#when your paying this man a whole films budget basically

[thetimelordbatgirl]

....So basically, when Disney/MCU acts like they can't pay the people who help make their films a reality next time they asked to pay said people better, we know its a fucking lie, right?

[popculturebuffet]

HCG: Garfield His 9 Lives Retrospective: The Special (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello all you blues cats paying your dues and welcome back to my look at the three faces of Garfield His 9 Lives. Last time we covered the book which was excellent for the most part from some good comedy to excellent horror.

So now we're onto the second part of this unintentional trilogy. The book was clearly either a success or a good enough idea that not only did Film Roman make a special out of it but unlike the others this big chonky boy is an hour long. It's something I forgot but you yourself can experince as the specials are all on Peacock and Tubi, and I highly recommend this one off the bat.

9 Lives takes the basic premise of the book and adapts it decently for animation: There is still a good chunk of segmetns that use the regular garfield style, but some vary it up a bit in ways similar to the book if not as radical to keep the budget down.

The bigger change is that 4/9 of the segments are replaced. Only Cave Cat, the Garden, Lab Animal, Garfield and Space Cat remain, largely unchanged. Babes and Bullets is gone but was made into it's own excellent special, while The Vikings, the Exterminators, and Primal Self are just gone.

If I had to guess why, the Vikings might of been hard to replicate on a bduget with it's fantasy style illustrations, hence the much cheaper King Cat in it's place. The Exterminators coudl've been a rights thing, since some stooges shorts were under copyright, but it could've just as easily been a time thing as the special exclusive stunt cat is only a minute long. Finally we have primal self, the only one where it's damn obvious WHY it didn't happen

This version is the most popular, likely because while the book is clearly known and loved, it hasn't been reprinted. it was printed enough that thankfully it's cheap to get and the Internet Archive makes it avaliable, but far as I can tell it hasn't been reprinted in decades. The special on the other hand has 80's nostalgia for the kids who were there at the time, got a release on the garfield fantasies dvd (Alongside babes and bullets of course.. and a indiana jones spoof with a dash of james bond that is far more foregatable but fits the astetic), and is as I mentioned currently avaliable for free under garfield and friends on tubi or on it's own on peacock. It's way easier to see the specail and for it to get more word of mouth. I even saw it first before the book thanks to said dvd. So the question is how does this more popular adaptation hold up to the OG? Let's find out under the cut and once again learn when you've got 9 lives you've got nine ways to loose.

Directed by Phil Roman, who Co-Directs all other segments

I love the title cards in this version too. And it starts the same way: Jim Davis is god

And orders the creation of cat. It looses a bit of luster as oversaturated footage of paws inc isn't as fun, but I do like the booming voice of god, played by C. Lindsay Workman who played the old man in the halloween special and Garfield's Grandpa in Garfield on the Town. The punchilne's also not as strong as rather than revealing him as a cat he just says "It'd make for an intresting story". This is understandable as they save this for the ending. More on that when we get there. For now this segment is alright and workman makes it fun, but it's the only segment I feel got a downgrade between versions.

We next get our opening number, which for once isn't tied into the story thus technically giving us 11 segments this time. Garfield wails on the harmonica while we get another great Lou Rawls opening, a blues song underlying how rough it is to have 9 lives "You've got 9 ways to loose" and the genre fits the man like a glove. Truly awesome stuff and a song that's been in my head this whole retrospective and while making the cover arts.

Directed by George Singer

Watching this one I figured out WHY I didn't like the Book version as much: I saw this one first and Cave Cat has one thing this one dosen't: narration. The hammy narrator really sells the documentary feel of things better than text boxes can. I love comics as a medium but there's some hard limits, and this is a bit that just works better when you have what I suspect to be Thom Huge giving nature doctumentary style narration. It makes even the cornier jokes hilaroius and Cave Cat feels more distinct ironically with Lorenzo Music's iconic voice, with him doing a good job making this cat still have the garfield voice but feel primitive. It's good stuff and just a few touches take a pretty decent if done before bit into something fun.

Directed by John Sparey

Yeah I don't like this one. Before reading the boom comics version, this was easily my bottom life across all versions.

King Cat DOES have an interesting hook: Garfield is the pet of a dim witted pharoah and thus worshipped. The problem is as basically vice pharoah.. garfield has slaves

For starters a past version of Odie is one of them and Garfield spends the short fighting to not be killed.. but you don't care as King Garfield enslaves a bunch of dogs and hassles the slaves at the period. Karma does bite him as despite his best efforts his owner dies and he becomes a slave to odie after odie saves his life but it's hard to see that as a good "the oppressed has become the opresser"

So not only do you have slave master garfield and this ending.. you also have no real jokes. The only one that makes me chuckle a bit is that the pharoah's evil brother who eventuallyt akes the throne is named prince black bart. It's sto stupid it works. This segment.. is so bland and weirdly fucked up at the same time it just dosen't work.

Directed by Ruth Kissane

The garden is kept the same plot wise, but does feel like an equilveant exchange. The animation looses the weird 3d style and while they try to make it slightly puffier to match the book, it mostly comes across as the standard garfield. That said what we loose in the trippy 3d, we gain in the narration, done by what seems to be Nermals voice actor which comes off as Chloe herself narrating it, which adds a nice bit of whimsy that papers over what was lost. The segment's still not entirely for me, but I appricate it for what it is.

Directed by Bob Scott

Court Musician has my faviorite look out of the shorts, being one of the few to get more of a visual identity in the adpatation, having a nice very blocky style to the charcters. I love it. And it's no suprise that director Bob Scott would go on to have a healthy career doing a lot of work for disney and some design work. He even designed the characters for the threre best segments in this one, also doing the designs for Diana's Piano and Lab Animal.

The short is a fun romb as we follow famous composer Fredrick Handel whose cat is a nicely deisgned blue cat.

I really wish bob had gotten to direct more, this is great stuff as Freddy , as bluefield calls him, finds out he has to make a concerto overnight... which his boss the king never commuincated to him. So to do so he has his cat write half. The first half is a slow well done fuege as the Jester, history's greatest monster, taunts Freddy with his death should he fail... only for a rousing jazz number the cat wrote to be a big hit. It's fun as hell, well written and even caps off the special in lieu of blues cat. Which i'd object if this peice weren't so great.

Directed by Bill LIttlejohn and Bob Nester

Stunt Kat is a quick fun segment likely done as while the special was given extra room it didn't have room for 9 full segments. So instead we get a fun bit of comics history as this garfield was a stunt double for the legendary 30's comic strip Krazy Kat. Krazy Cat was a fairly simple but influental strip with surreal backgrounds. The basics boil down to this

Krazy loves Ignatz, Ignatz throws bricks a tthem, and the local cop tries to put Ignatz away and loves Krazy. It's a zany love trinagle, a tragicomedy and magistically drawn. I haven't gotten super into it, but I do respect it and it's influence on later cartoonits with both Bill Watterston and Berkely Brethead citing this one as an influence.

So here Garfield fills in when Krazy gets a bunch of bricks dropped on them while Officer Pupp runs the camera... and dies pretty quickly. A brutal fun gag and a nice way to give a cameo to a legend... if I'd remembered this I would've done the same in the first entry but hey, thems the breaks. Or the bricks I guess

Directed by Doug Frankel

Diana's Piano might be my faviorite segment here and it's the simpliest, a tale about a woman reflecting on her life to her cat patches, and the life of her previous cat Diana, a cat she got as a child, and kept for most of her life, into marriage right out of college, through the birth of her child and to Diana's sad end. It's got the most gorgeous animation of the special, this nice fuzzy style as if it was painted. The animations very limited for the most part, but it works well, making it feel like a painting come to life. It's a simple realistic tale. It could face issues with not feeling very garfield like.. but with some of the more experimental segments from the comic gone, it nicely fills the place of stretching the concept of "it's a cat" to as far as you can take it. Diana isn't garfield yet has pieces of him: her not wanting her owner to marry, issues with kids, there's pieces of garfield in his past self. I also think it's neat they acknowledge that past lives don't have to be exact matches for their future lives. This is reincarnation after all. Part of the books charm was that the various garfields were so diffrent from one another yet had some part of who he'd be in his 8th life.

Diana's piano is a moving, wonderfully done piece, a short heartbreaking story of life that uses the medium well.

Directed by Doug Frankel

Lab Animal is the special's most memorable segments for the same reasons it was in His 9 Lives: It's the darkest segment here with Primal Self gone, and it's a striknig diffrence:While Diana's piano gives us another grounded segment, instead of a sentimental story of a cat's life, we get a cat desperately breaking free. Rather than go full realistic, they go more with a don bluth style: cartoony yet stylish. I checked director doug frankel's imdb but he shockingly only worked on one bluth film AFTER this, Ferngully, like most people on this special going on to disney or early dreamworks.

Lab Animal really is a straight adapatation of the book the only big changes being a sequence with the dogs chasing the Lab Cat up a tree, and the MP just.. glaring at the cat instead of shooting at it. Which is less effective but.. I get it. Late 80's cartoon standards and all that. Everything else is largely the same, and I feel both versions are equally good: The original has nice shades and detailed artwork, while this has gorgeous animation, a really tense score, and both have the effective twist at the end. It's fantastic and easily the best adaptation of the bunch, adapting the story perfectly while changing it just enough.

Directed by Bob Nisler and John Sparey

I really.. don't have much to say about this one. It's not bad at all: given this was one of Film Roman's later specials, they've perfected doing garfield at this point, so it's not suprising the garfield section still looks great.

The thing is this segment is the straghtest adaptation out of the bunch. It's almost word for word panel for panel with only the slightest changes. One of those changes bothers me as they censor old eli's line

The bury me is why it works. It'd be like shoretning Snoopy's Awkard Teenage Nephew's neck. It's fucked up and it's funny. And you could say "Well they censored other stuff for kids".. but they still had garfied and odie own slaves. I can understand editing out the gunfire from Lab Animal as it was the 80's and guns in kids shows was, and still is, if for more understandable reasons, a touchy subject. But this is just a bit of black comedy and I refuse to belivie garfield owning slaves is more acceptable than Old Eli wanting people to take him home and bury him.

Otherwise it's a solid adaptation, it just dosen't stand out as much both due to having no real changes for better or equal like the others, or being that diffrent from the other specials or garfield and friends. It's a reason King Kat also limped along for me I forgot to get to in that section: It feels like one of those historical episodes garfield and friends would do. Every so often they'd have jon and garfield play their own ancestors. It feels lazy in comparison to the book and other segments here. This dosen't because it shares the whole origin story thing, but does fade into the background a bit.

Directed by Bob Nessler and John Sparrey

Like cave cat I like this one more than the book, but even more as the animated version is vastly experimented. The federation planning to murder garfield in space is given more personality, counting down to his death and skipping one because he was in the bathroom, and the count down gives things a sense of pressure, as does the fact that rather than be a game this is all real and garfiled is sent out to survivie as this is his last life. So it adds tension: we know it, they know it and thus we WANT Spacefield to survivie. We also get a bunch of clone odies who hilarously get thrown back from attacking in drone ships by a fire hydrant. It keeps the best stuff from the short but expands it to be way funnier.

The ending also helps. Garfield.. still dies.. this time for real as does Odie.. and god cat calls him before them.. and due to a seeming clerical error asks garfield what life he's on. And in a touching bit of clearly remembering his eight life some how, or just kindness.. garfield gets odie 8 lives too. IT's a reminder that while Odie may anoy him.. garfield loves his brother and gladly saves him. And the ending does use the god cat twist well. We don't see a full furry face just the eyes.. btu we get the sense god was just lying his ass off and willingly let both get 9 lives as they deserved it. Garfield's argument is also.. valid. Unlike his other deaths, he didn't volunteer for this one. he was just shot up into space and died horribly. IT's a cute ending and really ties it all together well and feels like a better much more concise one than the book.

The Ranking Diana's Piano: It's schmaltzy but damn if it dosen't work on me every time, with gorgeous animation and a truly lovely story. Court Musician: I"m shocked this one ended up as high as it did but I just love the blocky, gorgeous art, that fun ending number and the jester being a hilaroiusly cruel shithead the whole segment Lab Animal: Tense, well done and gorgeous Space Cat: HIlarious and the best garfield style segment of the bunch Cave Cat: Music's performance and the great narration really sell this one Blues Cat: A catchy as hell number from lou motherfucking rawls. Stunt Cat: Only this low because it's so short but it's so damn funny and dark. In the Beginning: It's fine Garfield: Ditto The Garden: Thirded King Cat: We need a sequel where Jon is moses and frees the slaves from odie.

Next Time: We end this look with a hit and miss comics anthology that came decades later. No one really talks about.

[eemcintyre]

"Stretch" (2014) review

Aka ✨ why this movie is one of the most underrated ones I've ever seen and why it is some of Patrick Wilson's best work ✨

"If you like stories about chance and coincidence, here's one you've never heard" gives me the chills every time 😮‍💨

Patrick Wilson is one of the most underappreciated actors of his time, like, not only do his other projects demonstrate that he has drama, romance, instruments, and singing down ✨, but here he is finally given a chance to flaunt his impeccable comedic timing, vocalizations, and expressions

Idk maybe I just love movies with narration (ex., "Heathers," "Jerry Maguire," "Amelie," "Eloise at Christmastime," "Megamind," "American Made," "The Outsiders," etc.)

But jokes aside, I will defend Patrick Wilson's narration throughout the movie no matter whAT ANYONE SAYS YOU CAN PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGIES; IT IS AT TURNS FUNNY AND RELATABLE AND PROFOUND AND WE GET TO KNOW THE MAIN CHARACTER BETTER 😤😤

It does start a bit slow, especially if you aren't as invested in Patrick Wilson as I am 🙃🫠 but if you stick with it and pay attention to the subtle comedic elements in the meantime 👌🏻

This movie is not afraid to be a bit irreverent, which is a modern and mainstream rarity

Stretch and Charlie are so cute together; I wish more of their interactions had been kept in the final cut because when I think of the quality content that we missed 😩💖

"Who gains weight in their neck?" "Sexy people." "Three months of Rosetta Stone- I HATE THE FUCKING FRENCH." "We was gettin' all romantic, watching Titan-tic..." and so, so many more

Honestly, Karl is an integral part of this film as well- he may seem overtly cartoonish to some, but again, we get to know the main character better through him, as his presence gives us a visual of Stretch's inner struggle; he contributes to the dark humor vibe, and Ed Helms was clearly having the time of his life (as was the entire cast)

Speaking of which, stellar casting all around, especially those who were cast against type; love when directors give that stuff a chance. Everyone was made for their role

Dark humor, satire of Hollywood, homage to 80s films

The Navstar scene. If you know you know

Same goes for the post-Candace club exit scene with the valet, the wannabe rapper, and the sex club exit scene (there's a man wearing only balloons. need I say more). I mean, the whole movie is basically the best part and I'm trying not to make this review me just naming every scene and going "yes. this is good" but these are some of the most standout parts

The soundtrack may be atrocious overall, but the exception is the song at the end (although I was disappointed when I read that it was originally supposed to be "Telephone Line" by ELO but they didn't have enough in the budget because that would have gone so hard) 😩💕

Speaking of the ending, why is it so incredibly pure and sweet to me that it would almost make me cry if I weren't medicated? 🥺 Something about the setting of the diner, exuding vintage charm and glowing in the sun the quiet morning after the previous night of chaos, and the serendipity of how Stretch and Charlie finally reveal how much they've obviously liked each other for a while, and after all of the danger and depravity, everything ends soft and gentle and alright 😊💖

This film is somehow so sleazy and wholesome at the same time- against the backdrop of drugs, sex clubs, threats of violence, and constant swearing, it's ultimately a story about overcoming cynicism and self-destruction, getting your "mojo" back, taking control of your life, and allowing for the possibility that things happen for a reason ✨ Honestly? 10/10

[agentnico]

Beau Is Afraid (2023) Review

A few days ago I read an article that proclaimed Beau Is Afraid to be a 3 hour long anxiety attack. So naturally I thought - that sounds fun, I want to go see that. So here I am.

Plot: Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home.

I have had mixed opinions on Ari Aster’s previous films, as Hereditary was a mediocre horror film with one memorable sequence involving a certain decapitation, and Midsommar was basically a modern day take on The Wicker Man. But I also appreciate their existence now more than ever, as were it not for the critical and financial success of those movies, A24 would have never justified giving Ari Aster a $30 million budget to make a film like Beau Is Afraid. For this movie is absolutely bonkers insane! This is sorely Ari Aster’s unique vision, and one that you’re either willing to jump on the ride with, or you won’t get it and find it pretentious and ridiculous. 

This is a movie that demands a lot from its viewers. What starts as a simple premise with Beau planning to go visit his mother after not seeing her for a while becomes this overlong surreal, grotesque and unpredictable odyssey and very much an interpretive challenge as it is shown through the eyes of the titular Beau. However Beau struggles from multiple anxiety disorders, as such everything he sees, hears or feels is always under question of what is reality and what isn’t. Beau is what I’d call an unreliable narrator. You know that feeling when you’re anxious about some worst case scenario happening that you’ve built up in your head, but then reality strikes and it’s never anything as bad as you brain expected it to be? Well for Beau every craziest scenario that his brain assumes becomes reality, as such everything around Beau is very over the top and macabre mad. Especially since all of Beau’s thoughts and insecurities stem from his very dysfunctional relationship with his mother, and as such everything Beau does is an attempt to emancipate himself from this toxic connection. The result? Well the result is one really weird f-ed up movie!

Joaquin Phoenix is perfectly cast as the broken and lost Beau. Phoenix is able to deliver so much with his eyes and expression, showing off Beau’s desperation to get out of this hell that consistently finds himself in, and all he wants is to be left alone. Yet as befit of the Kafkaesque reference in the synopsis, Beau simply cannot ever catch a break. He’s like the cockroach from the famous Kafka short story Metamorphosis, that is stuck in a room, not being able to get out of it. Beau’s life is one big messed up nightmare. And during this nightmare journey that is split into these episodes of sort, Beau meets a whole array of colourful characters, which I won’t spoil, but I will say that the whole cast in this movie do a fantastic job of embracing Aster’s mentality. The likes of Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey, Richard Kind, Stephen McKinley Henderson are just a few examples, each bringing in their own peculiarities. Zoe Lister-Jones and Patti LuPone both a responsible for bringing to life the younger and older version of Beau’s mum, and both are very great at delivering one super manipulative and deranged creation. 

From a technical standpoint this movie is a pure filmmaking dream. Ari Aster definitely took advantage of A24′s big pay-check by creating some really trippy sequences, ones that are definitely inspired by the absurdist takes of David Lynch. A highlight it a scene where Beau is watching a theatre performance, and mentally puts himself into it, and we are then treated to a most beautifully bizarre semi-animated sequence. Beau is whisked into the on-set scene and then proceeds to traipse through fable-like villages, living out a long imagined life full of pure love and abject terror. It’s delicate movie art rendered as psychological weaponry. It’s a visually stunning piece, and one that only adds to the questions of what the hell we are watching. Another example is closer to the end of the film where Beau is forced to go up into this mysterious attic he’s been avoiding all his life, and what he sees there is something so random and twisted, yet at the same time a great use of practical effects and once again an example of Ari Aster’s willingness to create something truly different.

That’s what Beau Is Afraid is - different. Every viewer will leave having a different interpretation, but there is no doubting that this is Ari Aster’s very own distinct director vision, and one that feels like you’re being thrown face first into someone’s deep subconscious. It’s a truly exhilarating viewing experience. Do I get all of it? No, but I don’t think I need to. Some things are meant to be misunderstood. Is the movie a bit long? I mean yeah, it’s three bloody hours! Though that may tread a bit into the element of self indulgency from Aster, I still can say with certainty that this was a strangely enjoyable watch, and also surprisingly funny too. In a twisted way, Beau Is Afraid is a hilarious comedy of errors. And by gosh go see it on the big screen at the cinema. This movie deserves your undivided attention, don’t wait for it to go to streaming. Cinema is where it’s at, even if at my screening there was this very annoying fly that kept flying from the projector to the screen, making the in-movie anxiety correlate pretty effectively with my anxiety of that stupid damn fly!!

Overall score: 9/10

[wizkiddx]

i saw that you at least used to write for harry could u do another? like maybe im just a basic bitch but 'only one bed' trope or sm

Summary: honestly just me shitty attempt at the only one bed thing ahah with Harry Holland x reader

no warnings I don’t think apart from my ramabling :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

God you were groggy. It had been a long 16 hour flight and you were well and truly completely over this day. Once you’d had some proper sleep, no doubt you will be beyond excited to explore the forest and beaches of this remote island in Indonesia. You were certain it was beautiful, even if you’d arrived in the dead of night so you couldn’t see any of the majesty yet. It was one of the joys of being Tom’s makeup artist - travelling the world and being paid for it? A literal dream. 

Except maybe the previous 24 hours. The Holland name carried a lot of weight in the world, but not enough to control typhoons across the tropics - there were some limitations to his power. And yes first class lounges were nice but none had beds to crash on during the 6 hour weather delay. The four of you (Tom, Harry, Andrew and yourself)  ended up camping out in a out-the-way corner. Tom got the long sofa; Andrew in one of those weird egg line chairs; you and Harry splayed on the floor. Why you’d had to get up at 4 am to catch a flight that was now not departing till 12 hours later actually hurt to think about - especially because you’d all gone out for a meal the night before that had inevitable went a lot later than planned. 

Two connecting flights with a very angry baby later, the four of you were checking in to the only hotel on the island - which was now almost exclusively filled with the production team for Tom’s newest movie. It wasn’t especially big-budget with massive million pound overheads, instead a smaller scale indie film (that you privately thought might earn Tom a number of accolades). But yeh, shooting on an island that received almost no tourism meant everything was different to the usual. None more so than for Tom and his team (including you) who he normally would look after very well, with the nicest hotel rooms or rental homes. 

The hotel was basic, you’d known that before you arrived but seeing is believing is it not? Most entertaining though, was seeing Tom’s face. Andrew was a well travelled older guy, he had stayed in some shitholes in his life. Equally you and Harry had both travelled when you were younger (you through inter railing and him in australia), so had stayed in hostels before. But for Hollywood star Tom Holland? The way he tilted his head to the side as if to say ‘really this place?’ did lift your spirits momentarily. 

Andrew had got his key first, bidding you all good night with a grunt, then Tom - who still seemed confused as to the whole arrangements. It left you and Harry at the small dingy reception, the warm glow of an old lantern-esque light fixing illuminating the place. The guy behind the desk was a smiley local and greeted you warmly, if incorrectly.

“Ah and finally the couple I see!” He spoke with a thick accent but still very clear English which had you questioning if this was just a translational error. Harry looked at you instantly, his eyes wide which made you scoff - him joining in, shaking his unruly curly mop emphatically.

“No no we um… we aren’t together.” All the while Harry pointed between the two of you, communicating through actions rather than just the language, given that you were both the very typical Brits abroad who hadn’t learnt the language of the place they were visiting. 

“Still under Holland name?” The guy asked in a perplexed manner, flicking through a book filled with cursive scribbles and scanning to see if he’d made a mistake. He checked one, then looked up nervously before checking the same page once again- you saw where this was going. ”We, we only have couples room down for you though? 3 double rooms is the booking for Holland.” 

It was late, you both stunk of a combination of plane and BO, you both just wanted your individual and respective beds. 

“Well can we get another room then?” Harry didn’t quite snap but there was still an impatientcy to his voice, which came out whenever he was a little agitated. Seeing the slightly worried look the mans eyes, you leaned onto the desk with a genuine smile. 

“Sorry we know its last minute and its not your fault, we’ve just had a really long flight.”

“I am terribly sorry miss but we are only small hotel and Hollywood has filled us up. I have no other rooms. I am truly sorry sir, ma’am.” The guy went from looking worried to terrified as Harrys jaw tensed up, you naturally squeezed his arm to try and ground him, instantly deciding that you’d just work it out. 

“No no it’s not your fault, don’t worry we’ll figure it out. Can I just get the key?”

Harry stepped back and let youtakeover proceedings, signing all the insurance documents etc and asking the man about the breakfast arrangements and such, though you saw him furiously typing on his phone and by the buzzing in your pocket- presumed he was messaging the group of you Tom, Andrew and himself. 

Once finished the guy pointed you on your way, up two flights of stairs and down a hall. The whole time Harry was muttering about how useless the other two were for not replying and also for making the wrong booking in the first place. If only you hadn’t been the last two to checkin, then it would’ve been someone else’s problem.

He felt especially guilty just because you were the only girl-  he didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable, hence why he was trying to locate his brother so they could share tonight till they got it figured out. The tension, combined with sleep deprivation, was palpable as you both walked in silence toward the room - Harry was trying to formulate a plan in his head as they did so. And honestly? You just couldn’t be bothered to deal with it. So, once you reached the door 57 holding the physical key (old school, rather than a key card) you just decided to address it. 

“Will you chill please?” 

“Well if my idiot broth-“

“Oh leave him be for god sake. If you’re okay with it I really don’t mind sharing with you tonight?” Not bothering to laugh at his slightly shocked expression with mouth hanging a little open, you fiddled with the key until the lock clicked open. From the entrance you had a pretty clear view of the whole room and… well, lets just say dated would be a fair expression - when compared to what you were used to? The floor was tiled and the bed was a small double, with some funky and slightly washed out prints of blue and red on the cover. The pillows looked a little limp, more like glorified pieces of cardboard than anything fluffy and comfortable. The walls were that yellowy magnolia shade that everyone in the UK had gone insane for in the 80s and there was an old school wooden wardrobe in the corner. 

Home for 5 weeks. 

With a shrug of your shoulders you entered, dumping your personal and work suitcases by the far wall carelessly - the higher priority action being to collapse on the bed. Doing so with an overdramatic huff, you let your eyes close but payed special attention to the delayed footsteps of Harry as he entered, then the slight creaking noise as he perched on the other side of the bed - no doubt looking at you, at least slightly fearfully. 

The relationship between you and Harry was complex to say the least. Well no… it should be, not on the face of it. You had met through work and made friends. And you wished it was that simple but alas, nothing ever really is. When you’d first worked with Tom you were in the tail end of a relationship you had long since forgotten about - literally meaningless, not worth the time and effort you’d put into it. From the start you’d had a feeling Harry was more interested in you than the average co-worker (even if your job and therefore co-workers were anything but normal and average) but you were in a relationship so nothing ever came. 

Then almost as if synchronised, just as you got out your relationship, Harry threw himself in the deep end with a girl he’d met through his family friends. Then the roles were somewhat reversed, you now spent a good chunk of your day just entertaining yourself with thoughts of the curly headed, slightly awkward, very-passionate-about-tea-making Holland. The cliche is so real - your always want what you cannot have. 

However, a couple months ago his relationship had fizzled and faded away leaving both of you in a sort of no mans land. The sort of not wanting to ruin the friendship situation. The subject was never broached by either you - except you assumed he was being tormented in a similar way to how you were by his big brother and Andrew. Never publicly, yet whenever you found yourself alone in a room with one of them (being Tom’s makeup artist that happened often enough) there would always be a sly dig. The chemistry was  so ‘obvious even a blind man could see it’. Somehow though, weeks of this and your were still stuck. Stuck in the middle. 

“You sure you’re alright with this?” His voice was gruffer and hoarser from the long journey but you could hear the self-consciousness and naivety in his tone, without having to peel your eyes open and look at his face. 

“I know your not a murder and plus, we shared the airport floor this morning… this is pretty much the same.” He hummed in acknowledgement so you carried on “and plus your pint sized.” That earned you a playful shove in the side as you sniggered, before pulling yourself up so you we now sitting next to him, legs hanging off the edge of the bed. His brown eyes searched deeply into yours, as if physically checking for any hint of regret or hesitation. “Don’t even dare offering to go on the floor.” 

“Okay okay okay!” Holding his hands up in surrender, you both laughed, breaking the peace of the late night of the remote Indonesian island. Once an impressive yawn interrupted you though, Harry proclaimed it was time for bed and shooed you into the bathroom to get changed and sorted. 

Honestly you were too tired and lazy to dig out your cleanser and skin stuff, instead opting to just splash a bit of water on your face before swapping into your pj shorts and an old tattered oversized tee. Once done you and Harry swapped, him coming out a couple minutes later in basketball shorts and a black loose fitting tee. 

It wasn’t awkward so to speak, more a sort of excited-tense atmosphere, which there was no doubt Harry was mainly responsible. The boy was jittery and on edge, which to put simply, you didn’t have the energy to reciprocate. 

With a quiet wish of goodnight to each other, Harry flicked off the bedside lamp and you both rolled to your respective edges of the bed, a large space of no mans land between you. In the middle. You know the first time you share a room with someone and you overthink everything? When you don’t want to move about or fidget too much in case it disturbs the other? When your listening intently to their breathing, in the hope it’ll even out and only then will you feel able to fall asleep yourself? 

Well it doesn’t work when both of you are doing it. When both of you are professional over thinkers. 

God knows how long it took till you gave up, favouring sleep over your worries and concerns. So you flipped over, no doubt rocking the whole bed, turning to face his back that was still huddled almost teetering off the edge of the bed. The only light within the whole room was that coming under the actually scarily large gap between the floor and the door to the hallway. It was just enough to see the back of Harry’s curls and you must’ve fallen asleep trying to trace all the torturous and windy routes of the strands.

///////////

In the morning the process of waking up didn’t come easy to you as normal for many reasons; the long day prior; the jet lag; the weird surroundings. So you stayed in this sort of blissful haze for probably longer than you should. Half aware but not really; half asleep but not quite. In the middle  of sleep and alertness. Therefore it took you longer than it should have to notice the extra weight on the dip of your waist. Not anything alarming, just a presence you were absolutely not used to. It was only when you shifted a bit to lie further on your back, that enough of a stimulus from the added pressure made you actually open your eyes blearily. And sure enough, a limp hand looked to have casually and unconsciously been thrown over your side. 

As if in slow motion, you traced the arm backwards - first with your eyes, but then having to twist your neck too. Only then could you fully see the browny ginger haired boy who was lowkey spooning you? It was certainly a way to fully wake you up, breath halted to a stand still in your lungs, in fear of disturbing him and having to confront what would almost certainly be an awkward situation. 

There was still a safe hands width distance between the two of you except for the rogue arm. Harry’s head was placed to the edge of his pillow, mouth slightly parted as his breathing slightly tickled the wispy hairs on the back of your neck. He looked so peaceful and calm - a difference to the normal Harry who, even on a good day, took great pleasure in meticulously picking things apart and being a bit cynical. It was part of his ‘charm’; but seeing him like this was a type of vulnerability he rarely chose to show. 

To be fair he was asleep, he dint realise he was exposing himself in this way.

Finding yourself a little transfixed (a bit creepy but hey) on the natural curves and definition of his face, you ever so carefully rolled over in the bed to face him. It stopped you from craning your neck and gave the sleepy boy a slight nudge, making him tense his arm a little more tightly round you. 

He settled quickly though, giving you ample opportunity to just observe what was going on . Both right in front of you… and what the hell was going on in your head. Because to be honest it was an overwhelming amount of emotion thoughts for the early morning. 

Somehow you must’ve eventually drifted off once again because the next thing you were aware of was a shuffling from immediately next to you. This time though, you were instantly aware of exactly the situation you found yourself in and chose to keep up the pretence of sleep - a little interested in how Harry would play it. 

You heard a small gasp, having to suppress a chuckle at what you imagined Harry’s sleepy and panicked face looked like. That lasted a couple of moments, before you felt him painstakingly slowly peel his hand from your waist and if you were being 100% honest… you heart sort of sank. 

What you had been expecting?- you don’t know and really there was really no reason to be disappointed. Yet, you still felt this deflated and disappointed feeling, hit your chest especially hard. Perhaps it was because of your focus on that emptyness that you forgot you were supposed to be pretending to be asleep./.

Because when he had delicately brushed the side of your face to tuck a rogue bit of hair behind your ear - your eyes flickered open.  Like a rabbit caught in headlights, Harry froze, his hand still hovering over your jaw. Equally, you didn’t know what to do. Because really… do friends tuck hair behind the others ears? And do friends look at each other with this matched expression of confusion and fear? 

It took a painfully long time (though in reality was probably only a matter of seconds) before the boy retracted his hand, suddenly sitting up from his reclined position down at you. Mirroring his actions, you both ended up sitting, facing the opposite wall, bodies closer than they needed to be in the double bed. Both still very much in the middle. 

“I er-“

“-No no don’t… was nice of you” He had been about to apologise which you didn’t want to hear. You didn’t want to hear ‘ I didn’t mean it’ - you wanted him to mean it. In response Harry nodded jerkily, and from your peripheries, noticed he was searching your face for any sign of emotion.

“Still can’t believe this all happened… I-I didn’t disturb you too much did I?” He sounded really nervous. You were never like this with each other. So static and forced. 

“No no… I slept really good actually.” Your register was quieter, waiting till you’d finished speaking before looking over at him with a self conscious smile. 

“Ah I’m glad… I um-I did too.” The silence returned and the atmosphere just felt sharp. It felt like you were quite literally walking either side of a knife edge. It made you chew on your bottom lip, playing with the slightly frayed edges of the vintage quilt. 

“Y/n- I look…” He’d bolted upright and voice was more raised than normal for the morning. “This is gonna sound so fucking weird, especially cos we’re literally in the same bed but... but I was thinking we could maybe go on a hike or something together?” What he seemed to be suggesting didn’t match the level of panic that was conveyed in his body language which confused you. And what the bed had to do with it… was yet to make sense in your head. 

“I think Andrew said we’re getting some tour of island this afternoon so-“

“ I kinda meant just you and me.” 

The penny dropped and it had you focusing all energy on processing what was happening - understandably causing Harry to only worry more with the lack of response. “I’m sorry if I’ve ruined ever-“

“No I-I….I’d really like that too.”

“Oh er… well… really?” The sheer shock made you giggle, feeling the two of you sliding back into the normal dynamic.

“Normally a boy has to buy me a drink before he gets in my bed but….” A mischevious smirk that spread across your lips gave Harry the final confirmation that just maybe you were interested too, making him scoff and quietly chuckle.

It was odd; mainly because this was the two of you being incredibly vulnerable and honest with each other - something that you hadn’t allowed yourself to be for fear of messing things up. And then one lazy morning, both with morning breath and slightly puffy eyes, it changed. For the first time when you looked at him, he really saw - and vice versa. You were still in the middle of something, yet it was completely different. 

This time you were in the middle together figuratively as well as literally. In the middle of the bed, closer than you needed to be, but not wanting to retreat - while you both just looked shyly and bashfully at each… Eventually you lips hesitantly met in the middle. 

[bae-science]

oh? uprising pentagon funding moments? tell us more

okay let’s get into it hello everyone and welcome to unraveled with newt bae-science. i’ve replaced the twink.

BACKGROUND:

when creating the first pacific rim movie with gdt at the helm directing, the cgi being done was pretty expensive. it’s giant robots, giant monsters, huge military complexes, and making raleigh’s pupils into circles and not big pink hearts. complicated stuff! so the expectation from the big boys at legendary was that they would take the marvel route: get funding from the us military. 

the way that works goes like so: there is a team at the pentagon that reviews every script sent to them by film producers that would like funding. if the script is deemed to portray the us military in an acceptable way, the production gets free use of military bases, tons of cash, use of equipment, and a ton of other stuff. this is how marvel does all their movies. it’s propaganda, babey!

so they polish off the script and send it off to the boys in brown in washington to ask for cgi money. the us military reads the script, says “no we’re not portrayed well and also the ppdc is too international (and lbr, with the kaidonovskys and the triplets they probably weren’t too happy about that teamup)”, and sends it back for changes. no changes? no money.

well del toro says fuck that.

he says considering all the lovely things the us military had done to latin american counties while he was growing up (because remember, the guy is mexican), he wasn’t gonna take a penny of their propaganda money just to kiss up. no changes are made, a crap ton of more money goes into the cgi, and the first film barely broke even. it had a budget of $180 million usd  (10 million more than godzilla king of the monsters) and grossed $411 million worldwide. in big budget movie world? that’s fucking nothing. the first avengers movie had a budget of $220 million and made $2.048 billion worldwide. in 2012. so the bar was set and pacific rim did not meet it monetarily.

cut to five years later with uprising. legendary is sitting around, going “okay we know there’s still a strong fanbase for this franchise, there’s still blockbuster material in here, can we make a profit?”. they don’t want a repeat of last time, because if you bring in del toro, he’s gonna give us a script that won’t get military funding, and we cannot afford to make this movie without it. it’s pacific fucking rim. so they bring in a guy whose never solo directed before and has a background of working on the transformers movies, which are also about giant robots and also chock full of us nationalism. you can pay him less than a big name like gdt, he’s guaranteed to make something that the army will like, and he knows what he’s doing with the rock ‘em sock ‘em robots, which is all we really care about. 

enter steven s. deknight.

THE HUNCH:

gonna put a great big ALLEGEDLY here because none of this is confirmed, i’m only speculating, but i’m also a double entertainment major who’s been working in the industry for almost half a decade, so. i have a solid proposal.

here’s my pitch: i think they whip up a script that is us military catnip. tons of glorification of soldiers, turning the ppdc into a police state, child soliders going uncriticized, more emphasis on the jaegers and fight sequences than actual characters, and of course, the villains. you have shao, a chinese businesswoman who has an extremely unethical company culture (stream) and turns out to have been blind to the evil aliens destroying it right under her nose, and then you have the precursors. because putting aside the whole twist thing and newt being possessed and tortured, all the poorly done allegories, blah blah blah, before the big twist that it’s faceless aliens we can blamelessly kill, it looks like the fruity dude who defected from the government to the private sector and sold out, is the main villain. you have several excellent things the audience is already primed to hate (girlbosses, china, people being successful at things who aren’t the government and refusing to work with them, schrodinger’s evil dandy) thanks to propaganda. formulaic, basic plot with little scary nuance or criticism + easily vilifiable concepts the us doesn’t like = tons of cash from uncle sam. free money, right?

well we all know how that girl bossed now don’t we.

the budget for pacific rim: uprising was $150 million. it grossed $290.5 million worldwide for a monumentally worse box office flop than the first movie, mixed reviews from critics, an outraged fan response, and everybody got on their ass for fridging mako and being yet another sci-fi franchise to screw over john boyega. it premiered in march, Q1, where movies go to die. i was there. i sat in that theater in my little newt cosplay and was set on the path to also become a psych student (i have a lot of fields of study. nomative determinism, okay?), and felt my extremely normal and average height body fill with rage. it was a shitshow at the fuck factory. 

THE TAKEAWAY:

we all know why uprising sucked. it was a textbook example of fridging, the characters were underdeveloped and one-note, there were no real themes or points made, newt starred in a one-man one-hivemind trauma porno; i’ve said all this before. 

but i try to do this thing where i take away a lesson from a shitty experience, whatever it may be. what can we learn from uprising (allegedly)? well for one, don’t cram your movie full of enough propaganda to please the army and expect it to actually be a good movie. don’t let a first timer direct such a big project with so many politics behind it. let financial constraints push you to think outside the box with your art: just look at new who! blink is one of the highest rated episodes of the whole damn SHOW and it came out of penny pinching. and most important: support art that means something. throw your money at projects that have something important to say, and encourage the people you know to do so too. because if we don’t? nothing is immune to propaganda. not even giant robots.

(and stream pacific rim: the black so i can have a big budget for when i direct pr3 ❤️)

[legionofpotatoes]

alright here’s ma thoughts on that flick I mentioned

we hatewatched a*my of the dead because we were CONVINCED “zombies in las vegas” would be an impossible concept to screw up, but in so assuming we obviously invoked a holy wager with the universe and got reminded, once again, that hoping for improvement from someone who’s dependably put out bad art is never a wise choice 😐

but we were honestly kinda roped in by the marketing??? and expected a goofy fast-paced flick with the odd traditional undead metaphor thrown in, framing some sort of relationship drama maybe or hell even nothing at all! we’d have taken pure indulgent storytelling, idk italian job with zombies in las vegas, I don’t know fucking anything but??? whatever this was???? spoilers below for it is time for One Of My Rants

I mean the main reason I really want to write all this and complain. this film here probably has the most unappealing cinematography I have ever experienced in my life and that is saying something. who the fuck signed off on that CONSTANT shallow-ass depth of field that imprisons your eyeline and turns every shot into bokeh paste???? and I mean every shot almost!!!! I promise if you think I am overreacting just throw a dart at the seek bar and watch twenty seconds from wherever it lands. it is horrifying to look at. at least it gave my girlfriend a good visual shorthand for what it’s like when I lose my glasses

why was sean spicer in this movie. did they pay him to be here. was sean spicer paid hollywood money for his scene in this film because fuck everyone who was involved in that decision

the legitimately baffling hints at the extraterrestrial origins of the infection that went absolutely nowhere and had no dramatic or plot-level bearing. we love to see the franchise sprouts fellas

yet another big budget waste of everything hiroyuki sanada has to offer. and bautista too I guess? I like him but man was this an odd career move

what was the crux of his conflict/resolution with his daughter btw. I understand it was rooted in miscommunication over their forms of grief irt mom but uhh… it was all rather clunky and didn’t land for me. I tried I really tried to buy in but something was wrong fundamentally with the groundwork there, it did not click and their catharsis felt unearned. I know there’s massive amounts of tragic baggage being projected there from the author so I’m not slapping any judgment down really;

but again it would be an easy thing to wave off if they just had a vibrant cast of lovable simpletons with good chemistry and the kinetic sense of plotting the trailers promised (and this premise never discounts good drama, either). but instead it was just two and a half (!) hours of meandering into situations the filmmaking instincts had no idea how to flow in and out of

to wit. I know talking about “bad pacing” is associated with armchair bullshit but consider the example of the scene were dieter does an out of nowhere little dance after childishly screaming but then still-killing a zombie, with the film framing this as a micro character triumph, and not a second later the bg soundtrack instantly fades into an orchestral score dramatizing a nearby mcguffin reveal, completely 180 degreeing the tone without a semblance of deft insert shot stitching or even I dont know a fucking jump cut maybe. now imagine this whiplash for 2.5 hrs uninterrupted

I will keep complaining about the length yeah because this was not a story requiring this much real estate to be told. Uhh in my humble and personal opinion, of course

[man sees zombie tiger] “this is crossing the line!” you can in fact write dialogue that is not utter nonsense that falls apart once you drill down its single fickle layer of referential meta winking. what line are you talking about. you have rules in this insane situation you’re in? total nitpick moment I know but it got burned in my brain for some reason. like a microcosm of the mismanaged dramatic instincts paired with weird writing that dots this movie. I am sure the director calls this either satire or genre deconstruction. I am SO sure

tumblr domino meme that goes from “dude getting sucked off while driving” to “entire las vegas literally nuked”

tig notaro is always great to see but once you know she’s been filmed as a separate greenscreen plate months after photography wrapped - cause she had to apparently replace some abusive asshole but that’s a whole other pig not worth fucking - it becomes impossible to unsee her odd detachment from everyone else in the movie lmao. it doesn’t really “ruin” anything on its lonesome but it is hard to unsee

why. was. sean. spicer. in. this. movie

a very simple key ingredient missing from fully turning lip service sympathy for main uruk hai dude into actual empathy that would generate meaningful conflict with hero family would be to spend a bit more time articulating what he internally wanted the most. because he was obviously trying to do something here with pointed agenda. a family, to have kids, build a caste system, save his wife’s head, return to his planet??? all of these could represent the bigger context in his psychology that spurred his vengeance but none of them are dramatically emphasized long enough for you to cheer him on. I’m not asking too much I promise. Articulating interiority of a mute character is pretty doable with deft cinema language, just gotta linger and hold a shot here and there for a few seconds, frame as his POV, donezo. I know this is also one of those like. “who cares” moments but the movie does, very evidently so, in making this guy an actual character. you can kinda piece it together and create a framework of sympathy for him, sure, but then again he ultimately becomes a foil to be killed and not defeated, so. Ehh whatever

quarantine zone stuff was not a wildly childish covid allegory quarantine zone stuff was not a wildly childish covid allegory quarantine zone stuff was n

the rooftop helicopter fakout at the end was such an ass-backwards, manufactured moment of what could be a simple setup/payoff it just pissed me off??? you gain nothing by giving sad dad five seconds of pointless crisis that flips right back to previous status quo ANYWAY, except for a weaksauce waste of runtime, which could be used instead to get inside notaro’s head and actually SHOW the remorse form as she took off, literally maybe even a frown playing on her face as she’s headed for safety right before we cut back to drax and the kid. just a simple-ass, minimal, momentary setup for what is the most basic filmmaking trick of creating macro catharsis moments. Just???? g o d if you can’t even land that shit why are you even doing any of this

that lil run final pam did was very very charming and super choreographed in a way that was the tiiiniest bit overdone

the whole intro with the simul-backstories and posing with family photos was just… oddly motivated. what was the goal? “here’s what we’re fighting for” vignettes? why? it’s not a functional setup in that vein. what was all that

also I am sorry if this is insensitive but the reasons most characters end up articulating to justify going back into the hell that destroyed their lives makes them sound seriously insane

I dont like complaining about CGI (honestly) but so much of it in modern movies can achieve higher fidelity if the animation is simply subdued. Do not overengineer and over-apply 2D cell methodologies and kinematics to each tiny twitch and movement in a hyper 3D model and I promise you. it will look a thousand times more natural. look at thanos in those last two movies. your rendering and detail are absolutely perfect with the tiger you just have to let stuff sit instead of constantly simulating swaying hair strands and firing off all facial muscles at once. great moment at one point where makeup zombie horse and CG zombie tiger are both in one shot together and just by unnecessary amounts of movement alone you can tell who doesn’t belong. again; detail, rendering, compositing, lighting, all picture-perfect; but y’all just gotta let the animation breathe sometimes, and chill it out

plot holes don’t really matter to me but it was kinda funny how lilly decided not to mention the enormous wrinkle in intel pertaining to an actual territorial tribe of intelligent zombies that require human offerings to let you pass, just so that reveal could play out in real time through the joyous punishment of the cartoonishly misogynistic dude

total chad move for mister uruk hai and final pam to rule from a rusted swimming pool complex

the ending with vanderohe oh my god. with the. cash stacks at the airport register. and specifically them working in his favor. that is literally something you do to get arrested under suspicion of theft. it was almost played for laughs and I respect that. coulda been goofier. make these movies goofy ya dorks

anyway, weird, weird movie. bad marketing. message unclear (something something sins of the father???), baffling editing instincts, literal worst-looking cinematography I ever laid eyes upon. Confidently dying on that last hill

[aion-rsa]

Space Sweepers and the History of Working Class People In Space

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This week saw the release of Space Sweepers, Korea’s first big budget special effects space movie extravaganza. There are a lot of interesting things to say about this movie, but one of the things that makes it stand out is it’s an excellent portrayal of people in space who are skint.

See, I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably never going into space. Unless you’re a highly trained technical specialist (well done!) or a billionaire (pay your taxes!), your best shot at seeing Earth from space within your lifetime is the development of realistic-yet-cheap VR headsets.

And the thing is, a lot of the time this holds up in sci-fi as well. Space travellers are either living in a post-scarcity utopia, are part of the military, or are some kind of genius scientists.

Even where we see supposedly salt-of-the-Earth relatable types, like Han Solo or Mal Reynolds, their scruffy outfits and roguish ways can’t quite cover for the fact that they own and live in the equivalent of a massive luxury yacht or private plane. Serenity may look like a rust bucket, but it’s far from the equivalent of a white van, and while Mal is constantly complaining about the costs of fuel and repairs, that doesn’t change the fact that he seems to own the ship outright, and in “Oxygen” he appears ready to buy the ship for cash.

As for Han Solo, leaving for a moment his humble origins and that he won the ship in a card game, within the Galaxy Far Far Away the ratio of space travellers to non-space travellers doesn’t seem that different from the one on Earth. Yes, there are lots of smugglers and Tie-fighter pilots and interplanetary bounty hunters, but for every one of them there are millions of Tusken sand raiders, Jawa scrap merchants, moisture farmers and Corellian street rats. Spacecraft might come and go from the spires of Coruscant as regularly as buses, but the population density is such that most people on that planet will be lucky to see sunlight, let alone the stars.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the chances of an ordinary person getting into space even in the foreseeable future vary between Willy Wonka Golden ticket level lucky, or truly dystopian. On the one hand, Elon Musk has announced the first all-civilian mission to space, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman (so, not what you’d call an everyman), two seats given to people who have won a place by donating to St Jude’s Hospital (it probably won’t be one of the smaller donors), and finally, one lucky front-line health worker.

But Elon Musk wants to colonise Mars, and sadly billionaires still need people to clean the toilets, so Musk has other ideas for how ordinary people might get into space. Unfortunately that idea is indentured slavery, demonstrating that the most prescient science fiction writers of our generation are the writers of first-person shooters.

This is why, outside of post-scarcity-fully-automated-luxury-space-communism, and the military, science fiction is always oddly quiet about money. With a few honourable exceptions.

We Just Work Here

The first and most obvious reason why any ordinary working-class person would end up in space is “they’re paid to”.

Pretty much the codifier of working-class people in space is Alien. The crew of Nostromo aren’t scientists, they’ve not got The Right Stuff. Nobody on that ship is getting a high school named after them. The crew of the Nostromo are basically truck drivers who venture off the highway and run into something nasty. Yes, ironically they show a great deal more competence, professionalism and intelligence in encountering an alien threat than the actual scientists in the prequel movie, but the first conversation these characters have when they come out of hyper sleep is about money. From the outset, these are people in a place of work.

It’s a model that set the format for gritty-industrial-working-class-people in space movies going forward for better or worse. Event Horizon just lifts Alien’s aesthetic completely for the rescue ship Lewis & Clark, as does the videogame series Dead Space, like Alien, set aboard a mining ship.

Away from the horror genre, Outland sees Sean Connery play sheriff in a final frontier mining town that could have taken place in the same world as Alien.

And of course, Red Dwarf, which not only made good use of the Alien aesthetic, but also cast the colony commander from Aliens as their Captain, to tell the story of chicken soup repairmen in space.

Across all of these stories, and of course the aforementioned videogames, the life of the blue collar space traveller is an unpleasant one, exploited by a company that not only controls your life while you work, but also owns all of your food, water and air. Indeed, it’s not rare for them to go further. In Moon, another film where the spacemen-to-earthmen ratio seems not far what it is now, Sam Bell’s employer decides to save the cost of training employees and ferrying them back and forth from Earth to the Moon by taking one employee and filling a cellar full of his pre-programmed, short-lived disposable clones.

Space Sweepers

Public Transport

But maybe you don’t want to work for “the Man”, not an unwise call given the Man is probably trying to feed you to something horrible in the hope of creating a new bioweapon. One surprisingly under-utilised method of getting into space is public transport.

In The Fifth Element, Bruce Willis plays a special-forces-operative-turned-cab-driver who, as part of his cover, wins a ticket to go on a space cruise. Although looking at the sets and the extras in this movie, as well as the packed-in-as-tightly-as-we-can apartments back on Earth, one gets the impression this is not an option open to the majority of working joes.

Perhaps the best example of this is in the shockingly under-loved 2018 flick, Prospect, featuring future Mandalorian Pedro Pascal.

In Prospect, the spaceship is little more than a rotating framework filled with cargo containers in front of a massive engine. The father and daughter prospecting team are on board a lander that resembles nothing so much as an old Apollo Lunar Lander on the inside, and as the mothership approaches their destination the ship doesn’t even stop, it just releases the lander, tells them when the ship is going to be passing back that way and warns them the line is being terminated, so there won’t be another ship passing that way.

This is a model it would be fantastic to see more of. The landing module is small enough that it’s entirely plausible that even these not-very-well-off characters could buy, hire or rent one. Rather than having the freedom of the space ways like Mal or Han, their travel options are entirely restricted by what destinations are profitable for large shipping companies and whether they’ll let you tag along. And while on the surface the aesthetic looks a bit Alien, in truth it feels far more like it’s cobbled together from relics of the actual space age.

Borrow Your Way Into Space

And finally, of course, there’s the Elon Musk solution. Borrow your way into space. One of the early places to use this idea was Gateway, by Frederik Pohl. Frederik Pohl in particular is fantastic at writing science fiction worlds where people actually have to worry about money. In Gateway and its sequels humanity has discovered Ancient Aliens left a space station nearby, stocked with a lot of spaceships. Being alien technology, humans can’t control the ships accurately, they’re limited pretty much to pressing the “Stop” and “Go” buttons, and when the ship flies off it might land on a world of fabulous riches, or it might chuck you into the heart of a star.

Prospectors who want to try their luck in these ships have to take out a loan to get to the station, and throughout the novel the protagonist is constantly aware of how many credits are in his account.

Which brings us back around to Space Sweepers. At first glance the Space Sweepers set-up might seem similar to that of the Millennium Falcon or Serenity – an extremely “used” looking ship run by a rag-tag bunch of misfits. But the first time we see the protagonist, Tae-ho, he’s in a pawn shop. As soon as he gets back to the ship we learn the crew are still paying off the cost of the ship, as well as the costs of repairs and parts.

We see an awful lot of “Space sweepers” throughout the film, junk collectors gathering up salvage from Earth’s orbiting collection of derelict spacecraft and defunct satellites. But these people don’t seem like roguish space pirates, the impression they give is more akin to app-based gig workers.

This is compounded by another issue – that to work in space you need a visa, with citizenship limited to the wealthy few who are able to afford a place on the deluxe orbiting space habitats.

Everything in Space Sweepers is driven by money, whether it’s Tao-Ho’s attempts to raise enough money to find his daughter, the robot, Bubs, and her attempt to get a humanoid body that reflects her gender, and of course, the $2 million reward for “Dorothy” which drives the whole plot.

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Often space-based sci-fi is about the fantasy of freedom, of exploration. Even shows like Star Trek give us characters whose job isn’t much more than to fly around having adventures. But there is rich storytelling to be done about the people who have to clean the space toilets.

Chris Farnell’s novella series, Fermi’s Progress, is about a ship whose FTL drive vaporises planets, and features at least one space traveller who isn’t a scientist, super soldier or billionaire (although to be fair the other three characters are exactly that). You can find part one here.

The post Space Sweepers and the History of Working Class People In Space appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/375jTzb

[letterboxd]

Found Family.

Riders of Justice writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen opens up to Aaron Yap about grimly funny fairy-tales, woke teenagers and creating an accidental Christmas movie with hunky muse, Mads Mikkelsen.

“Genres, that’s just a sales tool really. That’s to give people, show people, ‘are we having sushi or are we having Italian?’ Sometimes I like it when you don’t know what you’re getting.” —Anders Thomas Jensen

It’s stupidly easy to sell writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen’s new film Riders of Justice on its thirsty pulp appeal alone. Who can resist the promise of Danish acting force Mads Mikkelsen finally getting a decent John Wick-ish vehicle of his own, stoically meting out anguished, bloody vengeance to a cadre of underworld thugs? Certainly not, among many Letterboxd members, Harlequinade, who was moved to write this ode:

“MikkelGod sporting a bushy beard MikkelGod wearing a military uniform MikkelGod wearing a suit MikkelGod having this whole silverfox daddy thing going on MikkelGod killing a man with his big beautiful bare hands MIKKELGOD 🤗🙏🏻😍”

But to dismiss Riders of Justice as another entry in the seemingly endless slew of action-revenge pics would also be to undersell its other layers. Much more than Wick, your average Liam Neeson thriller-of-the-month, or even the recent avenging-dad flick, Nobody, Riders positions itself in a more emotionally and psychologically rewarding space, one perhaps closer to its tonally fluid South Korean counterparts. “What lingers,” Douglas Davidson writes, “are the questions Anders presents and the strange hopefulness that flickers upon the credits roll, burning like the embers of a dying fire in the darkness of night.”

It’s of a piece with all of Jensen’s directorial work thus far. A prolific screenwriter who’s penned everything from soulful early Susanne Bier heartbreakers to the recently misfiring The Dark Tower adaptation, Jensen, as a director, has found a sharply honed groove in the form of grimly funny, genre-defying modern fairy-tales populated by oddball characters forced to contend with the chaos of the inscrutable cosmos around them.

Causality plays an even more pronounced role in Riders. The film’s unlikely heroes—hard-bitten special forces soldier Markus Hensen (Mikkelsen) and a trio of bumbling data wizards (Lars Brygmann and Jensen regulars Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro)—are drawn together to take down a vicious biker gang, but also preoccupied with processing the hows and whys of grief and trauma, and of course, the value of revenge.

Amid the terse blasts of gunfire, the film foregrounds scenes of connection and healing between its characters, an assortment of progressive teens and bumbling middle-aged men whose unusual found-family dynamic recalls Jensen’s previous dark, offbeat comedies like Adam’s Apples and Men and Chicken. As More_Baddass writes, the film gifts us some “Christmastime therapy of an unorthodox family”.

Over Zoom, we spoke about whether it’s possible to make Mikkelsen less handsome, why Denmark won’t be getting a sci-fi blockbuster anytime soon, and the time that Jensen and a friend tried to break the Guinness World Record for movie-watching.

‘Riders of Justice’ cast members Lars Brygmann, Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro.

Riders of Justice is one of your more action-packed films. Did you watch any other action flicks, or were there any specific movies that inspired you while you were designing and creating the action in this film? Anders Thomas Jensen: It’s funny, because it’s always subconscious. I never look for inspiration directly because for me, that would be weird to do because then you’re just copying. Definitely in the back of my mind, there’s a lot of action movies and a lot of revenge movies that I’ve seen in the past that will work their way in there. The process for me is very, how do you say, unconscious? What’s it called?

Intuitive? Intuitive, that’s the word. Thank you. First of all, a revenge movie is not easy, but it always has a strong lead and it has a strong will, which is obviously really good if you want to do a script that moves forward. Hamlet is a revenge story, right? I love Once Upon a Time in the West. I love that. The Searchers. The Sting, I guess, is also a revenge movie. Also, there’s so much identification in people who are wronged.

Wish fulfilment. Yeah that too. It’s one of the obviously basic human feelings. Revenge, love. There are these emotions that you’ll do dramas based on long after we were here.

I understand that you took a break from directing for a while and you were spending time raising your family. I’ve noticed, with Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice there’s a lot of attention paid to parenthood, and the role of the parent. Was that intentionally woven into these narratives and something you were thinking of? Yeah. I don’t do it on purpose, but I can definitely see that every movie I ever made I’m very much a part of it. So the whole father story is part of my life in this movie. I have a teenage daughter who I sometimes feel like … I don’t at all have the emotional tools that she and her friends have. This new woke generation that I’m aware of; every single feeling and the environment and everything. I was brought up in a different way. So that’s quite personal in the story, the whole ‘father who has to learn how to communicate through feelings when he’s not very good at it’.

Mads Mikkelsen and Andrea Heick Gadeberg in a scene from ‘Riders of Justice’.

Would you consider Riders of Justice a Christmas movie? Well, it’s so funny because I didn’t see it at all before one of my editors said. No, I wouldn’t because I didn’t pay attention to it at all. The only reason it ends on Christmas is because that’s the perfect coming together of a family. I needed it in the end, but it could have been Easter, but it wasn’t. Perhaps it is a Christmas movie now because it does have Christmas in it.

What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? There are several, but I think the first time I had was Lawrence of Arabia. I saw that when I was very little, when I perhaps shouldn’t have seen it. But when I was around ten, I got a bootleg copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. VCRs were a brand new thing and we got a VCR. I saw that film every day for half a year and I still know every line in it. It’s not getting out of my head. I love that film and I think from there on, I knew that I wanted to do films.

As a screenwriter, do you have any other screenwriters that you respect and admire? I have many. Billy Wilder is one of my favorites. Also, Ingmar Bergman, the Coen Brothers, Robert Towne, but many others also. There are a lot of good screenwriters.

I can see elements of those writers coming through your work, especially the first three. You’re really good at blending elements from different genres and putting strange characters together. Are there any other genres you want to explore that you haven’t yet? Well, it’s funny because every time I open up a new streaming service, I look for sci-fi movies first. I’m part of the Academy and when I get the screeners, I’m always checking for sci-fi. I have a love for sci-fi, but unfortunately I’m born in a country where doing a sci-fi film would just be insane. It’s never been done. If you have a really big budget, you have five to six million here. So it’s just something that won’t happen. But of course, you could get ambitious and write a sci-fi movie and hope you could do it somewhere else. I hope one day [to] do a good sci-fi movie, or at least something within that genre because it is a favorite.

But I also have to say, basically, I love all genres. Perhaps not rom-com that much, but I really like Westerns. I like war movies, revenge movies, dramas. I love to mix genres. Every time I do a movie, I get this from the distributors: “What are we going to call it?” Because it is this mix of genres. Genres, that’s just a sales tool really. That’s to give people, show people, “are we having sushi or are we having Italian?” So people don’t get confused. But I think sometimes I like it when you don’t know what you’re getting. That’s also what I love about the Coen Brothers and other directors that play with genres, is that I never know where it’s going.

‘Riders of Justice’ writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen.

Let’s talk a little about Danish cinema. You have your Lars von Trier, you have your Vinterberg and Susanne Bier. Is there an older Danish film that you would recommend that people should see? I actually thought about it and it’s going to sound arrogant, but I couldn’t find one. Not when I compare to what else is out there of American, French, Italian, British, German, Russian and Asian. No, there isn’t. Of course there’s Carl Dreyer. He’s an icon in early, early cinema. That’s the obvious thing to say, but no. For me, Danish cinema starts in the ’90s. Also, I haven’t watched many Danish movies before that, because there aren’t that many. Some people will hate me for saying this, but that’s how I feel.

Are there any recent Danish films or filmmakers that you can recommend? This year I saw a film called Shorta, which was great. It was made by two directors with no budget, about two cops venturing into this Muslim part of Copenhagen where there’s a riot. That was really a promising debut. Also, I really like the idea they had. They made a lot of great stuff visually and for almost no money.

What are your movie-watching habits? You said when you turn on a streaming service, you look out for sci-fi movies. Do you have any other weird behaviors? It’s crazy, but if I really like a movie, I see it many times. I also see it many times where I do not look at it. I hear it. I will just lie with my back to it and just hear the movie. Actually, if the movie is really good, it also works without the picture.

I think that’s [as] weird as it gets, otherwise I’m pretty much normal. I used to binge-watch. Actually, I tried to get into a Guinness Book of Record with a friend when I was fifteen, where, for five days continuously, we watched movies. I can’t remember if it was 107 movies. We watched movies and we had a video store sponsor us. We were lying in an all-night video store, and just saw films until we collapsed. That’s the craziest thing I’ve done, but we never got into the book because there are people that are better at not sleeping, so somebody else beat the record by far.

Do you have a list, or a record of what you watched? No, but there was a journalist that asked us what number afterwards. He asked me, “What film was the film number? 47, 46?” I remember him being very impressed that I could differentiate them.

It would have made a great Letterboxd list. Preserve it for eternity. The funny thing is years after I would actually see a film, and I would get an hour into it and I would go, “Oh, I’ve seen this one.” It was because when I saw the last 30 films, I was unconscious.

I need to ask about Mads Mikkelsen because he’s massive with our community. You’ve worked with him for quite a long time now, so you’ve got a pretty solid working relationship. Having just watched a number of your films in a short period of time, it was impressive that you found that range in him that maybe other filmmakers haven’t tapped into. Is there a type of role that you want to see him in that he hasn’t had a chance to play yet? Yes. There are many roles, but I don’t know. I could put a job description or a feeling on it, but it’s much more complicated with Mads, I think. We have this common thing that we love exploring people who lie to themselves, whether it’s comedy or drama. People who are not being honest with themselves and people who have this screwed up self-image, which in all the films we’ve done together, his character has. There are many other characters I would love to explore with Mads.

His looks are quite specific in each film. He just looks like a different person each time, which is great. You just want to see how he is going to look in the next one. His wife is like that too. She’s always excited and she was so happy this time because he wasn’t ugly. Normally he doesn’t look very well, like in The Green Butchers. Because he’s so handsome, so I try to do him not so handsome.

Riders is the hunkiest he’s been in your films, I guess. Definitely. The competition isn’t tough, though. You’re up against a guy who masturbates and a guy with a bad receding hairline. But it is by far his most hunky.

Related content

Softspacedad’s annotated rundown of 46 Mads Mikkelsen films, and ‘Mads Mikkelsen movies ranked based on how good of a father he is’

‘Mads Mikkelsen is filled with rage and has only one eye’, a list by King

Onebear’s lists of all Danish movies released within each cinematic year since 2009

Anders’ list of films by Danish directors or in the Danish language

Leyner’s list of Danish films nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film

Mikkel’s list of Danish Christmas films

Follow Aaron on Letterboxd

‘Riders of Justice’ is screening now in select US theaters and available on demand. Images courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

[mst3kproject]

Light Blast

What’s this?  A death ray movie in which we actually see stuff get death rayed?  Aw, man, that might disqualify it for MST3K right there!  Fortunately for us, however, Light Blast was directed by Enzo Castellari, who brought us Escape 2000, and it stars Erik Estrada. Estrada was never on MST3K but he was on pretty much all the 70’s cop shows they kept referencing, including Mannix and Police Woman, and Mike and the bots would never have let him forget it.

So what do we want out of a death ray movie?  I dunno, some faces melting like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark would be cool, and Light Blast apparently read my mind on that count because we get the first melting face action before the ten minute mark! A couple of young people go to have sex in a boxcar (this scene includes a real classy upskirt shot, just three minutes in) while the bad guy tests his death ray, and in the fine tradition of kids just trying to bone at the beginning of movies, they get zapped.  Meanwhile, somewhere else, Erik Estrada in a speedo takes down a couple of bank robbers by hiding a gun inside a roast turkey.

This is gonna be a weird movie, isn’t it?

Sadly, Light Blast never again rises to that height of absurdity.  Evil Professor Yuri Svoboda has a death ray, and has decided to hold the city of San Francisco hostage for the princely sum of:

Was that even a lot of money in 1985?  According to dollartimes the conversion rate is about 2.5, so that would be $12.5 million today... still seems a little low for a major city.  Anyway.

To show he means business, Svoboda death rays the announcer’s box at a demolition derby.  Thence ensues a series of extremely uninspired car chases and a scene in which Estrada is repeatedly kicked in the avocados by a woman dressed as a nurse (I liked that bit).  Eventually he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, and never even bothers to tell us what the finished picture looks like before running off to what looks like it’ll be the final Power Plant Confrontation.  No such luck.  Svoboda escapes again, and Estrada has to chase him down to the final final confrontation.

There are two things here Castellari seems to really like. One is digital clocks, which are frequently the focus of the death ray for some reason.  The other is men staggering around on fire, filmed in the type of loving slow motion that turns this agonizing death into a moment of over-dramatic hilarity.  Remember in the Making Of Documentary for Return of the King, when Peter Jackson acknowledges that Denethor falling off the top of Minas Tirith while on fire is ridiculous?  Enzo Castellari is definitely not that self-aware.

He is also fond of car chases.  There are three or four of them in Light Blast and they’re competent, I guess.  They’re definitely better than the budget version you sometimes see in really cheap movies, in which the camera turns to watch one vehicle pass by, then repeats the shot with another.  There was probably a storyboard and so forth.  But they’re still pretty monotonous and mostly just look like people driving around with no sense of a destination or a narrative.  Instead, the movie tries to add interest by giving them ‘gimmicks’.

In one of the chases, Estrada doesn’t want the villain to know he’s being followed, so rather than using his own vehicle, he just hops into random people’s cars and makes them do the following.  In one he shows his badge and tells the driver he’s a cop. In another he tells the woman driving that he’s playing a practical joke on a friend from college.  Astonishingly, he never gets slapped or shot.

In another, he steals a race car in order to chase down Svoboda, who is fleeing to a boat from which he plans to death ray the entire city or something.  This chase includes two separate shots in which Estrada jumps the race car over some obstacle in his way, again filmed in slow motion.  In neither was there any sort of ramp to get the car off the ground. It’s like that scene in Speed where the fucking bus somehow jumps over a gap in the highway except they did it twice and slowly to give the audience time to think about how stupid it is. Then Estrada jumps the car again onto Svoboda’s boat, which has already left the dock, and somehow manages to stop on a dime rather than falling into the water.

I recognize that movies are not bound by the laws of physics, but those that get away with breaking them do so by walking a fine line. Things have to look possible. People running away from explosions looks like it should work, and very few of us have ever been in a position to find out what it’s actually like first-hand (partly because those of us who have probably didn’t live to tell about it).  The car jumps?  Nah.

Wikipedia includes a couple of reviews of this film that have been translated, not very well, from Italian.  They’re kind of hard to understand but they do seem to fixate on the preponderance of car chases.  They also reference another staple of 80’s action movies, which is excessive police brutality.  Estrada shoots a whole bunch of people, breaks into a power plant and a funeral home, steals cars, causes a dozen accidents and untold property damage, and bullies his girlfriend into risking her job in order to get him the information he needs.  Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Other clichés drift by.  The villain gives a pretty classic monologue all about how he Showed Those Fools At The Academy and how his death ray will make him supreme ruler of the world and he’ll bring about a new age of peace.  There’s a bit where Estrada and his partner, the Tall Guy (these characters do have names, I just don’t care) sit down at the kitchen table and put together what they’ve learned… but instead of some exposition to tell us, the audience, what that is, we get a Ryan And Shane Look For Forrest Fenn’s Treasure montage but without the irony.  We can just barely hear fragments of voices through this, as the characters talk about it… enough to tease us with what they know and we don’t.

I dunno, it’s possible the audience is supposed to have already figured this stuff out and I just wasn’t paying attention.  I was pretty bored during most of this movie.

During the montage, the bad guys sneak up outside Estrada’s house (which is on a boat?  I think?) and open fire, basically shooting everybody but Estrada himself, who escapes completely unharmed.  His personality-deficient girlfriend isn’t so lucky… but she was only in this movie so it would have a part for Estrada’s real-life girlfriend Peggy Rowe. This bit is right up there with The Phantom Creeps as a perfect example of why Women In Fridges is screenwriting for hacks.  Estrada is already determined to get these guys.  He already cares about the people they’ve killed in the past and the ones they plan to kill in the future!  He is already frustrated by his failures to catch them!  ‘Making it personal’ is completely unnecessary!  Did the writers really think her death would add anything, or were they just trying to fill up their Action Movie Cliché Bingo card?

In the villain’s evil monologue, Svoboda reveals that apparently Estrada killed his wife?  I guess she was the mortician?  This doesn’t help, because I don’t think Svoboda actually knows that Estrada’s girlfriend is dead and even if he does, she wasn’t his target. His henchmen were after Estrada and Tall Guy.

Then there’s the ending, which is in no way a ‘climax’ and barely even counts as an ‘end’.  Remember I said Estrada jumps his racecar onto Svoboda’s boat?  This knocks the death ray over and it melts Svoboda himself.  Estrada watches this, then basically just shrugs and walks the fuck away.  So… that was it?  No confrontation?  No fight? Just a failure to properly secure the superweapon?

Isn’t the rest of the boat gonna melt now, too?  In previous uses the death ray seemed to melt things over a fairly wide area.  Isn’t anyone worried about that?  No, we’re just rolling the credits?  Okay, fine. At least the movie’s over.

Is there anything nice I can say about Light Blast? Well… I guess it passes the Bechdel Test.  There’s a bit, completely irrelevant to the plot, where two women who work at the police station discuss perfume.  It’s as if one of the writers had read about the Bechdel Test and shoved that in there just to pass it, without bothering to think about what the point of the ‘test’ is.

For all I’ve bitched about it, Light Blast isn’t a full on disaster.  It’s merely a mediocre 80’s action movie.  What makes it so damn disappointing is the wackiness of that early scene with Estrada in his underwear and the gun in the turkey.  That bit has the same effect as naming your movie Hercules Against the Moon Men – it gives the audience the impression that you have a sense of humour, and then the rest of the film can be nothing but the slow downward spiral of realizing that you were, in fact, serious.  Even then, it still could have been fun if the writers and director had kept up that kind of cheese throughout but no… Light Blast couldn’t even be bad enough to be good.

If any of you MSTies reading this are aspiring film-makers, let this be the lesson for you: the introduction of your main character sets the tone.  Do that wrong, or in a way that doesn’t match the rest of your movie, and you’re sunk. And if you only have one interesting or funny idea, for love of Apearlo put that at the end of the movie, not the beginning!

[jcmorrigan]

In Defense of Archibald Snatcher

Oh, wow, we’re coming up on almost the sixth anniversary of The Boxtrolls, my favorite film of all time, and though the fandom for it seems to be either dead or in hibernation, I still have the torch lit.

I actually have been of the mindset of the opinion/s I’m about to present here for all those six years, but never really thought it prudent to lay them out until I recently had a friend I was recommending the film to who I warned about some of the elements considered “problematic” and I offhandedly mentioned that I could do a whole essay about why they don’t bother me and said friend replied with a desire to want to hear it because we share infodump for infodump, so here we go, I’m poking the hornet’s nest surrounding a controversial film with a dead fandom.

But if you were on Tumblr back in the heyday, you might’ve seen the reaction to this film when it first debuted. Specifically, what a lot of people honed in on wa that the villain, Archibald Snatcher, employed a dragsona to be able to push his agenda and implement his evil scheme. There was outrage. There were accusations. There was lambasting. And above it all, one question hovers: was this transphobic?

I want to start, before we get into the weeds, by saying that if you are anywhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and you were offended by this film or this character, your experiences are completely valid. I’m about to present the counterargument in language that assumes my take is fact for the purpose of not having to write fifty thousand clunky disclaimers, but analytical as this may be, it IS an opinion, and if you don’t think it’s right, then hey, that’s super valid, and I’m not gonna try and change your mind, because if you’re hurt, then you’re hurt! You just may want to nope out of this post right now because I’m about to lay out my observations and thoughts to the contrary of the accusations of this being homo/transphobic.

First of all, the obvious facet that comes to mind is how strange it is that we only ever saw the word “transphobia” put on this phenomenon rather than “homophobia” when using a female alter ego as a disguise or a performance art is not the same as being a woman assigned male at birth. One only needs to take a look over at RuPaul’s Drag Race to see examples of this culture. Lots of gay men wearing dresses. No women perceived male.

All the same, I will say that on the surface, adding any kind of queercoding to the story’s villain, who the audience is supposed to boo and hiss at, looks really, really bad on paper. However you interpret it, Snatcher is definitely queercoded. He openly flirts with the man he’s trying to trick as a means of getting what he wants, he displays sincere enjoyment of wearing the dress, and he runs the gamut of flamboyant hand gestures. But if you dig a little further, there’s even more to the story: his tale is one of a man who desires to pass as one of the elite class in his society, but is held back by something he can’t change about himself no matter how he denies it.

Let’s look at the rest of his story. Snatcher is in pursuit of the White Hat: the ultimate status symbol. To that end, he’s decided to otherize the Boxtroll population of the town and play upon the culture shock in Cheesebridge to convince the humans of the “upper world” that the Boxtrolls are predatory monsters who must be killed. This sounds like a pretty black-and-white good-and-evil scenario, right? You’ve got your population of innocent sweethearts being attacked and your genocidal racist orchestrating their destruction. But there’s a third layer still: Lord Portley-Rind, the chief White Hat himself. Lord PR is actually the worst of the lot. It’s because he doesn’t accept Snatcher that Snatcher feels he has to resort to this tactic. He demonstrates open hatred of the Boxtrolls and of Snatcher (”I’m not sure who should be more worried: the Boxtrolls or us!”). There are implications in how he treats his daughter that he’s a textbook sexist who believes there are men’s roles and women’s roles in society and nary the twain shall cross. And he’s the rich guy controlling the entire city and letting children’s hospitals and crumbling bridges go to waste by spending the budget on frivolous cheese. In short, Lord PR is basically the ur-example of a nightmarish fictional Republican (and oh, how I WISH he hadn’t been so prophetic).

I’m not saying Snatcher was justified or good. No. He’s in no way redeemable. But over the course of his interactions with Lord PR, you can see just how much society’s elites treat him as inhuman or like a dirty buffoon. He’s looked down upon, he’s insulted even when he’s doing the “service” Lord PR desires, he’s rejected until he’s gone above and beyond his contract and I think it’s even a little bit implied that Lord PR would’ve reneged on the whole deal if the mob hadn’t cheered for Snatcher in the end. So what you have is a prim and proper billionaire who subscribes to gender roles telling a man of the lower class, obviously economically downtrodden, that he doesn’t deserve what Lord PR has.

The idea of meritocracy is woven throughout the film. Listening to the speech in the background of Snatcher’s anaphylactic attack, while the visuals are focused on Eggs rescuing Fish, you can hear Snatcher rambling about how his father told him that if you work hard, you will receive a White Hat, but he worked hard all his life and got nothing. One of the White Hats literally says he got his through being rich. It’s not hard to infer that Snatcher has figured out how broken the system is and realized the only way to win the game is to cheat.

But there’s still one more thing holding him back from his victory, something that actually trips him up when he achieves what he wanted. Cheese is presented as another status symbol: the rich eat it and are connoisseurs of its flavor. Snatcher is deathly allergic to it. The goal he’s chasing, he can’t even have without threat to his own life. His reaction is to pretend he isn’t allergic and to expose himself to having allergic reactions on the regular to show how much he’s ready to become part of the elites. I’ll reiterate: Archibald Snatcher wants to join the elites, but is held back because of something about himself he cannot change that only matters because the upper crust said it should.

Okay. So we’ve established the man is gay, or somewhere on the queer spectrum. How is this not really, really horrible?

Because the narrative invites you to feel some sympathy for him. No, not for his actions or any secret soft side or tragic backstory (that’s a job for the fans), but because he is chasing a dream he cannot attain. Perhaps the film’s biggest shortcoming is how little consequence comes to Lord PR in the end, because Lord PR, for all intents and purposes, is the worse villain on the board. Snatcher’s ploy is to take the class below the one he inhabits and paint its members as the bad guys: a nuisance that must be exterminated for the betterment of society. And we’ve seen this. We’ve seen plenty of real-life examples of have-nots turning on have-lessers because the haves benefit from oppressed groups infighting and being distracted from who holds the money and the power. A lot of times, you see that while intersectionality is definitely something we need to pay attention to, racism, sexism, and homophobia are not concepts that are all explicitly linked. If you experience one, that doesn’t mean you don’t project one or two of the others on other people - particularly if you’re trying to make yourself feel better about the discrimination you face.

When you look at the hierarchy, Snatcher is, I reiterate, a very bad person. But he’s also a victim. Not as much of a victim as the poor Boxtrolls, who get the malice trickling down from both the Red Hats and the White Hats, but he is a victim. We see him mocked, laughed at, turned away. And though he’s not redeemable, there are aspects in which he is sympathetic.

But what about Frou Frou? What about that particular disguise?

Well, for one, it’s used to make yet another allegorical statement. Snatcher is able to get attention paid to him if he weaponizes female sexuality - though it is a very shallow attention that largely results in the straight men of the town swallowing his propaganda while also objectifying him. Most of the comments made on Frou Frou are slimy, smarmy “compliments” on her body from the White Hats. Lord PR’s wife harbors a distinct distaste for Frou Frou because her husband most certainly prefers ogling Frou Frou to actually paying attention to their marriage. Frou Frou is a propaganda vehicle to make it look like more than one person is on the same page as Snatcher; Snatcher himself drives the action of his scheme and gets the dirty work done.

It’s also worth noting that if you take away the implications, villains using alter egos to trick their nemeses is a tale as old as time, from sea witch Ursula making herself more supermodel-esque in order to marry the prince to mythological Loki actually crossdressing much in the same vein in order to fool the Frost Giants. There’s a reason disguise masters and shapeshifters are intriguing villain archetypes: because we’re always a little bit afraid that someone isn’t who they say they are, and because - yeah, I’m about to go here - I think we all wish we could shift shape ourselves to take on new forms that suit the goals we’re trying to accomplish, even if that means “fooling” others. So it’s reasonable to think Laika wasn’t aware that there was any queercoding to even be had here - but I do think the crew was aware, and not in a malicious way.

However, watching Snatcher’s scenes as Frou Frou, there’s something that comes across in his character that you don’t see so often when he’s presenting male: he’s legitimately having fun. He dances, he flirts with the crowd, he adds more flourishes to his speech, he gets sassy. Frou Frou is a means for him to express himself, to allow himself to be feminine when he has built his philosophy on needing to do “what a man does” (he repeats this at least twice) in order to achieve greatness. He can be a little more himself when he’s Frou Frou, even though Frou Frou isn’t him. Taking a new identity that’s allowed the other half of the gender roles allowed in Cheesebridge (which runs on a binary because it’s run by the White Hats) lets him act a little less like what he needs to be to be taken seriously and a little more like he has freedom.

Put this back in context of the greater narrative: given all the parallels we’ve seen, it’s safe to assume that Cheesebridge, as a whole, is not accepting of deviations from gender roles, whether it’s being open and proud of your LGBTQ+ identity or simply wearing the clothes that don’t belong to your gender. Snatcher is taking an enormous gamble here by using Frou Frou at all. On one hand, it’s a calculated risk; he knows if he can appeal to Lord PR’s unchecked sexist libido, he can secure another avenue to being heard. On the other, however, it’s not really much of a leap to say this is something he wants to do, someone he wants to be more like, and isn’t allowed to, and since he’s cheating at the game anyway, he might as well go all the way and do what he wants with his life.

I’ve seen a lot of people take issue with the scene where he reveals himself to Lord PR and comparing it to some actual homophobic/transphobic media. And again, if that still stands to you as your primary analysis and emotional reaction, then feel free to turn away, reject my analysis, and know your thoughts and feelings are completely valid. But I think this scene differs from your usual “person with male parts tricked you into thinking they were a woman” scene in a couple ways.

For one, Snatcher decides to out himself on his own. To Lord PR, it’s when he’s got nothing left to lose. Again, when he realizes the game is broken and the odds are against him, he takes control and decides to be himself a little more. Now everyone knows he likes to act a dragsona because he wanted them to. But also, earlier on, when he revealed himself to Eggs, it was again on purpose. Eggs didn’t figure him out. Snatcher needed Eggs to know the level of the threat he was dealing with: that he was the person Eggs has been running from since the start and is no less dangerous in a dress. It’s always been of his own volition. There’s no “I thought you knew” or disrobing to see a body that doesn’t match expectations - Eggs ripping Snatcher’s wig off is maybe a little iffier, but again, in context, that’s him trying to show Snatcher’s identity, not as a man but as Archibald Snatcher, to expose the corruption, and Snatcher actually plays it completely off because he’s that good of an actor.

Which brings me to my second point. There’s only one person who reacts in an “Oh, gross!” manner to this revelation, and it’s Lord Portley-Rind. The one we’ve established is sexist, homophobic, and your textbook Rich White Straight Cis Man. The one at the top of the food chain. The one who’s been objectifying Snatcher and acting like a slobbering pervert about Frou Frou from the beginning. The homophobe realizes he has been a little gay. The sexist realizes his objectifying a particular person he perceived female has consequences. And this is why to me, that scene is actually hilarious. Because I don’t feel like I’m laughing at Snatcher’s expense. I’m laughing because Lord PR just got called OUT, and this is exactly the kind of discomfort that is karmic given how he’s treated his daughter, his wife, and everyone in his city who’s needed him.

Cycling back to when Snatcher outs himself at the ball, Eggs doesn’t really seem to care that there’s a gender-role-play involved here. His concern is not that this is actually a man; his concern is that it’s specifically the person who he knows is trying to ruin everything. Same with Winnie when Eggs passes it on. Eggs trying to reveal Snatcher to the crowd doesn’t even begin with “Frou Frou is fake,” but a line I will never forget: “Archibald Snatcher has lied to you all.” Not even drawing attention yet to the fact that he’s in the room. Starting out by having everyone remember that guy they are all sure ISN’T there and pointing out he’s bad news.

To look at Lord Portley-Rind’s “Oh my God! I regret so much!” as a dig at Snatcher is to say that Lord Portley-Rind is the lens through which we should be viewing this story, which it most certainly isn’t. The lens is Eggs and Winnie. Adjacent lenses are Fish, Shoe, and Jelly. Lord Portley-Rind is an antagonist to every single character in this film save the other White Hats.

Which is why if this film falls flat anywhere, it’s in letting Lord Portley-Rind get away without consequence. I think I can take a guess as to why this primarily happened: it needed to wrap up in a little under two hours, and dismantling systematic oppression and abuse of socioeconomic power can’t be done in a two-hour escapade. I still wish he were at least villainized a little more, as that’s where the narrative was leading up to that point. One of his earliest scenes with Winnie foreshadows that he will have to choose between her and the hat, and it takes him two tries to make the right choice. This story, until the very last act, has not supported him being a character to like or sympathize with, even in such subtle ways as Trout and Pickles stealing his hat and running around with it to taunt Snatcher - showing that a symbol is really only a symbol, and doesn’t indicate your worth. Anyone can put on a hat. Lord PR has just been brought onto an equal footing with them, if only for a moment.

Okay, so why have this whole three-layer narrative anyway? Couldn’t we have made this story more clear-cut between the Boxtrolls and White Hats, with no queercoded villain to get in between?

Yes...but I’m not sure that would have been best for the viewing audience. And there’s plenty of precedent as to why Laika thought it was a move for the better.

Queercoded villains are in every aspect of our fictional and fandom lives. Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: all your favorite Disney villains are queercoded. All of them. “But Frollo’s arc is about - “ Being a man in a religious system afraid of being tainted as sinful for being attracted to the wrong person. “Gaston, though, is - “ Very chummy with LeFou, and I’m talking the animated versions. They’re all colorful, flamboyant, foppish for the men and full of socially-unacceptable strength for the women. These were the cornerstones of our childhood nostalgia and characters we still feel culturally attached to.

It’s not just in Disney. Are you a fan of musical theater? Well, then your favorite villain probably got a big song and dance in which they wore some glitter. Classic lit? Google the name of your favorite literary canon villain and “queer theory” and see what happens.

I don’t think we can really say this is good or bad. On one hand, it’s not great that a marginalized group can only see themselves in the character we’re supposed to hate. On the other, though, we don’t always hate that character. Villains hold a unique place in our culture. They do bad things, horrible things, but the story can’t take place without a conflict, and we like when that conflict has a name and a cool design such as a tall, imposing sorcerer/witch in flowing robes - or perhaps a tall, graceful man in a long red coat and a towering crooked top hat.

I’ve had lots of friends and trusted Internet reviewers talking about how queercoding in villains can actually be really empowering. If you’re a fan of the villain, you get to see a power fantasy in which someone who has something very big in common with you gets to enact karma on others for wronging them! You get to wear the cool robes, sing the fun song, do things that are not really legal or acceptable! I think a great analogy is if you check out the book “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” by Sady Doyle. It’s primarily about sexism rather than queer issues (though it does touch upon them!), but examines how women throughout pop culture and storytelling history have always been the witch, the monster, the demon, and how that sucks, but it also means that women have a great pile of fictional power fantasies to pick from to indulge in. It’s the same principle. I myself may not be same-gender-attracted, but I am asexual, and still waiting on my glamorous villain who uproots society as revenge for being forced to do something analogous to having a sexual relationship...*taps wristwatch*

Meanwhile, queercoding is not as prevalent in heroes. And I think that’s where everything’s tripping on its own feet. Because a gay villain among a bunch of straight heroes does look pretty bad. Are some of the heroes queercoded as well, though? Well, that’s just realistic diversity. People are gay, and there happen to be some good ones and some evil ones here. I don’t think Snatcher’s dragsona is entirely unproblematic, but I do think it could have been mitigated a lot with more implications that Eggs and Winnie might be queer in some way (and believe me, I choose to interpret them that way, because the more the merrier).

The thing is that in pop culture as of late, there seems to be a trend to scrub away all villainous queercoding because it’s seen as a black-and-white issue. To go back to the Disney villains, do you feel like the live-action recreations of Jafar, Scar, and Gaston are missing a certain je ne sais quoi? Well, think about it through this lens and it might be that you savez quoi after all. They’ve all been made incredibly straight as of late, with off-the-record actor confirmations about having obsessive crushes on the film heroines. I can’t speak to why this has happened; there’s a lot of history behind any given social movement, and I haven’t managed to really unpack this one. “Blame Tumblr” is too easy; I would want to know who were the loudest voices, why they said what they said, and what was the intended accomplishment, not to mention if this had built on other social-media or real-life platforms over the years and was influenced by any outside source by news or marketing. I can’t say why queercoded villains are being burned; I can only say it’s happening. And it was happening big-time in 2014, when The Boxtrolls was released.

I also feel like I would be remiss to mention that The Boxtrolls is based on “Here Be Monsters,” which I believe to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read, bar none. That version of the story has...pretty much everything that’s perceived to be in the film version’s text as problematic. Frou Frou is presented as something to laugh at Snatcher about throughout, largely because everything about Snatcher is presented to make him seem gross or like a buffoon. There’s a whole scene of the hero rifling through his desk to find soiled underwear. Not to mention that the original purpose of Frou Frou in the text was to manipulate the town’s women by dictating the fashion trends they should follow and the beliefs they should hold in order to fit in. This is something that does need commentary on it, but in that text in particular, it seems like the women are silly and easily swayed, and that they’re the town’s weak link because they’re slaves to fashion. The Boxtrolls completely flips this around so that the town’s weak link re: Frou Frou is the rich MEN who objectify women, particularly the men that happen to be in charge of the whole town, and looking at that divide alone tells me how much care was put into this adaptation at every level.

So why’d I do this, besides having a friend who wanted to read it? Because Archibald Snatcher is legitimately one of my favorite fictional characters. Yeah, I know, he’s a horrible person and terribly racist, and no, I don’t think his demonizing an entire people is anything to be emulated. But on one hand, there are places where I not only empathize but identify with him, particularly where it comes to living out the majority of one’s life trying to live up to a meritocracy - I did everything right, so why am I not on top? He’s also just fun and satisfying to me. He’s the exact brand of evil I eat up. He’s quippy, flamboyant, sadistic to a point, and altogether enjoying his job way too much. Even though he isn’t in power all that long, he is a power fantasy for me, too - wishing I had his talent to talk my way into others’ hearts by saying the right thing, and maybe cultivating a little bit of that I didn’t realize I had (but not to use for evil purposes). I loved him from the moment he turned up because of his sheer dynamic presence - his drawn-out vowels, his sinister smile, his silver-tongued manipulations - and to this day I find him an inspiring character when it comes to writing fiction, both in the realms of fanfiction and original villain creation. You could say he’s a comfort character to me. And maybe this has been the delusional rambling of a woman trying to protect a character she likes for surface reasons by spelling out what look like analytical points of discussion.

But I don’t think Laika was trying to be mean-spirited or homo/transphobic in their character creation. I think they were trying to make an engaging villain who had some layers you could pick at to see more about the narrative as a whole and the message of societal corruption and how the way to overcome it is to be true to yourself rather than defined by your status: a lesson Snatcher fails at the finish line when Eggs gives him one last chance to “make you.” And ultimately, if you really and truly did like Archibald Snatcher, you’re not wrong or invalid in the least.

[jq37]

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult is it to make a podcast? I’ve been following ANA since you first announced it (I’m so excited for it) and the other day I came up with an idea that I think would make a good series

Hey, thanks for the message! And thanks for being interested. Absolutely No Adventures has been a lot of fun to put together and it's nice to see that people are looking forward to it.

As for your question I'd say maybe a 6? But that's a really incomplete answer and I did a lot of searching for help on how to get started when I decided to do this so I'll give you  more in depth breakdown of the steps and if you have more questions you can totally message me off of anon.

(1) Write The Thing

So yeah, no getting around it. The first thing you have to do is just write the podcast. For some people, this is the hardest part. For me, it was probably the easiest part because it's the thing I was most familiar with. You already have an idea, which is great. So now you probably want to sit down and figure out things like is this a limited miniseries or will it be on-going with multiple seasons? How long will each episode be?

You also want to make sure you write for the medium. For example, in a book, you can just say, "She hugged him." But if it's audio, you have to make there's some kind of indication for that (ie: Man: Oh, and now we're hugging).

Format doesn't matter too too much as long as it's consistent. I used film script format in Celtx (which is free) but people also use Google Docs. Just pick what's easiest for you and get going.

I also highly recommend you finish a full season of scripts (or the whole set if it's a mini series) before you move on. Some people write as they go and if you want to do that, cool, but it's one less thing to worry about once you're in production and you don't want writer's block to slow you down once you're already going.

(2) Casting

So this is where I left my comfort zone and had to learn to do things I was unfamiliar with. The good news here is, there are a lot of actors available to be a part of projects like this for varying amounts of money or no money at all if it's an interesting enough project. I will advocate for paying people if you can though because I wanna make money off of my art someday so I think it's only fair to reciprocate. If it is unpaid, just be upfront about that. It's common among indie projects so it's not scandalous or anything.  

Anyway, the basic process here is you write up a casting call that says what the project is, what the deadline is for auditioning, and has some audition lines for each characters (called sides). Then you post on Twitter which has a pretty active voice actor community plus some other places like reddit and certain FB groups and auditions will start rolling in. Casting calls tend to spread--people came to me from Discords I'd never heard of. Once you get a bunch you can pick who you like or, if you can't decide, invite back some people for callbacks and then pick.

I think 2 weeks is a good length of time to keep auditions open, longer if you're looking for something really specific.

It's also possible to simplify this step if you happen to know friends who have mics and wanna help or if you want to do a podcast with a very small cast--maybe even just one person who could be you. There are a number of podcasts with that format. I maybe should have mentioned this during writing but I'll mention it here instead. Anything you have to write, you will have to produce, so keep that in mind. Like, when you're writing, it's easy to have a bunch of extras and sound effects and crazy things happening, but remember that you have to bring that all to life later, so maybe a different character can give that exposition so you don't have to cast ANOTHER person as an extra.

(That being said, most actors I've worked with are chill with doing an extra voice or two.)

Oh! Also. Time zones are a thing. Keep that in mind. I do no regret casting an Australian, a Brit, and Americans across the country because they were all fantastic, but it was hell to schedule.

(3) Recording

So there are 3 main ways to record--in person in studio, remotely together, and remotely apart.

Option one is kind of a no-go right now because of Covid so let's talk about the other 2.

Remotely Together means you get all your actors on a Zoom call with you and they're all in their studios and you record as if you're all in the same room. I did this for ANA and I think it's the best way to do it cause people get to react to each other in real time which is great. The only thing is, it means you have to line up everyone's schedules which is a total bear. Still, if you can do it, worth it.

Remotely Apart means you give everyone their scripts and tell them to send in their lines in x weeks. I did this for some episodes of Secret Podcast Number 2 and it works fine. But for the more emotional eps, we still recorded together. This method is good because it gets rid of timing troubles which was necessary since we're doing a December release (which, trust me, is crazy quick for what we’re doing), but there are some things, you want people to be able to adjust their intensity levels for in the moment.

Either way, but especially in scenario 2, I'd suggest you do a table read first where everyone gets on call and reads through everything. It helps everyone get a feel for each other so they're not going in cold.

Wrt directing, it can feel a little weird to tell people how to talk or inflect or how much they should be crying, but, as long as you're polite, just go for it. They're actors. They can take the notes. That's what they do. All of my actors were always super great about it.

(4) Production

Alright so you have lines in from all your actors.

The next question is, how are you going to handle your production? The actual putting together of the lines and cleaning them up and balancing and adding effects and all that?

I specifically wrote ANA to have relatively simply sound design and it was *still* too much for me to handle so I opted to outsource for that and it was for sure where most of a budget went. If you happen to know how to do this or have the time to learn, you'll def save yourself some money. It is still very time consuming though. The one part that I did do--deciding which takes to use from the lines my actors sent (aka: picking takes) and putting them together to send to my sound guy--took super long as is.

If you're going to hire/recruit someone to do this stuff for you, I recommend you do it before you cast because they'll be able to let you know if the actors who want have compatible audio quality.

IDK what standard procedure is here but the way it works with my guy is I send him lines and then he puts stuff together and sends me a draft of the episode. Then I say what I want changed in an excel spreadsheet with time stamps and we go back and forth until it's done.

(5) Ancillary Stuff

Theme music! You probably want that! There are a couple of routes you can go here. You can get something from a music library--either totally free or for a relatively small fee. This is the most cost effective but will probably more generic and likely in use somewhere else if it's fully free.

You can write it yourself if that's a thing you're good at obviously. Or you can pay someone to do it which will probably cost you a couple hundred bucks but will be totally tailored and unique.

Cover Art! Also very important. People do judge things by their covers so I def rec getting a really dope one made. Canva is also your friend for like icons and stuff.

A Website! You'll want at least a basic one for like contact info, transcripts, stuff like that. I just use Carrd. You can get a pretty classic, website-like setup by using sections and you can link to a custom URL for only like 13 bucks a year which is great.

(6) Marketing

OK so, I'm gonna be real with you, this is the step I'm working on now so I'm still figuring it out!

Besides posting on social media and stuff, you also need to make a press kit which is basically a doc with all the info about you and the show. You can see mine on the ANA site.

I also have mood-board-y graphics I made on Canva to drop with each ep (or ahead of them. Haven’t quite decided). 

I will say, I’ve made friends in the community and a lot of them have hyped up my stuff without me even asking. Which isn’t me saying, “Make friends for what they can do for you.” Gross. What I’m saying is that just participating in the community can help.

Anyway, this is getting way too long. I hope this was at least somewhat helpful. Like I said, if you (or anyone else) has more specific questions, hit me up!

[persephoneiam]

Snow White: What Everyone Gets Wrong

This is my very first post in my “What Everyone Gets Wrong about [insert Disney movie]” series.  Though some facts are sprinkled into this post for context, most of this is an opinion. Nothing in this text is meant to be insulting or offensive. Thank you.

To start off here is some background for those of us who need a refresher:

This was the world's first full-length animated feature

It was released in 1937

The film is only 1.5 hours long

4.5 years of work went into making it

The film was completed 2.5 weeks before its premiere

Now that we know the basic facts, let’s talk about the things that everyone gets wrong/ that tick me off.

Number 1: Necrophilia

Now, I get that memes are supposed to be funny, but the random corpse thing just doesn’t make sense. Firstly, she’s in a coma, not dead. Secondly, this kiss isn’t sexual in nature; its a goodbye. He really liked her (as seen in the first few minutes of the movie) and now she’s gone. She’s a fourteen-year-old that left too soon. It's sad with no sexual motivations involved. That said, a person can interpret this however they want. Which brings me to my third point: the timing of the film. As I stated earlier, this film was completed 2.5 weeks before it’s premiere. There was a huge time (and budget) crunch for this film. In the Brothers Grimm telling of this story (which Walt Disney decided to base this film on), Snow White awakens from the apple-induced coma when the dwarfs are carrying her coffin to the prince’s castle so she can be buried in the family crypt for whatever reason, and a dwarf trips, causing the apple piece that had been stuck in her throat to dislodge and fly out of her mouth, allowing her to wake up without the kiss. Having such little time and budget, I doubt the animators could have put what would have equaled an extra half hour (the coffin carrying and wedding where the evil queen would dance to her death) of animation for the film. That’s not even including the cursed corset or poisoned comb that were taken out of the story. Not to mention each frame was hand drawn, making even the smallest scene a time-consuming piece of work. Who wants to draw all the extra stuff involved to take the coffin to a castle somewhere far off? It’s much easier to draw a kiss and be done with it. Why else do you think they cut out a bunch of animation backstory by including the written story in the middle of the film (as seen below)?

Number 2: She’s Not Feminist Enough/ All She Does is Cook and Clean

What the actual heck is it with this argument? I get that we want our children to be strong, independent people who realize there is more to life than being with a man/woman/significant other, but why should strength and independence only mean going into the workforce? My dad lost his job, so he was a stay-at-home dad with me and my little sister for a couple years. It was awesome! Not to mention his value as a human being didn’t diminish every time he touched a mop or dusted. He taught his children how to keep a home tidy and guess what? I didn’t have to pay anyone to do my laundry when I got to college. I was a better-adjusted adult because I knew how to keep a home, and I was healthy to boot because I know how to cook. 

Feminism is about the equality of the sexes, so its really easy to bash Snow White because she cooks and cleans and takes on traditional gender roles. But the thing everyone seems to forget is the fact that this movie was made during the Great Depression and premiered two years before World War II. As large as the Disney empire has become, there is no way it could have possibly seen the future and made a film that was more in line with today’s feminism standards. 

Furthermore, this movie is set in 16th century (1500s) Germany and made in 1937. It’s history. As in, an amazing, revolutionary work of art that changed film forever. Yes, it is very traditional in its approach to what Snow White does/ doesn’t do, but she’s a fourteen-year-old fugitive in 16th century Germany! She doesn’t have a lot of options. Keeping house in exchange for food and shelter is not a bad choice considering the only other option is prostituting herself. Also, the way she takes charge of the house is pretty awesome. She doesn’t take any sh*t from the dwarfs (as seen by her “go outside and wash” speech). She may only be fourteen, but she’s managing things like she’s the next CEO of Disney.

History aside, it seems like all the parents I meet that don’t like/ don’t show the film only do so because they don’t want to encourage gender roles. I get it, but telling kids that cleaning and cooking aren’t useful or that you can’t be strong and independent if you like/subscribe to traditional gender roles is kinda backward. Afterall, isn’t feminism about the right to choose? If I want to be a stay-at-home mom and my sister wants to be the next Steve Jobs, aren’t we both entitled to go for it?

Number 3: Saved By a Man

This is just a continuation of my above point. Snow White is fourteen. The prince (who is credited as ‘The Prince’ because Snow White and the Dwarfs are the only characters with names) is only seventeen. Now in Europe in 1500, a girl as young as twelve could get married no problem. Most girls did. Or they became nuns. All of that doesn’t really matter when your audience is Americans in 1937. What matters is that a studio just completed the first, full-length entirely cel-animated feature. When Walt Disney started this project, he wanted to focus on the dwarfs. He gave them names and personalities. By the end of the film, however, the focus had turned to the relationship between Snow White and her stepmother. All really good things. That said, the plot changed a bit from the start to the finish. The original storyboard was much more comical and very different from the storyline we know today. With all these changes, it makes sense that the one element that stayed the same through production was the happy ending where Snow White and her prince marry. It’s a classic ending, and there is no reason that true love shouldn’t win out in the end. Of course, the true love argument becomes problematic considering they’ve only met once before the coma, but considering the film is only an hour and twenty-eight minutes, I think we can forgive the quick progression of their relationship. 

Also, it’s not so much Snow White’s beauty that makes the queen jealous, it's her youth. Snow White is young and growing into her body whereas the queen is aging. But that’s a whole discussion for theorists that I don’t want to get into.

In conclusion, Snow White is a classic film that doesn’t deserve to be hated on as much as it is. Because of its success, it paved the way for many of my childhood favorites, and I am thankful for that. She may not wield a sword and shield, but Snow White is still a bada** princess who teaches the value in being kind and making the best of a terrible situation. I for one think that those are still relevant lessons no matter what time period you are watching it in.

This has been a rant. Thank you.

[hellobengski]

In Another World: Japan 2019

Maybe to love is to learn – and learning Japan for quite some time is just beautiful with all its chaotic yet fulfilling desire at heart.

December is the season for family and friends and having to spend it another country again is different – a very memorable one. It is such a good grace of embracing new culture from a 5 hour trip  away from home – living a temporary life, what it’s like to live in a world where everything seemed to be provided. The place itself is an art, where you can experience the calmness of the streets although I had to enjoy the freezing weather in which I was forced to wear almost four layers of clothing, including multiple heat packs to keep us going along the way. Nevertheless, Japan has its own way of welcoming you to the best possible ways it could offer, making exceptional memories of more than a dream.

Japan is in the top of my bucket list yet the very least to make it happen when I was younger. Given that it’s expensive, it requires you to apply for visa in which chosen people are only given the opportunity to process it. Maybe timing wasn’t for us then hence watching anime films was an alternative way to feel it. Japanese characters itself with perfectly triangular shaped faces used to be my hidden desire, like there’s something mystical about their personalities. And maybe timing could be right too. It could be right when the High Power allows you – specifically when you’re ready.

I have no idea what to hate in a place where it appears to be perfect. Utopia, as what they say. I went with a group of twenty people with various ages and personalities so there were two things that needed to be considered in this trip; to conform and to be patient. I have watched some documentaries, travel vlogs, and even movies like Hachiko to prepare myself with an expectant heart.

From there, I know Japan would lead us to wander and be lost.

Upon arriving in Japan, our group was picked up by huge sized black colored van including drivers who were definitely dressed well with their coat and tuxedo. We were late. And there is something wrong with that. It’s a bad Impression for Japanese people to be late since time is valuable – unless you have reasonable excuses. The tension was starting to fire up so I decided to apologise. The family did too. During the one-hour travel from Narita Airport to the first place where we stayed, I was mesmerized. The overwhelming emotions from visual presentations turned into reality. Maybe this is love, like seeing a person for the first time letting your head turn into 360.

Fallen leaves, chirping crows, and whistling of the winds. So this is winter – I have never felt this in my life. It surprised me as I was enjoying the giant automatic buildings. We toured several of Tokyo’s places, all of which had their own unique culture.

I experienced the towering skyscrapers and offices of Shinjuku and the shopping and pop culture of Harajuku. I learned how diverse Tokyo was: three blocks from the Tokyo Skytree, an observation tower that symbolizes Japan’s cutting-edge technology; Asakusa, an ancient Buddhist shrine where people prayed under enormous red lanterns and burnt incense for their ancestors. I noticed that this dramatic juxtaposition between the old and the new is what most characterized Japan: pop culture and technology contrasted yet blended with traditional customs and culture. While polar opposites of each other, these two aspects of Japan coexisted in perfect harmony. I believe that harmony sends an important message: you do not need to disregard the old in order to embrace the new. It is possible to honor and accept both.

And the bikes were electronic. I grew up learning how to ride a bike but never got the chance to do it in Japan. Maybe if I was just a solo traveler, I could use it to explore the clean roads.

Every train is a safe space.

With Haruki Murakami’s novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, fragments of imagination have conveyed my emotions to become a fan of train stations. I have seen some parts of myself through Tsukuru, how darkness made him feel as an empty person, lacking in color and identity. He was real to me. From millions of people that passed through me, he could’ve been there. That’s when I started to love the train stations even more.

They are always on time– and of course, a delay of even just one minute will result in profuse apologies from the conductor. Train stations are always staffed with employees who are ready to answer your questions and do so very well. Though we weren’t able to ride city buses, I believe they’re also great though I wasn’t sure if we can pay their fares with the same card we used to ride the train.

I have seen people coming in and out of the trains, like every person has its own story of why they needed to ride the train. On Tuesday, I remember some old man trying to stop his son from crying. On Friday night, I smelled ginger flavored beer from Japanese employees who just got off from work from Shibuya station. I liked the smell, it didn’t make me feel that I was in danger. Probably weekends are for Filipinos, like Saturday, who came all the way from Grandberry mall outlet to purchase almost half price of some original brands that are dying for.

It is just solely convenient. There were convenience stores that are open 24 hours a day and you can simply find one just about anywhere. We found some food, basic toiletry items and magazines. Another thing that’s a go-to in Japan is the vending machines. Vending machines are even more common than convenience stores, and you can find one by just walking a block or two. Most of them just sell drinks like water, coffee, tea, juice and soda. They’re usually quite cheap (100 yen at the cheapest), and you can get them hot in the winter or cold in the summer.

I personally bought drinks from vending machines almost all the time and they were worth it. And the food, oh the food. Japanese don’t have the highest life expectancy in the world for no reason. Never in my life have I tasted the best apple pie in the world until Japan let me. From its first bite down to last, it was beyond my ultimatum. No words could express it.

Even so with Ramen after a whole exhausting day, the warm soup with its perfect texture of noodles satisfied us. I believe that every food regardless if it’s in the streets or in a luxurious restaurant was served with love. They would want to make you feel like you deserve to be well treated with a quality of food that they could offer you.

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language but in Japan, it has brought me to both --- tranquility and complexity. The demeanor of place demanded me to breathe. It gave me the power of wanting to be alone, looking back to nostalgic feelings that I felt and decisions I have made in my life.

Until another Utopian world took me to the fun and excitement part --- Tokyo’s Disneysea, the most brilliant story world’s ever created: a living ode to Walt Disney’s love for storytelling, world-building, and lovable characters. You see, Disney isn’t just made of Story Worlds – it’s also a story world in itself, and its star is Mickey remains the most iconic character ever drawn. Mickey belongs exclusively to the world of Disney; his presence invokes the idea that all of these smaller story worlds are part of something bigger, something uniquely magical. Mickey Mouse is the linchpin to the whole operation. He’s the reminder that Disneyland is more than the sum of its parts – it’s an experience unto itself.

Ultimately, the story of Disney sea is the story of my visit. My presence with my family defines the day; we get to pick rides and shows. Disney Park will always be an “open world,” where you explore, collect things, and meet characters in whatever sequence you choose.

Until sooner I realized we have one more day left to pack things and luggage. Items that were bought in Japan were already sort out, from gadgets to food, fridge magnets and even branded shoes. My mom had to buy another big trolley to maximize all the stuff so we could all bring home the goodies.

Just before the plane took off from Narita airport, I met an amazing couple from Japan. The lady’s Filipina, Marissa Suzuki, who’s married to a Japanese and been living in Japan for 30 years. The old man, Mr. Nori Suzuki, was 20 years older than her, had 2 children who were left at home. I was sitting from the window seat trying to calm myself from my episodic anxiety. The first thing she asked me was if there’s any book to read while waiting. I told her that there were just couple of magazines but probably wouldn’t satisfy her husband. It was a budget airline. She was hardly putting her bags on the bin until her husband helped her.  And then she sat beside me. They smiled at me like they wanted to know me.

The two hour conversation started.

I felt the joy from their eyes, especially from the Japanese old man as they kept asking my whereabouts. They insisted on buying coffee and oatmeal cookies for me. I wanted to be polite so I smirked. Of course I was very hungry and didn’t eat some breakfast. They even offered wasabi nuts and matcha flavored round shaped sticky bread. I had to appreciate it although I didn’t really like the taste too much.

For once in my life, I tried staring to someone while sharing personal stories. I felt bittersweet from her expressions, how she left our country when her older sister brought her to Japan. It was like she didn’t have choice. She was only 17 back then when she faced the reality. I know she wanted to make me feel what she has been through. I could see through her eyes how she learned to love her husband from the first few years of their relationship.  The difference of the culture and language didn’t really matter to her, instead, she was challenged by it. Mr. Suzuki was quite a storyteller, I was pretty convinced that he loves the Philippines with its warm people and weather. I love his words of wisdom; to treat people equally because we all deserve it; to value time because we all work for it; to give as much as you can because there’s no better feeling than to serve.

Funny how they wanted me to date a Japanese guy, or at least I should’ve met someone in a span of week. I could always go back, but will be definitely choosing a different weather. I admit I didn’t really have good sleep from the entire trip but maybe travels are for people who seek for adventure and stories.

From what I have learned in this trip, through its any lifestyle, people have survived. And we will always be. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.

With all my sincerity and respect, in another life, will always go back to you, Japan.

[standfortheangels]

Instructions: Always repost with the rules, answer the 11 random questions left for you, and leave 11 more for the people you tag!

Tagged by: @illicreatxm

This got long so I’m going to stick it under a read more ^^

1. If you could write any canon character, which would it be and why?

Hm. I’m not sure. I have roleplayed a couple of canons before, but I find it harder to keep the muse for them. I could probably do Elsa okay, I could jump between her locked in the castle personality and her open, welcoming character post-film, which might help, but the inconsistencies in her Over-powered Powers annoy me, so I think I’d add a few limitations in there.

2. Favourite Disney movie?

Maybe Aladdin because Robin Williams is of course amazing and so perfect in that role~ Ohh but there’s also Atlantis.. And Dumbo! Aw no... Let’s just call this my top three before I get carried away >w>

3. Least favourite MCU character?

I haven't seen the more recent ones, so, I can't take into account characters like Thanos or Dr. Strange or, whoever else they've been bringing in. So out of what I've seen, I'd have to go with Bruce Banner/The Hulk.

It seemed in the earlier films that they didn't give much attention to Banner. They were all over using the Hulk to make bits interesting, but Bruce was boiled down to "quiet smart guy who CaN TuRN inTo THE HULK" so, yeah.

And the hulk himself later did like a 180° change for me. In his stand-alone film I think Hulk says like 3 words, maximum. Then rarely talks in his appearances in the other avengers brand films. Cool. We had "Puny God" and that was a-okay. One short, memorable, funny quote seems perfect.

But then what was all that when Whedon got his hands on it? (I mean don't get me started on that, I am really reigning myself back here but) They start off needing ways to calm Hulk down enough to get him back inside and give control back to Bruce, fair enough. But then like... He winds up not letting go of Bruce's body even though he isn't enraged anyway? And suddenly he's emotional enough and smart enough to take- what was it a plane? And seperate himself off from everyone and look all solemnly at Natasha before he does it or something?

Obviously my memory of it isn't great, honestly I stopped paying attention after Natasha's "I'm a monster- not because I was raised in a heartless environment full of violence and raised to literally kill people, that bit's whatever- but because they took away my fertility and now I can't have babies." speech. And that's the last MCU film I watched. I didn't want anything to do with them after seeing what Joss Whedon did with the characters and the overarching plotline and... Everything. x') So I might have gotten some of the hulk stuff wrong.

(I did watch Deadpool though, that I enjoyed~)

4. If you had to create any new character, what occupation would they have?

Ooo good question.

I think something proactive, where they could seek other characters out, but.. I'd kinda like a bad guy~ Someone who lies so much for their job, they have a dual personality to work with. They can be your smiling friendly neighbour, wishing you well on your holiday, then turn around and grit his teeth because this poses a major problem for his mission, and he can't lose his target, so now he has to follow, but he can't do that as your happy neighbour, no, you know he isn't going on holiday, certainly not today, not on your flight, not to the same ski lodge you're going to. No, he has to make a new cover- maybe say his neice phoned him with a family emergency and he'll be leaving to go be with her a while. Then shed this identity, find out where his target is going, quickly pose as some other tourist who blends into the background and get to the lodge first, all the while planning out some plausible skiing accident he can set up.

Wow that got more detailed than I expected x'D I think I just reinvented hitman, whoops.

5. Favourite sport?

[Image ID: Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service, laughing hysterically.]

My biggest concern when I'm on my feet is not falling over so, obviously sports aren't really my deal. x')

I used to swim a lot when I was a kid, I loved that, but, don't do it now.

And I'm not really into watching sports either tbh. Most of it seems over-hyped. Most football teams (real football, it is not soccer. The hint is in actual football, the ball, is hit, with your feet. Picking it up and running with it and then sometimes kicking it does not qualify as football, come on USA. Your thing is closer to Rugby than Football.)

Anyway most teams aren't much better or worse than any other if you actually watch objectively, which makes it look like they both suck because they're too well matched to score goals more than once in a blue moon.

Rugby I don't really understand the appeal of either. Scrums are weird and it wouldn't be entirely bizarre to see a guy walking away from the game with blood down his face and an ear in his hand. You'd almost expect him to stick the ear on ice and be back in a few minutes with his bandages on.

Really the only sports than interest me are the gymnastic types. Ice skating is good for a while but it can start getting dull if you don't have people willing to break the mould a bit. (Which is why I absolutely love the free skate bit. Where they aren't being scored and they just do whatever the hell they want, omg I live for that)

Floor routines are awesome, the pommel horse and rings are usually a little samey for me but the one with those two bars at different heights, that's fun to watch~ there's a little more variety there.

(And I don't wanna hear anyone in the replies saying these aren't sports, every example there including figure skating is a separate event in the Olympics, so. There.)

6. What’s your dream car?

I don’t really have one. At this point in my life I don’t actually have the option to learn to drive so I haven’t really thought about it. My only criteria is, it has to have a nice face. x)

Since I was tiny I have always seen cars as faces. The headlights would be eyes, and usually the number plate would be the mouth, but some cars have other stuff like a grill that might be the mouth instead. So like...

This would be a grumpy car with a pig-like nose and frown.. Actually those look like jowels either side of the mouth part. It looks kind of like a bulldog. X’)

And this would be a happy car. That black part around the number plate it wide and smile-shaped, and the headlights- rounded on top and straighter on the bottom, like the little creases we get when we scrunch up our eyes laughing~

This car looks like someone just said something really stupid to it, and it is not impressed, and lets the silence hang not knowing what to say.

Happy car

Terminator car

Happy car but in a mean way.. Like it’s on its way to cause mayhem or poking fun at someone. You get the general idea -w-

7. A movie that you think should have a sequel?

Hmm... this is a toughie.

8. A movie sequel that you think should be deleted from existence?

I don’t remember which number it was or even the title, but the Shrek sequel where Shrek like, hates having kids so much he makes a deal to change time? And Fiona winds up as like a vicious warrior leader because no-one ever saved her from the tower, and rumplestiltskin is in it? What even was that...

9. Design your dream outfit using this game ?

I wouldn’t say this really is my dream outfit, but from the options on offer~

(also discounting the enormous hair bun >w>;)

10. Favourite fairytale?

I’m not sure if this actually counts as a fairytale, but I love the story of the jolly roger. That classic skull and crossbones flag has a story behind it that a lot of people don’t know.

In a nutshell, a man (i guess a pirate) develops an intense crush on a young woman, who is about to get married. But just before her wedding, she dies. She is buried, but the man doesn’t take death for an answer. He digs her up and has sex with her body. When he’s done, a disembodied voice speaks to him, telling him that he has basically impregnated this corpse, and to come back in nine months.

For some reason, he does. He digs up the woman again. And sat below her pelvis is a small skull and two bones. The disembodied voice tells him to take these bones with him on his ventures, and they will bring him luck.

It’s bizarre, and kinda gross, and.. I dunno if being rewarded for sexually desicrating a corpse is the best moral? x’) But I was amazed when I heard this story, because I’d had no idea there was this whole tale behind the flag~ and I still love that it exists~

11. Create an avatar of your favourite muse using this creator? ?

First, it’s so cruel to ask me to pick my favourite child how dare you >w> haha

I went with Chester though because he’s the one I’m usually most connected to.

I can’t think of anyone I want to tag right now (at least not anyone who hasn’t probably done this already), but I’ll put the new 11 questions for anyone who does feel like doing this~ :) __

1. What’s one thread/plot you really want to do that you haven’t had chance to yet?

2. What is the reason for, or meaning behind, your blog icon?

3. Do you have any pets? Tell us a bit about them!

4. What is one thing you would never want to change about your appearance?

5. There is an ultra secret spy group, and you’ve just uncovered their existence. Now they say that you must either work for them, or they’ll find a permanent way to keep you quiet. What kind of work would you offer to do for them?

6. If you met your muse in real life, how do you think the two of you would get along? (multi-muse blogs, pick one of your muses at random.)

7. You have been given a huge budget to remake one film in your own vision. You can change anything, add anything, choose the cast, you have no limits. What would you do?

8. What is one skill you wish you could automatically master?

9. A genie offers you a deal. An unlimited lifelong supply of one food of your choice... But, you have to sacrifice your ability to chew. Does any food still tempt you?

10. What do you think is the funniest animal?

11. Share one memory you have that makes you happy to think about~

[cbrownjc]

GRRM and Romance

So, this isn’t something I have seen so much being said on tumblr, but I have seen it said other places, most specifically when it comes to Jon and Daenerys’ relationship, and it’s this: “George R. R. Martin doesn’t do romance!”

And when I see it said, I always do a “what?” double take. Because it’s clear people who say or think this don’t know of GRRMs writing credits outside of ASOIAF/GOT. More specifically, one credit in particular: the television show Beauty and the Beast which aired on CBS from 1987-1990. He was not only one of the main writers for the show, (penning 14 episodes out of the total 46 of the show’s run, the third most of any of the writers for the show), but was also one of the supervising producers of the show as well. And at the time, and even after it short run was over, it was considered to be one of the most romantic shows ever produced for television. 

I was around 9 or 10 when the show first came on back in the 80s, and was so not into dramatic romance shows. So I never watched it when it was in its original run. It was actually about a year after it ended when I first started watching it (having just entered my early teens). And to this day, almost 30 years later, that show still has not only left an impression on me, but is also still one of the most romantic shows I think has ever been done for television, just as was said about it when it first aired. 

The show wasn’t just a romance, it was a High Fantasy Romance. Unlike the reboot on the CW a few years back that had a pretty handsome-looking guy who would “beast” out or whatever, the Vincent of the original looked as he did in the above image from the beginning of the show until the end of it. His physical appearance never changed. And along with his otherworldly looks, he and Catherine shared what could only be described as a mystical connection between them. They could only describe it between them as a “bond” but the gist of it was, they could feel each others emotions. They could feel what the other was feeling at almost every moment. Which, on one level, help to add some “action” into the show, since Catherine was a lawyer and so would get into life-threatening situations with some of her cases. Vincent could feel when she was in trouble and rushed to save her, usually killing the people that were trying to hurt her, giving in to the more “animalistic” side of his nature (though the network kept wanted to reign that fact back).  

However, the point of their bond was more than just for that. It was to enhance the idea of the theme of the show, the theme of the beauty and the beast tale in general, of being able to see the true beauty inside someone. On the surface, Vincent and Catherine both appeared to be ugly. Whereas Vincent just had the physical ugliness, Catherine actually started out the story as a typical spoiled rich girl “yuppy” type, who’s dad would pay for anything she wanted. She’s mistaken for somebody else one night, brutally beaten and left for dead in Central Park, where Vincent finds her and saves her life. 

It is here that their bond begins to form. Vincent, who was always guarded and would hide away from people because of his looks, (except from his “family,” a society of people who lived under NYC as well like he did, and were all viewed as outcasts for various reasons), allows himself to begin to feel worthy of being loved. And Catherine, changed not only by her experience but the kindness of Vincent’s heart, starts working at the DA’s office instead of her dad’s law firm, to help people in any way she can. 

The show only ran three years because of lots of behind the scenes drama. The main one being, Linda Hamilton wasn’t fully committed to doing a tv show just in general. (Filming tv is much different than filming movies). As George himself says in this interview from the Hollywood Reporter, she wanted to go back to doing movies, plus have children. (She and director James Cameron were a couple at the time, and they did have a kid together. Her relationship with him would go on to have a lot of drama in and of itself too). So, when the time came when she could leave the show, she left. Meaning, given the premise of the show, Catherine’s character was killed off. The bond between her and Vincent got broken so he couldn’t save her when she got into a situation beyond her control with one of the most powerful men in the city. 

However, the reason the bond got broken was revealed to be because the bond got transferred into the child she and Vincent conceived a few weeks back, when Vincent was going through a “violent madness” - basically losing his humanity to his more “animalistic” side. The bond between them is what was able to save him from the madness and, though you never see them make love (which you never did at any point during the show even before this, mostly because the network didn’t seem to want to show such a thing), they did, and conceived a child that night. 

The whole theme of this part of the story became based around the Dylan Thomas poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion. A poem I still know most of by heart because of this show. 

Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.

The final episodes of the show closed out the story, with Vincent able to find Catherine before she died (the man who kidnapped her kept her alive when he discovered she was pregnant, then injected her with an overdose of morphine after she gave birth to her and Vincent’s son). They quoted those above lines from that Dylan Thomas poem to each other as she died in his arms. Vincent was able to find the child later and save him too, with the help of a new “beauty” in Diana Bennett. And while I personally did like her character, the whole premise of the show was the uniqueness of Vincent and Catherine’s bond. There was just no way you could take that and begin to try and transfer it to a new character being placed in the “beauty” role. As George R. R. Martin himself said about it:

Basically I look back on it now and think we were in a no-win situation. I think we did some very fine work in the third season, but the core of the show was the romance. It was Vincent and Catherine. We brought in a new Beauty in the person of Jo Anderson, who was a wonderful actress in the part of Diana Bennett. She was great to work with. But you can’t do two seasons of telling the world, “This is a love story for the ages, this is Romeo and Juliet,” and then suddenly third seasons say, “Juliet? Forget Juliet. It’s Romeo and Harriet. Here’s a different love story for the ages!” So that didn’t work. When the love story stopped, our core audience left. If Linda had not left the show we could have gone for five years at least. 

So basically once Vincent found his son, the show was over. 

And it was his experience with writing for the show, and the limits that came with writing directly for tv that he experienced while doing so, that made him leave tv writing behind and go off and begin writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Because with a book, you don’t have to worry about production budgets for creating a world (like the underground NYC world of the show), or actors wanting to leave because they don’t want to do tv anymore, which basically kills your whole show’s premise; or the network not wanting more darkly violent acts for the “beast” to commit when trying to protect his “beauty” . . . along with never being able to show them having sex, and only confirming that they ever did when a child finally comes into the story but only because said actress now wants to leave the show, and is pregnant at the time in real life anyway. 

A Song of Ice and Fire, and by extension the tv show adapted from it Game of Thrones, isn’t a High Fantasy Romance story. A love story isn’t the main driving narrative of the story. However, the idea that GRRM wouldn’t put a romance in the story, and one that is highly romantic in its nature, seems like a very bad take when it comes to his backstory as a writer. If anything, the love stories and relationships he does write about are ones that are just as unconventional as Vincent and Catherine’s was. They don’t follow the normal tropes of relationships or love stories you usually find in romance stories, even in the genre of high fantasy. GRRM himself said that his favorite part to write in Fire and Blood was the story of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen and Queen Alysanne, which he himself has also called a “great romance.” 

Yet, it was straight up an incestous relationship between a brother and a sister and, in universe, they created and had people preach what more or less was a doctrine of exceptionalism in order to justify the relationship. Yet, their reign was one of the most peaceful periods in Westeros history, lasting over 50 years. And yet, their reign also help to set the stage for the Dance of the Dragons civil war just over two decades later. So even the relationship he called a “great romance” has his patented “shades of gray” to it.

Jon and Daenerys are already unconventional when it comes to romance stories in general, not just high fantasy love stories; and the incest part of it not even being the main thing with regard to that IMO. Their fates are clearly entwined, yet they never meet until what is essentially the final act of the story. Just basic and standard writing tropes would have had Jon and Daenerys meeting in act one of the story, forming a connection. And then, though circumstance, being split apart by the end of the first act, so that they would spend the majority of act two trying to get back to each other. Or with that at least being one of their goals, to reunite, along with whatever other goals they needed to accomplish in act two of the story. However, in ASOIAF/GOT, Jon and Daenerys go on their Joseph Campbell-esque Heroes Journeys separately, completely unaware of the other’s very existence until the third and final act of the story begins. That’s just not how it’s usually done, and you usually only see third-act romantic hookups in long-running tv shows after you get multiple cast change-overs. But again, this is why GRRM left writing for tv, so he could do unconventional things like this with his story. 

So this idea that some people have that George R. R. Martin doesn’t do romance is ridiculous. Not only does he do it, he clearly likes very much to do them in highly romantic ways, ways that make them great romances in his view. He just doesn’t do or write conventional romances. His great romance couples are never written in a conventional mode, or have standard conventional romantic tropes about them. And there is always a shade of gray to them. And Jon and Daenerys are no exception to all of that.