Super Tired

The ecstasy of creation burns away into the convoluted balancing act of maturity in 2018's The Incredibles 2. I'm not describing the plot, I'm talking about the writer/director, Brad Bird, whose clear vision in the first film made it a smoothly enjoyable ride, but whose comfort and fractured interests gave us a polished but slightly tiresome sequel.

The Incredibles 2 came out a year before The Boys premiered on Amazon Prime, beating them to he punch when it comes to bank robberies being portrayed as victimless crimes the heroes cause more trouble by trying to stop. I'm sure insurance companies just love that trope. Mind you, The Boys comic is much older, though I understand it's quite different from the Amazon series.

Yesterday I talked about how a hybrid of The Incredibles and The Boys could be really effective. I guess Incredibles 2 is kind of that but, aside from the fact that I don't think allowing rampant bank robberies, counting on insurance companies always to foot the bill, is a workable solution to crime (wonder what happens to insurance premiums after a couple years of this?), the movie's problem is that it shies away from any strident statement along the lines of the first film's "If everyone's special, then no-one is special."

The film picks up immediately after the first film, on the same day, even. So the victory at the end of first film, in which superheroes are poised to become government operatives again, is immediately reversed when the family fails to stop a villain from demolishing part of the city. Once again, superheroes are just illegal and the Incredible family is forced to contemplate a civilian life. In steps Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener as a brother and sister billionaire team who want to launch a PR campaign to rehabilitate superheroes and they want Mrs. Incredible to spearhead it.

Mrs. Incredible ends up having to fight a villain called the Screenslaver. The dynamics of the plot are about as muddled as the film's message. At one point, Mrs. Incredible catches a man she thinks is the Screenslaver but he's clearly shown to have been a hypnotised red herring. A few scenes later, though, Mrs. Incredible acts like she didn't notice. Was it a hint just meant for the audience to catch? Am I a genius for having spotted it? Or were the filmmakers just that out of touch with how subtle they thought they were being? I'm inclined to think the latter.

One thing's for sure, the animation and action sequences are far superior to the first film. Mrs. Incredible chasing a runaway bullet train on a motorcycle is pretty, well, incredible. The baby, Jack-Jack, is also really cute.

The Incredibles 2 is available on Disney+.

Only Some Movies are Special

I finally saw 2004's The Incredibles last night. It was a breath of fresh air though I can also see how it's informed discourse on superheroes since its release.

I watched it on Japanese Disney+, which digitally replaces most of the text with Japanese, so I know the movie's title in Japan is Mr.インクレディブル, "Mr. Incredible". Which seems odd because it's clearly an ensemble piece. The first part of the film follows the point of view of Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) but from the halfway point it's mostly the point of view of Mrs. Incredible (Holly Hunter).

Now I understand why so many people lust after Mrs. Incredible (and why there seems to be a mountain of porn based on her). Who'd have thought giving Reed Richards' powers to a woman would be so sexy? But of course it is. She twists and stretches, she envelops, she accommodates her body to various rigid forms, not without strain and visible chagrin.

The film's philosophy has become primarily conservative, though, or right wing. Disney has steadily rowed their boat away from it ever since. The Incredibles face a world unable to deal with the fact that some people are just better at some things than others. Disney has used Marvel movies increasingly to put distance between themselves and that idea. Though the true opposite would probably be Amazon's The Boys, which I watched the first two seasons of, and part of the third, waiting to see if they would even address the question of whether or not superheroes actually help people. Maybe they finally get around to it in the third season but it really ought to have been right at the beginning.

The Incredibles shows a world in which bureaucratic entanglements entirely prevent superheroes from using their powers. I wish writer/director Brad Bird had found some more plausible scenarios than a man who'd tried to commit suicide suing Mr. Incredible for saving him, or Mr. Incredible and Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) saving people from a burning building only to accidentally end up in a jewellery store wearing ski masks.

I imagine the ultimate product would combine The Boys with The Incredibles. You'd have a scene like the one where Homelander botches an intervention in the middle east, killing a civilian, and then one in which Mr. Incredible plucks a passerby out of the shadow of a falling building. Let's have a show where people debate the real benefits versus risks, like a David E. Kelley superhero series. But maybe audiences are too polarised for that (I wonder if that's why Kelley's Wonder Woman series never got off the ground).

The Incredibles is available on Disney+.

When Fire Washes Up

In these extraordinary times, studios throw millions of dollars at aggressively stupid screenplays. One specimen is 2023's Elemental from the once creatively vibrant Pixar Animation Studios.

The high concept premise is, in a world of sentient, anthropomorphised elements, a fire elemental and a water elemental have a romantic comedy. It's a, shall we say, steamy premise and the best part of the movie is when the two experiment with touching. No amount of neurotic sanitation could deprive that moment entirely of sensuality.

However, to get there we have to suffer through an idiot plot in which Ember (Leah Lewis), the fire elemental, is compelled to pretend to know nothing about the water leak that almost destroys her father's shop. Wade (Mamoudou Athie) is the water elemental and city inspector who cries all the time, something that's supposed to be funny or cute but instead comes off as the most excruciating Lucille Ball impression you could imagine.

There's an allegory for immigrant families, evidently based on director Peter Sohn's real life experiences, but, as is usually the case with allegory, it has to tie the premise in knots to stay on track. Why did the fire elementals have to immigrate? Because their house was destroyed in a flood. A shot of frowning elders in their homeland, I guess, is supposed to somehow explain why the family couldn't simply find a new house in the homeland they still love. Then we have the potentially very unwise decision to paint these particular immigrants as people who can explode and destroy parts of the city at any moment, an idea that might not have occurred to Sohn had he been the son of Middle Eastern immigrants instead of Korean immigrants.

The animation is good, of course. I'm sure executives felt within their rights pocketing millions on the strength of what the animators sweated over.

Elemental is available on Disney+ in most countries.

Ursa Minor

Long ago, a fraught family relationship is healed after one party is turned into a bear. No, it's not Brother Bear, it's 2012's Brave. After trailers promised a mediaeval action adventure with a flaming redhead princess, I have to think a lot of people were disappointed by a film that was more of a goofy comedy about a mother and daughter relationship. Still, despite kind of a lame plot, it's not a bad film and the relationship between the princess and her mother is interesting.

In mediaeval Scotland, Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald) is a headstrong lass who'd rather be riding her horse and shooting trees than entertaining suitors. It's too bad this movie wasn't made in an era when they could've shown Merida actually hunting. It would've made sense with all the meat her family is shown eating. As it is, we only get once instance where she shoots a fish when she and her mother (Emma Thompson) are hiding in the woods.

I've heard Merida's kind of an unpopular character partly because she turned her mother into a bear. It's not like she did it on purpose, though. What I don't understand is why Merida has to flee from her family or why she has to sneak into the castle later.

The first part of the film is the best which is focused more on the very sweet chemistry Merida has with her big boisterous father (Billy Connolly).

I really do wish this had been a film about Merida going into the woods and facing some terror no-one else could. That hair of hers really is eye catching and it's fun watching her do trick shots with her bow and arrows. But some of the early stuff about how she and her mother misunderstand each other is nice. Though her mother's shift towards being more understanding of her daughter halfway through the film comes kind of abruptly and without adequate buildup.

Brave is available on Disney+.

A Girl Absorbs the Red Puberty Panda

In the heart of every straight-laced young girl, there lurks a raging red panda, waiting to let loose. That's the idea behind 2022's Turning Red (the idea's not about turning Communist, thank goodness). The latest film from Pixar to be dumped straight to Disney+ is once again better written than the films Disney has recently released theatrically. It's an adorable and surprisingly raunchy teen comedy, almost like a John Hughes movie, an impression heightened by the main character's resemblance to Molly Ringwald.

But actually Mei (Rosalie Chiang) is of Chinese ancestry, the film being set in Toronto--for no apparent reason in 2002. Except maybe it's to be close to the time of writer/director Domee Shi's childhood as I suspect the film is very personal. I don't agree with the current politics that say every story's subject matter should be matched for the gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of its writer/director but Shi has real passion for writing about a teen's struggle with emotional repression. This movie is the true successor to Frozen, though it doesn't have any musical numbers as strong as "Let It Go", despite all the songs being co-written by Billie Eilish (despite the fact that Eilish isn't Asian).

Surprisingly, all the songs Eilish co-wrote with her brother, Finneas O'Connell, are for a fictional, typically sugary, boy band called 4*Town. Thirteen year old Mei and her circle of friends are obsessed with this group, something that strongly reminded me of the junior high school girls I teach here in Japan. Believe me, it takes very little prompting to induce them to expostulate at length on the virtues of Snowman, Johnny's West, or Strawberry Prince. That's another reason I don't see why this movie needed to be set in 2002. Maybe Shi just didn't want to figure out how to incorporate texting into the plot.

Toronto sure is a lot more colourful than it is in David Cronenberg movies.

Mei's relationship with her mother, Ming Lee (Sandra Oh), is at the heart of the film's drama. At the onset of puberty, the women of their family start turning into giant red pandas whenever they feel strong emotions. The metaphor for real teen anxiety is obvious and, of course, has been mined many times for stories, though usually stories about boys. But I was reminded of Kare Kano or maybe even Carrie. And, of course, Frozen.

The tight psychological grip Ming Lee has on her daughter is of a kind pretty famous in East Asian cultures. And, oh boy, can I certainly see it here in Japan. Some of the wilder, more transgressive students tell me about it directly, but even they're a bit reluctant. I remember one girl confiding to me that her mother is "an ogre". She must have looked up the translation for "oni" before talking to me. It's a relationship that extends beyond the family and girls will look to other older women for approval before they do anything. I remember talking to a young woman in a restaurant who looked to an older woman present for tacit authorisation before she responded to one of my questions. The older woman smiled and nodded and suddenly the young woman became quite talkative.

It's pretty bold for a Disney film to so directly criticise such a deeply entrenched cultural practice. There's no even-handedness about it, no moment where Mei realises maybe it's a good thing her mother's so much in her business sometimes. No, Ming Lee is the embarrassing helicopter mother who hides behind a tree to watch Mei in class and then tells her, in front of everyone, that her daughter forgot to bring her tampons to school.

Mei finds she can control her panda by remembering her love for her circle of friends, which is sweet, though I wonder if the implications of transferred codependency occurred to Shi. One teen problem at a time, I guess.

Turning Red is available on Disney+.

The Little Merboy

Two young sea monsters go ashore to chase their dream of owning a Vespa in 2021's Luca. What is it with Disney and Vespas lately? Anyway, its a sweet little movie about how friends support each other with their contrasting personalities.

This a Pixar movie, the first one I've watched since Wall-E, if you can believe it. Maybe when I've finished going though the Disney Animation Studios canon I'll start on Pixar because this wasn't bad.

You'd expect this movie to be influenced by The Little Mermaid, and it is, though the director doesn't own up to it in any of the quotes from him on the Wikipedia page. He talks instead about Miyazaki and Fellini. Miyazaki I can see, particularly in the human town, which looks like something out of Kiki's Delivery Service, but the sea monster community looks more like something from Sponge Bob.

Fellini I don't see at all, despite the Italian setting. There's a lot of Italian language peppered into the English dialogue which made me kind of wish the whole movie was simply recorded in Italian. But I suppose it would've never gotten to be the number one streaming movie of 2021 that way.

Luca (Jacob Temblay) is the smart, timid boy while Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the dumb, brave boy. Alberto teaches Luca to go out of his comfort zone while Luca teaches Alberto to be a little more contemplative. Then a human girl, Giulia (Emma Berman), is thrown into the mix and of course causes tension. But these kids are too young for a romantic plot.

The dialogue is funny and always follows the action and the characters nicely. Only in the end does Alberto start talking out of character to explain the moral of the story to Luca, but it's sweet and insightful so I didn't mind it so much.

Luca is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1516

The hat of corn was popped to prime the house.
The flickered man was agent z to eight.
A billion bees construct a metal louse.
Beyond the clock we count it soon to sate.
The waves of fiction bathe the babe of fact.
Computer birds were pretty, far from land.
To wear the office armour begs some tact.
Abated storms were naught but painful sand.
The second armour now is called the first.
The busy players part beyond the field.
She finished work before the salmon burst.
At night, the picture raised another shield.
The little bike resumed its colour course.
A motor leaps beyond the fastest horse.