January 7, 2019
Do not read about the character that broke the internet.
I have a big enough problem with the concept of Wreck’em Ralph, yet another Disney/Pixar story of the mundane wage-slave behind the scenes lives of formerly extra-ordinary beings, except now instead of characters they made up or that are at least public domain, they have enough money that they just license anyone they want. And unlike “Food Fight,” which was criticized and shamed into obscurity for that, since it’s Disney + Vidya Gaemz it is purity and SO GOOD. Alright, and now since Disney owns Lucasfilm, Marvel and Fox (for what that is worth) they can also insert most of the remaining characters which would never have been licensed to them otherwise, and they can just toss Darth Vader and Spiderman and the Krusty the Klown in a movie and act like this encompasses the whole of creative validity, and can imitate the copyright-infringement wasteland of internet social media to a great enough extent as to just be able to call it “the internet,” and then put the title character over all that. Alright, and now there are book adaptations of that. I haven’t seen the movie. Obviously I was never going to, it wasn’t made for me. The advertisement literally shows Ralph and the dark-haired gremlin running from Star Wars stormtroopers and then getting chewed out by Rapunzel and Cinderalla (the Disney versions, the REAL versions, of course) and I am supposed to think those both being in the same or any movie is a good thing. And, one assumes, remotely coherent in a children’s book. This is essentially embarrassing fan fiction with a price tag on it. I thought that was what Patreon was for. Where is the worth? I don’t have kids, you can thank your gods, but if I did I wouldn’t want to read them stories about some chubby guy palling around with an incongruous cross-franchise mashup of characters they never heard of inside a facebook post or whatever I have no clue and I think having a clue would require making myself dumber below the safety threshold from which it would be possible to get as-smart again afterward. AND AGAIN the relatable schmucks behind mobile communication premise was already done in The Emoji Movie, which was MASSIVELY criticized long before it came out, and unlike Food Fight actually did come out. And heeptydeepty my sister tells me that Ralph’s gremlin is voiced by Sarah Silverman, who is famous why? For being crass and contrary to the corporate-approved comedians who kept getting sitcoms in the 1990s. Crasser than Roseanne, then, even. And now Sarah Silverman is in DISNEY movies and Roseanne is unemployable for typing something Sarah Silverman would have spoken aloud on television and gotten big laughs from even though it doesn’t actually make sense 20 years ago.
The one thing I said in Ralph’s favor last time, even if I didn’t mean it as a compliment: “Why is this film special? Because it’s not on the internet. ” And now it thinks it IS the internet. The likes of Ralph could never have been conceived without the utterly broken culture of internet social media and in such a state it is incapable of being broken by Ralph.
It once was the case that, at least in the united states, you could use any intellectual property character you wanted in any way you wanted so long as it was a parody. That law no longer applies to Disney! Disney can buy any copyright and once disney owns a copyright it never expires. Disney can decree that Doctor Doom and Salacious B Crumb play Mario Tennis against Pinocchio and Frank Caliendo as John Madden and put that in a video that gets turned into a gif and then Ralph watches the gif and somebody makes a gif of that and that’s Canon with a capital C and that rhymes with P and that stands for “Please kill me” for all time. Maybe Disney will also buy Canon Inc, the digital camera company and repurpose that to making cannons for restorations of 16th century Spanish galleons just to drive home that point.
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Abc sez:
Do you think , as I do, that corporate consolidation is increasing?
Frimpinheap sez:
Of course it is, it always is. The US government almost always bends backward to serve corporate interests. It only breaks up monopolies that don’t have well known smiling faces on them. Meanwhile, other media corporations do their best to be identical to disney and people that aren’t corporate do their best to appear as brands rather than people so even when the entities are separate the attitudes and results are the same.
guidoVegeta sez:
That Ralph thing… What a cesspool. Whatever creative force existed decades past that made Disney what it is today, is long gone. Modern Disney is just a self-sustaining machine feeding off of brand recognition and mediocre writers/directors these days.
In fact, the last original thing I saw from modern era Disney is Zootopia and even that had problems. It was the most self-indulgent, preachy and obtuse social justice infested mess I’ve seen (which also caters to furries). The woke fools all gave it glowing reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for its “positive” message. I watched it myself, and the plot was just too mind-numbingly pathetic for me to stomach.
Anyway, I’m just waiting for Disney to take over Dreamworks, Blue Sky and Illumination in the not-so-far future.
Frimpinheap sez:
it might as well. they are all trying to be the same thing anyway. Somehow the more powerful our technology becomes, the more homogenized what people do with it becomes. As a child I never liked the Disney company’s exploits. I only came to appreciate them relative to what occurred beyond that point.
guidoVegeta sez:
I grew up on much of Disney’s classical works like Peter Pan and Beauty and the Beast. I may have a bias towards those days, but I appreciated the “magic” in those works as a child and that memory is still clear today. Sure, Disney has always been a corporation out to make money, but I saw some semblance of vision and effort back then.
Compared to those days, most of what I see today feels so devoid, so hollow of any meaning. The technology is there, but I can’t shake this feeling of cheapness. The laziness and emptiness where there should be something. I think you are on point about the homogenization, and I would add there is a distinct lack of effort in general because they rely on the technology so much. The lack of meaning – I blame that on the lack of a healthy culture these days. As in, we’re supposed to be more concerned with giving a girlfriend to Elsa to placate “them” and whatever trivial nonsense they complained about Moana’s costume being offensive to people they don’t represent.
Point being – Why aren’t more people challenging Disney itself? The few people I know who do, hate Disney for the wrong reasons (like reasons above).
I am also the same about appreciating what came before. Everything has been on a downward spiral, like or dislike whatever Disney was before.
Frimpinheap sez:
I do not know if you saw my previous post on the topic, https://bimshwel.com/?p=7746 but my conclusion was that contemporary media – much of it owned by disney – is less interested in being entertaining than it is in getting hype for being socially progressive, and it actually isn’t! Rewriting interesting male villains to be totally unlikeable so they aren’t role models and female ones to be devoid of fault so they are role models makes for totally boring viewing unless you are an insipid idiot who thinks you are edgy and sophisticated, which is the dominant consumer demographic now.
The Lion King was what foremost turned me against disney. I felt like that was when it put hypable voice cast and lazy humor first and it never looked back. But the contemporary fake progressiveness is definitely yet more irritating. Before then I didn’t understand the appeal of Mickey Mouse, who as I observed, I thought astutely, did not resemble a mouse in any manner, but certainly for most of its existence that character’s goal was foremost to amuse people.
Living with a now four year old niece, I have seen the gamut of films Disney isn’t currently deliberately keeping from market in anticipation of hyped up rereleases. I can see things to appreciate in the hand drawn ones that I don’t in the computer ones. The only thing I like in Moana is the incidental background music but that is easily missed because it is imperative for me to not hear the songs.
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[…] everything i guessed about it is not only true, it’s twice as bad. the princesses aren’t in the whole movie but they are in much more than I was expecting. they show up about the same length into the film that optimus prime does in the transformers movie and get about as much screen time. (incidootily my least favorite part about 2006 transformers was also the incessant mentions of ebay) This movie cannot stand on its own, and nobody cares. imagine if “meet the spartans” made much more money and put a curse on braindead movie critics to say nice things about it. that series got killed when writer producer jackasses seltzer and freberg became too greedy and decided to distribute subsequent movies themselves and suddenly couldn’t get into theaters. That is not a reliable circumstance for me to hope for with disney. […]