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Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
https://twitter.com/murrman5/status/1179046435737800705?s=20

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GATOS Y VATOS
Aug 22, 2002


Pick posted:

I loved a lot of early SU, but it just did the JJ Abrams thing where it turns out it had no plan and its themes are all messed up.

This is a textbook example of 'a hot take', isn't it.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

GATOS Y VATOS posted:

This is a textbook example of 'a hot take', isn't it.

I went into it plenty in the old SU threads and don't care enough about it as a property to relitigate it, but basically everything from Beta (I/II) onward is just fumbling. There's a lot of very solid content before that, but everything after that just has no idea at all where it's headed and at what pace. Essentially, the show probably had a plan, but it got trapped in a place where it's reacting to its audience instead of telling its story and that sends it down a lot of useless and confusing rabbit holes. Eventually they realize, after a lot of puttering around, that they wasted a ton of time and have tons of story threads that now can't really resolve in time and which can't be fleshed out enough to be satisfying. It's the exact same problem Lost had. The White Diamond finale shot is a great example of something that's visually great but unearned and the product of a bunch of new powers they whipped out at the last second to plaster over a conflict they couldn't get to gel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjd1hVEwXQo

You could show that shot to someone only five episodes (out of 150+) prior to it happening and they would have no idea what is happening and why and what it's supposed to be calling back to thematically or mean.

The movie however is probably the prime example, where it could be about "what do you do with a toxic friend?" but ultimately isn't able to say anything particularly useful about it, because it gets too trapped in Lore, Reactive Character Revisionism, and Original Character Do Not Steal. It has a lot of interesting notions, but none of them coalesce.

Pick fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Dec 28, 2020

Maxwell Lord
Dec 12, 2008

I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.


:smith:

Grimey Drawer
I still refuse to believe the only way you can make good television is to meticulously plan it down to the last detail. No plan ever survives contact with reality.

IShallRiseAgain
Sep 12, 2008

Well ain't that precious?

Pick posted:

I went into it plenty in the old SU threads and don't care enough about it as a property to relitigate it, but basically everything from Beta (I/II) onward is just fumbling. There's a lot of very solid content before that, but everything after that just has no idea at all where it's headed and at what pace. Essentially, the show probably had a plan, but it got trapped in a place where it's reacting to its audience instead of telling its story and that sends it down a lot of useless and confusing rabbit holes. Eventually they realize, after a lot of puttering around, that they wasted a ton of time and have tons of story threads that now can't really resolve in time and which can't be fleshed out enough to be satisfying. It's the exact same problem Lost had. The White Diamond finale shot is a great example of something that's visually great but unearned and the product of a bunch of new powers they whipped out at the last second to plaster over a conflict they couldn't get to gel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjd1hVEwXQo

You could show that shot to someone only five episodes (out of 150+) prior to it happening and they would have no idea what is happening and why and what it's supposed to be calling back to thematically or mean.

The movie however is probably the prime example, where it could be about "what do you do with a toxic friend?" but ultimately isn't able to say anything particularly useful about it, because it gets too trapped in Lore, Reactive Character Revisionism, and Original Character Do Not Steal. It has a lot of interesting notions, but none of them coalesce.

The super long delays were actually advantageous to Steven Universe because it hid how terrible the pacing was. Once the show stopped being monster of the week and started focusing heavily on plot, it really suffered. So many plots that had a lot of build-up that never really went anywhere.

IShallRiseAgain fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Dec 28, 2020

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

IShallRiseAgain posted:

The super long delays were actually advantageous to Steven Universe because it hid how terrible the pacing was. Once the show stopped being monster of the week and started focusing heavily on plot, it really suffered. So many plots that had a lot of build-up that never really went anywhere.

I'd actually give it credit a little longer than that, the broad strokes were laid down for a pretty simple but satisfying series-long plot arc. However, the show just seemed to almost lose interest and kept going off on tangents, and by the point they realized it was time to whip out the finale, they'd actually forgotten to keep laying down those bricks so it could get there. Steven Universe seasons 1-2 are, in my mind, really well-paced with well-reasoned story drops, and remain incredibly strong. But it simply loses focus and didn't take the time to re-focus.

As much as this was a recurring joke, it's a genuinely good example: Jasper. If SU hadn't gotten a surprise denouement season, her arc (?) would have been "wrapped up" in literally several seconds in a montage in the finale, as part of the "resolution" to the corruption storyline, which was a huge part of the main arc that ultimately never... goes anywhere. The second Centipeedle episode is actually super strong, and so the corruption storyline had the right legs, the creators just started doing anime pastiches instead. Like there's an entire episode where the premise is "Hey look, it's Initial D!" Meanwhile, major arcs terminate with no consideration.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
Watching Soul now with my fiancé

But first we watched the new Pixar short Burrow. It’s cute as heck, with a 2D animation style a little reminiscent of Ernest & Celestine/Big Bad Fox. Really gorgeous. I love that badger

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



I just finished Soul.

Macaluso posted:

There's one other thing I want to bring up. There was some discourse when the trailers for this movie were first shown about how black characters always get transformed into other creatures, and that this is doing that again. I'm a white dude so I'm curious how black people feel about Joe not only ending up as a soul pretty early on, but eventually ends up in a cat while Tina Fey ends up in Joe's body for a large percentage of the movie. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me and some of the most emotional moments in the movie happens there, but I'm a white guy and I'm going to view those things in a different light

The movie will also really make you want pizza

As a black guy, this tweet almost sums it up for me:


https://twitter.com/OhHeyDJ/status/1343092396427419648

I didn't know this was really "a thing" until I saw Spies in Disguise and now it's hard to think of an animated movie that hasn't done this outside of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Hell, Miles half-black, half Puerto Rican so I don't even know if that counts very much. Sure, Frozone is in Incredibles 2 but he is hardly the main character. In fact, he's one of the few black characters Disney has that I can name off the top of my head in the past 20 years (Tiana, Joe, Frozone...yeah). Anyway...

I thought that Joe was going to go back into his body and 22 would be the cat, the switch was hilarious... but yeah, a black guy voiced by (as the movie even calls out) a middle-aged white woman who helps the black guy learn about his life is...awkward. Very awkward after how 2020 has been for the black community. So awkward, in fact, that if this spoiler actually gets spoiled to the masses, I fully wouldn't be surprised if some black people wouldn't see the movie just because of that one thing. Is it that awkward for me? No. I loved the movie and I'm most likely going to buy it when it drops on Blu-Ray and ill show my mother as well...but I understand why it would upset people.

For me, it's not SUPER awkward like that but I think that it could've been better to not actually call attention to the "middle aged white woman" voice. Yes, it's Tina Fey and she's fun...but calling attention to her voice then giving her Joe's body so she can fix him plot-wise is...strange. But it doesn't bother me that she was in his body.

What bothers me is we got a movie about a black guy...and he didn't even get to stay as a black guy for most of the movie. He was a blob, then a cat, then a person for a bit again, then a blob again, now a person. I get the movie may not exactly work if he's a human for half the movie as you wouldn't get a full realization of the other side, 22, Terry, the Jerries, etc...but... I don't know. I just think maybe let him be himself for a while would've been nice too.

This probably explains more what I mean though.

https://twitter.com/OhHeyDJ/status/1343101741198262274

Honestly? I really wanted to see more about Joe's life...even if it was just him as a cat and 22 as him. I loved seeing his family, his friends, and how him as a cat forced him to listen to the words of others and being unable to respond in a way he would normally do so he had more time to actually think was really nice. I'm glad he didn't die at the end but can we have a Soul 2 which is literally just him living his life or just doing whatever? I really liked NYC.

Hell, we could even have more of the Great Before and the weird line-line shapes of all of the higher-up characters. It deeply reminded me of The Dot and the Line, especially with Terry. Terry is a weird rear end in a top hat...and him telling that guy to stop eating processed foods hit me in a weird way as I was eating processed foods when he said that. I feel like the movie was talking to me and I don't like it. :v:

Also the movie didn't make me want pizza so much as it made me want a Tootsie Roll Pop...which is what I was eating when Terry admonished the guy for eating processed foods.


That all being said...yeah. I just wish there was more of Joe somehow and maybe they did another way of making him fit into the strange Pixar life. This probably comes off as a lot of rambling but it's kind of hard to put into words? I guess on one had, I absolutely love the movie, on the other, it's weirdly disappointing.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
I just finished Soul too!

I’m gonna go back and read all the spoiler text itt in a second so I dont yet know what the big discussions about the film are.

But my immediate impressions are that it was a lovely little film, very good as I’ve come to expect from Pixar, but not reaching the heights (emotional, exhilarating, beautiful) of Inside Out and Coco, which are the two pinnacle exemplary Pixar films for me.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

I dropped out of watching Steven Universe when it felt like the show was just getting lost or, more accurately, scared of succinctly and cleanly telling its narrative somewhere around season 3(? Maybe earlier) so I never finished it or watched the movie.

Coco was my favorite Pixar movie but Im also not embarrassed to say in large part that because the music in it jives with me very deeply. Soul won't have that so its an uphill struggle for film about body swapped black man.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
I just realised Terry’s voice actor also voiced Moana’s grandmother

Macaluso
Sep 23, 2005

I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG, BROTHER!

Hedrigall posted:

I just realised Terry’s voice actor also voiced Moana’s grandmother

I thought I was in the Smash thread and was incredibly confused

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
dude I dont like Reggaeton. Like at all. But I'm not going to avoid a good movie because of it. SOme of you are loving weird about Jazz goddamn

I'm gonna make an animated movie about J Alfred Prufrock and put weezer on the soundtrack when he agonizes about posting himself eating a peach

Some of you will really relate to this scene

shame I'll probably have to skip watching my own movie cuz I hate weezer

Boxman
Sep 27, 2004

Big fan of :frog:


One observation that i liked about the racial politics of Soul (that I've definitely nicked off Shawn Rosell on Twitter) is that it's the rare movie that features black people but doesn't really invoke racial suffering. Like, the way black people have been systemically mistreated is bad, and art can and should reflect that, but I agree with him there's room to show black culture separate from being on the short end of the white supremacy stick.

Even Princess and the Frog didn't dodge this entirely, with Tiana's journey being set into motion in part because of some racist rear end realtors.

PS People talking about avoiding this movie because they don't like jazz is some weird poo poo. It's not a concert film.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe
Yeah not liking jazz is one thing but actively avoiding it because of jazz is probably some thinly veiled racism as well.

Those folks probably didn't avoid Whiplash bc he was trying to become a jazz drummer.

Anyway, the black culture stuff was great and I just want an animated film set in that world that doesn't have some need to be magical and go somewhere else.

smug n stuff
Jul 21, 2016

A Hobbit's Adventure

Hedrigall posted:

I just realised Terry’s voice actor also voiced Moana’s grandmother

She’s also reprising in full her role from Hunt for the Wilderpeople

JazzFlight
Apr 29, 2006

Oooooooooooh!

BonoMan posted:

Yeah not liking jazz is one thing but actively avoiding it because of jazz is probably some thinly veiled racism as well.

Those folks probably didn't avoid Whiplash bc he was trying to become a jazz drummer.

Anyway, the black culture stuff was great and I just want an animated film set in that world that doesn't have some need to be magical and go somewhere else.
I wish the movie had more to do with jazz. Frankly, there wasn't enough in the movie to begin with and it could have been replaced with a character's love of baking or baseball or whatever.

Neon Noodle
Nov 11, 2016

there's nothing wrong here in montana

ThermoPhysical posted:

I just finished Soul.
I haven't seen the movie, but based on this post, and also the fact that they cast TINA FEY of all people, who has a kind of terrible track record of weird racial tone-deafness (which she's acknowledged, but then kind of repeatedly hosed up over and over again), makes me not want to see it. I say this as someone who is actually a hardcore Tina Fey fan, I love her to pieces but she has a particular blind spot about race in her comedy.

galenanorth
May 19, 2016


I laughed at this post for a solid five minutes

Terrifying Effigies
Oct 22, 2008

Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up.

smug n stuff posted:

She’s also reprising in full her role from Hunt for the Wilderpeople

And Thor Ragnarok

Rachel House is great and I love every time she shows up in something.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

Pick posted:

As much as this was a recurring joke, it's a genuinely good example: Jasper. If SU hadn't gotten a surprise denouement season, her arc (?) would have been "wrapped up" in literally several seconds in a montage in the finale, as part of the "resolution" to the corruption storyline, which was a huge part of the main arc that ultimately never... goes anywhere. The second Centipeedle episode is actually super strong, and so the corruption storyline had the right legs, the creators just started doing anime pastiches instead. Like there's an entire episode where the premise is "Hey look, it's Initial D!" Meanwhile, major arcs terminate with no consideration.
I feel like a lot of Steven Universe critique involves weird goal posts like Jasper's redemption arc because who says that even needs to exist. Jasper was never depicted as a leading character like Peridot or Lapis were. She's an antagonist mostly in service of Lapis and Amethyst's story arcs which are both pretty greats.

Like it's fine to not like a show. You have to get through like halfway through the series before you even fully understand some of the show's underlying premises or even fully who one of the main characters is. But it always falls apart when people try to apply some vague laws of storytelling to prove it's bad.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
It's a completely fair point and totally indicative because all the early beats are there for the arc, and then at some point the show loses focus so it can do anime pastiches. Characters like Lars and his entire team of characters don't really end up mattering even thematically. And you can have a show like that, where most of the episodes don't really matter in a greater sense, like adventure time, a show I like very much. But this is a show that promised it was written out, was doing this very consistently in the early stages, and then basically just followed the web comic trajectory of introducing too many characters and too many ideas that could never be realized. And a lot like Lost, as soon as that finale hit, the fandom basically died almost overnight, because people did considered a violation of what they had been promised. If the point was that they were going to introduce a lot of things that they were never going to resolve, then really the mistake was insinuating the opposite in the first two seasons, because they wasted a lot of time then pretending that the show was supposed to have internal logic or make points or execute themes.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Captain Invictus posted:

I want an antire full length animated movie in the style and surreality of Felix Colgrave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhVehcHwOB8&hd=1

Yo, don't sleep on this.

JazzFlight
Apr 29, 2006

Oooooooooooh!

Schwarzwald posted:

Yo, don't sleep on this.
Agreed, and if anyone hasn't seen this one of his other masterpieces, you owe it to yourself to do so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_MSFkZHNi4

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant
Lars does complete his arc, though. He dies and is reborn and finds purpose as captain Harlock a rallying figure for the dispossessed and messed up. His loss allows Sadie to stop being the codependent welcome mat to his hapless cynic rear end.

The USS Lars doesn't rain down terror on and Gem armada or anything, but he returns a changed person.

IIRC Jasper's arc was about failing to let go of failure and that's what turns her into a corrupted gem. Steven could heal her form, but he can't do the emotional heavy lifting that she needed to do to unfuck her mindset.

Ignis
Mar 31, 2011

I take it you don't want my autograph, then.


Neon Noodle posted:

I haven't seen the movie, but based on this post, and also the fact that they cast TINA FEY of all people, who has a kind of terrible track record of weird racial tone-deafness (which she's acknowledged, but then kind of repeatedly hosed up over and over again), makes me not want to see it. I say this as someone who is actually a hardcore Tina Fey fan, I love her to pieces but she has a particular blind spot about race in her comedy.

Honestly I got the impression that she was cast specifically for the middle aged white woman voice joke, she's got that Karen voice that was probably on the casting sheet. They probably would've picked Amy Poehler if she hadn't done Inside Out already. She got a guest writing credit, but it's more likely she wrote a few of the flashback gags, they're very 30 Rockish in style. I doubt she had a hand on the whole cat swap thing.

That said yeah the cat thing is godawful and it's pretty discouraging to see happen on an otherwise okay movie

SweetMercifulCrap!
Jan 28, 2012
Lipstick Apathy
Pixar has always been really good about picking voices that seem to be chosen for how they can bring the character to life over marketability, though. Amy Poehler is perfect as Joy, as is Phyllis Smith as Sadness. Tina Fey doesn't bring anything to 22, and I think that "middle aged woman voice" joke was inserted to excuse this rather than being the reason for it.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!
So I enjoyed Soul but I think it didn't click because it all seemed so obvious? There was nothing in there that I didn't see coming. And while I'm not saying that's bad I think to make it a 5/5 sorta film I'd want a revelation. I think it reminded me of the Good Dinosaur where it feels like they had an idea and had to reach it in a bit of a roundabout way. Like Graham Norton as a mystic who just happened to be in New York and had an answer for everything that needed to be done felt way too perfect. Again not enough to ruin the film or anything, it just feels a bit fridge logic.
Inside Out definitely worked better for me.

Graham Norton was great though, it was so weird to see him in something like this!

How did the cat not die when his soul went into heaven? I know it doesn't matter at all, I just wondered.

Taear fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Dec 28, 2020

r u ready to WALK
Sep 29, 2001

The big revelation in Soul is that life is meaningless and the only thing waiting for you at the end of the road is non-existence :smithcloud:

Macaluso
Sep 23, 2005

I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG, BROTHER!
The visual gag of the great beyond being a bug zapper was really good.

The way I figured they would handle the Freaky Friday thing was that 22 and Joe would end up in the same body. Shame they did it the way they did

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



There's a shift in Steven Universe where the show abandons ideological conflicts in favor of moral and especially psychological ones. Early Steven Universe leaned into the fact that the Crystal Gems are aliens. Even though it's revealed later that they're space aliens, the fact that they're not humans, don't think like humans, and don't believe the same things humans do was a big part of their characterization. The show would use this to really impressive effect. The very best episode(s) of the show, "Mirror Gem/Ocean Gem", revolves around a unique ideological conflict. The Crystal Gems believe the mirror is an object, just a tool, but it turns out that Lapis is a real person. What makes this conflict so special is that it's irreconcilable; there is no way to reconcile Lapis' needs as an individual with the belief that she's just an object. To resolve the conflict Steven doesn't even bother trying to to make it work, instead he recognizes that Lapis is a person he can interact with and give what she wants. The early show had tons of these kinds of conflicts to varying scales. Steven convinces the Crystal Gems that satisfying curiosity is worth taking risks in "Marble Madness", Steven believes that monsters can be friends in "Monster Buddies", and Bismuth and Steven fight over the utility of political violence in "Bismuth".

What distinguishes this approach to late Steven Universe is that what individual people or gems feel about the conflict informs what happens in the episode, but has little to do with the resolution. As the show goes on, the show is much more interested in finding personal psychological causes for conflict and resolving the conflict by resolving those. For example, the conflict from "Bismuth" is revisited in "Made of Honor" and instantly resolved when Steven tells Bismuth that Rose was actually Pink Diamond. The "Bismuth" conflict is no longer about whether violence is moral when used for just ends, but rather about how Bismuth's feelings were hurt when Rose lied to her. When Steven reframes the conflict in that way Bismuth decides she no longer believes in political revolution, I guess. The show slowly grows more and more dedicated to this approach, to the point that a literal interstellar empire is reformed when Steven tells the dictators involved about the meaning of sorrow, as if imperialism can be explained by the psychological anxieties of individual leaders and resolved by addressing them. An uncharitable interpretation of this tendency would be that the writers are unable or unwilling to explore the tension between Steven's pacifism and the urgency of political change, but it could also be seen as a simple change in interest. If you're more interested in simple psychological exploration, this is a welcome development, but for me the change feels facile and underwhelming.

Another difference between how early SU and late SU handle their storytelling is the increasing use of moralizing. Early SU was refreshingly anarchic, similar to Adventure Time. In "Mirror Gem/Ocean Gem", both the Crystal Gems and Lapis act badly and episodes like "Steven and the Stevens" have plenty of conflict, but without a simple protagonist/antagonist struggle. Along these lines, one of my favorite characters in the series is Lars because his episodes are similarly complex. Lars is unlike anybody else in Beach City in that he is an utterly negative grouch. That doesn't mean that people dislike him or that he's evil; sometimes people are just like that. The Lars-centric episodes tend to resolve around his anti-social behavior, but the conflicts in those episodes run deeper than that. In "Island Adventure" Lars makes things difficult with his attitude, but it's Sadie who conspires to strand them on the island. The conflict between Lars and Ronaldo in "Horror Club" is quite layered and complicated; there is no protagonist or antagonist nor a victim and victimizer. This approach to storytelling made Steven Universe distinct from years of animated television.

As the show went on, though, Steven Universe became much more interested in telling didactic just-so stories. "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service" is a good example of how interpersonal conflicts have been made much more simple: Jenny has been taking advantage of Kiki by asking Kiki to cover her shifts and it's stressing Kiki out. All Kiki needs to do to resolve the conflict is ask Jenny to help her with her work. It's not a bad episode at all but there's not much to explore. This approach hurts Lars as a character as the show demands that he be made to be more copacetic. As with the psychological tendency, I think this is more of an evolution than a misdirection, but it's very clear that the show's thematic approach deliberately changed from its early incarnation and to call it "inconsistent" isn't wrong, just uncharitable.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

JazzFlight posted:

Agreed, and if anyone hasn't seen this one of his other masterpieces, you owe it to yourself to do so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_MSFkZHNi4
Double King is legit one of the most fascinating videos I've ever seen. There's so much you can read into it. I had a lengthy conversation about what each part in the video means that I wish I could remember because I'm just blanking on it now, but yes, it is a phenomenal video with a wild style and a typically Felix surreality to it.

Most of his other videos are excellent too. I am not a huge fan of his pre-Fever The Ghost videos, but from then onwards is basically all quality stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RHFFeQ2tu4&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b26iN-j8RaQ&hd=1

This is why I love Patreon, because despite its flaws, it allows us to have more Felix Colgraves who can survive off their obscure(or not so obscure nowadays I suppose) works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QYxJ69pY0E&hd=1

r u ready to WALK posted:

The big revelation in Soul is that life is meaningless and the only thing waiting for you at the end of the road is non-existence :smithcloud:
coming to terms with the void of nothingness at the end of all things is very important because nobody else has escaped it so why should you be the first, and fretting over it is just excess anxiety that wastes you away

Sivart13
May 18, 2003
I have neglected to come up with a clever title
Soul:

BonoMan posted:

The cat body swap poo poo is bad. Like goddamnit. I love Tina Fey with a passion, but what this movie didn't need was a goddamn white savior and this STILL tried to do it
I was disappointed by the film. There is a nice, normal-rear end movie in here about a guy reconsidering his life choices after a touch with the afterlife.

The character of 22 fucks it all up. How am I supposed to relate to a little blob who has not-lived for millennia and knows everything about Earth culture but has just been two stubborn to give it a try? Maybe she's not meant to be relatable and is just an obstacle for Joe to work through at first, that you grow to love. But that didn't happen for me, I just had to sit bewildered through this emotionally stunted whatever-creature figuring out the world.

Fey didn't add anything to the role, but I'm skeptical there's any version of this character I would've been happy with. The movie I watched was neither funny enough or serious enough to replicate that Inside Out energy.


Though it didn't help that I watched it at home with my 3.5 year old who was constantly asking WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE THEY GOING? Covid end plz.

I actually saw Onward two days before this one and liked it a lot better, which is probably blasphemous for this thread. I liked the silly 'elves with toasters' world they built. Most of the film is a straightforward adventure, yeah, but I'd be more keen to rewatch looking for background gags in Onward than something like Brave. The revelation that Barley needed to see his father a lot more than Ian did hit me harder than anything in Soul.

perepelki
Dec 11, 2020

know before Whom you stand

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Sivart13 posted:

I actually saw Onward two days before this one and liked it a lot better, which is probably blasphemous for this thread. I liked the silly 'elves with toasters' world they built. Most of the film is a straightforward adventure, yeah, but I'd be more keen to rewatch looking for background gags in Onward than something like Brave. The revelation that Barley needed to see his father a lot more than Ian did hit me harder than anything in Soul.

I was hard on Onward but I'm a big sucker for the "main character realizes they're not the main character" narratives and thought this was a good choice.

pokeyman
Nov 26, 2006

That elephant ate my entire platoon.
I'm trying to figure out if I would've found Soul's historic figures as mentors bit funny when I was younger (but still old enough to recognize them), because they left me completely stone-faced. Just "yes, I see what you're doing here, no it's not funny, can we move along now oh good there's more".

Overall it felt like a movie with several better movies mixed up within it, and I kinda wish we got to see one of those instead. I'd watch Joe's life on Earth, Joe's soul somehow being the first to ever break the rules, Dez's life, 22 doing anything other than occupying a Black body, Dorothea Williams's life, Joe's mom's life, Moonwind's crew wandering around. There's lots of good here, but we only get it for a few minutes at a time.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


What if Tina Fey's character were played by a black actress? Would the racial politics be marginally better?

Actually you could probably remove Tina Fey from most things to no harm.

Inspector Gesicht fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Dec 29, 2020

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Inspector Gesicht posted:

What if Tina Fey's character were played by a black actress? Would the racial politics be marginally better?

Actually you could probably remove Tina Fey from most things to no harm.

If they didn't call to attention that she was basically a middle-agreed white woman, I think it'd be a bit better too.

Actually if it was a black woman, yeah it'd be less awkward as well.

The articles are pouring in about the scene as well. Most call attention to the fact that Soul originally didn't have a black lead and that 22 was the star.

Then they wanted to have a different lead and had to get a "brain trust" of black people (including Daveed Diggs which I find awesome) to help them write a black person correctly, add the barbershop scene, and correctly animate black skin and hair.

Originally, they just had Kemp Powers helping them with it but they got more when he told Pixar that he "doesn't speak for all black people and my experiences aren't the same for all black people" which...is a bit awkward if they originally thought that...

But whatever.

Some have already said that it's a great movie just a bit tone deaf.

galenanorth
May 19, 2016

22 grew on me as a reference to George Bailey's "I wish I'd never been born" in It's A Wonderful Life, but they could've done the same thing in less than a third of a screentime if they spent less time on the jokes like "I washed your butt for you"

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BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe
22 was fine as a concept (although like most mentioned - Tina Feye just didn't really add anything) and would have passed by rather unnoticed ... except they just *had* to do the body swap. Ugh. Without that scene (or just having 22 in the cat so her first worldly experience was a cat) the movie would be miles better. I don't think it's malicious, but just remarkably tone deaf and surely somebody from their trust would have brought that up?

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