Movie: "Up" from Pixar - 'Give me peace of mind to trust, and don't forget the rest of us.'

[timepiececlock]

If you move past the fact that the only female character with speaking lines disappears 15 minutes into a 97 minute movie (and that includes the short that opened it) and that it creates a world entirely devoid of women or girls except as backdrops or objects of loss (not even the frelling dogs)--and I'm sure we'll all move past that because it's a familiar hurdle with Pixar--then I can report that this is a beautiful, moving film.

It's a little darker than WALL-E, and a little sadder. I cried at two separate points; not a lot, but my eyes were significantly wet and I had to wipe them. It's still an uplifting film, still full of wonder and adventure and grace, but there's no denying that the emotion of loss permeates this story.

There's something reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki's work when you watch it: gorgeous vistas, brilliant colors, and sky. So much sky! Balloons, dirigibles, airplanes! And old person and a young person on an adventure together, experiencing the wonder of flight. It's not quite as funny or cute as WALL-E, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be.

There's no doubt that the Pixar studio has some of the finest writers and storytellers in the film industry today. Now they only need to live up to that potential, and open their magical world to the rest of us. It looks, as always, like a beautiful place to play.


WARNING: COMMENTS NOW CONTAIN MOVIE SPOILERS!

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

So I guess I'm a little perplexed why Pixar is getting singled out in the media as if they were the only ones with this problem (although I'm beginning to think it's part a backlash phenomena starting to hit Pixar since they haven't had a flop yet, and that tends to make media writers cranky).

I haven't seen many Dreamworks films, not nearly as I have with Pixar. I've seen Shrek, and the Moses one... but looking at their computer animated film list on wikipedia, of the 12 movies, 2 have female leads (Bee Movie, Monsters vs. Aliens.) That's....16 percent, about. Which is, when you get to it, 16 percent better than Pixar's 0%.

I think that the fact that there's been none in the fifteen odd films is why it bothers me so much. I expect it to be a low number. But NONE? That's why I target them for this particular rant. And when their stories are, in other ways, so delightfully human and aware and sensitive and filled with people of all colors, it makes it stand out more, to my eyes.

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I haven't seen either Bee Movie or Monsters vs. Aliens since I don't particularly care for Dreamworks animation--they fall a lot on the miss side of hit-or-miss for me and I don't like the way a lot of their animation looks. So I don't know if in those two movies the female characters are really leads or if, going by the ad campaigns, they are co-leads.

If they are co-leads, I think you could read a few Pixar films (Wall*E,/i>--inasmuch as the robots were sorta-gendered--Finding Nemo, The Incredibles) as having female co-leads (and there were significant female roles in A Bug's Life, and Monsters, Inc.). But, as I said, I haven't seen the Dreamworks films and so don't know if that's an apt comparison.

Can I ask where you're getting 15 films for Pixar? The sources I check show them as having released 10 feature films.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I just double-checked, and the number is ten. I must have gotten that number mixed up from something else; I remember looking it up about 3 months ago, but clearly the wrong number stuck in my memory. Thanks for double-checking that.

I haven't seen either Bee Movie, Monsters vs. Aliens, or Bug's life. I thought that the Bee Movie had a female lead from what I remember of the trailers, and from reviews I've read people have said that M v. A is a team film with a female lead/main character as the audience focus (like Incredibles is a team film with a male lead.)

As I said, I haven't seen Bug's Life, but I consider the little girl in Monster's Inc to be as effective as the absent Ellie is in Up--important, but not part of the main duo by any means. *shrug* Also, not a speaking part. For the Incredibles I read it as the two main characters are the male hero and male villain, and the others are all support. Same for the father/son in Nemo, where the blue fish was a supporting character behind the two leads. WALL-E is the best that I think Pixar's done so far on this topic, but there's still a clear dividing line in terms of whose name is the title and whose isn't, which is about the clearest line you can get for this sort of thing.

ETA: I also find Dreamworks animation to be somewhat off-putting visually. The character design doesn't work as well for me, though it's hard to pinpoint why. And I feel like they're more gimmicky, and cater to a less discerning viewer.

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

The thing I remember most about the Bee Movie trailers and ads is that it was mostly about Jerry Seinfeld. The Wikipedia plot summary seems to indicate his character is the main one, with a female supporting character.

I don't agree with your assignment of lead/not lead, but it's a tremendously subjective area in interpreting movies and film criticism (and TV), in general. I think there's room to read the characters in either way, or perhaps even in a third way. But I don't think there's an absolute, single way of viewing any of the movies and characters we've discussed because of how different experiences color how we respond to and weigh the importance of them.

A big chunk of my visual problem with the Dreamworks computer animation is that it still retains a lot of the plastic-y, hard looking surfaces that were an early hallmark of computer animation. Pixar has managed to achieve a striking, soft translucency to its animations that is visually much more pleasing to my eye. Also, Pixar's textures and fabric/hair/fur movements are really impressive (There are some extras on, I believe, both Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles discussing the technical challenges involved in making Sully's fur and Violet's hair move in a naturalistic manner. I, um, tend to geek out on those kinds of things.)