Sci-fi/fantasy author Charlie Jane Anders has a column in today’s WaPo that really resonates with me: Grown-ups, it’s okay to love pop culture for kids. Stop being embarrassed about it. Its thesis: the fans of children’s properties have aged, and, wanting to continue enjoying their favorite characters, have dragged the properties along with them. While this has produced some good works, it has also seen the removal of a vital sense of whimsy and, well, cartoonishness. You may have noticed that we’re now drowning in dark, gritty, sexy takes on everything from Transformers to Batman to Cruella de Vil (who even has a tragic backstory now–it’s been requested that I say this is a spoiler, so learn about this ridiculous idiocy at your own risk).
This has overtaken pop culture to the degree that it extends to non-children’s works that were quite dark and gritty enough already. I’m particularly disheartened-in-advance by the new Dune movie, which appears to be tragically dichromatic and same-y. This is a story written by a man who was tripping his face off half the time, which shows and deserves to shine through; it inspired a whole generation of counterculturistas–so why does it look and sound like it was directed by Christopher Nolan?
What happened to us?
We never wondered why Peter Parker, in addition to his radioactive spider-bite, was capable of inventing miraculous technology like his web-shooters. Or why Batman chooses to throw bat-shaped boomerangs called “batarangs.” We didn’t ask how, exactly, a group of mutated turtles managed to learn martial arts from a sewer rat.
These stories never worried about being taken seriously, or about being “realistic.” That freedom allowed them to take truly beautiful detours, and to defy expectations. To read Golden Age and Silver Age comics, or to watch the original “Star Wars,” is to be intoxicated by a draught of pure imagination, and to feel as though wonders are possible.
Good can defeat evil (and we can cleanly separate one from the other), miracles are commonplace, and lessons are everywhere. A great children’s story has a set of rules that you have to follow — and a sense of gleeful anarchy. Weapons don’t draw blood. Friends and family always come back together.
When adults claim dominion over these stories, they get darker, at the expense some of their innocent fun. Primary colors dim to crepuscular shades, and sexual assault, mutilation and torture become commonplace tropes. Superman once had a pet super-monkey named Beppo who’d stowed away aboard Kal-El’s rocket when he was a baby. In 2016’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” Kal-El was beaten to death in a gory fistfight with a bone-knuckled zombie alien.
Her op-ed is not, however, a cranky lamentation. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a dark, gritty superhero movie. The problem is that they are eating up all the big-money resources. It has led to a self-reinforcing stagnation in the industry. From a thread about her piece:
In the article I talk about the rise of the direct market for comics, and the “four quadrant” movie for teens and adults. A lot of structural changes happened starting roughly 40 years ago that helped push formerly kid-focused properties to lose their innocence.
— Charlie Jane “VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH” Anders (@charliejane) June 2, 2021
So what’s to be done? Nothing, she argues, that we aren’t already doing, at least as an industry. While the biggest studios may be stuck in a rut, young upstarts like Netflix are investing heavily in fantastical children’s properties. This will help ensure that children have stories to inspire them, just like aging nerds used to, before we collectively decided that whimsy is cringe.
This brings us to what truly troubles me: I feel like it reflects a broader cultural shift away from the fantastical, the non-tragic romantic, the optimistic, the whimsical. We live in a pessimistic era, even as, for most of us, there has never been a better time to be alive. We live longer, we have magic-grade technology, and while we face our share of challenges, humanity always has. But saying this out loud isn’t very hip.
I read a lot and watch a lot of TV. By far the finest piece of fiction I’ve encountered since COVID began is Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I watched for the first time when Netflix picked up the license. For those who don’t know, it’s a children’s cartoon. And it’s got the best storytelling I’ve seen for over a year. The kids, I’m told, will be all right; it’s the adults I’m worried about.
It occurs to me, now that I’ve hit publish, that this is a malaise mostly felt in the US. This might explain the ever-rising Western popularity of anime, a famously romantic art form.
(If you like Avatar, by the way, the head writer has a new original Netflix series, The Dragon Prince, which is also fantastic and fantastical.)
A live read of the Nevada public option bill
West of the Rockies
Why is it so difficult to make a good Dune?
I loved the Avatar anime. Tales of Ba Sing Se is poetry. I watched it because my young daughter loved it.
Nina
Stay away from the Avatar: the last Airbender movie. Bad bad bad bad bad.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I thought Dune is a cautionary tale about following dangerous leaders and the drug use was just flavor text. If it feels the same it’s because we just had Baron Harkonian for realizes.
Major Major Major Major
@Nina: Stay away from what is notoriously one of the worst movies ever made? Fine… twist my arm :)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Dune isn’t about drugs, but it was created under heavy influence, it shows, and that deserves to shine through.
TeezySkeezy
Am I misremembering Dune? I don’t recall much joy or whimsy from the novels.
Major Major Major Major
@TeezySkeezy: I’m not calling it whimsical–as I say, it’s dark and gritty enough already, so why are we giving it the darker-and-grittier-reboot treatment?
ETA: highly recommend the documentary Jodorosky’s Dune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune
Barbara
I have trouble following all the various iterations of Avatar, but when my son was a toddler and wanted to watch Willie Wonka for the 35th time in a month, my daughter insisted that they watch Avatar, which they did after much howling. Within two minutes he was hooked and more than a decade later they are all still hooked, to the extent that his “reward” for a reasonable report card is that my husband will watch a certain predesignated number of episodes with him.
I guess you can add Willie Wonka to the list of kid’s things that have been adultified and darkened by Hollywood. Honestly, I think some of it is just wanting basically to keep hewing to the same characters over and over again because the studios have become so risk averse as budgets get larger and larger.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Because movie people always want to remake the movie, and Dune’s case that movie is Joborowsky’s Dune, the greatest movie never made, because if featured Paul as a real savior, not a false one, synchronized shitting, perdophila and necorophila and god knows what else because I stopped reading his script when it got to the necrophila.
Bobby Thomson
Sorry, but this is ahistorical. The “realism” versus “ah it’s just a comic book” debate has been going on ever since the early days of Marvel. What changed was how far artists could push the envelope with corporate-owned intellectual property without losing their jobs.
Matt McIrvin
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a weird thing, though: it started out as a product of the 1980s wave of black-and-white independent comics, which were consciously bloody and gritty (and mostly extremely bad). When it got big, it turned into a kiddie franchise that was kind of the sort of thing it was parodying/reacting to originally.
Major Major Major Major
@Bobby Thomson:
…is at no point mentioned.
Matt McIrvin
…and Silver Age superhero comics got weird and whimsical specifically because there had been a moral panic about the bloody and prurient comics that dominated the market in the early postwar years, and the industry responded with the Comics Code Authority which explicitly prohibited a huge range of things. The bizarre stories about Superman’s head turning into a lion’s head from Red Kryptonite happened because that was the kind of thing they were still allowed to get away with.
(The CCA was also gratuitously racist, even though the letter of the Code seemingly wasn’t, and would nix stories just for being about black people. What a surprise!)
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Yeah, I’m a big fan of whimsy. I think we need more of it. The world is full of wonder. We could use more stories that play off that wonder.
Elizabelle
re the Dalmatians item: Spoiler! Most of us have not seen that movie; might not for a while, but you have just ruined a plot point, MMMM. Maybe edit that out, or hide it??
NotMax
One thing I’ve questioned in any Batman film is why anyone would voluntarily live in Gotham City.
Gritty, gloomy, menacingly repellent and apparently lit at night by street candles.
*cough* Tentacles *cough*.
Also bullet trainloads of dystopian anime.
piratedan
just to stick an oar in…. if you’re looking for “whimsical” in your anime story-telling then I can offer a few suggestions, mostly in the teenage rom-com genre but the laughs and the wryness is there all the same without too much introspection… They cover the usual themes of self discovery, awkwardness in communication and romance
School Rumble, Working!, Service X Service, FLCL, and My Love Story!
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
WTF do you think spice is?
Leto
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: @West of the Rockies: also:
This is why. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit. This isn’t the “Golden Age of Cinema” where you can release films the length of Gone with the Wind, or Ben-Hur, with an intermission in the middle. Studio’s have instead gone to the “we’ll release this singular book in 2-3 films”, and if the books series had a few volumes, there’s a good chance the final book will itself be 2 films (see Harry Potter and Hunger Games). Sometimes that’s good as it adds more story. Then you have the opposite where Peter Jackson decided to take a short story and make it into a three film shit show.
I think Denis is doing it correctly with two films to try to establish a coherent narrative without resorting to Lynch style length/mumbo-jumbo. TLDR: there’s a lot of stuff in that book and trying to get it translated to film is hard.
Belafon
I did because I wanted to make them. And still do. If I could create Jarvis….
Martin
@Bobby Thomson: This is the same dynamic as happening in video games. I was never a comic book kid – every Marvel movie I have to ask my comic book friend ‘who the fuck are these people, and why should I care about them’ on the way to the theater. It’s become something of a ritual.
But RPG and similar video games back when computing couldn’t do much were heavily focused on story, dialog, and how to invent game mechanics that were engaging. Then everything went 3D and it consumed increasing fractions of the budget to the degree that story writing is worse than it was 30 years ago, game mechanics are improving very marginally, but damn if that new rendering of Manhattan isn’t 3% shinier than the last rendering of Manhattan.
We’re getting close to a point where cinema and gaming is converging in terms of what can be done visually. (See The Mandalorian). My hope is that at that point they can share and exchange assets, that there will be a definitive set of assets for Manhattan that some studio maintains and licenses out to all parties, because there’s really no marginal benefit to reinventing it. At some point your procedural maple tree generator can’t meaningfully be improved upon, so you stop spending money on it, and maybe then we can get back to story, character development, narrative being the thing that carries properties.
This is something that cinema should particularly wish for because video games have significantly larger budgets than movies do.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: Sure, it’s an all-ages art form. Obviously lots of dystopias are romantic, though.
When I think of romantic anime, I tend to think of the biggest(?) anime subgenre, shonen. It’s targeted at young men and tries to promote teamwork, doing one’s best, etc., but is grounded heavily in the primacy and nobility of individual emotionality.
@Roger Moore: Dune isn’t about spice! Or giant worms!
TomatoQueen
I have no trouble with Dune as gritty, as there is a lot of sand in it. Dark? Tuneable suspensors that float provide all the light you need.
The notion that any Dalmatian could ever be capable of anything more than running all over the place, or sitting elegantly up by the driver on an old-fashioned fire engine, as required, is insulting and absurd, moreover the notion that there is no back story to Cruella is central to the horror of the tale. Do not abuse the memory of Dodie Smith further.
In the end, adults are allowed to enjoy their childhood favorites as they were and are, without fucking around with them.
TeezySkeezy
@Major Major Major Major: Watched it on a 10 hour flight. Would have been interesting, for sure…but a *bit* more psychedelic than the books felt to me. I can see your point about the color palette being unspiring, but I just can’t see the story being more gritty than the novels.
Leto
@Roger Moore: metaphor for oil/water, or anything else of limited quantity/scarcity but high demand. Of course that Frank Herbert stating that, so opinions might vary. (Insert scene from Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School, where he’s yelling at Kurt Vonnegut about how he doesn’t know his own novel)
Omnes Omnibus
@Barbara: Ronald Dahl’s stuff always had a dark edge. Some deem it inappropriate for kids as a result. I think kids can deal with dark better than many adults think, and adults need whimsy/nonsense/etc. more than they think.
Major Major Major Major
@Leto:
It is, however, the golden age of big-budget TV adaptations, which is where a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books are landing. Looking forward to Snow Crash!
NotMax
Got kiddies?
Tip top recommendation for Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants. Almost completely dialogue free; they (and you) will be mesmerized and giggle freely.
The Moar You Know
To ask a society that’s been in a cold civil war for the last thirty years, rapidly progressing towards a hot civil war for the last five, to indulge itself in “whimsy” is a bit much to expect.
Citizen Alan
@Barbara:
Willie Wonka was pretty much dark from the start. At a minimum, the first film was terrifying at times.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
I can think of two reasons:
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
Why?
West of the Rockies
Okay, for glorious whimsy, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: Isn’t that when people most need a break?
Gravenstone
Avatar was great stuff. Its successor The Legend of Korra isn’t quite as strong for story, but it is in many ways emblematic of the article you posted, with a rather darker take on the world. I would recommend it as a follow on to Avatar. It also appears to be available on Netflix.
The Moar You Know
Also: Dune will never be successfully adapted to movie form.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
And here I was brought up to believe anime was all about gratuitous panty shots.
;)
@Leto
David Lynch, whose original cut ran about five hours, had no say in or control over the final cut released in theaters. Even insisted his name be removed from later released extended versions, which as a result are credited to Alan Smithee.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
10-14 hours seems a bit long for a Dune movie, but it certainly deserves to be longer than the studios would be comfortable making into a single movie. My rule of thumb is that for most novels, you can get about 100 pages into 1 hour of movie without sacrificing too much. That would mean a Dune movie would need to be about 5 hours, maybe a bit longer if you think it needs more time per page than a typical novel. It seems like it’s just wrong for today’s media environment: it’s too long to turn into a movie without being drastically cut, and it’s too short to turn into a prestige TV show without a bunch of filler.
Major Major Major Major
@Gravenstone: I’m watching Korra right now. It’s fine. They’re definitely aiming for the next age band up, but I think why it really suffers is because they didn’t have Avatar’s head writer. Really shows you how much of a difference one person (of a team of three) can make.
Gravenstone
He said whimsical, not weird. =P
That said, the original FLCL is a trip and quite enjoyable. The belated follow ups are much more hit or miss. But still feature the great music of the PIllows.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: I think this is where the whole Emma Goldman thing comes in. I don’t think it is wrong to find enjoyment and beauty wheee one can, but some would argue that it is frivolous and one should be focused on the “struggle” at all times.
I, however, do not mean to put words in Moar’s mouth.
Amir Khalid
Probably the most iconic work fiction of whimsical fiction in the late 20th century was H2G2 — the trilogy, anyway. (The fourth volume felt like a joke extended past its punchline, and the fifth like a completely different joke, told by somebody else, that went on too long and wasn’t terribly funny.) Anyway, it’s thanks to Douglas Adams that I see the number 42 and tthe phrase “life, the universe and everything” in all sorts of unexpected contexts.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus:
Doesn’t sound like a life worth living, to me.
Leto
@Major Major Major Major: SyFy did an adaptation of the first three Dune books almost 20 years ago now. If they did it as, say, a six part run, each 1h – 1h 15m, that would be potentially good. Although at some point it’s time to move on to other works. Still looking forward to Dennis’ adaptation.
AM in NC
I will always be grateful to my kids for bringing Avatar and Phineas and Ferb into my life. Both quality shows with humor and heart. The kids are mid to late teens now and still return to these series (especially when under the weather).
lee
My kids grew up watching The Last Airbender.
Every Friday it was swim lessons, then home for Hot Dogs and Macaroni & Cheese and The Last Airbender. To say we were disappointed in the movie is an understatement.
I just finished re-reading the first 3 books in the Dune series. I had forgotten how trippy they were. I’m not sure how exactly they would portray all the mind-altering scenes coherently in a movie. All the different narratives get twisted about (mixing religion and government, following corrupted leaders, losing your grasp of reality from drugs, etc). A movie has to thin all that out so the drug use loses.
One interesting tidbit from the books versus movie: In the book a lot of the words used are from the Middle East. In the book the Fremen go on ‘jihad’. In the movie it is now ‘crusade’.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
Yes, it has that quality, but Spice isn’t just a generic substitute for [insert valuable substance]. It has mind-expanding properties, and those properties are essential to the plot. Take away the drug aspect of Spice, and Dune is just Lawrence of Arabia in space.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
Grizzly, :)
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: The Sixties, a time of society-wide upheaval, were a golden age of weird and whimsical camp media. The Nineties, as placid a time as we’ve ever had in US history, were the heyday of EXTREEM grimdark, especially in comics and games. I think what we get is often a counterreaction.
Barney
Arrakis is a desert planet. There’s not meant to be any green there. It should look like a place where life is a constant desperate struggle, against the elements, or ruthless bastards exploiting you. It’s not Disneyworld with a regular fireworks display.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: That was Emma Goldman’s point. “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
CaseyL
I agree with some of the post’s basic premise: don’t force children’s literature to become something adults appreciate and especially don’t “reimagine” the books we all grew up on to suit our current, darker sensibilities. But…
Children’s literature, and the movies made from it, is plenty dark without any “re-imagining,” “rebooting” or other revisionism.
Comic books? I was never much of a comic book fan, thinking they were all for superannuated little boys. Then in the 1970s a friend introduced me to the X-Men: superheros with lots of angst, snark, and continuing storylines. I then read a bunch more comics aimed at adults, including stuff like Cerebus the Ardvark, and the Tick… not a single page had little kid whimsy. Lots of grownup whimsy, though, which I liked just fine.
So, to tell the truth, when I really think about it, I’m not actually sure I do agree with the basic premise of the post after all!
Oh, and in reference to Dune: I’m quite looking forward to the new movie. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I consider the 1984 film version an abomination, the 1990s SciFi channel miniseries very good, and am hopeful the newest entry will be at least as good as the miniseries.
There’s always going to be a problem adapting a book like Dune to a single movie, though: as at least one reviewer famously noted, Due is basically six books rolled into one: A political thriller, an environmental story, a revenge tale (straight out of Greek Drama), a space opera, a sociological novel, and above all, a take on apocalyptic/messianic religions. Much easier to get all of that when you have many episodes to work with.
MattF
@Leto: I watched some of the SyFy Dune series– it was one of the things behind my decision to stop watching cable. Just Awful.
Leto
@Roger Moore: That’s where I was headed with my reply to Major4. It’s why I’m intrigued by Denis adaptation because it’s going on the break it into two parts formula. Dune is approx 450 pages, so two films fits your 100 to 1 ratio. Which even then might be a bit too long. It’s going to depend on how well he handles all the internal monologuing, and how that translates to film.
piratedan
@Gravenstone: granted, was mostly going on the tenor of the series… while decidedly weird, maybe I should have gone with Mushi-shi instead…..
Bill K
@West of the Rockies: +1
Nobody does it better than Miyazaki.
Urban Suburbanite
If you haven’t read UnLundun, I totally suggest it – it’s a gloriously strange story for kids that also manages to be a parody of those tropes.
Spanky
@Leto:
There’s a movie I’d pay to see.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: But, you’ll notice, the Hitchhiker’s Guide series is also extremely cynical and even nihilistic in its outlook. The characters aren’t inclined to play hero and save the world because they figure it’s all pointless anyway.
(Adams adapted the third book from an unused Doctor Who treatment, and he said later that this was actually very difficult because, unlike the Doctor and friends, these people just weren’t motivated to do anything to advance the plot.)
NotMax
@Gravenstone
Music by Hajime Mizoguchi throughout Please Save My Earth (sample) still (pleasantly) haunting. More than decent story too, although plug was pulled on financing so what became the ending was rushed and less satisfying.
JoyceH
I do think we need a bit more optimism in our popular culture. Just watched a vlog about grimdark, and it just cemented why I don’t like grimdark. As for ‘whimsy, in THIS times?!’ recall that Shirley Temple and Fred Astaire were at their heyday during the Great Depression. There’s actually a new genre that agrees with me – envisioning an actual hopeful future. It’s called solarpunk.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: A seasoning?
zhena gogolia
@JoyceH:
Shirley Temple, now you’re talking.
It’s the only reference in this entire thread that says anything to me.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
The Dune trailer seemed, to me, to be pretty spot-on, which is why it’s the first movie in a looong time I’m looking forward to seeing in a theater. The book always seemed to me to have several themes running simultaneously: first and foremost a coming-of age story; an ecological fable; a cautionary tale about messiahs; nifty sandworms. If the movie can address any of these without tripping over itself I’ll be satisfied. The fact that most of the dialog in the trailer seems pretty close to (may have been taken directly from) that of the book gives me hope. Plus, nifty sandworms just like John Schoenherr documented them. Having said that, I agree with the Major about the increasing darkness of so many genre works; specifically movies. We finally watched Wonder Woman 84 over the weekend and it just wasn’t fun.
Elizabelle
Thank you MMMM.
Elizabelle
@JoyceH: Agreed. People need hope, release, and fantasy. If it’s well written and presented, so much the better.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
I’m not so sure about that. Avatar spends time on the characters doing fun stuff, but it’s still set in a very dark world. Ang is the only survivor of a genocide. Sokka’s and Katara’s mother was assassinated, and their father abandoned them to fight in a war. Toph ran away from home because her parents couldn’t accept her for who she is. Zuko was physically and psychologically abused by his father, who then exiled him and promised he could only come home if he succeeded in a wild goose chase. Azula undergoes a psychotic break and devolves into paranoia. And everything they do is set against the background of a 100 year long colonialist war. It’s a very dark setting, and that darkness keeps poking through the light tone of the show.
Major Major Major Major
@CaseyL: Anders actually covers the darkness inherent in kid lit in her piece! I just didn’t find it super relevant to my take on it.
@Matt McIrvin: The best Douglas Adams Doctor Who Novelization, of course, is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, which is just the City of Death Tom Baker arc.
NotMax
@CaseyL
Also too, the original ElfQuest. Which by rights ought to have stopped there. With each succeeding iteration the lore became messier and less look forward to-able., IMHO.
Major Major Major Major
@Elizabelle: Done! It’s literally the only thing I’ve heard about the movie so I figured it was common knowledge.
@Omnes Omnibus: gotcha.
@Barney:
Sure but colors other than orange and blue exist. And one would imagine that the residents of such a planet might use a lot of green in decor!
zhena gogolia
Okay, now that I’ve managed to read the OP, I agree with it. Although these are not my cup of tea to begin with, but if I had kids I wouldn’t know what to take them to see.
lee
@MattF: I can’t imagine I didn’t watch the Dune miniseries when it came out. I’m guessing it was so bad that I repressed the memory. I’ve read that it is close to the book but just god-awful in execution.
I’m looking forward to the new movie.
raven
no bic
Elizabelle
@West of the Rockies: Our historic movie palace (1928) in Richmond, VA has hosted some Hayao Miyazaki film series. Lines around the block to get in. Only time I ever got to sit in the balcony; they had to open it for overflow.
I am going to be happy today that Mr. Miyazaki is still in the world. He is a treasure. Also love how girls are empowered in his films. They can be aircraft designers! All manner of skills and exploration allowed to them. A welcome break from all the princesses American cartoon films saddle one with.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
no comprende
trollhattan
Ladies and germs, meet Crystal Dunn’s chickens.
https://twitter.com/Cdunn19/status/1399778082030985218
Fine flock, I must say.
RobertB
Avatar – my daughter is planning on getting a tattoo of Appa, hopefully not on her face.
I’ll throw another vote for it out there – if you haven’t watched The Last Airbender (show, not movie), you should. Legend of Korra is okay, not up to The Last Airbender standards but still pretty good.
Gravenstone
@Roger Moore: And let’s not forget Sokka’s first love sacrificed herself to become the Moon. Yes, the underlying world construct in Avatar was dark. I just think Korra tends to embrace that darkness in a more direct and personal manner, especially with her own individual struggles and challenges.
aliasofwestgate
One Piece is something i continually come back to because it’s such a good mix of whimsy, romantic themes, with darker storylines hidden in there. The art style is always a bit odd, but it works. The storytelling is top-notch and was far ahead of its time when it started in the late 90s. It’s helped herald in a lot of the modern shounen like Jujutsu Kaisen, with the ability to upend tropes extremely well without being angst a thons like Attack on Titan.
OP’s appeal is that whimsy even in the face of adversity, and growing from the pain before it. Which is kind of why it remains a comfort food anime for me. Jujutsu Kaisen has a similar appeal. Older storytelling has always had that line between whimsy and darkness, and it’s hard to get right. Anime still does a lot of that, even the most whimsical of the fare meant for kids under 12 or around 16. The only time you get pure fluff in anime is when you’re going for the tinies age group. Kindergartners.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Diff’rent strokes and all that. Even as a kidlet if the choice had been between (a) sticking thumbtacks in my eyes or (b) watching Shirley Temple, (a) would have won in a walk every time.
Little Margaret O’Brien another one who mashed the on button for the gag reflex.
;)
Old Man Shadow
Our culture tends to sap whimsy and wonder and art and imagination from us.
When you grow up, you are expected to become a cog in the machine that generates money for others, nothing more. When you stop being a useful cog, you might be able to retire modestly and live out the last 10-20 years of your life as you see fit. Otherwise, it’s fitting back into someone else’s machine to generate money for them until you break down and die.
Humanities are mocked and defunded. Music and art are usually the first things to go when budgets get tight in schools. Student loans are a way to make sure you take your place in the machine. Rent and mortgages too.
I’m sure there are young people out there with good ideas and good stories to tell. But the machine would rather churn out another product with name recognition even if the lead action hero is 80 and the story so full of holes you could pilot a Death Star through them.
It’s all rather depressing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: I guess no one teaches about the heroes of the revolution anymore.
I do think the sentiment is important. If we are going to try to save the world, there should be a reason why. Bread and Roses hits the same notes as well. https://youtu.be/qNQs6gSOkeU
Bostondreams
@Roger Moore:
Oh my goodness did she ever. I don’t think I can name any other children’s shows that showed the impact of mental illness and child abuse any stronger.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Avatar has a dark setting and deals with some heavy themes, but it is never a dark story.
Eolirin
I know it’s not exactly a kids thing, but if we’re going to speak of whimsy, Leverage is coming back! July 9th. On Imdb.tv
Leto
@Major Major Major Major:
What you’re asking for is an interior view of Sietch Tabor, which the trailer doesn’t show, but the book does talk about wall hangings/carpets having color in them to brighten up their cave dwelling homes. This is the trailer, and them showing nothing but the flat muted colors of the desert (which are as a part of me as the woodland colors of my SC childhood) to help set the tone going into the movie is, from my perspective, laudable. Other places for color: Arrakeen, Ghedi Prime (ewww), and Caladan. Just as long as we don’t have a f’ing rain scene at the end of the second movie!
Delk
Steven Universe is quite whimsical.
Major Major Major Major
@Leto: Given the appalling prevalence of dichromatic orange-blue movies, I’m preparing myself to be disappointed.
@Delk: Cartoon Network has some good stuff, yeah!
raven
@zhena gogolia: exactly
NotMax
@Leto
Always wanted to see a scene with the Shadout Mapes furiously sweeping while muttering to herself, “Ragga-fragga desert planet. No matter what I can’t keep these floors clean.”
Leto
@aliasofwestgate: @Roger Moore: one series from my childhood that hit on a lot of the notes that M4 wants is Robotech. It’s definitely showing it’s age now, in animation terms, but watching that story line (love, sacrifice, characters actually dying, hope, coming to terms with loss) versus Transformer/GI Joe was just so stark. But Robotech is similar to Avatar, as M4 points out at comment 83, in that it has dark themes but the story itself isn’t dark.
Gravenstone
@Major Major Major Major: Just wandered over to wiki to refresh my memory on aspects of Avatar only to be reminded that Netflix has a live action “reimagining” of the series in the works. Originally slated to be produced by DiMartino and Konietzko, I now see they left the project in 2020 over the dreaded “creative differences”. Oh well, sounds like one worth skipping.
Which also revived my dread of the upcoming Netflix live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop.
JoyceH
One of my biggest beefs with modern sci-fi movies-television is the insistence on making the spaceship interiors DARK. Yeah, the ship is usually an old clunker with a ragtag crew yada yada – but of all the energy drains on a ship, lighting would be miniscule! And surely when you’re operating a spaceship, it’s critical to be able to see the controls!
cain
@NotMax:
so many other things – like how cops never manage to kill any of the super villains in custody or violent reprisals for all the people they killed. I mean, by now – the Joker would have been taken out by someone given the death count.
Or if you got like world ending things – the American military apparently is non-existent. :-)
That said, the Netflix Marvel series were one of the best as it showed real human frailty that we can relate to. They had powers, but it was almost an afterthought – it lead to some really wonderful story telling. So I wouldn’t say there was stagnation – I think what the people who did the Netflix Marvel series showed that you do something fresh.
As someone who grew up in the 80s on comic books (another thing, my fellow indians didn’t do lol) with a subscription and everything – comics was always looked on as a little kids stuff and then it became a real bonafide art form – and it was awesome. Again, I think sometimes the powers are there, but still kind of in the background – the shit with Kraven the Hunter and Spiderman showed some seriously demented stuff back then.
So, yeah, I suppose we could swing it the other way towards the campy 60s era – but meh. Plenty of stories to be told – and you could always have heroes like plastic man or some other that introduces real humor. I mean shit Deadpool is a perfect example of fun stuff.
zhena gogolia
@JoyceH:
That goes back to Alien.
cain
@CaseyL:
But I think comics are appreciated across all age groups – same with “cartoons” – it’s just a presentation form – the stories can range from child friendly to adult.
Even all those children songs – they came from a dark place – I mean “ring around the roses” did not come from a happy place.
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia: Personally I’ve come to terms with pointless dim lighting, face-facing helmet lights, and sound in a vacuum, not that these don’t irk me very slightly.
JoyceH
@zhena gogolia: Well, it bugs me! And it’s not realistic. Another one is in contemp fiction when the cops are searching a dark place and they pull out their flashlights and the flashlight produce this one highly directed measly little beam of light! Everything outside that one beam is stygian gloom. SERIOUSLY? After one of those scenes, I turned off the room lights and turned on my phone’s flashlight – and it lights up the whole room! Television police budgets must be pathetic! (Of course, they do that so the Reveal will be more shocking, but please.)
Brachiator
I have mixed feelings about this. I have no problem with whimsy, but there can be adult whimsy. Adults need to stop shoe-horning in on kid’s stuff. I include Halloween in this as well. That is, pre-pandemic Halloween. The whole point of Halloween is that the world is turned upside down and children can demand treats from adults. But yeah, adults can have their silly ass costume parties. But be discreet.
Batman was always pretty damn gritty. The campy TV show was an exception to the rule. And even Dick Tracy in the comics had some grotesque villains that he dealt with. So, for me, gritty is good. Damn good. But not everything needs to be dipped in grit. The Christopher Reeve Superman movies had a light touch, with a bit of sardonic flavoring.
The Guardians of the Galaxy movies were much better than the comics precisely because they ditched some of the darkness in favor of humor. And Thor Ragnarok was not just funny, it was an antic film set in a comic universe.
I haven’t seen the Cruella movie. But I suspect that some villains (and heroes) just don’t need origin stories. But this goes beyond whimsy vs grittiness. Some adult filmmakers seem to need to give heroes and villains psychological problems to define them or to “explain” their paths to heroism or villainy, because these creators are to sophisticated for simplistic good vs evil narratives. I wish these dopes would just find a good therapist and stop inflicting unnecessary pain on movie goers.
ETA: The original Superman, from the 1930s comic was not the straight-laced “boys scout” of the 1970s Superman movies or the later TV incarnations. He was much more a smart-ass street smart hero, kinda like his creators. Spiderman also had street sass, and there is still a touch of this in his current incarnations.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major: I assume in Alien it was supposed to be a play on the name of the ship (in the movie) Nostromo, so it was a mashup with some Conradian ship.
patroclus
There’s gonna be a re-make of Dune??!!! The Sleeper has awakened!! Tell me about your home world Usol! He will know your ways as if born to them!! For he IS the Kwitsat Haderat!! The Spice must flow!!!
zhena gogolia
@JoyceH:
How about — “can you enlarge that”? And they’re able to enlarge some small detail of a photograph so it’s in perfect definition.
NotMax
@cain
Was perpetually a thing that art was honored; museums constructed to keep and display it. Words were revered; great libraries constructed to house and preserve them. But marry art and words and ipso facto it became kiddy fare.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Batman’s grittiness came and went. Batman was gritty in the 1930s and 40s, but by the time the TV show came on, it was kind of faithfully reflecting the weird world of Comics Code-induced Silver Age Batman, just treating it with straight-faced amusement. But in the 70s the comics seemed to get a little grimmer again.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I watched the original 101 Dalmatians 2 weeks ago. I remembered about 2% from the 1st time I watched it 40+ years ago. My little one was hysterical over Cruella. That movie is fucked up. Lol…
PJ
@lee:
Herbert basically just transposed Arabic culture to Arrakis, with Paul as the new Mohammed leading them to conquer the Near East. No surprise there.
It’s pretty stupid that they changed “jihad” to “crusade” though, since jihad was what drove the Arab conquests. I guess they don’t want the “good guys” to be going on “jihad”.
PJ
@Roger Moore:
Dune in its high concept pitch:
Lawrence of Arabia meets the Arab conquests of the Near East and the birth of Islam meets the oil crisis of the 1970’s.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Heck, initially he carried a gun.
As for silly, in one the the Batman movie serials, which had no Batmobile, he and Robin rolled around in an everyday coupe, they’re pulled over by a traffic cop, who asks the costumed Batman, “Does Bruce Wayne know you’re using his car?”
Also upon returning to not so stately Wayne Manor (one among many houses on the same block), they park in the driveway and dash across the front lawn – in costume – to go inside.
Leto
@Brachiator:
I think this is why the Zack Snyder DC movies just don’t work. They’re just 1000% all grit, all the time. It’s taxing, and it’s not fun.
Cacti
This seems an odd complaint, when the above was just an adaptation of the 1993 “Death of Superman” comic book arc, in which…
Kal-El was beaten to death in a gory fistfight with a bone-knuckled zombie alien.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I must admit I get irritated at people who automatically dismiss YA fiction. An editor from Sourcebook addressed my writer group and said they used to debate what made something YA or adult and finally YA was about young characters. That’s it. It can take up any topic and be plenty dark. Or not.
Play is good. It’s good for our spirits. I love cons where people dress up and play.
geg6
Hmmm, could it be I was ahead of my time? I have never been much of a fan or consumer of children’s pop culture. Not even when I was a child. I have always been bored by cartoons (with a few exceptions), comic books (literally no exceptions…I hate them) and Disney. It’s similar to my feelings for almost all sci-fi (with a few exceptions), especially sci-fi books. Just have always found it stiflingly boring. I like Trek and a few of the Star Wars films, but you can pretty much keep it otherwise.
I have little patience for adults who love cartoons, comics and Disney. I get very judgmental about it with people IRL. I won’t judge jackals for it though, since I can usually just ignore those posts or comments. Not so easy to do IRL.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
Yeah, it’s (often) important to know somebody’s motivation, but so many writers have this weird insistence on trauma, specifically, as the root of action. It’s kind of boring, and more worse-ly it leads to predictable arcs of healing and/or redemption.
As for backstories/prequels, I’m always reminded of a Chuck Wendig quote, “a prequel is just a fancy-ass deleted scene.”
Major Major Major Major
@geg6:
I feel the same way about people who use two spaces after a period, in this the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-one.
Ken
@PJ: Bret Devereaux did a series on the Fremen mirage in his blog. By “mirage” he means the myth-making that portrays people from less-settled societies as being naturally tougher than those who live in cities.
He has some interesting examples of the use of the mirage in historical sources, including writers in the Roman Republic (c. 200 BCE, before they even finished conquering Italy) lamenting how weak Rome had become, and how its glory days were in the past.
CaseyL
@patroclus: Oh, you didn’t know? *I* think it looks really promising:
Dune trailer
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: And you can fuck right off with that.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Gritty is not the same as grim. I liked the TV show, but it was almost the only game in town with respect to comic book heroes. But I am also an old fart who liked the earnestness of the old Superman TV series.
I liked the Tim Burton Batman, and it had its quirkiness. But it also had Burton’s on-going obsessions with ugliness and being a geeky outsider. But I also distinctly remember some parents walking out with their kids because the children were upset with the rank ugliness in parts of Batman Returns. Totally understandable, even though I loved that film.
Needless to say, I loved Nolan’s take on the Dark Knight. Funny though how some people missed the obvious homages to Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” in the last film of the trilogy.
Some comic fans are hoping to see more of Batman as “the world’s greatest detective” in the upcoming film. The problem is, most filmmakers seem to have a hard time making detective work look impressively cinematic, or believe that if they don’t have big action set-pieces it is not a comic book movie.
ETA: the TV series Arrow, which pretty much stole a lot of story material from Batman, was a good show precisely because it was gritty and grim.
It’s all about execution.
Roger Moore
@aliasofwestgate:
And some of the pure fluff can be really strange. The one I’m thinking of was Mao Chan, an anime about elementary school kids fighting off an alien invasion. The basic idea was that the invading aliens were so cute, the Earth Defense Force had to have equally cute troops to defeat them. The cuteness was provided by the granddaughters of the heads of the different branches of the Defense Force, each of whom was given a cutesy fighting vehicle with which to defeat the aliens. It was undoubtedly cute and silly, but if you got past that, the idea of doting grandfathers giving their darling 8-year-old granddaughters implements of war and throwing them into combat is deeply disturbing.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Haha, I thought I was going to be a die-hard about this, but publishers require one space, so I’ve gotten used to it. Now two spaces look weird to me.
PJ
I think whimsy is fine, in its measure, but if it sucks the sadness out of life, or ignores its unfairness, it becomes cloying, and, in a word, twee. There’s a lot of whimsy in say, 19th and 20th century British literature for adults and children (cf. Dickens, Grahame, Peake, Dahl) but it’s there lightening the harshness of the story – if it were all whimsy, it would be unbearable. The most whimsical/twee filmmaker working today is Wes Anderson, and every time I’ve seen one of his movies, I’ve wanted his characters, who are all insufferable, to be punched in the face for the duration of the movie so that they might become a little less awful and smug.
Leto
@geg6:
Thoughts on The Mandolorian?
Benw
I’m pretty much over telling other people how to culture. We’ve all been through some shit, man. There is SO MUCH content out there, watch/listen/ship what you want.
But I have to say that it seems a pretty selective reading of “the culture” to say that grimdark is hoovering up all the resources when the most recent smash movie franchises have been Harry Potter (good), the MCU (great), and the Star Wars reboot (great tailing off to meh). All of which were full of “the fantastical, the non-tragic romantic, the optimistic, the whimsical.” The DCEU even basically admitted that their grimdark didn’t work with Aquaman and Wonder Woman (both great).
My point is all this dark shit is Frank Miller’s fault, that fucking hack. :)
And if you haven’t yet, go see Spiderman into the Spiderverse right now. Your sense of joy and whimsy will thank you!
mdblanche
Well, for all its faults the David Lynch version succeeded at that.
RobertB
@Major Major Major Major: Two spaces. This is the Way.
NotMax
@geg6
Animation can serve to display a story which would be too horrifying to view if attempted in detail in live action. Barefoot Gen, adapted from the graphic novels, covering the aftermath in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped, is one example.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major: @Gravenstone:
Did you guys ever think the whole “benders vs non-benders/Equalist” stuff was badly handled and not well-expanded on? Both shows glossed over that in different ways. Avatar never addressed it at all IIRC, and Korra was trying to go for some “Equalists are socialists who want to make us all the same” a la Harrison Bergeron
Subsole
@Roger Moore:
Oil.
It’s oil.
Oil that the Honored Maitre snorts off your back in great, fat, Leto-sized lines.
JoyceH
@geg6:
I was kind of an intellectual snob as a child and teen, but I’d discover certain aspects of kiddy lit when I was above the target audience. Read Dostoyevsky and Melville and Milton in high school, but also discovered Dr. Seuss in junior high and thought it was adorable. Found the Edward Eager books in high school, and still adore them. (“It happened just the other day, to a boy named Roger….”) I’ll still reread the Eager books and Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Major Major Major Major
@Benw: spiderverse is great!
Ken
It’s worse when they already have an origin story, and that’s the only damn story Hollywood wants to tell.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Don’t you mean “Felicity and Friends”? ; )
Martin
@geg6: I’m kind of the same way. I like science fiction that challenges me, but once you’ve handed me the concept of time travel and explored some of the challenges of it as an idea, I kind of don’t need any more examples.
That’s why I moved to video games. Give me a world where I can tell a story I’m interested in. A lot of games don’t work that way, but the interesting ones to me are the ones that give you a canvas and allow you to drive the story.
Erick
Isn’t this really just a DC thing though? They are definitely guilty of making most of their stuff dark, which is one reason Wonder Woman was such a breath of fresh air. Marvel is still doing a mix of lighter stuff (Guardians of the Galaxy, the last Thor movie, Ant Man) with the darker stuff.
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
Usually, it’s just “enhance.”
Which never fails to crack me up.
[I know goddamn well some day there will appear an AI misfocus correction plugin for Lightroom that will have me ruing deleting many thousands of digital shots I missed by “just a titch.” Then it will suck to be me.]
zhena gogolia
@PJ:
I’ve never seen one of his movies because even the reviews make me want to fwow up.
zhena gogolia
@Leto:
I’ve never seen the Mandalorian, but my husband and I were entertained by a Baby Yoda sticking out of the back of a guy’s motorcycle on I-84 the other day.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The first season of Korra was such a waste…
@Erick: Transformers, Cruella, Maleficent, GI Joe, Rogue One… not just DC at all. And the popular indie superhero stuff right now tends grimdark too, The Boys for example, Umbrella Academy to a degree although it has good heart. And we *really* took a wrong turn with space opera for the last couple decades.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
It tries to avoid having an excessively dark tone, but it has some dark and bleak episodes. I can’t think of any other description for “The Southern Air Temple”, “Appa’s Lost Days”, “The Puppetmaster”, or “The Southern Raiders”. The key is that those episodes are the exception. Most of the time, the tone is pretty light, which lets you forget about the dark setting, but that just throws it into sharper relief when the darkness shows through.
zhena gogolia
@JoyceH:
I still reread favorites like The Witch of Blackbird Pond or Ursula Nordstrom’s The Secret Language.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Well, there were also the contemporaneous with Batman TV shows Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice.
Both of which sucked Francis the Talking Mule’s nether regions.
Brachiator
@geg6:
I love the highest of high art. Almost got sucked into becoming an English professor.
However, I don’t judge what other people like because in the end no one can honestly say that what they like is unreservedly good and what they don’t like is universally unworthy. You just can’t do it.
There was a local sports reporter who absolutely, totally, utterly believed that animated movies were for kids and refused to watch any Pixar or Disney films, no matter how much other people raved about them. He never knew what he was missing.
I also know some people who cannot watch most science fiction because any movie set in the future is not “real.” On the other hand, for these people, any film set in the past, no matter how inaccurate, is OK.
People are strange.
Leto
@zhena gogolia: It’s pretty much a spaghetti western set in the SW universe. Have a basic understanding of SW? You’re good to go! Each episode is it’s own individual piece, but part of the larger overall story. Most of the stuff is explained along the way, though for those who’ve watched a lot of the other stuff there’s plenty of little Easter eggs to enjoy. I know we’ve talked about it on BJ before, but it’s still in the highly recommend column if you’re able.
Tony Jay
I’m…. not sure what she’s getting at here. Her argument appears to be that ‘back in the day’ comic-book readers just enjoyed stories without needing them to have any base in ‘realism’, but these examples aren’t at all simpatico with her point. I had a long discursion here about Spidey’s long history as a hidden genius, but I’ll trim it back to note that all of the examples she chooses have been part of the characters since day one and form major aspects of their backstories. Spidey was a genius from inception, that’s how he can make his gadgets. Batman throws batarangs to hurt criminals, because that’s what Batman does. The sewer rat can teach mutant turtles martial arts because he’s been trained and needs students. Didn’t ask? Didn’t have to. It’s all in the origin stories which readers ‘back in the day’ certainly – did – ask for.
Yeah, those crazy Superman stories were crazy for a reason, and it wasn’t because that’s what the writers wanted to be writing about. Other than Grant Morrison (who, let’s be honest, has imbibed a bit too much exotic material to be considered normal) I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t wince when reading them. There’s even a ‘Superman is a dick’ meme based around how frigging awful he was back then. And the death of Superman in a gory fistfight isn’t something the (awful) writer of that (awful) film came up with, it’s based on a three decade old storyline that was basically a celebration of heroism, sacrifice, inspiration and the power of lurrrvvve. The grimdark pit into which DC have thrown their cinematic universe has a lot more to do with their choice of directors than it does to any ‘adult’ demand for barely visible glum-punching.
And frankly, comic books aren’t written for kids and haven’t been for a long, long time. The writers are just writing for the audience they have, not for some idealised image of kids picking up the latest issue of three-colour fisticuffs along with their bubblegum and soda-pop.
Subsole
@Major Major Major Major: Ohmigod! We actually get to see Hiro Protagonist in the flesh?!?!
I am so hype right now! Cannot wait to see how they handle Sushi K’s hair…
God I hope they don’t take that book more seriously than it took itself.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
Of course the key to understanding where Robotech gets it is to remember that it was put together from Anime. In particular, the first section was taken from the very highly regarded Macross. Probably more important, Harmony Gold made the bold for the time decision to take it pretty straight. Most imported anime was butchered to make it more suitable for syndication: individual episodes were cut for length and to make them suitable to be shown in any order, and darker elements like death were cut out. Robotech refused to do that, though they had to do a little bit of massaging to get three initially separate series to mesh as a single story.
Leto
@Roger Moore:
Onions, every damn time.
Iroh Sings Leaves From the Vine (Little Soldier Boy)
Subsole
@Roger Moore: Frankly? Gotham is probably safer than Metropolis. I’d rather have Batman-grade villains than Kal-el grade. Much, much, MUCH less collateral damage there.
Subsole
Whimsy wise, check out Adventure Time.
Brachiator
@Ken:
I suspect that some villains (and heroes) just don’t need origin stories.
Yeah, that too.
I loved how in The Dark Knight, Joker mocked the very idea of origin story by making some of his victims listen to lurid, unreliable retellings of how he got his scars. It made him all the more terrifying.
cain
@NotMax:
Exactly – I mean – it was suddenly not worth preserving or anything – but you know – the very first bits of communication was just stick figures – eg cartoons written on walls.
Subsole
@Gravenstone:
…
…
…
…
Those eyebrows!
…
…
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Even Beano?
;)
Leto
@Roger Moore: the history of Robotech is just… insane. There’s a really good YouTube channel that does the history of 80s pop culture stuff (lot of anime, cartoons, toys) and they’ve done a number of Robotech related videos. I think there’s a total of 5 parts, with the most current one wrt how Harmony Gold and the original license holder in Japan agreeing to a new multi-year licensing term/contract.
Major Major Major Major
@Subsole: Hopefully it’s good!
Netflix recently picked up The Three-Body-Problem and put the Game of Thrones guys in charge of it. I hated those books but I’m curious to see if the GoT guys, plus the pacing problems Netflix shows notoriously have, manage to make it even worse…
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I had hit a bump of joblessness when Robotech was syndicated in my area. I would record episodes on a VCR for my girlfriend’s son. Got caught up in the series. Very good stuff. I sometimes think that it could make an interesting live action feature.
cain
@Brachiator:
The first movie was superb in the operatic style – every scene had its own soundtrack. I could listen to the soundtrack to Batman and know every scene and have it played out in my head. Not many movies can claim that.
Doug R
@Benw:
The best superhero movie period and well deserving of its best animated picture Oscar, it manages to have a sense of joy even with some serious moments.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I watched Robotech in high school some. Pretty fun. Definitely showed its age even then. I love giant robots.
Speaking of, I’m wearing an Eva Unit-01 shirt today, actually. ‘Cuz it’s laundry day.
lee
@Major Major Major Major: As long as have source material to work from they might do a pretty good job. It’s when they have to work from a blank slate then tend to do poorly.
Leto
@Brachiator: It came on at 6am, school days where I lived. My dad would get me up to get dressed, mom would plop a bowl of cereal/grits and eggs in front of me, and the next half hour would be Veritechs, Zentradi, Robotech Masters, and the Invid. It was amazing. Then it was off to school. SOB!
Roger Moore
@Leto:
In contrast, I think one of the things the MCU movies have done a pretty good job at is maintaining some of the essential silliness of the comics. They get that people dressing up in weird costumes and having funny names is inherently silly, and they don’t try too hard to disguise this behind a layer of grit. That’s not to say they are always light in tone- the Captain America movies were certainly darker than most- but even when they go darker they love to have some comic relief.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Ahem.
Exception proving the rule?
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: I mention shonen anime elsewhere in the thread and the MCU movies are definitely the closest thing we have to them. I have plenty of other complaints about the franchise but they are largely exempt from this particular rant.
Major Major Major Major
@lee: the main problem with the source material is that it’s apologia for chauvinism/misogyny and authoritarianism. There’s ways to rejigger it and tell a different story, I’m sure, but to my mind it’s hard to separate even the broad strokes from these themes.
Leto
@Roger Moore: Agreed; they have a better balance of silly/serious which helps the overall tone of the movies. I think they’ve really found their footing with the later ones: Black Panther, Into the Spiderverse, and Ragnarok. I’m still looking forward to all the movie Phase 4 material, even though I think more of it is outside my realm of knowledge. WandaVision was really good, as was Falcon/Winter Soldier. Falcon and Winter Solider explored a lot of darker themes, which was nice.
Doug R
@Tony Jay:
I am a fan of the new Superman & Lois show-Tyler Hoechlin’s interpretation of Superman/Clark is a nicely balanced characterization. His sons have high school problems yet they ‘re handled in a way that I don’t want to roll my eyes. Elizabeth Tulloch is amazing as Lois Lane.
James E Powell
When I hear “whimsical fantasy” I think of The West Wing and The Newsroom.
lee
@PJ: I was pretty sure that was the case (Arabic culture). I don’t know enough about Arabic culture to really say.
Paul was an interesting mix of Mohammed and Jesus. Even had the ‘wandering in the wilderness’ part.
Tony Jay
@Roger Moore:
The creators of the Captain America films were damned smart in how they crafted that trilogy. Cap starts as a patriotic poster-boy with hidden depths, moves through a paranoid 70’s style conspiracy thriller where he rejects his role an an obedient soldier-boy, and concludes with him flat out telling the Government to go piss up a rope and going into exile himself rather than break his moral code. Pretty gutsy for a big-budget blockbuster series about a guy with red, white and blue branding.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
This gets into a larger problem I have with a lot of current stories.
I know a good number of people who insist that they must have a character that they can root for. And that bad guy/girl characters they like must be given a redemption arc.
And the people who most annoy me insist that a good book or movie must have a happy ending. They are triggered by tragedy.
All this is bullshit. I probably stole from one of my professors, or maybe it was Roger Ebert, the idea that sometimes what most matters about a narrative is that you clearly understand what the main character wants and are intensely interested to see whether they get it.
And so, Willy the Shake’s “Richard III” is a damned good play because you really, really want to see whether he gets the kingship. He can be as evil as he wants to be.
Also, coming back again to the grim/dark thing. I disliked Zack Snyder’s take on Superman because it was ultimately a bad movie, indifferently directed. Snyder just is not as talented as he thinks he is. But it had some intriguing ideas about Clark being an alien invader, but again Snyder wasn’t smart enough to work through the implications of this. And the movie and Justice League weren’t merely grim, they were just ugly.
lee
@Major Major Major Major: I have not read the books. They are on my ‘read when I run out of other things’ list.
I might move them down the list a bit farther.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I thought the biggest problem with the Equalist storyline in Korra was that it was hard to understand Amon’s motivation. It seemed pretty good in the first part of the season. They did a reasonable job of setting up the benders vs. non-benders, and you could definitely see where the Equalists were coming from. And Amon was very effective as a shadowy villain the heroes could project their fears onto; he obviously played into a deep-seated fear of losing their identity as benders that was really good. But that was totally undermined by the big reveal, and they never really gave a coherent explanation of his motivation after undermining it.
Tony Jay
@Doug R:
Now, that’s Superman. The portrayal in the DCCU is basically a steroided cosplayer with serious temper issues and very little self-restraint. Unrecognisable from the comics.
I blame the parents.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I think one of the best decisions the MCU made with Spiderman was refusing to go back and retell his origin story. We’ve seen it way too many times to need to see it again.
NotMax
@Doug R
Better done take on Supes and Lois than I anticipated going in (as it’s The CW, was dreading finding myself wading navel deep through teenage angst). Although her father is -plucked straight outta the two-dimensional file at central casting.
Subsole
@Major Major Major Major:
I think you nailed it there. Trauma is a cheap and easy way to give someone “depth”. It also helps us not look at the fact some folks are just effed up.
Truth is, some of the worst people I’ve seen were the ones that never had anything bad happen to them.
I mean, what hideous trauma did, say, Tucker Carlson endure? He’s just a spoiled little rich brat hurting people for kicks. And he manages to put Lonesome Rhodes to absolute shame.
Look at Trump, for that matter. Dude’s an actual villain – and all for sheer petulance.
But it’s kind of like we expect everything in a story to make sense, including the people. People seldom really make sense.
BruceJ
@Roger Moore: This is why I loved the (alas, short lived) series Powerless about employees of an Insurance company trying to develop products to defend ordinary mortals from the battles between superheroes and supervillains
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Good take. I skipped the first Captain America movie, but really enjoyed how he was developed in the later films and in the Avengers movies.
And it’s funny. Maybe it’s because Robert Redford was a pivotal character later on, but the second Captain America film seemed to have a 1970s “Three Days of the Condor” vibe.
Brachiator
@Subsole:
His mother left the family when Tucker was 6 years old. Maybe to find herself, to live a bohemian lifestyle, who knows.
Little Tuck had to deal with it, block it out, whatever.
He is still an asswipe.
Roger Moore
@Tony Jay:
A huge part of what makes the MCU work is that a lot of this stuff is built into the characters. The comic book Steve Rogers abandoned his role as Captain America in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era because he wasn’t sure he still believed in what he was fighting for. The “Tony Stark has PTSD” story from Iron Man III drew on the comic Iron Man’s struggles with substance abuse. It isn’t something the writers are adding in to try to make the story grittier than the source; it’s grit that’s been part of the characters for long enough that it’s integral to how fans perceive them.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Good point.
I guess I would say that I am impressed with how the Marvel team have selected what story and character aspects from the long running comic series to emphasize in the films.
Major Major Major Major
@lee: if you want good Chinese sci-fi I’d recommend the short story collection Invisible Planets.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
I think that’s definitely what they were going for. The paranoia. The betrayal. Even the stark colour palette seemed inspired by films of the era.
And I’d advise giving Captain America: The First Avenger a go. Very entertaining popcorn flick. Chris Evans really nails the stubborn kid who just wants to take on the bullies and parts of it were filmed in my home town of Liverpool.
Plus Hayley Atwell. That’s… some lady.
Subsole
@Brachiator:
I’ve known people who went through foster care because their parents took turns getting drunk and attempting to beat them to death.
They are not one tenth as shitty as Tucker Carlson. Not even close.
Mayhap Tucker and I have different definitional thresholds for the word trauma.
RSA
When it wasn’t an everyday thing, there were interesting efforts, partly because they were daring and original. I’m thinking for example of In the Company of Wolves, which I liked despite the creepiness.
Tony Jay
@Roger Moore:
Couldn’t agree more. Other than Age of Ultron, which really did take some major liberties with the source material, so much of the MCU canon has taken beloved elements of these characters and plastered it across the big screen for everyone to enjoy. I’m not even an Avengers fanboi (X-Men all the way) but I know enough about them to appreciate the care and consistency the adaptors have shown in making it all work.
That’s probably the biggest difference with the DCCU. Their characters range from pretty similar in some aspects (Wonder Woman, Old Man Bruce) through to more or less just a new character with branding (Superglum, Flash, Aquabeard), and of those only the first and the last have been entertaining.
Urban Suburbanite
The one DC series that seemed capable of rising above the curse of dark grittiness was Gotham. When the writers were willing to embrace the weirdness, it had some great moments.
JoyceH
@Brachiator:
Anyone else notice that movies and series always give the protagonist Daddy Issues, while in real life it’s almost always Mommy Issues?
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Totally agree with you.
I don’t think she was always well-served by the showrunners of her TV series. But that’s a whole nuther kettle of fish.
I will give the first Cap movie a shot.
geg6
@Major Major Major Major:
And that’s just fine. I’ll do me and you do you. Just don’t expect me to agree. And that’s just fine, too.
geg6
@Leto:
Never seen it. I won’t subscribe to Disney just for the few Star Wars movies I like and Hamilton. Disney can fuck off and die.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Roger Moore: or just a retelling of the story of the Prophet PBUH
geg6
@NotMax:
I cannot watch animation. I even found the only flaws in Monty Python to be the animation. I hate it and it hurts my eyes.
Major Major Major Major
@geg6: you can’t even legally get the theatrical release of Star Wars any more! Well, not without buying used.
geg6
@Brachiator:
I have nieces, so I’ve watched plenty of Pixar films. Better than most, but still just boring and juvenile to me. Not my thing. I’ve always loved comedies (live action only, please) and documentaries, along with a few other films of various genres, the most.
“People are unique” is how I’d prefer to put it.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Erick: I’ll tell you, Arrow was dark and gritty, but I almost stopped watching Supergirl because it was way too much like the golden age.
Villain: “Supergirl, I’m an enemy, but since I have a hostage, you’ll render yourself vulnerable, so I could just hit you over the head and kill you, but don’t worry, I don’t want to kill you.”
Supergirl: “Okay, I guess I don’t have any choice.”
I’m glad I didn’t give up on it. The Flash isn’t so relentlessly positive (I mean, seriously, Supergirl’s theme song could be the same as the Partridge Family’s!), so it didn’t seem as off-kilter to me, but the heroes are heroes because they’re so damn heroic.
The first season or two of Legends was kind of cool, too, though darkish because of the threat – then I stopped watching and got totally lost, and it seemed like every time I tried to step back in there was a new timeline.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@PJ: I see you got there ahead of me.
Benw
@Doug R: I would’ve put it in contention for best pic Oscar, period.
Benw
@Major Major Major Major: I still own a box with a VCR, coax cable, and the THX original release trilogy on VHS in it. Lucas can eff right off with the updated versions, that hack!
Helen
@The Moar You Know: The reintroduction of Jane Austen in the 20th century started in the trenches of WWI. British soldiers read her novels out loud for amusement. Brutal reality vs ‘whimsy’.
J R in WV
Hated Disney as a kid. Loved Science Fiction starting in Jr High, Heinlein, etc, etc. But Dumbo, Bambi, Snow White, etc, etc. Nope.
Black Panther was great fun. One of the last films we saw before the world shut down. Dune the original movie was OK, we all enjoyed it. That first book was good, all the rest are terrible deritive BS.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Leto:
Really? I’d characterize it more as a samurai series set in the Star Wars universe. The main plot is all Lone Wolf & Cub, and then you have that episode that was nothing but a ripoff of Seven Samurai.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
From what I’ve read, this is mostly Kevin Feige’s work. Before he worked for Marvel, he was already a huge fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of the comics. He’s deeply involved in decisions about what aspects of the comics to include in the films, and that knowledge means they’re doing a good job of finding the most interesting stories, not just the ones the fans already know.
I think another huge thing Marvel has done right is to build up a lot of expertise in the studio, which lets them bring in directors who have interesting storytelling ideas regardless of their experience. The studio can hold their hands on the things that make the movie into a big budget blockbuster so the director can focus on storytelling. It does tend to give the films a bit of a visual sameness- they’re almost all shot with the same second unit, for instance- but the overall tradeoff seems good.
Tehanu
@Urban Suburbanite: I love Un Lun Dun, it’s a terrific book! And I was really not expecting to like it because I’d tried some of China Mieville’s other books and really disliked their, um, grungy aspects.
@JoyceH: I’m always so happy when I find a fellow jackal who likes the same things I do. I just re-read all my Edward Eager books for what is probably the 50th time each.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Lacuna Synecdoche: There’s some well known crossover between samurai and westerns – not just “Seven Samurai” <==> “The Magnificent Seven”. Of course, the basic premise of a wandering person with the right set of skills showing up where needed is one of the most common heroic themes I know of. So some of it might be entirely unintentional crossover.
Miss Bianca
Way late to the party here, but my takeaways from all this include “Hmm…maybe it’s time to finally try to read Dune again” (was one of the books I cracked as a kid that I just couldn’t get into at the time), and “Hmmm…must check out Avatar: The Last Airbender“. (Whenever I see the word “Avatar” in a title I just automatically think it’s the James Cameron movie).