your museum in Los Angeles, see if you can defeat history by writing your own, 50 miles northwest and 40 miles southeast of your museum the Kathy Kennedys of Reagan and Nixon are trying to do the same thing.

And this isn’t Disney’s fault, because of course Disney doesn’t care about filmmakers. When has Disney ever cared about filmmakers? Why would you ever think that? Have you seen Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s movies, all that playful deconstruction? What makes you think Disney fucking wants to be deconstructed? Remember when Shrek came out and the nice twist at the end was that the beauty became a beast because actually LOOKS DON’T MATTER? Remember 17 years after Shrek when Disney released yet another movie about a beast who becomes a cute doofus because sure looks don’t matter but also HUBBA HUBBA? Quick, guess which made more, Shrek or Beauty and the Beast Except Now Nobody Can Sing? Disney is an engorged capitalist carcharodonic fun-monster, it moves ever onward devouring childhood and recycling its glittering defecation into some untold generation’s primal dreams, Disneyland’s great, I love it, but it’s not what you’d call a place that is open to bold new ideas, they just replaced the Twilight Zone ride with a Guardians of the Galaxy ride, I hear there was a controversy about that, either the term “controversy” has lost all meaning or nothing matters the way it’s supposed to.

What an age we live in. Directors are fired midway through production of their movie, and the charge is serious creative differences between the filmmakers and the producers and the studio. Wow, this is some serious Easy Riders Raging Bulls shit! Man, what were they working on? A bold political statement about our tattered society? A scathing dark comedy guaranteed to outrage everyone and thrill future generations? A boundary-bursting romance that promises to break down our preconceived notions of sexuality? A wild provocation from a fiercely independent creative spirit? What was this film that was too dangerous to be made, your grandchildren will ask you. Was that your generation’s Brazil? Your generation’s Dr. Strangelove? Another Brokeback Mountain? Something that can measure up to the sheer explosive power to Wertmuller’s Swept Away? WHAT WAS THIS WORK OF RADICAL CINEMA your granchildren will ask WHAT WAS IT THAT OFFENDED THE GATEKEEPERS SO?  

...it was tenth film in a franchise, or eleventh or thirteenth depending on if you count the animated film and the Ewok movies.

And it was a prequel about the most popular character in the franchise.

This is what we have creative differences about now. “Is the Han Solo movie going to be too funny????” I guess, or maybe “Is the Han Solo movie going to match up to Rogue One?”

Rogue One, LOL. They pushed out that director after production and nobody cared. They spent half the movie flying random places with random people for no motivation besides SAVE THE UNIVERSE and MY DAD!!!! and nobody cared. They spent the whole movie talking about how cool the Death Star was literally 39 years after the movie that already showed you how cool the Death Star was, and nobody cared. Felicity Jones nudged a satellite dish a few degrees left as the big climax and nobody cared, hahaha wow look they took stock footage of all those X-Wing pilots and made the stock footage look more modern-er than before, “Let’s see it again but now more modern-er!” seems to be the rallying cry of us all now, of audiences and of critics and of people everywhere who should want something new.

It’s all so funny. What a laugh. This will make such fine subtext for 23 Jump Street. I blame myself, you should blame yourself, feel bad about this, we caused this. Take nothing seriously but our own complicity. And next year, whenever Han Solo Origins: A Star Wars Story directed by Phil Lord & Chris Miller & [insert scab here] opens in theaters, ask yourself: Do you have to see this movie? Consider advice from Jyn Erso. Isn’t this a rebellion? Are you ever going to rebel?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, seriously, not joking, I just remembered: That line didn’t make it into the movie. It was just in the marketing. Star Wars sells rebellion, but nobody involved with Star Wars – not the characters, not the filmmakers, not the audience – rebels against anything anymore.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Bizarrely Specific Things Every Sci-Fi Movie Does

Anything is possible in science fiction! You can explore the future, delve into the past, chronicle alien civilizations, and probe the endless possibilities of time and space. The genre is limited by nothing but human imagination. Unfortunately, human imagination seems like it was depleted sometime in the 1970s, because no matter what obscure corner of the galaxy you warp to, some things never change. Like how …

5

The Only Design Philosophy In The Future Is “More Angles!”

Coming up with a new sci-fi aesthetic is tough. Luckily, there’s a shortcut that does about 80 percent of the work: Add some unnecessary angles! Tilt half of it, chop off a corner — it doesn’t matter how you make those angles happen, or what they might possibly be good for. Everything in the future has at least seven unnecessary zigzags.

Universal TelevisionThis isnt paper; this is space paper. You can tell because they cut the corners off, as is space custom.

Most cars in modern sci-fi movies are nothing but contemporary designs with all the curves replaced by straight lines. Here’s one from the original Total Recall that is so much from the future that you might almost say it looks stupid and ridiculous.

TriStar Pictures“WAOW, LOOK AT DAT IDIOT CAHHH. DIS IS A VERY DUMB FUTAH.”

The 2017 Ghost In The Shell remake took the same approach, and wound up with a “futuristic car” that more resembles a 1983 Datsun.

Paramount PicturesAnd made less at the box office than a 1983 Datsun is worth.

After 2025, all windows are uselessly weird trapezoids. Here’s what the poor bastards in Empire Strikes Back have to look through when they want to see outer space:

LucasfilmBetter check your blind spot. All 26 of them.

Jupiter Ascending also knows that good science fiction is all about inconvenient angles and unnecessary corners.

Warner Bros. PicturesIt is the year 2060. Window manufacturers have gone mad, and the whole world suffers.

Here’s a cockpit from Prometheus, apparently designed by a drunken spider:

20th Century FoxThe script was written the same way.

In the future, we will invent six brand-new, never-before-seen angles, and we will use them everywhere. From the landscaping in Star Trek …

Paramount Pictures

… to the hallways in Star Wars …

Lucasfilm

… to the maniacally uncomfortable tables in Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Marvel Studios

It’s not clear if this is all some fashion trend or the side effect of cosmic radiation on the human brain. All we know is that no one in the future can stack anything, and it takes 15 hours to measure a room for carpet.

4

All Aliens Eat Bugs

Here on Earth, we eat a wide variety of food. In fact, whole industries have been built around preparing, packaging, marketing, and ultimately ingesting food. Seriously, if you haven’t heard of food, you should Google it. People go nuts for this stuff. But in science fiction, aliens eat insects, grubs, or worms. That’s it. Aliens might have similar dinnerware and mealtime rituals, but they almost always eat swarming plates of live bugs. Take, for instance, the Klingons. They’re a proud warrior race that should probably be eating seared Gorn ribeye for every meal, but instead they sit down to bowls of worms, like a bunch of chickens. They gussy them up like they’re some kind of delicacy called Gagh, but look at it. It’s worms.

CBS TelevisionThe Klingons might be brave warriors, but they eat like gullible Earth catfish. TuHmoH!

In Babylon 5, a series for nerds who think Star Trek is too approachable, everyone’s favorite food is Spoo. It’s a bunch of cubed worms, and the best way to eat it is when it’s very old. If you’d like to read more about Spoo, please find the angriest comment below describing how we obviously didn’t do our research, or we would know only the Centauri prefer their Spoo to be aged.

Warner Bros. TelevisionAnd now try new Spoo: Chocolate Starlight!

If you’re from outer space, all sustenance comes from slimy, wriggling worms. Here on our planet, we chop and saute and burrito, but aliens find that ridiculous. Here is the alien food from the Fallout series: a sloppy-ass worm on a metal tray.

Bethesda SoftworksYou couldn’t slice that thing over a salad?

In Titan A.E., the chef, who is himself a beetle monster, is inexplicably proud to offer up Akrennian Beetle Sashimi, which is just a writhing trough of insect larva. That’s like going to a human buffet and finding it filled with screaming baby monkeys. In other words, tantalizing and delicious.

20th Century Fox“No offense, chef, but … are these, like, your kids?”

3

Everything In The Future Is Asian (Except The Cast)

If there’s a single unifying element in modern science fiction, it’s this: Asian stuff is sick as hell. From the 1980s on, we pretty much decided that any sci-fi future looks like somebody opened a Radio Shack and a Benihana in the same space. In every dork’s favorite failed show, Firefly, they live in a future so Asian-influenced that people curse in fluent Mandarin, and yet none of them seem to know any Chinese people.

In Blade Runner, the entirety of Los Angeles is a grimy, rain-drenched Little Tokyo. This makes a bit more sense than LA becoming a grimy, rain-drenched El Salvador, but it still has a lot of pagodas and geisha for a multicultural cyber metropolis.

Warner Bros. PicturesNothing says “Future LA” like seventh-century Japan?

And when they rebooted Total Recall to be less fun and more terrible, they decided that “the future” meant an Asian-style parasol in the hand of every extra.

Columbia Pictures“I don’t even think it’s raining.” — Colin Farrell

Even Demolition Man, a movie so stupid it imagined Pizza Hut and Taco Bell would be the food of the future (when it will clearly be Carl’s Jr. and Kenny Rogers Roasters), made sure that even after all culture has been homogenized, kimonos will hang on.

Warner Bros. PicturesAn outfit that says, “My anime pillow wasn’t as durable as I was promised,” and a haircut that says, “Let me speak to your manager.”

All of this would barely be worth mentioning, except that none of these series have an Asian person as anything but an extra, for the most part. It’s as if every sci-fi universe shares a common history wherein all the important Asians were wiped out and the architects of their genocide said, “Oooh, but let’s keep their furniture and robes!”

2

Artificial Humans Always Involve Some Kind Of Milky Liquid

If you see an android in a sci-fi movie, then it’s almost guaranteed that sucker is somehow dependent on white goo. It’s as if robot scientists said, “Look, we can build you a perfect replica of a person, but it only works if we fill it with satin finish house paint.”

In Westworld, the process of creating a host involves submerging an almost-complete body — full skeleton, developed muscles — into a vat of thick milky stuff. The production crew calls it “the skin dip,” and it’s a protein liquid that builds all of the body’s remaining tissues using sci-fi magic.

HBO“BEHOLD AND TREMBLE AT THE HORROR MILK HAS CREATED.” — The National Dairy Council

They probably got that from the original Ghost In The Shell (seen again in the live-action remake), wherein the final stage of the Major’s birth involves dipping her body into a vat of white liquid. Again, a mechanical skeleton monster goes in, and a sexy, sexy human comes out.

Paramount Pictures“Warning: Your sex robot will ship covered in a flaky layer of dried goo. And it won’t be the first time, amirite?” — Shell Instruction Manual

The Alien franchise also features human replicants and white goo. It’s just that this goo squirts out of them like a terrible milk truck accident any time they get hurt. We first saw it 1979, when Ash was torn apart in Alien.

20th Century FoxHe took it pretty well.

We saw it again in 1986, when Lance Henriksen got himself gutted in Aliens, and it happened more recently in 2017’s Alien: Covenant. Basically, any time someone makes a movie about human-like robots is a great time to be a white fluid salesman.

1

In The Future, There Will Be One Font To Rule Them All

Any fully realized sci-fi world contains many different societies, nations, and peoples. This should mean a huge variety in graphic design and typography, but apparently there will be a moment in our future when we all come together and decide that we need only one font: Eurostile.

If the future needs to say something, it does so in Eurostile. The font was originally created by an Italian designer in 1962, and it’s all sci-fi movies have needed since. Here are but a few of the universes which Eurostile has taken over, as well as a fun rhyme you can use to remember them all.

PixarIt’s the only font to survive the apocalypse of Wall-E …

Universal Pictures… and its used to describe Jaegers as they battle kaiju near Bali.

TriStar PicturesIt’s the default web font in Johnny Mnemonic‘s time …

TriStar Pictures… and it beat out Jokerman and Wingdings to be the font of District 9.

Universal PicturesIt’s used on the boats docked at Jurassic World …

Orion Pictures… and you can see it in RoboCop, right behind this mean girl.

TriStar PicturesYou may not remember Elysium, but it too used that font …

TriStar Pictures… and so did Total Recall, on every subway and restaurant.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Sony Pictures ClassicsThe Lego Movie used it, as well as Moon …

Walt Disney Pictures… Eurostile even showed up in the Big Hero 6 cartoon.

Universal PicturesIn Back To The Future, it made energy from waste …

20th Century Fox… and you can spot it in Alien 3, if you have no fucking taste.

PixarYou’ll spot Eurostile in The Incredibles if you have a keen eye …

Warner Bros. Pictures… and in Edge Of Tomorrow, as you watch Tom Cruise die.

TriStar PicturesStarship Troopers used it too. Would you like to know more?

CBS TelevisionThen watch Star Trek: Discovery, you font-hungry whore!

Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon, where he writes. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs.

For more poetry like that, check out Even Superheroes Have Bad Days.

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Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_25309_5-bizarrely-specific-things-every-sci-fi-movie-does.html

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[tortuga-aak]

How a harsh criticism turned 'Coco' into Pixar's most uniquely made movie yet

Disney/Pixar

"Coco" is the latest Pixar movie and is directed by Lee Unkrich ("Toy Story 3").

The movie focuses on the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead"), and marks the first time Pixar has told a story around a cultural celebration.

Unkrich brought on cultural consultants to make sure the story was representing Mexican culture correctly. This is the first time a Pixar movie has welcomed in outsiders to a project still in production.

This came after the Latino community protested Disney for attempting to patent the phrase "Dia del los Muertos" for the movie.

Director Lee Unkrich was hot off the box office success and Oscar win for 2010’s “Toy Story 3” when he delved into making a movie that focused on the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos. Seven years later, the project now known as “Coco” is finally ready for release (in theaters November 22), but the experience of making it was unlike any other Pixar movie before. 

Under the watchful eye of Pixar/Walt Disney Animation head John Lasseter, Disney animation has been a powerhouse for over two decades. A big reason for that is the visionaries behind the scenes who are always looking for a challenge. For Unkrich, it was the Day of the Dead holiday that really fascinated him as an entry into telling a story. 

“It wasn't until I started to learn about the tradition, and what it was truly all about, and its history, that I started to really see the potential of telling a story that could be very adventurous and visually dazzling, full of music and color, but could also have a real emotional resonance,” Unkrich told Business Insider. “And that's what we're all really looking for ultimately in the stories that we tell. We don't want to just tell a story that's gimmicky and clever.”

It would be new terrain for Pixar: the first time it would tell a story around a cultural celebration. But Lasseter was game. He gave Unkrich the okay and the filmmaker got started in September of 2011.

The story follows a young boy named Miguel who secretly wants to be a famous musician, though his family has forbidden music after his great-great-grandfather left the family to seek out fame as a musician. While celebrating Day of the Dead, Miguel magically ends up in the Land of the Dead, and must go on a journey to find his way back to the living while also searching for his great-great-grandfather.

Disney/Pixar“Many of us have lost loved ones and have spend time thinking about them and wanting to keep their memories alive, so we felt even though this was a culturally specific setting for our story that it was going to be full of ideas that people all over the world could relate to,” Unkrich said.

But finding the right tone for the culture it was spotlighting turned out to be the project’s biggest challenge. At first, to stay clear of stereotypes and making sure to be culturally respectful, Unkrich said he used many Pixar artists and employees who are Mexican or Mexican-American as a sounding board. However, a major roadblock hit the production in 2013 when Disney filed an application to patent Dia de los Muertos for the release of the movie. The Latino community went into an uproar on social media and a petition to stop Disney went up on Change.org and received over 21,000 signatures. The company quickly withdrew the application.

Unkrich admits making “Coco” has been a learning process from the start, but he said they really hit their stride when they put together a group of cultural consultants. Made up of people like Lalo Alcaraz — author of the nationally syndicated comic “La Cucaracha,” who was one of the most vocal opponents of the patent — and Latino playwright Octavio Solis, the group would meet with Unkrich, codirector Adrian Molina, and their team every few months and look at the development of the project. It was the first time on any Pixar movie that outsiders were allowed into the studio’s creative process. And getting the feedback of outsiders didn’t stop there.

“We ended up bringing in periodically big groups of all sorts of folks from the Latino community, from artists to writers to political figures to media executives, because we wanted to get a lot of different perspectives,” Unkrich said. “What we quickly learned is there is no one right way to tell a story set in the Latino community, there are a lot of different opinions. Part of our challenge was trying to navigate all those different opinions to figure out our path forward.”

These meetings with the consultants and Latino community didn’t lead to any major changes to the story, Unkrich said, however they were responsible for many small tweaks that increased the movie’s connection to Mexican culture.

One example is a change in how the character of Miguel’s grandmother, Abuelita, disciplines people.

Disney/Pixar“In her earlier conception we gave her a wooden spoon that was tucked into her apron string and she would whip that out and kind of hit you to express displeasure,” Unkrich said. “It was at one of our earlier screenings that a couple of our cultural consultants said, ‘A spoon has nothing to do with Latino culture, she should really pull off her chancla, her slipper, and hit them with it.’ And that was the first time we learned about la chancla, and we embraced the idea fully. That one adjustment has proven to win us a lot of points in the Latino community because it's something a lot of people grew up fearing.”

Then there were the factors surrounding the movie that were beyond Unkrich and Pixar’s control, like how immigration suddenly became a hot-button topic after the election of Donald Trump as president. Unkrich said he and his crew were in Mexico on election night, recording music by local musicians for the movie. He said the news of the Trump win didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits, but he does recognize the current climate about immigration and race, and how it’s changed substantially since back when they began working on “Coco.”

“I feel like this has been a confusing time for many people, and there's lots of negativity in the air, and we just hope that with this film we are bringing some needed positivity,” he said.

Unkrich doesn’t know if “Coco” can be a unifier, but he does believe that telling stories like this is important.

“I think a lot of great change in history has come from stories and storytelling, there's a power to it,” he said. “The one thing that everyone knows for sure these days is that we're living in super unpredictable times. All I can really say is that I firmly believe that by bringing this movie out we're trying to be part of the solution rather than trying to be part of the problem.”

Youtube Embed: http://www.youtube.com/embed/Rvr68u6k5sI Width: 560px Height: 315px

NOW WATCH: The most underrated foods — according to Anthony Bourdain and Danny Bowien

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[jewelridersarchive]

Greg Autore & The Toy Design of Jewel Riders - Part Two

We’ve got a really special interview to share with all of you today! You may remember back in December we had the opportunity to feature several of the toy designs for the never-produced third wave of toys (http://www.jewelridersarchive.com/posts/greg-autore-and-the-toy-design-of-jewel-riders/). We reached out to Greg Autore, the Art Director behind Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, with a few more questions after featuring the designs, and are so, so excited to share his responses with you. Please enjoy!

The Jewel Riders Archive: First off, can you tell us about your history as a toy designer?

Greg Autore: I started in 1984 as an intern with Mattel and am still designing toys and children’s products. Toys I have worked on (a short list): All of Sabrina the Teenage witch, All Disney fashion dolls from 1989 to 1994 (that is a bigger story to tell sometime), first year of Disney Musical Princesses (I used those bodies and heads for the first Gwen dolls), Star Wars, Popples, Hooks, Peppermint Rose, GI Joe, Trolls…and tons more. In those cases I had a major impact on all those lines. But there are many other smaller things, for instance, I created the very first Barbie’s little sister doll Stacie. I saw a gap in the play pattern since there was no child doll close to the age of the children buying Barbie. (Skipper was a young teen and the babies from Heart Family were toddlers.) So, when I was put on a short term team of cross functional designers to come up with new concepts, Stacie is one thing I did. I used the body from Lady Lovely Locks and took the head from Skipper and chemically shrunk the head to fit. After it was accepted, one of the Barbie designers cleaned it up. She was originally designed to be wearing her big sister Barbie’s pink letter jacket. It still has the basic look from what I designed.

JRA: Wow, that’s an incredible background in toy design. But how did you get involved with Jewel Riders?

GA: Part of the Kenner process is to always look for new properties or inventions. When they arrive, Design and Marketing review them and some are picked to go to the next step to make test models and get early consumer feedback. I was given several scripts and loved “Enchanted Camelot” when I first read it. So, I pushed for getting it into the tests and was assigned to adapt it into a viable toy line. I was told that the production company was willing to work with us (Kenner) to make it better. It was not until after the test results came back favorable and we decided to push forward that I met Robert Mandell and really dug into the project.

Incidentally, “Princess Tenko” was in the same round of testing, and I did make the models for that also, but it did not score as high. Later, Mattel picked up that line but it did not perform well.

Other reasons why I was given the line was probably due to my work with Disney dolls at Mattel. At that time, Disney NEVER cross branded their properties. I was given the assignment to turn Cinderella into a fashion doll. After I had been working on it a little while it occurred to me it could work well for 2 to 3 years but it would be even better if we could rotate the characters through a line in the same way Disney was re-releasing its movies to video – every 7 years. So, with the backing of the Design VP, I pitched the concept to Disney with glorious models. They were very apprehensive at first when I showed them the first two (Cinderella and Snow White) but by the time I showed them all 10 female properties together – they were hooked. The next year after Mattel’s successful launch of Cinderella and Snow White, Disney launched a new branding program “Disney Princesses.” My fingerprints are still on Disney Princesses every time you see Sleeping Beauty wearing pink. I presented a doll to them with a dress that transformed from pink to blue so the kids could replay that scene from the film. They liked it but wanted it blue in the package. Having all the models in front of me I showed them how many Disney female characters they had that were blond with blue dresses and won them over. Now you almost never see Princess Aurora depicted in blue.

There were many unproduced models for the original Disney Classics (purple box) dolls. There are many very cool ones. A centaurette from Fantasia, all the other Peter Pan characters, transforming soft catapillar/butterfly, the original wax model of the white rabbit that I sculpted.

JRA: Very awesome! You also mentioned the Disney Musical Princesses and their connection to PGJR, we were wondering if you could expand on that a little?

GA: The bodies for the musical princesses were originally sculpted and tooled for the “Wonder Woman and the Star Riders.” But it died at toy fair and never shipped. Most of [the Wonder Woman and the Star Riders] doll samples were destroyed because I made the Musical Princesses out of them.

Gwen is the same size as musical princesses but different tools (Editor’s note: Tools are steel molds created from prototypes that are used to manufacture the toy in the factory) since they were made by Mattel’s biggest competitor. If you look carefully, all the Mattel poses are straight and rigid (like a super heroine) but Gwen bodies all have one cocked knee and bent arms for a more natural stance.

JRA: Fun! This looks like it was made from the pre-existing Jasmine Musical Princess Doll. Did Jasmine have that style shoes? Or are those a Jewel Riders exclusive design?

GA: Jasmine would not have worn those shoes. Most likely, I sculpted those onto the existing legs with Sculpy, the heated them with a fine point heat gun. That was one of my typical techniques.

JRA: Were there any other pre-existing toys that fed into Jewel Riders toy design?

GA: The Gwen horses were Fashion Star Fillies with the rump jewels added to the tooling.

JRA: Can you describe your creative process?

The other thing I had going for me [in addition to having worked on Disney dolls] was my imagination. When I mentioned to my supervisor one day about, “Can’t you see there must be a Fair that Gwenevere is going to right over that hill?” I thought everyone could do that. My supervisor informed me, “Uh… No… that is not how MOST people think.”

This came in very handy for Gwenevere. When the second set of episodes was turned on, the only two directions to start with were – 1) Search for wild magic jewels since the first set was all found 2) Use Morgana as the ultimate villainess instead of Lady Kale. One thing I wanted to do was to create a visible use of jewel power other than just shining. I wanted something more like what certain superheroes can do with their power rings and create shapes to solve the issue. This lead directly to suggesting the trio has an episode underwater to find a wild water jewel and use that opportunity to have them use jewel power mermaid fins. Fortunately, Director Robert Mandell was open to many of my suggestions. That second season had many episodes that grew from my concepts and a very rough storyline suggestion.

JRA: We love that “Jewel of the Sea” sprung from one of your concepts. It has long been a fan favorite episode judging by the social media reactions! Next, we’d love to know what your favorite product that you designed for Jewel Riders is?

My favorite Princess Gwenevere toy was probably the Zebracorn. Gwen and Fallon already had special animals. I know Tamara had her small animal friends but she was always limited to having to ride in the carriage. I wanted her to have a special animal friend like Sunstar – but how do you compete with a unicorn and a flying horse. I wanted the new friend to be totally unique and stunning in its own way. Somehow the idea of a Zebra striped unicorn came to me and we made a rough model. The model was especially cool. One of my goals was to try to get as many of the really fun toy ideas into the show. Since Robert Mandell was still working through the rest of the scripts, I suggested the idea. He was unsure but when I suggested the story line to go with it, then he saw the magic and emotion of it and had a script written based on my basic plot outline. There were many other features I was able to convince Robert and the writers to add in, but that character and episode were still my favorite. The whole concept that “some things are more special than you can possibly imagine if you take time to care” was dear to my heart and I hoped others would get it also.

JRA: That’s really touching, and we definitely think your message got across in the fan-favorite episode “Shadowsong.” So we’ve talked about your favorite product – now we’re curious which provided the greatest challenge?

GA: I noticed that Fallon was very popular also. This is gratifying as we put much work into her so she would not be just a tag along character with a different skin tone. During the time I was at Mattel since they did so many dolls that they were very restrictive on flesh tones. They had only 3 – pink flesh, suntan and black. The black skin tone Mattel used, I thought, was very dull, chalky and lifeless. Kenner did not have set skin tones so I worked very hard to find just the right skin tone for her. I did not want her to look specifically African American since we were in a fantasy setting. I also wanted her to appeal to more people. So the skin tone I picked could have made her Caribbean, North African or many other darker skin tones. But the color was alive and vibrant. Robert bought into the idea and gave her an accent that was hard to place – more like Creole. She was one of my favorites to design for since she did not have to look pink and pretty. She was more mysterious and really was the smartest of the three. Tamara was the most empathetic. Gwen was the leader – trying to find her way.

My hard work to get Fallon just right paid off for me personally when I found the Deluxe Fallon doll on a list of “The 10 Best Black Dolls Every Made.” Ironically, a second one on that list was the mother/Queen from Prince of Egypt which I also worked very hard to get right. Both took the time and energy to fight to get them unique and just right.

JRA: To your knowledge, was there any development done for a third season of Jewel Riders beyond your toy design work?

GA: There was never a plan to do more episodes… yet. If anything was done on it, I never saw or heard of it. Originally, they were just going to do the first 13. Then Bohbot wanted European distribution which required 26. So they made the next 13. They would have made more but were waiting to see how it succeeded.

JRA: Do you know why Gwenevere was renamed Starla outside of North America?

GA: Two reasons for the question: 1) international names often have to have minor spelling changes or conjunction changes so a simple less specific name translates better (too many ways to translate “princess”). 2) Guenevere was probably being used legally in a country they wanted to release it in.

Tamara was supposed to be Melody but that name was trademarked in the US

JRA: We were wondering if you could speak to rumors that any possible playsets were in development?

GA: 1) The castle playset shown to consumers in the original testing. Very cool model and design (even if I hand made most of it). It was more like a castle keep but expanded up and out to make a good backdrop for play. But the castle eventually designed for the show did not match it all. I know for a fact that it was destroyed along with many things just before I left. (People starting digging through the Kenner garbage cans looking for Star Wars discarded samples so a grinder was put in place to destroy all trash).

2) Carriage playset – It was okay. A real plastic model was never made of it. 90% sure it was destroyed.

3) Enchanted Forest playset – very basic clamshell sculpted magical trees that open up with jewels to add that would work like a combination of light-pipes (in basic Gwen figures) and light brite. Nothing exists from it that I know of. It was only a foam core model.

4) Pavilion Playset – the only one management ever took seriously. It was approved to move forward but the line was dropped soon after that decision (since the show could never be found and kept moving its time slot and not notifying TV and other publications). Only one model ever existed.

JRA: Very cool! We would have loved any one of those to be produced.

Next, we were wondering about the color scheme for the show. Tamara as a pink-haired magical girl was an inspired choice, as it has been one of the things people remember most vividly from the show. Were you involved in this aspect at all?

GA: Tamara – I would have to double check but she either started with red hair and I made it pink or it was pink to start. The teal color was the best color to balance her hair. Pink was a cuter way to depict a red-head. It also gave me, two pink characters – one with pink hair and one with pink clothing -Win/Win!

Gwen – As the main character, she needed to be in pink. Girls OVERWHELMINGLY prefer pink. But I chose her skin tones and hair color to be as golden as I could as if she was infused with the sunstone’s power. (Side note: when we were trying to determine the colors for Popples, they pulled in about 10 designers and we used the same sketch, then created as many color variations/styles as we could. Then 100 were shown to consumers. The top 3 chosen were all different shades of pink.)

Purple/lavender is the second best selling color so I used it for Fallon’s primary accent. It also led to her mysterious quality.

When I met with the Aladdin TV show team to do some product, they mentioned that very young kids would have a hard time following a character if they changed outfits. For instance, when Jasmine was put in her brown townsperson clothes, the younger viewers did not get it was her. So when I had the chance to do Jewel Riders, I specifically created a palette for each character and stayed with it religiously so the hair color and costume color would always make it easier for younger viewers to follow. It was absolutely intentional.

JRA: Greg, we absolutely can’t thank you for taking the time to speak with us about all your amazing memories of Jewel Riders. We really can’t thank you enough for your generosity in sharing so many amazing insights with the fan community. Any special message you’d like to share?

GA: I just went through the work you and Chris have been putting into the Jewel Riders Archive site. It is nicely done. Reading the comments of what it meant to others is touching. For what it is worth, the day I was told the line was officially dropped and I no longer was allowed to play and build in that world, was a very sad day for me. There was so much more I wanted to do with those characters.

JRA: Thank you Greg. That means a lot to us too! Even though we aren’t the creators of the series, we definitely feel invested in the characters, the story, and the integrity of the show. What started out as just a love for a cartoon turned into a dedicated… passionate to say the least, commitment that we get a great joy from.

Read the complete blog at The Jewel Riders Archive! http://www.jewelridersarchive.com/posts/greg-autore-and-the-toy-design-of-jewel-riders-part-two/

[grinning-tiger]

Interview with Azra Alkan (VFX Compositor)

Let's do an interview!

Here we have a great person, great artist, and a friend of mine who I met back when I was a student at Academy of Art University and who I have the pleasure working with currently at Ingenuity Studios.

I hope you enjoy and if you'd like to see more, her demo reel is down belong along with being able to find her on IMDB and her personal website www.azralkan.com

-Tell me a little bit about yourself. My name is Azra Alkan, I’m a 26 year old compositor working on films, TV shows, and commercials.  I grew up in the capital of Turkey, Ankara. I graduated from Academy of Art University in December 2014 with a Bachelor's Degree in Animation and Visual Effects, majoring in compositing.  I’ve been working in the VFX industry for the last 5 years in Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

-You mentioned that you are from Turkey. What is VFX like back home? When I left Turkey, there was no visual effects houses back then. All of the VFX were being outsourced to different countries. To be quite honest there was no market for it either. It’s only blooming over the past few years with the newly founded VFX studios. They mostly work on commercials because film industry still has a hard time trusting local shops.

-Tell me of your journey that got you to where you are today. I was always infatuated with arts, particularly with storytelling, so I tried to learn that ever since I was a kid. At the same time I was very good at sciences and I was drawn to both sides. I started programming at a very early age as well as painting and writing stories. I got accepted to a visual programming major back at home and I was loving it. However I felt that the visual side of me wanted more freedom, so I applied to a school in U.S.A, convinced my parents with the scholarship they offered me, packed my stuff and moved across the world for the best art education I could get. Visual Effects was a rare industry that kept both my artistic skills and my scientific background in check. I fell in love with it ever since.

-What brought you to VFX? When I was studying cinematography I felt the need to have more creative freedom. I wanted to capture the stuff that a regular camera cannot see. Live action art was not enough to convey my insane imagination. I wanted to create worlds that only I knew how they looked. I was fascinated by the movie Avatar at the time. Seeing Avatar, I said “this is it, this is what I have got to do!”

-What inspires you? Humans, psychics, outer space, our existence, how big the universe is and nature itself are the topics I think about constantly. I really wonder about our place in the entire universe and it drives me to create futuristic effects, worlds, cities, planets in my work.

-What are some of the things that you have worked on? I was lucky enough to work on many amazing TV shows, movies and commercials for my age. I got to work on my favorite TV shows such as Gotham, Agents of Shield, Stranger Things (oh I am obsessed with that show!), Westworld, Last Man On Earth. The latest blockbuster movie I worked on was Disney's Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

-What is something that you love about your job? I love the problem solving aspect of it. It is quite like a puzzle. As a compositor, I am at the end of the post production pipeline. I am given all the elements such as FX, CGI, image, etc., and I have to figure out a way to fit them all together to make them belong and look real. At the end of each scene I work on I still get surprised on how real it looks. I almost fool myself into thinking this is a real live action footage.

-What are some of the challenges that you have experienced? Art is very subjective and sometimes what you think is great might not be what the client wants. Unless you are working solely on your own projects (which is why I love collaborating on indie movies) you have to keep your crazy imagination in check with what the clients think will bring in more viewers. Get ready for some very personal criticism on your art work!

-What are some notable experiences that you have gained? When I was working at Studio 400A, which is a non-profit indie studio made of talented artists and their mentors, I got to lead Advantageous, which has been nominated in Sundance and many other film festivals. When I got hired to work at CoSA VFX, I got to work on Emmy nominated shows by Disney, Marvel, and Fox. Now at my current studio, Ingenuity Studios, I work as a senior artist leading a team of other talented artist for the show Fresh Off The Boat. It’s great because it is a show about immigrants and who is better than I to supervise it :)

-What do you see as the future of the VFX industry? I believe the film industry started to realize how important visual effects artists really are to the whole process. I know there are many people out there that constantly point out that we get the worst treatment out of everyone in Hollywood, and to some degree I can understand that. However, we need to trust our talent and not let negativity or speculations affect our decisions. We are the backbones of this industry and we will continue to rise with the upcoming technology.

How do you want to contribute to this future of VFX? I would like to continue working hard and continue having many irons in the fire to shine a light upon every fellow artist who are good at what they do and needs a platform/leadership to show their artwork to the world.

-What are your dreams and aspirations? I eventually want to open up my own studio, where talented fellow artist are treated right, compensated the way they deserve, and where our only limitation would be our imagination.

-The VFX industry has a history of being a “boy’s club”. What has your experience been like? Is it still an issue and has it changed? How do you think you can be a positive influence? For the most part, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who respected me for the skills I bring on the table, but yes, there have been situations. Some people have referred to me as the “best woman compositor” they have met or, in the past, clients have told me "Why are you behind the camera because the way you look, you should be in front of the camera”. I have been shamed for the way I dress up in studio by other women. I have been shamed for thinking about asking for the raise I sure deserve, because according to most women I should have been happy that I even have a job. Some clients chose to speak directly to the men in the room as if the women in there were just the help. It’s a sore subject for many women in the industry. Not too long ago women weren’t even allowed to become animators, we could just be corrective artists, not creative. The tradition is surely still there but people are more sneaky about it. Or sometimes they don’t even know they are engaging in sexism. How I deal with it is by setting up an example to all fellow women and men that it can be done differently. That if you are good, you should ask for your worth. You call it out as it is and do not let the opportunities get away because people think you should just be happy you are even allowed in the industry. Women can and will be in the creative, critical parts of the industry and not just in an office aiding the production.

-Time for a lighter question. Here's a favorite back from TeaTime Animation (shout out woop woop!) What’s the worst and/or funniest mistake you have made when starting out? I think the funniest thing we all think as artists when we start out is that we know everything. That we are so so good. Oh boy, was I wrong about knowing anything! It’s insane how much the industry progresses each and everyday. Now I know you are a senior artist, a veteran, if you accept you know nearly nothing and there is so much to learn still!

-What are some words of wisdom that you can share for all those young blossoming artists? Please don’t disregard the connections you make at school. I am talking about the guy who sits next to you that you never thought you would be friends with. They end up being your coworkers, the people who decide to hire you, fire you, recommend you. Also get yourself into many collaborative projects. Don’t worry about the money. Worry about making it look great. Don’t let your projects look good enough for your homework. Make it good enough to be in a feature film.

[tortuga-aak]

In a first for Pixar, 'Coco' was created with the help of people outside the company

Disney/Pixar

"Coco" is the latest Pixar movie and is directed by Lee Unkrich ("Toy Story 3").

The movie focuses on the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead"), and marks the first time Pixar has told a story around a cultural celebration.

Unkrich brought on cultural consultants to make sure the story was representing Mexican culture correctly. This is the first time a Pixar movie has welcomed in outsiders to a project still in production.

This came after the Latino community protested Disney for attempting to patent the phrase "Dia del los Muertos" for the movie.

Director Lee Unkrich was hot off the box office success and Oscar win for 2010’s “Toy Story 3” when he delved into making a movie that focused on the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos. Seven years later, the project now known as “Coco” is finally ready for release (in theaters November 22), but the experience of making it was unlike any other Pixar movie before. 

Under the watchful eye of Pixar/Walt Disney Animation head John Lasseter, Disney animation has been a powerhouse for over two decades. A big reason for that is the visionaries behind the scenes who are always looking for a challenge. For Unkrich, it was the Day of the Dead holiday that really fascinated him as an entry into telling a story. 

“It wasn't until I started to learn about the tradition, and what it was truly all about, and its history, that I started to really see the potential of telling a story that could be very adventurous and visually dazzling, full of music and color, but could also have a real emotional resonance,” Unkrich told Business Insider. “And that's what we're all really looking for ultimately in the stories that we tell. We don't want to just tell a story that's gimmicky and clever.”

It would be new terrain for Pixar: the first time it would tell a story around a cultural celebration. But Lasseter was game. He gave Unkrich the okay and the filmmaker got started in September of 2011.

The story follows a young boy named Miguel who secretly wants to be a famous musician, though his family has forbidden music after his great-great-grandfather left the family to seek out fame as a musician. While celebrating Day of the Dead, Miguel magically ends up in the Land of the Dead, and must go on a journey to find his way back to the living while also searching for his great-great-grandfather.

Disney/Pixar“Many of us have lost loved ones and have spend time thinking about them and wanting to keep their memories alive, so we felt even though this was a culturally specific setting for our story that it was going to be full of ideas that people all over the world could relate to,” Unkrich said.

But finding the right tone for the culture it was spotlighting turned out to be the project’s biggest challenge. At first, to stay clear of stereotypes and making sure to be culturally respectful, Unkrich said he used many Pixar artists and employees who are Mexican or Mexican-American as a sounding board. However, a major roadblock hit the production in 2013 when Disney filed an application to patent Dia de los Muertos for the release of the movie. The Latino community went into an uproar on social media and a petition to stop Disney went up on Change.org and received over 21,000 signatures. The company quickly withdrew the application.

Unkrich admits making “Coco” has been a learning process from the start, but he said they really hit their stride when they put together a group of cultural consultants. Made up of people like Lalo Alcaraz — author of the nationally syndicated comic “La Cucaracha,” who was one of the most vocal opponents of the patent — and Latino playwright Octavio Solis, the group would meet with Unkrich, codirector Adrian Molina, and their team every few months and look at the development of the project. It was the first time on any Pixar movie that outsiders were allowed into the studio’s creative process. And getting the feedback of outsiders didn’t stop there.

“We ended up bringing in periodically big groups of all sorts of folks from the Latino community, from artists to writers to political figures to media executives, because we wanted to get a lot of different perspectives,” Unkrich said. “What we quickly learned is there is no one right way to tell a story set in the Latino community, there are a lot of different opinions. Part of our challenge was trying to navigate all those different opinions to figure out our path forward.”

These meetings with the consultants and Latino community didn’t lead to any major changes to the story, Unkrich said, however they were responsible for many small tweaks that increased the movie’s connection to Mexican culture.

One example is a change in how the character of Miguel’s grandmother, Abuelita, disciplines people.

Disney/Pixar“In her earlier conception we gave her a wooden spoon that was tucked into her apron string and she would whip that out and kind of hit you to express displeasure,” Unkrich said. “It was at one of our earlier screenings that a couple of our cultural consultants said, ‘A spoon has nothing to do with Latino culture, she should really pull off her chancla, her slipper, and hit them with it.’ And that was the first time we learned about la chancla, and we embraced the idea fully. That one adjustment has proven to win us a lot of points in the Latino community because it's something a lot of people grew up fearing.”

Then there were the factors surrounding the movie that were beyond Unkrich and Pixar’s control, like how immigration suddenly became a hot-button topic after the election of Donald Trump as president. Unkrich said he and his crew were in Mexico on election night, recording music by local musicians for the movie. He said the news of the Trump win didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits, but he does recognize the current climate about immigration and race, and how it’s changed substantially since back when they began working on “Coco.”

“I feel like this has been a confusing time for many people, and there's lots of negativity in the air, and we just hope that with this film we are bringing some needed positivity,” he said.

Unkrich doesn’t know if “Coco” can be a unifier, but he does believe that telling stories like this is important.

“I think a lot of great change in history has come from stories and storytelling, there's a power to it,” he said. “The one thing that everyone knows for sure these days is that we're living in super unpredictable times. All I can really say is that I firmly believe that by bringing this movie out we're trying to be part of the solution rather than trying to be part of the problem.”

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