animation
- There are lots of reasons for anything and no single thing can ever fix another without causing issues elsewhere.
- Video games don't make kids psychotic. Chance does.
- Animation isn't an art form strictly limited to juvenile fare. It's just a visual storytelling medium.
- Video games do not create people. People make people. Therefore, video games do not create psychoses.
- Leaving bullying and all forms of abuse uncorrected creates an enormous hole into which people can fall.
- A strong support net that educates kids without coddling them is critical to the development of a well-rounded person.
- We don't learn by being shielded from everything.
- Biology cannot be stopped.
- The cause of a behavior is almost never the most obvious thing.
- Society can change to make things better, but we must be willing to make those changes, no matter how hard.
- I'm a huge nerd.
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania | Film Review
Despite the growing recognition in the West that animation is not a medium made expressly for children, there is an expansive industry that revolves around productions that aim specifically for that audience. Ahem… Disney? Heard of ‘em? There are a number of outfits that play in that space these days. Warner, Illumination, Pixar, DreamWorks, Universal, and Sony Pictures Animation, in no particular order, are a smattering. Each studio has their own “voice” but Sony’s Hotel Transylvania franchise is a series of films that speaks in its own voice, and that voice is Genndy Tartakovsky.
And yet, Tartakovsky’s participation in the fourth entry in the tetralogy is limited to writing the story, co-penning the script, and acting as an executive producer. Instead, the helm was handed off to co-directors Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska, who are both first timers in the director’s chair (that’s a big chair.) Tartakovsky wasn’t the only one to decline participation in this latest, and reportedly final, installment, either. Most notably, Adam Sandler was replaced by Brian Hull as the voice of Count Dracula and Kevin James’ Frankenstein was replaced by Brad Abrell. Trust me when I say that you won’t miss them. The replacements are almost exact matches, indicating that star power just isn’t necessary to support feature-length animation. All it does it foster bloated production costs.
Sony describes Hotel Transylvania: Transformania as follows:
When Van Helsing’s mysterious invention, the “Monsterfication Ray”, goes haywire, Drac and his monster pals are all transformed into humans, and Johnny becomes a monster. In their new mismatched bodies, Drac, stripped of his powers, and an exuberant Johnny, loving life as a monster, must team up and race across the globe to find a cure before it’s too late, and before they drive each other crazy. With help from Mavis and the hilariously human Drac Pack, the heat is on to find a way to switch themselves back before their transformations become permanent. [SOURCE: IMDB.com]
At its core, Hotel Transylvaniais both an homage to classic luminaries of the Golden Age of animated shorts like Wily Coyote, Tom & Jerry, Popeye the Sailorman, and even more contemporary adherents to classic animated hijinks like Roger Rabbit and Ed, Edd, & Eddy (a meta turducken, if you will) and entirely its own thing, something like Rush is to rock music or Ben Folds Five is to alternative.
Nuts & Bolts
As the fourth entry, HT4 is a solid evolution of the defined art style, but it doesn’t stray from the franchises established parameters. This is no Spider-Verse and yet the color palette is rich and bright, lighting and luminance effects are excellent, and the correct application of bokeh and the lens effects bring believable depth to most scenes. It’s clear, that Sony has been working hard to refine their process. That said, some of the textures don’t look great (the rock slide in the opening musical number looks like crap) which is a big oversight on such a high-visibility production.
Character designs, on the other hand, are peak franchise, hewing closely to the immutable nature of classic cartoon character design that said characters are iconic and must remain recognizable. They only change in service of a gag and always return to their pristine base form when the gag is complete. This is the same basic rule that defines all character designs from all cartoon where these icons always wear the same clothes, et al. Imagine Fred Flintstone wearing actual pants or Jessica Rabbit wearing something other than her signature red, sequined dress… oh. Well, not that, but you get the idea. Thanks, Disney Whitewashing Division…
The story telling is solid, if a bit on the basic side, something I’d expect of Illumination’s work. It’s not bad, but it’s also not sophisticated. The comedy revolves almost entirely around the physical gags which, in turn, defines the entire film. In a film that is more a buddy adventure flick, ala the far superior Emperor’s New Groove, then another entry in the HT canon it works to a degree, but not entirely. There’s little to no meta humor that pleases both adults and kids alike, depending on your depth of knowledge. It comes down to the gag, and that gag is always a physical comedy bit. The approach takes away from the core conceit; two people coming to terms with each other by walking in each others shoes.
Unexpected hair loss syndrome…If anything jumps out at me it’s that the film feels claustrophobic. We start in Drac’s house, then the hotel, the plane, the provincial town, the bus, the jungle, and the cave, then back to the hotel. While the story is about Johnny and Drac and their journey towards acceptance of their differences, and spending time in each others shoes, it pulls back from the more expansive world-building as exemplified in the Tartakovsky-helmed entries. Since each scene needs to serve the setup for the next visual gag, any potential avenues for additional, foundational scope and scale is ditched in favor of setting up for the next gag.
And that’s where it lies; at the intersection of storytelling and spectacle, with the visuals winning over the written by a long shot. It’s not a terrible movie, to be sure, but you won’t derive much but the most deconstructed joy, the kind that makes a little kid roll around in the dirt with the giggles but generally doesn’t survive the transition to higher modes of cognition that come with age.
It should be a hit for years to come as a go-to for quiet toddler mommy hours worldwide.
Anime and video games don't make people psychotic
Western societal ideals have always been broken when it comes to animated content. First, there is the core element that states when you are no longer a child you leave childish things behind and grow up. Adults aren't supposed to like the same things when they were children. Kids drink juice boxes. Adults drink coffee. Kids watch cartoons. Adults watch TV dramas. It's not okay to retain your childhood because that means you aren't responsible. This infects the entire scope of western animation production because it is a core principle that we perpetuate. If you liked Toy Story when you were a kid, it's only valid to look back on it with nostalgia as an adult or share it with your kids. Watching it alone, however, is deviant. Cartoons, after all, are for kids.
Adult animation is an alien concept to much of Western Society.
Of course, that all ignores the reality that is the human animal. First, and most critical, we are not static samples of a human being. We shift and change and grow, but a lot gets locked in by 30. That's not to say we don't add new likes and dislikes, but the range of categories/genre/ideas we accept are generally solidified. As an example, I'm turning 50 on the 14th. I play video games and watch loads of animated content. I've been doing those things since I was a kid and nobody told me to stop doing that and grow up. Do I play the same games and watch the same things I did when I was 10? Of course not. My tastes in animation have grown to seek out the beauty of traditional animation and more complex storytelling.
Now, watch this...
If you can't tell, Doki Doki Literature Club, or DDLC, is a dating sim style game. This is a common form of game in Japanese society, where 13 is the age you are considered old enough to take on real responsibilities by yourself. This idea pervades Japanese media and storytelling, where young protagonists feature everywhere.
But, I digress...
DDLC is a dating sim where you play as a character and interact with other characters. Yet, DDLC is also not like other dating sims because it subverts that genre by introducing psychological horror. The makers of the game clearly state that this is what they are doing and aren't trying to fool anyone. The concept behind the game is the experience, not a Sixth Sense grade twist. When I started playing it, I was already filled with a sense of dread because I was caught up in looking for signs that my mind was getting screwed with. That's one hell of a trick to play on a gamer, and it's effective.
But it is also not a game for kids, and the definition of kid in Japan is 12 and under, so the makers of the game clearly state that this game is for people 13 years of age and older. Period.
That's because the adults are expected to actually parent their children, teach them right from wrong, teach them real from fantasy, teach them how to learn, and foster their growth as individuals. Not only that, but 13 makes a great delineation for adulthood because that's when puberty happens and we become physiological adults, too. Around 13 is when everything changes, and there's nothing stopping it, so many societies say "why bother" and prepare their kids for the inevitable adulthood that comes whether they like it or not.
We look at it differently. Because of our puritanical roots, we don't like what puberty brings, so we construct arbitrary boundaries for adulthood, like the age of 18. It's no surprise that most developed societies apply age limits to a range of things like driving and smoking and drinking and buying guns, but these are things we use and do, they aren't what adulthood is all about. We don't turn 21 to drink beer legally. We turn 21 because that's going to happen no matter what, and having 15 year olds running around drunk driving and smoking while shooting guns out the window seems like a terrible idea.
But applying that arbitrary delimiter to a biological eventuality is just crazy. It only make sense to plan in advance for said eventuality. Treating puberty as if it can be delayed simply adds several layers of complexity to the process of growing up, and that brings the potential for divergence from a neurologically stable place. This is, I propose, one of the key reasons why so many kids get in trouble for fooling around, getting caught drinking illegally, delve into drug use, and many other things westerners see as the problems they are trying to solve with the aforementioned limits.
You go through puberty at 13, but you can't do anything with it until your 18. That should go well.
But, I digress.... again...
The point I am trying to make is two-fold:
You can't blame video games for your kid committing suicide just as the world can't directly blame the parents of the suicidal kid for following through. It is, however, important to note that these two factors are not on the same scale. The video game is a static, external object. The parents, on the other hand, interact with their child daily (I would hope) and their choices go much further in influencing their child's choices and actions, but they didn't murder their child. At the very least, they could be held responsible for not noticing the signs of depression that lead to suicide attempts.
We don't know the recipe of life that leads to suicide in kids, but we do know some of them. Bullying, sexual/physical/verbal/psychological abuse, neglect and abandonment are all serious issues young people face, and how they deal with them depends almost entirely on the foundational development they receive from their parent/parents, friends and family, and other caregivers/educators. If there are too many holes in a kids support net, there is more and more room for bad ideas to pervade.
But even those numerous elements aren't the root/root/root cause. What it really comes down to is the fault of nobody; genetics and environment. Abuse is, without minimizing it, just the operational component. There must also be a structural component upon which the operational crap builds on. It's the same random chance generator that life is that produces kids with Autism or Down's Syndrome or Bipolarity or developmental issues. Psychoses are not, as a rule, created out of whole cloth by a few random interactions. They come from a complex, interwoven, impossibly entangled set of physiological and psychological factors that we just don't understand.
If we all just mimicked what we see in video games, we'd all be dead and the Earth would be a smoking husk. So, clearly, it isn't the fault of video games, and cute stuff isn't specifically marketed to kids, just as vaping juice that tastes like breakfast cereal isn't designed to attract kids. We like the things we like, and some of those things are the same things we liked when we were 9. It's not rocket science. Do you still pick your nose? Did you stop automatically when you turned 18? I do, at least until I found out that I wasn't taking care of my nose properly, and ever since I started using a Neti pot, I don't have to pick any more because I don't produce boogers any more.
Yes, it's gross, but it illustrates my point rather tidily.
So, some of the takeaways:
America's Ghost in the Shell really sucks
As for the whitewashing, it's just plain stupid. Everybody is hating on it, and Hollywood isn't listening. Dumb. You idiots are already losing tons of money because people don't want to spend $50 to watch TV in a big room for a few hours. There's TV at home, and it has better stuff playing. Whitewashing is also racist and puerile. We've got enough hate going around without having it shoved in our faces by what's supposed to be entertainment.
If the racism wasn't enough, there's the shitty, moody pacing and the constant, nagging remedial reminders that "Major" isn't really human and that's what the story is supposed to be about. So, GITS 101... What makes a human human? Can a thing be human if it contains the mere consciousness of a being, or is that just a clever copy that only seems alive? Ultimately, it questions the soul and where it resides, if at all. This is a subtlety that American filmmakers just can't seem to grasp.
See, there's this thing in Japanese storytelling, and even I don't fully grok it but I believe I'm well ahead of the curve for Westerners, that focuses on the experiential aspects of a tale. For example, in Mamoru Oshii's 1995 theatrical version, there are extended scenes which feature nothing but Kenji Kawai's haunting vocal track and scenes of New Port City in Japan. Not a single aspect of this sequence adds anything to the story, considered criminal in Western film-making, but adds both a layer of familiarity and presence to the teeming locale and injects a deeply emotional tone through the score.
Japanese storytelling often features the seasons with special attention to Cherry blossoms in Spring, the beach in Summer, festivals and fireworks in Fall, and Christmas in Winter. My intuition tells me that this is derived from the strong sense of tradition in Japan as native Japanese people culturally seek out the beauty and significance of life, the world, nature, and even human works. These are the bits and bobs that get left out or wholly misunderstood when translating Japanese media into American fare.
And that's all I have to say on that.
How Pixar killed traditional animation
It's hard not to think of Pixar and, by extension Apple, as amazing American institutions built by the astonishing, guiding hand of the late Steve Jobs. Pixar, after all, has churned out a steady stream of box office smashes, with the occasional stumble. Yet, at the same time, Pixar has become a cancer that has infected the Western World's lauded history of traditional, hand-drawn animation like an invasive species. We are paying a very steep price for Pixar's success today, and for the foreseeable future.
There is no question that Steve Jobs was a visionary and reshaped our expectations of computers and technology. He and friend Wozniak almost single-handedly created the personal computer market in the mid-70's. However, by 1985 he was ousted from his own company because he didn't fit the standard corporate mold. Steve didn't rest, however. He created NeXT Computers and later, Pixar. Pixar had a megahit with Toy Story in 1995 and Jobs sold NeXT to Apple in 1997. In that same year, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as Interim CEO.
While Jobs was reshaping what we understand as personal technology, Pixar was hard at work creating a new kind of animation using 3D rendering technology it had invented. That, however, is where the two diverge. As Apple created an environment where other manufacturers would start to compete with Apple, Pixar was starting to carve out a niche that would eventually become the entire market, forcing all comers to migrate to 3D or fall behind.
It's hard to ignore a studio whose every release rakes in hundreds of millions worldwide, time after time, almost without fail. Even the films considered relative failures by critics made tons of money for Pixar and distributor, Disney. Spielberg, Katz, and Geffen's DreamWorks SKG was the first real studio practically formed to take Pixar head-on, and eventually it zeroed in on a number of critical hits, namely the popular Shrek franchise. Others would start to make their marks, as well, like Sony Animation, Blue Sky, and Universal. Even Disney started making 3D features in-house.
1995 saw the theatrical release of six traditionally animated films and Toy Story, the first feature length 3D animated film. Toy Story went head-to-head with Disney's Pocahontas and A Goofy Movie and Amblin's Balto. By 2012 Pixar pitted the Celtic-themed Brave against seven CG-based and three stop motion films.*
2011's Winnie The Pooh from Disney, was the last significant traditionally animated feature to be released in the US.
2015 saw the release of Nickelodeon's The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water which featured traditional, CG, and live-action sequences, so can't be counted as a traditional film. Feel free to poke around the lists yourself, though it's quite depressing. In fact, Japan is the only major media producer that predominantly uses traditional animation, though it is commonly blended with cost-saving CG backgrounds and other non-character elements. Most Japanese feature-film releases are also traditionally animated, and Japan's most applauded animation director, Hayao Miyazaki, only rarely applies the use of CG animation, and never to anything important.
So, the result has been the almost complete dissolution of Western traditional animation studios. Period. It's not really a matter of the efficiency of output, after all, Japan produces a literal fuckton of animation over four seasons each and every year. It seems like it's come down to mere one-upmanship, and that sucks for animators or anyone who wants to go into animation.
Traditional animation is an art form. It is based purely in art as a creative, visual outlet that springs from human hands and is viewed by human eyes. While 3D animation can, and often is, beautiful, it is far less organic in variance, creative and/or cultural diversity, and frequently devoid of emotional impact. That last bit is critical. Sure, a story can be strong, and when edited together well, with good voice acting, and a compelling soundtrack, a CG film can be emotionally engaging. They simply lack the additional tonal quality of analog.
Like vinyl records.
* NOTE: All films noted or referenced were released primarily in the US market.
Disney, Stop Ruining Animated Classics
So, I watched Beauty & The Beast (2017) last night. Wow. Just SUPER wow, and not for the reasons you might think. It's a dud. A flop. I hate it. The entire opening musical sequence, so full of life and deeply engaging in the animated feature, is dead, limp, and lifeless. Everything after that is a disjointed, misshapen mutation of the brilliant, reinvigorating, emotional feature-length animated version from 1991.
Disney had a hit in 1977 with The Rescuers, but were having trouble with 1981's The Fox & The Hound, 1985's The Black Cauldron, and 1986's The Great Mouse Detective. They struck gold in 1989 with The Little Mermaid and 1991's Beauty & The Beast would be the first two steps in a long string of successes (barring 1995's Pocahontas, but that's just me). Had they not buggered about with their long history of storytelling, we might not have ended up with a 2017 version.
My recommendation to Disney? Stop it. Do NOT remake one of the most beloved animated films of all time, The Lion King. Stop all plans for other remakes. People don't want Live Action. They want new stories, not rehashed versions of old stories. If they hadn't remade Beauty & The Beast, then they wouldn't have invited discussions of misogyny and rape culture. It would have remained one of Disney's greatest films. Now it's just poop.
Hollywood is having a hard time making ends meet, with fewer people going to theaters to see films. It doesn't help that It costs nearly $50 for a family of four to see one movie and that TV series from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, and others are far more engaging and far more affordable. It's also not helpful that most movies that come out of Hollywood these days are designed for the Chinese boxoffice. After all, the money goes where the money is, and America, you just ain't it anymore.
The bigger problem, aside from the economy and jobs not being where Washington would like us to think it is (sorta non-sequitur and kinda not), that, and I know you're not expecting this, Pixar ruined everything. In 1995, Pixar dropped a bomb on the animated film industry with Toy Story,and have since made precious few missteps until being acquired by Disney in 2006.
More insidious, however, is that Pixar did for Hollywood what Apple had done for technology, changed the two industries forever. There's no question that Steve Jobs was an amazing person, and he did usher in a wide range of technological advances via Apple, but the same can't be said for animation. The sad truth is that Pixar killed traditional, hand-drawn animation as an American art form.
I don't mean to suggest that 3D animation isn't a form of art. Indeed, it can be beautiful as Pixar, Blue Sky, Dreamworks, and others have shown, but it is not the evolution of animation. We've seen too many times complaints like those about the characters from Frozen looking exactly like the characters from Tangled, probably because they do. Traditional, hand-drawn animation allows for any number of styles.
Mulan features stylized Chinese art forms. Lilo & Stitch featured Chris Sander's unique character design and beautiful watercolor backgrounds instead of the traditional gouache. The Emperor's New Groove featured character designs based on South American art styles. Hercules drew from Roman forms of art and architecture for it's look. It's hard to say where any 3D animated film draws its inspiration from.
So, that's pretty much it. America needs to get back to its roots and stop trying to make shortcuts to everything. We need to stop killing art and demonizing the artistic. Disney needs to get back to creating amazing, hand-drawn animation and soon, or it will become the company whose pillars are Marvel and Star Wars and a bunch of old stuff they used to make. What a legacy, Bob. What a legacy.