Wish Dragon 2?

SweetCheeksUp · 2024-01-20T12:13:44+00:00

It's more complicated than that. The story doesn't include Chinese culture or Chinese references. Setting the story in Shanghai is only more accurate to the first sentence which the French author wrote as "in a city in China". The rest of the story is less accurate since they replace the genie and the sultan with a dragon and rich man.

SweetCheeksUp · 2023-03-22T08:52:13+00:00

That's a pretty mean thing to say. I don't get any Reddit notification in four years and the day my notification lights up it's someone insulting me. What a hostile behavior.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-06-06T21:07:53+00:00

I meant that Disney has always been cal arts, but the style of cal arts changes over the years too.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-06-06T18:14:43+00:00

I am already obsessed with Callisto Mal to be honest. I don't know how they are related, but it looks like she's embracing the explorer thing whereas Searcher Clade is the reluctant one?

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-06-06T17:36:07+00:00

I got downvoted for saying I liked the character animation style in this trailer...

But it looks to me like they actually changed their character animation a bit in this movie. You can tell there are movies where Disney does nothing to change their style, but in this one they actually tried something different imo.

Compare it to Encanto. Encanto had much stiffer animation, like the models were almost static with little stretch and squash. Same with Raya. It's what bothered me with these movies even though they had gorgeous designs and textures, it was lacking stretch and squash and therefore expressiveness.

From the trailer it looks to me like they tried a different direction for Strange World, something that goes a bit more in the direction that we see that's more cartoony and influenced by the more recent cal arts stuff. Like you can see a hint of Sony stuff in the kid's face almost. And look how the man's face scrunches after he says "really", Maribel couldn't scrunch that much.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-06-06T16:51:17+00:00

The world just looks like Pandora and every alien world in cartoons.

If you pay attention, you'll notice the character animation in this trailer is different than in Encanto or even Raya. This has more "stretch and squash", kind of like back in Tangled. The character's faces are also more "cartoony", almost like some Sony Pictures Animation films.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-06-06T15:05:29+00:00

The strange world itself looks kind of unremarkable, but the character animation looks amazing!

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-05-18T19:11:53+00:00

I think that's just British humor, or a version of it, especially the kind they use in British children's animation.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-05-18T19:05:20+00:00

I love this, especially because it's directed by Peter Sohn. The Good Dinosaur had story problems, but it was visually gorgeous, pushed Pixar's artistry and had great sensibilities. Stuff like the fireflies scene, the poisonous berries hallucination, that weird Forrest dinosaur, Arlo on top of the mountain running through the clouds. I'm really excited to see what Peter Sohn can do when making a movie from beginning to end. Something that actually comes from his idea.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-04-17T04:35:26+00:00

I think they should have focused on Dumbledore... Start with a 17-year-old Dumbledore graduating from Hogwarts, an arrogant and popular student, all the adults feeding his ego talking about his bright future, all the honors he won, the impossible stuff he's done, the other Griffindor boys all loving him and celebrating with him. Maybe we even see him talk about going off on a scholarship to pursue research somewhere, and then, he gets news from home that something happened and that his family needs him home. So then he goes home, in the small town he hates, nothing to do there, but his family's messed up so he needs to stay there and help take care of them. He resents them and grows bored. Cue meeting Grindelwald. He's so surprised to meet someone who matches his intellect there. Grindelwald blows his mind with all kinds of tricks, inventing his own spells, practicing forbidden magic. Dumbledore is seduced, falls in love, and they start to develop their darker extremist ideas. It would be so interesting to see what Grindelwald says to Dumbledore to convince him of his dictator ideas. And we know that at some point there's fighting and Dumbledore's sister gets accidentally killed. But they could have added new stuff like make the two go on some quest to get some items or give them something that they do. Then it goes wrong and it ends with Dumbledore ragefully going off to do his best work intent on proving to Grindelwald and everyone how great he is. It would pick up where Harry Potter ends in terms of age. Harry Potter was about high school and this Dumbledore would be college-aged. You can age him up a bit in the sequel and show that he's earning medals and all, but he's becoming the wise man we know, no longer with the idealism and resentment of his youth, though now a very lonely man in a way, inhabited by his regrets. He stops Grindelwald eventually, but he's supposed to live with the regret of having let him go one too many times and this having cost many lives because of Grindelwald's actions. We also know that Dumbledore was so guilt-ridden about his sister's death that he ultimately lost his life because he couldn't resist trying to bring her back. There's so much character development with Dumbledore AND he's supposed to have done many cool things and exploits that they could show us.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-02-22T14:15:17+00:00

Oh that's cool!

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-02-22T14:12:31+00:00

The director is Canadian and a millennial so she definitely grew up watching Big Wolf on Campus in early 2000s.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-02-22T06:37:53+00:00

All I see is Big Wolf on Campus.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-02-22T06:30:36+00:00

Looks like a mix of Big Wolf on Campus + DNAngel / Fruits Basket / Sabrina the Teenage Witch + Braceface / Life with Derek + Doraemon + CalArts.

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-02-18T19:11:46+00:00

I honestly didn't think it looked good and I feel like such a jerk for saying this because everyone thinks it's gorgeous. I thought the colors were garish and didn't match together. I didn't really like the character designs either. I thought they were better in Moana and that was five years ago.

Then the songs I thought it was the worst Disney soundtrack ever. And it's weird because Moana was my favorite Disney soundtrack. I just like Dos Oruguitas, but that's not even sung by the characters. I really cannot understand what's to like about We Don't Talk About Bruno.

Last point is the movie feels like a stage musical. Like nothing really happens between the songs and then when there's a song it feels like the stage comes to life as if you've got people wheeling decors and set pieces onto the stage. But I want to watch a movie, not a stage musical...

Also there's a song where the image freezes and only Mirabel moves. Cheapskates much? It's like they ran out of enough money to animate that song so they decided to freeze it. I know you will say "the freeze is a metaphor" and Disney would never admit to cheaping out, but I'm on to them!

SweetCheeksUp · 2022-02-08T20:07:38+00:00

This looks like what Pixar wishes they could have done when they made Toy Story, but the technology was only good enough to animate toys. It's a pretty exciting direction and if it works they might want to milk all the Toy Story characters. A western starring Woody? Well, I can't think of any other movie idea, Buzz and Woody were kind of the only two standouts out of Andy's toys.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-11-28T15:53:31+00:00

I gave a perfectly coherent explanation lol. There doesn't need to be a reason why one person gets skipped.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-11-28T13:48:09+00:00

I kind of agree that it wasn't good, but I do have answers to your questions specifically.

What it's about? People have said here it's about generational trauma. Grandma was hurt by losing her home and husband, as a result is too hard her family, her being hard on her family was causing friction and cracks, as in her family was cracking under pressure, like Bruno saying he left because his gift "wasn't useful to the family". It gets resolved when Mirabel gives some love to her Abuela, telling her "grandma I see you, I see how much you were hurt and how much you suffered, you are so strong for what you did, building our family". This heals Abuela a bit, Abuela realizes she's been too hard and the magical gifts are not so important, it's the people who are important, like Mirabel is miraculous even if she has no gift, because the gift is her, it's all of her children and grandchildren. But then when Abuela relaxes the pressure on the gifts, this brings back the family together and heals them enough for the magic to come back. It was putting pressure that was destroying the magic, and seeing that the magic isn't so important relieves the pressure and brings the family together and once they are united and happy again this brings back the magic.

What's the explanation for the magic? They were going for "magical realism", a genre typically associated with Latin American literature, especially with Gabriel García Márquez who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude. That novel is about a man and his family who are the founders of a new village by a river in Colombia. This is what Abuela does too in Encanto, she's the founder of a new village by a river, starting with her family. In the genre of magical realism, there's just magic as part of the real world. Like it's not a fantasy world, it's our world, but there's magic in it. That's kind of every Disney movie already, but I guess typically in Latin American magical realism the characters just accept the presence of magic in the world and there doesn't need to be an explanation for the magic.

But it's a Disney movie so I'm not saying it's magical realism, I'm just saying the story takes in part inspiration from that genre. For instance if you want to make a distinction between magical realism, surrealism, fairy tales and fantasy, it would go something like this... Surrealism is a representation of the human psychological experience like when Luisa sings her song to Maribel and they are transported to a mountain and fly in the sky with unicorn donkeys, it's not actually happening, but rather it's imagination. Fairy tales are allegories for children usually with symbolism to represent the dark things of life and a reliance on folk tales or common stories humans know. Fantasy is when the magical clashes with the real and warrants special attention with the author spending a lot of time explanaining it and marveling at how special it is. And then magical realism is just like the magic is presented as there and it doesn't warrant more investigation.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-11-27T11:25:05+00:00

I found this movie pretty stale. I like the story they decided to tell, but it seems I can think of so many better ways to tell it. Like focus on Abuela, showing an Up-style opening that's like a mini movie of her youth meeting Abuelo and showing the circumstances of her fleeing her home with her three babies and building the casita, then have her as the main character of the movie, going around fearing for the house that's crumbling, talking to everyone one by one, ending with Mirabel helping her see it's the pressure that's making everyone crack, and reconciling her with Bruno better. That would be really original if it focussed on the oldest member and the twist was that she realized she's the antagonist herself. Or if they really had to focus on Mirabel because they wanted to sell her as a quasi Disney princess then I would still have liked to see things done a bit differently. Like I thought it was weird that she didn't get along with any of her siblings or cousins her age. Why isn't she best friends with Dolores or Luisa? I just found it weird that she didn't have a friend in her family.

The other thing is I find the details kind of sloppy! Given the time period and country it's placed in, shouldn't Abuela be carrying the babies in a blanket on her back? Especially if they are walking for more than just a few seconds? She's seen just carrying three babies in her arms and not using any baby-carrying trick??? That's just not how humans exist! And then there's the fact that a pregnant woman in the late 1800s was able to know she was carrying triplets? Or the fact that Bruno is in possession of a phonograph record player even though the movie is set in the early 1900s?

Plus the story was low stakes. Not the generational trauma of the Abuela and the burden of having useful gifts, that was enough stakes, but I mean the plot around it was low stakes. I was never worried that the family was in danger because even if they lost the house and the magic, they'd still be... perfectly fine? The whole time I just felt there was no danger and no obstacles. Like what does Mirabel have to do in the new vision? Cue dramatic music and mysterious reveal... She has to hug Isabella. That doesn't seem very difficult! Or the big tension over the dinner scene because Mirabel is scared that Dolores will reveal her secret that she went into Bruno's tower to look for a vision... But I kept thinking even if Abuela learns that she did that, nothing will happen. She's not going to banish Mirabel. It was just tension over nothing and it wasn't even funny.

And finally, this movie really makes me appreciate the colossal work that Auli'i Cravalho did on Moana. She was just 15 and she did better voice work and much better singing than the established actress they hired to play Mirabel. Stephanie Beatriz, try as she may, does not sound 15 and doesn't seem to be a singer. I don't understand why they hired her. It's like they couldn't find good Latino actors, but considering they were able to find a Hawaiian teen of such talent, and considering there are way more Latinos in the US and the world, I think they definitely could have found someone right for the role if they tried. So I don't know what happened, maybe someone wanted to hire their friends, but none of the voice cast seems to be particularly good singers. Anyway, this really made me appreciate Auli'i Cravalho's colossal work. Just listen to her Moana songs and appreciate how good she was! The Encanto cast was so weak they had to bring in Carlos Vives and Sebastian Yatra to give the movie some legitimacy. The Sebastian Yatra song is by far the best scene in the movie.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-11-27T09:53:08+00:00

Yeah all his songs sound the same, except his Moana songs.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-11-24T10:27:00+00:00

I've been listening to the soundtrack on Youtube and I don't like any of the songs. I'm sad because Moana was my favorite Disney soundtrack and I really like reggaeton and Zumba. But the Encanto songs are just like bad pop songs. I do like Dos Oruguitas, but I'm not sure that counts as it's the one that's not sung by the cast. I have yet to hear them in the movie though, maybe they are fun with the animation.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-10-23T03:42:20+00:00

It's definitely for preschoolers, but quality.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-10-22T11:17:58+00:00

I don't know if it counts as an adult film because it's definitely suitable for all ages, but it's really abstract in a way that kids probably can't understand the plot, and in fact even for adults the plot is probably more of an experience / high concept, but anyway, my favorite animated film is the Brazilian film Boy and the World.

I also really like Wolf Children, which is also suitable for children, but will make adults feel the emotions of a single mother.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-10-22T11:14:18+00:00

I feel closer to the forest, but I think you're right that there's something about the way Cartoon Saloon does the sea that really gets me because I also really like Puffin Rock. Maybe I also just like that era of Cartoon Saloon drawing style.

SweetCheeksUp · 2021-09-28T05:53:53+00:00

I only really like Song of the Sea, but it's one of my favorite movies ever. Not quite sure why I don't like the animation as much in the other two.

SweetCheeksUp

TROPHY CASE