The Lion King- The King of White Pride Rock

The Lion King is the greatest animated film of all time. The music, the characters, the Hamlet inspired story, and the incredible artwork combine to create something truly wonderful beyond any of the individual pieces. This magnificent piece of art represents thousands of hours of work by numerous extremely talented artists, musicians, and actors. I've seen this movie more times than I can count, but the opening sequence still gives me chills.

When I talk about traditional animation being innately better than computer animation, this is what I mean. Look at the detail in the illustrations and the expressionism in Rafiki's eyes. They can't do that with computers. These drawings have soul. That comes from a lot of hard work and love from the illustrators. Hand drawings can't fall into the uncanny valley like computer animation can. Brave may have been the prettiest computer animated film to date, but there's nothing in that film that comes close to the opening of The Lion King.

With all that said, this blog has delightfully perverted the way I watch movies and it is now apparent to me that The Lion King is so racist it could have been written by Walt Disney himself.

In the opening minutes of the film, we are told that all creatures have their place in the great circle of life, but seconds later we are informed that hyenas are not permitted on the lush prairies of the Prideland. (Prideland **Nudge** **Nudge** **Wink** **Wink** Know what I mean? Know what I mean?) They must be forcefully kept in their place. The hyenas are constantly battling starvation on barren lands while the lions live in opulence.

When Scar, takes power he's portrayed as evil. Why? Because, he supports desegregation. (Ok, so he did kill Mufasa, but that bigot had it coming.) When Simba returns, the Pridelands are dying, but it's not because the hyenas have over-hunted the land as the lions would like you to believe. It's because the savannah has been struck by a terrible drought. There is nothing Scar did or could have done to cause that. In fact, in a time of drought, a little extra hunting would relieve some of the demand for water and thus make the environment healthier, at least in the short-term. Scar and the hyenas are being scapegoated for a natural phenomenon so that the lions can justify their racism. Scar, by the way, is the only brown lion. All the other lions are blond (Aryans).

So while Apartheid was ending in South Africa, Disney was making a movie about how desegregation would destroy Africa. It's good to see Walt's legacy lives on.

Oh, and some of it might have been stolen from Kimba the White Lion.

I'm furry for Nala. That is all.

Brave- One Small Step for Woman...

Disney heroines have a long running theme of needing to be saved by a man. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are the most literal manifestations of this theme as they are trapped in a perpetual slumber until their Prince Charming kisses them and brings them back to life. (Move along, no symbolism to see here.) The Beauty and the Beast has an even more dangerous theme: it doesn't matter how much he yells and hits you, if you love him enough he will become Prince Charming. The moral of The Little Mermaid is that you should change everything about yourself to get a man. And even Mulan, with its ass-kicking warrior princess, hides that Little Mermaid theme under its girl power exterior.

But with Brave, Pixar shatters this theme that a woman needs a man both with word and deed. And Princess Merida thoroughly denounces her need for a man before saving the day...with sewing.

 

Oh well, that's progress, I guess. Women in the workforce and all.

Princess Merida does display an extraordinary amount of courage standing against tradition and a giant bear. But really, why sewing, Pixar? It kind of undercuts the message. Don't you think?

Okay, so the way the movie is cut it was probably the apology that cured the queen, but still that is radically different than how a male hero would have come to the rescue. Can you imagine Mufasa descending from the clouds to tell Simba, "Have a nice chat with your uncle and if you can gently remind him that renewable resources can become overtaxed if they are improperly managed. And remember [echo] it's your mom's birthday next week. You should give her a call. [Long echo and fade away.]"

With its castles, royalty, and magic, Brave is the Pixar movie which looks the most like a Disney film and it borrows heavily from several of them. The trailer promised Mulan with a Scottish accent. The deal with the witch is a callback to The Little Mermaid. The archery contest is out of Robin Hood.  But surprisingly, the Disney film it's most like is the one that effectively killed their traditional animation department, Brother Bear.

I shouldn't have to tell you it's good. Of course, it's good. It's Pixar. If things were fair, it would probably win Best Picture, but the Oscars have a terrible bias against animated films, comedies, and films intended primarily for children. But I doubt I will see a better film this year. [Update: I was wrong. Life of Pi should but won't win Best Picture.]

And it's beautiful, too. I had Lord of the Rings flashbacks during the landscape shots early in the film. The rules of 3D were followed almost perfectly. There were just a few shots with overly rapid movement. There were a number of dark scenes, but they never got too dark. Few films have ever used the 3D medium better.

Now, the updated Pixar rankings.

1. Toy Story 3

2. Toy Story

3. Up

4. A Bug's Life (Has been way underrated)

5. Finding Nemo

6. Brave

7. Toy Story 2

8. Wall-E

9. The Incredibles (Has been way overrated)

10. Monsters University (A high achievement in low comedy)

11. Ratatouille

12. Monsters Inc.

13. Cars 2

14. Cars (Will being about Pixar's inevitable demise)

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted- Your Most Recent Common Ancestor Would Be Ashamed

I was a little reluctant to see Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. I found the previous Madagascar movies to be very uneven. In the earlier films, the main characters were consistently unfunny. They were also weighed down with annoying lemur, but peppered with uproariously funny spurts of penguin. So, I went hoping to find enough penguin to salvage the rest of the film. The previous films were filled with verbal gags and reference humor which rarely landed, but the third movie completely shattered the old paradigm, opting instead for an explosion of rapid fire sight gags. The main characters worked much better when they had less to say and the lemurs were nearly cut out. It was a manic journey of light and sound. And it worked pretty well. Rarely have I seen a movie so blatantly and delightfully divorced from all sibilance of logic.

But for a film with such a geographically based title, it fails the subject pretty badly. The animals' first stop in their journey though Europe is the city of Monte Carlo in the independent state of Monaco. This is were we encounter our primary antagonist, DeBois, who is repeatedly referred to as French. She is clearly not part of an international unit as evidenced by her encounters with Italian authorities. So either she is an immigrant to Monaco, which is an unnecessary, confusing, and unexplained bit of backstory, or the filmmakers should have bought a map. This is why our kids our falling behind in geography.

We like to be open minded here at No Spoiler Tags. We approve of interracial and homosexual relationships and even polygamy, if it is truly consensual and involving partners of legal age. However, this film must be condemned for blatantly advocating a most wicked lifestyle choice: inter-species sex. We believe that a species is a group of genetically isolated individuals capable of producing genetically viable offspring and that attempting to produce hybrids makes a biologist's life harder. As it says in Darwin 3:14, "That's just icky." On the day of the Great Taxonomy, Almighty Linnaeus will cast the hybridizers unto the clade Hexapoda where they must spend all eternity amongst the Arthropods. Man-on-dog is the road to santorum. And furthermore, how does a lemur have sex with a bear, I mean physically, how does that work? He must have to stand on a table or something.