Hey remember that time Disney spent a load of money on a science fiction epic that was visually spectacular but also kinda inert, weirdly off-brand for them, with a load of tonal and pacing issues that ended up costing them a load of money?
I guess by this point it kinda IS on brand?
Anyway, Tomorrowland is the second (and to date last) live action feature directed by animation legend Brad Bird and it keeps alive the proud Disney tradition of sci-fi movies that I respect and want to like but are just fundamentally too dang flawed on the writing level to get anything other than a qualified endorsement.
Look, I know everybody idolises the first decade they can properly remember but this is different. The nineties really were awesome. The Cold War was over, the War on Terror hadn’t started, we’d fixed acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer (and that whole global warming thing would probably sort itself out) and the only threats to world peace were goobs like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic who would occasionally show up to cause trouble before being punted into the air like Team Rocket.
Meowth is Gaddafi fyi.
Plus, the movies, the TV shows, the music. I love this whole era. So I was overjoyed when I finally got my hands on a boxset of the complete Daria, an animated sitcom that ran from 1997 to 2002. Not merely a nineties show, but probably the most nineties show.
And imagine my disappointment on discovering that, like so much nostalgia, it doesn’t actually hold up all that well.
In 1984, two broke young illustrators named Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were trying to break into comics. Eastman randomly doodled a turtle in ninja attire and the pair decided that it was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, essentially a madlib of everything that was popular in comics at the time (except for turtles).
They then wrote a silly little issue parodying Frank Miller’s Daredevil run and that, of course, was that.
This one weird joke concept riffing on an incredibly specific moment in comic book history in a black and white indie vanished without a trace, the very definition of a flash in the pan.
Wait, no. *checks notes*
It went on to conquer the goddamn world. To this day, TMNT is quite possibly the most lucrative Western comic book property not published by either DC or Marvel. Third most successful toyline of all time. Seven TV series, seven films, multiple videogames, hundreds and hundreds of comic issues and a metric shit-ton of merch. Which, on the one hand, is crazy.
How did a concept so ridiculous, and so seemingly instantly dated become one of the most successful and enduring pop culture phenomena of the past half century? Well, success has many fathers. Firstly, I think the franchise’s longevity was sealed with this:
A theme tune that catchy only comes around once in a blue moon. Play it over NINE SEASONS and it’s practically brainwashing.
Then there’s the fact that TMNT relies on a template that has proven to be amazingly durable over the last 180 years.
Hothead. Stoic Leader. Smart Guy. Big fun doofus.
The Musketeer Archetypes are like the Four Chords of character writing. They’re bloody everywhere, but they’re there for a reason. They work, dammit. And these character traits (Leads, Does Machines, Cool but Rude, Party Dude) hold true across virtually all interpretations of the characters which gives continuity across the franchise. But, and this is crucial, with that stability and continuity there also comes incredible plasticity. The Turtles fandom is fantastically diverse in terms of its age range and that’s because TMNT can be this:
Or it can be THIS:
Once you get past the initially (very, very, very) silly premise, the Brothers Turtle can grow with their audience. There’s stuff for kids and there’s also stuff for adults. So, class, where have we heard that before? A character that has a rock solid core that’s also surprisingly adaptable and can tell stories for any and all ages?
So before we go any further, I owe you all an apology. I know I said I’d be reviewing Turtles Forever but you need to know three things:
My DVD of Turtles Forever didn’t arrive in time (that’ll teach me to support physical media).
There’s a Turtles movie with Batman in it, how am I NOT going to review that?
I don’t honestly know if I should feel sorry for Joseph Cotten or envy him. He had a long and storied career in theatre and film, appearing in several movies that are the mainstay of any respectable list of greatest films of all time. How could you pity any actor whose CV includes The Third Man, The Magnificent Ambersons and of course the big gorilla in the room, Kane?
At the same time, when you think of those movies Cotten’s name isn’t exactly the first one that comes to mind, is it? Of course not.
It certainly doesn’t appear that Cotten resented the fact that Orson Welles was essentially the star around which Cotten’s career orbited, as the two men maintained a close and warm friendship right up until Welles’ death in 1985. And it’s not like he was completely overlooked, either. In fact, it’s so common to say that Joseph Cotten was one of the most underrated stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age that he probably no longer even qualifies as underrated. But screw it, it’s my blog, and if I want to turn it into a Joseph Cotten appreciation corner who of you will stop me? That’s what I thought. We’ve Gotten Cotten Fever up in here!
Oh, fun fact. His hair was the model for Norman Osborn in Spider-Man. Orson Welles can’t say that, can he?
So let’s unpack this joke. Here is everything you, the viewer, need to know for this gag to land.
This is Elektra, played by Jennifer Garner.
Garner first played this role over twenty years ago, in the critically reviled Daredevil, and then again in the practically unseen spin-off Elektra.
In Daredevil, she was the love interest of the title character.
Daredevil was played by Ben Affleck.
Garner and Affleck married shortly after making that film.
They subsequently underwent an extremely public and acrimonious divorce.
Hence, Elektra is not particularly cut up about Daredevil dying.
And virtually every joke in this thing is that kind of inside baseball uber-specific nerd bullshit that seems positively tailormade to appeal to me, a 40 something male who had comics instead of friends growing up. And yet…this thing made €1.8 billion dollars. This is as mainstream as movies get now.
Super niche nerd culture is no longer niche. The war is over. Everyone is a massive nerd now.
Total domination.
And I now find myself in a very difficult position as a movie critic.
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I laughed my ass off from start to finish.
Comedy is a lot like politics, all careers eventually end in failure. There have been plenty of Bats versus Bolts matchups on this blog that have been, as one commenter put it “Glass Joe versus Mike Tyson” but this really is a foregone conclusion. On the one hand, Mel Brooks’ 1974 masterpiece Young Frankenstein, which would place in the low single digits on any creditable ranking of the greatest American comedies of all time. And on the other hand we have 1995’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It, a movie so critically lambasted on its release that it killed Mel Brooks’ directorial career stone dead, which is a bit like if Frank Sinatra sang a song that was so bad he was never allowed to perform again. I mean it’s Mel Brooks. If he hasn’t earned a mulligan or two, who the hell has?
You know that old saw about walking down a beach that represents the different times of your life and seeing God’s footprints beside yours? I kinda feel that way about animator Phil Nibbelink.
I knew it not, but he was there during The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Oliver & Company and American Tail: Fievel Goes West. Nibbelink worked on all those films and many others. This is a guy who has spent years at the very top echelon of American animation. And, around the turn of the millennium he and his wife formed Phil Nibbelink Productions to make their own independent animation without having to debase themselves before the Hollywood suits. This, mind you, puts me in a hell of a bind.
Because, I want to like Romeo & Juliet (Sealed with a Kiss) very much. This is an independent feature length film animated entirely by one possibly insane man. Nibbelink drew every cel of this. Himself. On a goddamn tablet. Over four years. That is, by any metric, an absolutely phenomenal achievement. Simply by dint of existing this film deserves a standing ovation and as many panties flung at the stage as can be thrown without damaging the structural integrity of the theatre. The movie is amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. But is it good?
Something I’ve come to realise is that most people only have the time and energy to get really good at one thing, if they even manage that. Nibbelink is a phenomenal animator. Now, I could show you scenes from Sealed with a Kiss, and you probably would not be that impressed. And yes, the models are extremely basic and the animation is around the level of a mid-budget TV animation. But again, this is one man doing this with next to no resources and the fact that everything moves smoothly and crisply and stays on model is a goddamn miracle. So make no mistake, when it comes to animation Nibbelink is a powerhouse. But making a movie requires him to be not just an animator but a director, screenwriter, casting agent and editor. And, like I said, most people can only be very good at one thing.
Watching this thing, part of me was saying to myself “oh, like you could do better?” and another part was answering:
I think, first and foremost, I’d have had the sense to recognise that the play about the 16 year old who seduces a 13 year old, kills two people and then commits suicide right before the 13 year old stabs herself to death on his corpse is maybe not the best source material for an all ages cartoon.
Titus Andronicus, now THERE’S fun for all the family.
I don’t know what Makoto Shinkai has against me but for some reason his reviews always show up on my schedule precisely when I have the least time to write them. Maybe he heard that I don’t particularly like trains or weather.
“Bastard!”
Anyway, this is the third movie of his that I’ve reviewed and, while I didn’t really love either of his previous offerings things are at least trending positive. I liked The Garden of Words quite a bit more than 5cm A Second and I like Your Name quite a bit more than either of them. I appreciate that “I like it okay” is so muted a response to this particular film that it might as well be scathing critique but…I dunno guys, I don’t know what to tell you. Shinkai’s stuff just leaves me kinda cold. EDIT: I wrote this opener before rewatching the film and I’ve since warmed to it quite a bit, as you will see.
But yeah, this movie is a huge deal. It was the most successful non-Western animated film of all time when it released, unseating Spirited Away in its native Japan before going on to conquer most of Asia.
While I know it isn’t true, I like to imagine there’s one guy in Warner Bros who was put in charge of the Batman films in 1989 despite knowing nothing about comics in general or Batman in particular and who spends every day banging his head against a desk and screaming “what the FUCK do you people even WANT?!”
Because to a casual observer, there really is no rhyme or reason to which Batman movies succeed and which fail. Why was Batman Forever a massive hit and Batman and Robina franchise-killer? Why did audiences love Batmanand largely steer clear of Batman Returns? Why is a grim and gritty Batman great with Christopher Nolan but not with Zach Snyder?
And there’s no one answer, really. Audience expectations. The marketing. The directing. The acting. The writing. The music. There are hundreds of factors that decide whether a Batman movie will succeed, same as any other movie. And added to that there is a very specific problem with adapting this character to screen: nailing the tone.
Getting the tone of a Batman story right is a damnably tricky thing, and it’s something that writers have struggled with ever since the character was introduced 85 years ago. Let’s take a moment, firstly, to acknowledge that Batman has often been campy and fun and played for laughs. And often, as in the sixties Adam West series, or Batman: The Brave and the Bold, it’s been done to great effect. But, fundamentally, this is a character rooted in a mashup of crime fiction and the horror genre. Batman stories, from their very beginning, deal with murder, corruption and violence. A child witnesses his parents’ brutal slaying and devotes his life to waging violent nocturnal war against the criminal element. It ain’t baby-town frolics. And I think what trips up a lot of Batman writers is that they succumb to the temptation to wallow in miserabilism. They lean into the violence and the horror and the awfulness of the setting to a degree that it stops being in any way enjoyable.
The best Batman stories have stakes and drama and darkness, but it’s a certain kind of darkness. A darkness that takes itself seriously, but not too seriously. There is a dusting of pulpy camp that stops the darkness becoming overwhelming. It’s a very, very tricky tone to capture and, if I’m perfectly honest, no single live action director has ever managed to capture it perfectly.
That is, until Matt Reeves knocked it out of the fucking park in 2022.
“Don Bluth” and “Science Fiction” is not an association you might automatically make even if, like me, you believe that An American Tail should rightly be considered part of the Giant Fighting Mech Animé genre.
Get in the robot, Fievel.
And that would be entirely correct. Apart from his video game Space Quest, there’s nothing in Bluth’s oeuvre to suggest that he would ever make a big epic space opera. So, why Titan A.E?
Well, firstly we have to remember where Bluth was in his career at this point. After finding early indie success withSecret of NIMH, Bluth hit the big time by partnering with Stephen Spielberg. When that relationship broke down, Bluth floundered with a number of increasingly bizarre and often subpar films before finding a place with Fox’s new animation studio, essentially as a hired gun. So, if Titan A.E. seems like a complete break from Bluth’s usual fare, that’s because this was basically a work for hire job. And, at the risk of sounding like a heathen…good?
Look, I respect Don Bluth a whole lot, I think he’s a true auteur and one of the most important figures in American animation. But I can’t help but feeling that his best work was done when he was executing someone else’s artistic vision. The Land Before Timeis very much a Stephen Spielberg film. Anastasiais transparently Fox demanding a Disney princess movie and Bluth dutifully providing them with one. It just so happens to be the best Disney princess movie that Disney never made and one of Bluth’s most accomplished films to boot. So if you tell me that a certain movie was just a job for Bluth and not a passion project, I’m actually more inclined to breathe a sigh of relief than shake my fist in impotent rage. Because I’ve seen Don Bluth’s passion projects.
And they’re weird as the dickens.
“Mouse, you seem to be swearing a lot less than usual. Are you feeling alright?”
Oh. Yeah. So, here’s the thing. Mini-Mouse has been asking to read my reviews so I’m gonna try and keep this one family friendly. Say hi in the comments, folks!
“Can I say “hi” back?”
“To THAT shower of degenerates?! Absolutely not.”
Okay, so, Titan AE entered production in the late nineties which was a weird, febrile and exciting time in American animation. The Disney renaissance was still very much in effect, but Toy Story had landed like a nuclear bomb and everyone was holding their breath to see whether CGI animation would supplant traditional animation or simply supplement it. Additionally, there was a cultural sea-change in how animation was viewed, being driven both by the ever increasing popularity of animé and the success of television animation aimed at adults like The Simpsons, Batman the Animated Series and Beavis and Butthead. In the new millennium, both Disney and its competitors would try to expand the core demographic for feature length animation from pre-teen and predominantly female and try to convince teenage boys that cartoons weren’t just for little kids and chicks. Of this little mini-genre, in which you can include Treasure Planetand Atlantis: The Lost Empire the first was Titan A.E.
unshavedmouse 