nateascendingskies - Tumblr blog

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[nateascendingskies]

It's late - here, have a fren.

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Say it ain't so! Major Disney delays...

The biggest, for me, is Pixar's original sci-fi movie ELIO leaving March 2024...

Not for June 2024, where INSIDE OUT 2 is parked...

But June 2025... Yep... 2025...

For a movie that has teaser poster and a teaser trailer...

The actor's side of the strike is ongoing, yes, but the severity of this delay seems to imply something else is afoot...

This is the biggest delay for a Pixar movie since the time they delayed THE GOOD DINOSAUR, originally set for a late May 2014 debut, all the way to Thanksgiving 2015... Two movies that were to open after it, opened before it. The movie was, of course, delayed because John Lasseter was unsatisfied with director Bob Peterson's work on the movie and had him removed. The plan was to originally have some of the Brain Trust "shepherd" various sections of the incomplete movie and still possibly make the May 2014 release date (as a lot of assets had been rendered, possibly animated even), until it was decided to throw it all out and start over. Peter Sohn was handed the reins, and worked off of some basic core ideas of Peterson's movie/concept. Naturally, they needed about a year to not only turn it around, but make the movie.

I'm not sure if that's happening to ELIO, because it was but a few months away and has a teaser. GOOD DINOSAUR didn't have that before the director removal and subsequent delay, only the footage and concept art people saw at the 2013 D23 Expo.

Maybe some sections need work or need to be redone, without impacting much of the finished movie. Very possible. CG allows those kinds of fixes more so than a hand-drawn film does, so maybe...

Or this could be a dirty tactic on the studio's part. "You're gonna keep striking? Well then! No movies released in the first quarter of next year!" A scare tactic to make SAG-AFTRA cave, but we know SAG-AFTRA... They'll stand firm.

I'm thinking it could also have to do with INSIDE OUT 2 existing. That has the juicy mid-June slot for this year, typically a prime slot for a Pixar. At least, in pre-COVID times. And also, its a sequel to one of their biggest original movies... Which was also a June release in its respective release year (2015). Instead of pushing INSIDE OUT 2 back a full year, Disney figures... Nah, make people wait for the original alien movie, INSIDE OUT 2 is top priority! A surefire hit, too, after years of Pixars either going straight to Disney+ or not being massive at the box office. ELEMENTAL may have just eked out, but Disney probably wants a guaranteed big hit next from Pixar, not a riskier big-budget science fiction animated movie.

Weird coincidence. After INSIDE OUT in 2015 came GOOD DINOSAUR. We went from INSIDE OUT to a Peter Sohn-directed movie. Now, we go from the Peter Sohn-directed ELEMENTAL to an INSIDE OUT sequel. Rhythm and rhyme. Just me? Probably.

We know how those tend to do at the domestic box office... TITAN A.E., ATLANTIS, TREASURE PLANET, LIGHTYEAR, STRANGE WORLD-

So... Yeah... Pixar's slate is now INSIDE OUT 2 in June 2024, ELIO in June 2025... Then two movies set for 2026, one in March, one in June. I reckon TOY STORY 5 is going to be the June 2026 movie, and one of the originals for March.

In addition to these delays, Disney removed the Searchlight movie MAGAZINE DREAMS from the calendar entirely, like they did with THE BIKERIDERS a few weeks back. The live-action SNOW WHITE vacated March 2024 as well. Instead of booting the LION KING prequel MUFASA out of summer 2024, SNOW WHITE has instead been delayed all the way to March 2025...

So, Disney has no big tenptole-type movies - after WISH until the pending May release of DEADPOOL 3.

Outside of POOR THINGS, I don't think they really have anything else, period... Until DEADPOOL 3. Again, in May...

Ya know, if they just... Paid their actors...

[nateascendingskies]

Something different, but I have really been in need of a good giggle and the ending of this KILLS ME! I hope it makes you giggle too!

[nateascendingskies]

Did this quick doodle a few days ago, used it as value practice! :D

[nateascendingskies]

Guys so I visited a medieval smithy the other day (ca. 1300s) and it reminded me a lot of Gobber's workshop... it was easy to imagine that I had just literally stepped into Berk's smithy with my own two feet... and to be honest, seeing this stuff in real life made the whole deal of Hiccup apprenticing in one of these infinitely funnier and Stoick's decision to put him there weirdly...understandable???

Let me elaborate: So you're in approx. 900 AD, you live on a tiny island under rough conditions, EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE WITHOUT A SINGLE EXCEPTION is a craftsman of some kind who has to work manually, and you've got a noodle of a son.

Also you're the Chief, no less than that. Let me tell you that this makes the whole thing just so much worse.

Looking at all those solid iron tools - mighty bellows operated by a beam larger than me, forging tongs that would have been half of Hiccup's size and exactly as heavy as this shot implies,

...swords with hilts longer than a cucumber and crude, brutal design, plus all the firewood that constantly needed to be chopped and carried around... even if Hiccup had turned out to be completely untalented at smithwork, that would have built him some muscles.

You don't understand. Hiccup having no muscles was a death sentence. The environment that he was surrounded by, which I was reminded of in that irl smithy, could - at that time! - only be overcome by hard manual labor, aided by the most basic mechanics. Even if he had become a breadmaker, that still would've built him some muscles. All the kneading, the weightlifting of flour and wood and water, the carrying, would have done the same job. Forget Snotlout bragging about working out in his parents' basement. EVERYONE on Berk was burly not because 'they were vikings' training for war or whatever for funsies every day, but because it literally was a requirement of everyday life to be able to carry something heavy from A to B, and be it only a single sack of grain.

So it's really funny to me how Stoick intentionally put this skinny rat of a son of his into the most merciless and dangerous job that probably existed on the island, just to put him to some use. Poor Hiccup. He's like a wet kitten under the command of a bloodhound. But at the same time, it makes so much sense?? Stoick didn't just put him into a job to gain some weight, he put him into a job that would teach him all about tools and weapons, how to defend himself and about the irreversible price of violence. I imagine a blacksmith would have to know how to use a sword to know what makes a good one, so Hiccup would've naturally learned swordfighting on the side. It was an important skill not just against dragons. We see the gang fight all kinds of human enemies in later years as well.

So what Stoick was basically doing was to prepare him for life. The need for abs back then is comparable to today's education about taxes and insurances. Hiccup needed some brawns to survive Berkian conditions, and not just for fighting dragons. Even though Hiccup had the brilliance to invent mechanical devices that could make life on the island easier, he didn't have electricity and he couldn't just press a button anytime he wanted the laundry done or needed some newly tanned leather. He had to work with his own two hands anyway. No dragon, once tamed, could assist the villagers in ways that an ox or buffalo hadn't done before. Despite his marvelous innovations, there's no changing that Hiccup would remain a craftsman and a warrior throughout his life.

So now there's the fact that Hiccup was a noodle. Having established that with Berk's living conditions in mind, you would basically have to avoid working any daily task ON PURPOSE to NOT develop muscles from early childhood, there are exactly two interpretations as to how Hiccup remained this scrawny for so long: a) he was disabled in some way that prevented him from doing chores, or b) he was spoiled and lazy beyond common sense.

Stoick spoiling someone is unthinkable, and Hiccup doesn't appear disabled. He could be struggling with anything from a muscle-degenerative disease to a fast metabolism to mental issues. But it's not implied in the movies. So how did Hiccup avoid manual labor And what kind of message did that send to the rest of the villagers???

Look, if they thought that he was lazy, or perhaps not quite right in the head, they were probably absolutely right. It would have been maniacal for the Chief to spoil his son to the point where he couldn't fend for himself and expected Berk to serve him and supply him with food. Stoick wanted his son to be Chief, so he would have to school him in some trade that enabled him for economics and warfare. As neither was the case though, it didn't put Stoick in a great light to have a son as Hiccup. How could this have happened - a noodle on Berk? It would have made both father and son the laughingstock.

The only reason that I can think of is neglect. Stoick may have been so grief-stricken about Valka's death that he went easy on Hiccup for a while, and then, when he got possessed by running dragon nest campaigns, he may have simply forgotten that he still had a child at home. And then, once Hiccup became old enough to get into trouble, Stoick may have remembered him because he got complaints from his villagers, and so he hurriedly stuck him with Gobber. Lol.

So that's how a skinny noodle rat with no survival skills whatsoever ended up in the weapon forge of Berk. Gobber has a point being sarcastic about it: "Oh, perfect. And while I'm busy, Hiccup can cover the stall. Molten steel, razor-sharp blades, lots of time to himself - what could possibly go wrong?"

And wrong it goes. I love it. WHAT WERE THEY EXPECTING?? XD

[nateascendingskies]

DISTANT DETONATIONS - on the Trinity Test in Oppenheimer

After seeing Christopher Nolan's latest, "Oppenheimer", in all its full IMAX glory last week, many thoughts have continued to ruminate in my mind, with everything from the film's subject matter to its technical merits being under consideration. Of those ruminations, none are perhaps more important than what could arguably be called the defining moment of the entire film - and quite possibly even the lives of many of those dramatized and portrayed on screen, the infamous Trinity atomic bomb test near the famed Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

As many who have studied the Manhattan Project and its influences on the end of World War II from the perspective of the Pacific Theatre already know, the test marked a crucial turning point in the close to 3 years of tireless research in developing such a weapon - one that, in all theory, could end all wars due to its unfathomable and near apocalyptic power, harnessing the destructive force of miles high fire and hazardously radioactive particles into one package. As the film's titular subject once stated, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

For director Christopher Nolan, who has been well known for eschewing computer graphics as the lead focus of his visual effects sequences, often using them to complement or tweak massive practical stunts and explosions, recreating such a moment in history was going to be a difficult test. How much firepower, magnesium powder and gasoline would it take to portray such a lethal force without being deadly to anyone on set, and how spectacular would the final result look on such massive screens in the format Nolan intended people to see the film in - IMAX?

Well, therein lies the genius of how the test is portrayed on film. For close to a year, I had been eagerly anticipating how such a moment would play out - I even went out of my way to buy tickets to a showing at the largest IMAX screen in Seattle to make sure I got the best experience possible. I knew what Nolan was capable of - he had utterly floored me with Interstellar some 8 years earlier. And while I wasn't the biggest fan of Dunkirk, I knew that he'd tastefully portray such an event with his experience in the dramatizing the era of World War II. Even then, everyone was expecting the test to blow the roof off of their local cineplex - I mean, why wouldn't it?

That Saturday night I saw the film, the tension was palpable leading up to the test - almost presented in real time to as it actually happened, tricky weather conditions and all. I was close to gripping my armrests, my heart was racing. Just how insanely massive was this going to be?

Then - it happened. The button was pushed, the countdown timer hit 0, and the test occurred on screen, but not with the explosive force that had been overblown and hyped by many. Instead, it felt, in an intriguing way, distant, restrained and even beautiful - using forced perspective and some extremely well staged pyrotechnics, such a crucial moment in history had been revisited. Then, the theater was given the jolt they were expecting - not in the explosion itself, but in the shockwave of sound that passed through the test site afterwards.

Perhaps we as an audience that night, myself included, should've caught onto this sooner - every explosion in the buildup to the test had a scientifically accurate delay of sound afterwards. In addition, the way Nolan had written and structured the film beforehand was far from the means of glorifying such an explosion - who did we think he was, Michael Bay? Oppenheimer was a complex, unfairly vilified political leftist, and even potentially neurodiverse man (awkward socially and better in visually driven theoretical physics than in math - the signs were there for him to be on the autism spectrum), so why would this moment in history even remotely resemble something from his earlier "Dark Knight Trilogy"?

This was a test that many were worried would destroy the world through a chain reaction igniting the atmosphere of the Earth. No spectacle was warranted, especially since this would lead to the deaths of tens of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few weeks later. Thus, such an approach was not needed, especially considering the mental trauma that awaited both us and Oppenheimer in the film's last hour (and especially so in the real life events that informed the film).

In all essence, it made perfect sense for the Trinity test to feel that small. We were seeing it from the perspective of the men who were there that night - not some wide angle or close up view of the events like something James Cameron had done for Titanic some 25 years earlier. And with on how bone-chillingly apocalyptic a note the film ends on an hour and half later, the way the test is shown on screen only reveals itself to be more brilliant with the full picture being unveiled. The test itself may not have destroyed the world. But as Oppenheimer notes to Einstein in a meeting at the end of the film set a few years after the test, the aftermath of it just might have.

[nateascendingskies]

[nateascendingskies]

Great whites and other sharks attack sick, injured, and lone whales for food. Orcas will also target whales in coordinated attacks.

However, scientists have observed humpback whales impeding orca hunts, rescuing the target, and harassing the orcas for several hours thereafter.

While whale blubber composes a large part of his diet, Bruce has given up the hunt and tends to scavenge nowadays to avoid fueling the poor reputation of sharks in the marine community.

And it looks like doing so has saved his skin, when a pair of orcas ambush Bruce… and a humpback whale intervenes!

A friend of Dory’s, perhaps?

[nateascendingskies]

what if jellyfish were just, like, really big. all the time

[nateascendingskies]

That an *overpriced* INDIANA JONES sequel and a DreamWorks animated summer movie are "flopping" this weekend... in addition to titles like an equally overpriced THE LITTLE MERMAID remake, a FLASH movie cynically jampacked with mostly zombie cameos, a $45m-costing Jennifer Lawrence comedy, a TRANSFORMERS movie, and a new also overpriced Pixar original are "underperforming"... is a damning indictment of where the movie business has been at in the post-outbreak era, I feel...

Everything Spielberg warned about a decade ago. This whole model of "make a big amount of money in a crowded marketplace in just a few months, not even" is... Call me crazy, not quite sustainable!

(Well, at the very least, JOY RIDE, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7, BARBIE, and OPPENHEIMER should make back their budgets quite nicely...)

[nateascendingskies]

A DISSERTATION ON ASTEROID CITY

Leaving a showing of Wes Anderson's latest film "Asteroid City" a few weeks ago, having pondered and puzzled over the anarchic, metatextual and science fiction vibes of the entire project, I was certain of one thing by the end.

I'm pretty sure that Wes Anderson is on the autism spectrum.

Like, there's really no other way to explain his quirky, offbeat, and matte painting filled style - the dude oozes hyperfixation and fascination with the strangest of details, and it's really proven by the way "Asteroid City" plays out.

Early on in the film, one of the three leads, junior astrologer and scientist Woodrow Steinbeck (played by Jake Ryan) is playing a name game of sorts with his fellow Junior Stargazer recipients, wherein one person mentions the name of a famous scientist or artist and the other person adds on to that, continuing in a Simon Says-like chain until it should, theoretically, be hard to follow.

After several names have been said and it's Woodrow's turn again, one of the other stargazers challenges him to name all of the people previously mentioned - in reverse order. He does it flawlessly. Since I know others on the spectrum that could do that with the entire alphabet at a young age, you can probably see where I'm getting at.

Later on in the film, following a military quarantine following the inexplicable arrival of an alien to the titular small town, we see the same stargazers - and what might they be doing now, you might ask? Continuing the same game with gleeful abandon and now throwing celebrities like Marilyn Monroe into the mix.

Of course, this isn't the only spectacularly bizarre detail that appears or re-appears throughout the course of the film. At three separate occasions, a slapstick worthy police chase and shootout involving no less than three vehicles passes through the main road of the town, with little acknowledgment from those who see it other than a shrug. It's not necessarily how the gag plays out in this case, though - rather, it's how it's set up and visually portrayed - almost with a sense of lucid unreality and focus on the particulars of what is happening. It's as if Anderson is relishing in the outright batshit insanity of it all - much like the entirety of the food critic hostage situation segment in The French Dispatch and the entirety of Fantastic Mr. Fox, two of his other works.

When you throw in various similarly odd running jokes involving a dancing roadrunner, someone burning their hand on a patterned griddle, a literal highway overpass to nowhere, real estate being sold from a vending machine, a Rod Serling style-guide who presents the play within a film setup in a loving tribute to the creation of such arts (and even intrudes on the "play's" narrative at one point by pure accidental happenstance), and nuclear bomb tests, it's easy to see why a case could be made for Wes' clear and uniquely neurodiverse position on the spectrum. Everything about "Asteroid City" might seem random at first glance, but there's a clear rhyme and reason to Wes Anderson's madness and how the entire narrative works and plays out.

Neurodivergent brains function in a state that is far from what might be considered societally normal or typical, tending to be drawn towards particular obsessive interests and playing with them in a style or voice that is uniquely their own. Over the course of a few decades, I have developed mine - with a love of films being among them. So, when I see a film like "Asteroid City" and admire its tonal consistency with such a wildly inconsistent set of characters and situations, having a clear love of well placed 50's and 60's musical needle drops and a song about the arrival of a benevolent alien told in an appropriately folksy style (Anderson even apologizes to the inspiration behind the song in the end credits for good comedic measure) in the same manner as my love of motorsports, Pixar films, and the scores of James Horner, I can only once again come to one conclusion.

I'm absolutely sure that Wes Anderson is on the autism spectrum.

[nateascendingskies]

ELEMENTAL Box Office Nonesuch

So... ELEMENTAL looks to make $28-33m over the weekend... The autopsies are already being done, the expensive Pixar original is already deemed a flop... Here's what I say...

Box office is absurd: I mean really, box office runs seem more and more absurd by the year in the post-COVID outbreak era... Having to make so much money, in a very competitive field and in a time where audiences can't see too many movies a year, in around 3-4 months? Like c'mon, it's literally the infancy of a movie's existence. It's not the '00s, or even the '10s anymore.

Longevity: Especially since animated movies from both Pixar and Disney Animation traditionally have had long, ever-fruitful second lives. Whether it was thru theatrical re-releases (1940s-1980s), home video (1980s-onward), or streaming... ELEMENTAL will likely be no different by the end of the year, probably will rack up a million streams on Disney+. This has a very good "A" CinemaScore grade, so it could have very good legs over the summer, even if it doesn't top that ridiculous budget.

$200m budget... Making around $500m at the worldwide box office is a lot of pressure to put on an original animated family movie, let alone most movies, especially in this day and age.

"Well, if they had made a good movie-" OK, now do every blockbuster smash hit that got mixed to negative critical reception. Heck, do this year's SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE. Critical reception/one's own opinion doesn't mean shit. If it did, CARS 2 - the go-to for "worst Pixar movie" - would've flopped hard back in 2011, regardless of any goodwill brought over from the first movie.

That William Goldman quote/marketing/blah blah: "Nobody knows anything... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one." Whatever was in that marketing... And there WAS marketing... LOTS of it... Just didn't motivate audiences to shell out lots of money for tickets and concessions to see this film in a theater where it's possibly disgusting, noisy, or... Both!

Pixar is not in a slump: This is also all subjective. And if I was a filmmaker, and I had a slump of movies that ranged from roughly 70-85% Rotten Tomatoes scores - not that RT aggregate scores mean anything anyways... That'd be quite alright! Anyways, the movies they're currently making just aren't to your liking. That's all it is... and they don't have to release a specific kind of movie. This, ideally, should be a studio where a director makes THEIR film. Not a collective. Like it used to be at one point... Speaking of which-

John Lasseter: I've seen so many people, from inside animation fan circles... to even pundits writing for major movie publications... Suggesting that Lasseter's ouster left a real hole in Pixar, and Disney Animation as well. Never mind implying that a misogynist pervert should be brought back to the studio, but this also suggests that every Pixar success is because of him... And him only. Like, all the filmmakers are just untalented hacks without him? Like he's the guy who waves a magic wand and suddenly, everyone on board made a good movie? Do you want animated movies made by FILMMAKERS? Or films determined by a small COMMITTEE? I'm also old enough to remember when Lasseter was THE problem with Pixar, that he was a dictator making every director bow to his every demand. (Which was true.)

I'm sorry, but I'm just exhausted from how people are talking about ELEMENTAL... Which I haven't even seen yet, but it feels like people are trying to write such nuanced industry-related things and outside factors off and use their personal opinions/biases to explain away these box office mishaps, wrapping it up in neat simplistic bows...

I'm just concerned about what will happen with the studio from here on out, especially after 75 people - including veterans like Galyn Susman, Angus MacLane, and Steve Purcell - were laid off.

"Make better movies, then!" Okay, how subjective, it's not like the studio's people are all sitting there not putting in effort and calling it a day. Okay? These movies take years and years to plan out, make, remake, and finish. Like Goldman said, it's all a guess each time out. A gamble. When these people are making these movies, they're making decisions that they think are the right decisions at the right time. ELEMENTAL, by all accounts, went into development around 2016-ish. Around the time director Peter Sohn had finished THE GOOD DINOSAUR... How would the crew, and the studio as a whole, had known what the world would like in 2023? What audiences' ever-changing tastes would be? What the zeitgeist would be?

And again... "Make better movies"? MARIO might've pulled in $1.3b worldwide and became one of the highest-grossing animated movies of all-time, but the critical reception for it wasn't great. Mostly mixed to negative, not as good as this movie. Or TURNING RED, LUCA, SOUL, ONWARD, even LIGHTYEAR! And even all the recent WDAS movies, including big box office flop STRANGE WORLD.

Again, it's as simple - and boring - as "They made a movie... People didn't show up."

So... What do I think happens next?

Pixar hasn't had a genuine financial success in theaters since TOY STORY 4 all the way back in 2019. ONWARD got cut off by the pandemic, SOUL, LUCA, and TURNING RED all went straight to Disney+ in most parts of the world. LIGHTYEAR lost money, this might, too... How much did ELIO cost? Why should that film be expected to make the amount of money usually reserved for a massive superhero movie? INSIDE OUT 2 is all but a lock for a huge gross... A sequel, no less.

I would hate to see Pete Docter get removed as CCO (and who the hell would they replace him with anyways? The rest of the "Brain Trust" is either no longer working there or off doing other things), but I fear that could be a very real possibility. I know most of the internet declares Docter's Pixar to be some kind of failure, but I for one like his Pixar. Even if I didn't like the films coming out now, the place is a lot more director-driven than before, and more experimental. John Lasseter would've probably fired Enrico Casarosa, Domee Shi, and Angus MacLane off of all of their films... Or would've blockaded them every step of the way whenever they tried to make something in their respective films interesting. So yeah, I don't feel Docter is the problem here... it's really all down to how Disney handled the release of many of the recent Pixar films, how much the studio spends on their films, and the marketing just not enticing audiences to go see the films.

That's beyond Docter's control, and he even partially touched upon this in a recent interview... And for what it's worth, again... Audiences... The ones who actually saw the movie already... seem to be liking ELEMENTAL. "A" CinemaScore is pretty good. SPIDER-VERSE Deux and MARIO had an "A" CinemaScore as well. If this movie has excellent legs, it'll show that people - not internet-dwelling weirdos who seem to be the authority on all things animation - actually DID like the film... It just cost too much to make. Like a modern-day CLEOPATRA or SLEEPING BEAUTY. A movie that quite a few audiences went to, but it wasn't enough to cover the gargantuan costs to make it...

Like, if ELEMENTAL cost around BAD GUYS/PUSS IN BOOTS 2/DC SUPER-PETS/SPIDER-VERSE numbers... You know, around $80-90m in budget and NOT $200m+... this thing wouldn't be written off as a flop.

I'd imagine more sequels will happen, which was always a given, but maybe more so than ever before. INSIDE OUT 2 and TOY STORY 5, they weren't going to stop there, that was a given... Docter did say in that same interview that the originals in Pixar's library are fair game for sequels. And no smart exec walks away from movies that make $1b at the box office... Unless they're something like, say, TITANIC.

Maybe there will be stricter mandates put on Pixar films to "make them more appealing to audiences"... That's very possible, as it sometimes happens at these studios. Micromanaging, ya know? Trying to create that next big hit the mechanical way, by overthinking it... Instead of just making something and seeing how it all goes. How it does at the box office is often beyond a filmmakers' control anyways... Again, what the world will look like 4 years after you've started your endeavor...

Or maybe nothing happens, Pixar has special privileges, and keeps making what they make...

To me, the smartest thing would be to either... Step back and realize how silly box office has become, that it's absurd to expect a smash hit out of something in a crowded marketplace in just 2-4 months, hinging an entire studio's future on that... Or lower the budgets of these movies...

Anyways, sorry to rant, but it's all just absurd to me... Yes, the movie may indeed lose money, but it's not clear-cut.

[nateascendingskies]

The Personal Experiences of Pixar and Elemental

Leaving a showing of the crew at Pixar and director Peter Sohn's latest film, Elemental, I was struck by how personal and certifiably unique the film was - no, not necessarily because of its story or even its characters (though the latter felt like a great inverse and even echo of the similar Zootopia), but because of how its themes of the immigrant experience, the duties and expectations of familial traditions, and even the feeling of multicultural love were conveyed or explored.

Much like how I have felt and seen myself in classic Disney and DreamWorks characters like Nick Wilde, WALL-E, and Hiccup Haddock, Ember and Wade spoke to me in ways I wasn't necessarily expecting or even considering walking into the theater some 2 hours earlier.

Like the literal flaming young woman that is Ember, I find myself in an interesting position in my life. While I have not necessarily found myself in the burden of following in family footsteps, I related very much to the idea of having to control one's temper in stressful situations. In the retail environment I have found myself in, I too have been overwhelmed by the constant hustle, bustle and flow of customers - all with their own wacky, weird and wild requests I probably wouldn't have even considered had I not stepped foot in a Home Depot for 8 hours every day. Oftentimes, I need a softer, creative, and often free-spirited side to awaken and comfort me when things get rough or tough sometimes. And, of course, that's where someone like a Wade comes in.

Like Wade, I do find myself easily crying at the most emotional of things - I do happily and readily admit. Yet, like the big ol' blob of water he is, I also find myself finding some clever solutions to problems I never once considered encountering. In addition, I do have a family and a creative community around me who have gone their own wacky and unusual ways, pursuing their own computer science or radiological techniques while I still try to find my own way around the world - living the dream as a writer for a film or motorsport publication or an archivist for a studio like Pixar, perhaps (funny, ain't it?).

Even then, it wasn't just the personal connections that I found in myself that drew me in. For the longest time, I had been longing for a Pixar film that felt like a true back to basics approach - the product of one voice guiding a similar creative team of thousands. Much like 2021's Luca, this was it - but on a big screen scale I didn't even think I wanted to see again. It felt refreshingly simple, pared back, even - which let the visuals carry the story even more than usual.

I didn't need any dialogue about butterflies, car windshields, code violations, blunt yet hard hitting racial allegories, games about making others cry, or depressed clouds trying to play visually trippy basketball equivalents (trust me, it all makes sense when you see the film) to keep me invested - all it took was a kaleidoscopic trip through a flooded old train station to find a flower that could survive in water and fire, some literal crowd waves at a sports stadium, and a literal familial flame to guide me through this weird world of living elements that Sohn and his team had created, showing more than saying what he had seen as a member of an immigrant family and perhaps even as a smitten romantic himself. Besides, as someone who spent a year in Oregon watching some of the best glassblowers in the world practice their craft, I couldn't help but smile watching that all come into play as a gift that Ember realized she had.

If anything, the flaws and traditional story beats the film had only served to draw attention more to what made it work - as a romantic comedy about literal opposites attracting, an unexpected tonal blender of comedy, drama and romance, and as a beautiful reflection of never really giving up on the dreams you discover and find as your life changes. I mean, if you told me I'd find a home at a Home Depot as a job I loved 5 or 10 years ago, I'd call you nuts! If you told me I'd come out of a film as mismarketed as Elemental listening to its beautiful score from Thomas Newman and admiring it mere hours after seeing it in a way that even Across the Spider-Verse couldn't match, I'd call you insane! And, perhaps most importantly of all, if you told me that I'd have a renewed hope, admiration and appreciation for the team at Pixar after how critical I was about their position in my last post - well, then you'd probably call me an unbelievable hypocrite with something stuck in my head. But that's just the way things work - and I couldn't be any happier to be wrong.

Plus, it made me more determined than ever to chase my own animated dreams. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna see what I should doodle next…

[nateascendingskies]

I want Miles to invite a bunch of spider people to one of his mom’s cookouts but he’s SO bad at trying to explain to his mom why all these people in increasingly weird Spider-Man outfits are here.

Rio: oh who are your friends honey? ^^

Miles: they’re uh. They’re the. The school Spider-Man club

Miguel somewhere in the back, mouth full of food: we’re the WHAT

[nateascendingskies]

SPIDER-VERSE On The Brain

Massive SPIDER-VERSE *spoilers* are ahead... Do not read on if you haven't seen the movie...

It's been four days since I checked out SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE in theaters... And I'm still processing such a rich layer cake of a movie with all this stuff going on, just the sheer ambition of it... And... This story isn't even over, that's the mind-blowing part...

This movie did have pretty strong arcs for Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, and even Peter B. Parker to some extent, in addition to introducing a major conflict and a soon-to-be-primary antagonist in Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099... While a larger threat, The Spot, still looms, and there's even a closer to home threat for Miles himself as the picture wraps up...

There's so much more to go, assuming that BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE is also going to be a pretty long movie. That this movie was, in the planning stages, getting to be so big that they had to break it up into two parts? Who knows what we're in for...

I feel a lot of ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE's narrative brilliance is within its yet to be resolved conflict...

Canon...

Back in 2018, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE came onto the scene with its dynamic new way of rendering CGI imagery in an animated feature, while throwing in eye-candy flourishes and other dynamic art styles to really make that movie pop amongst other mainstream animated movies *and* the entire comic book movie sphere. In a neat sense, this groundbreaking new way to make an animated feature strengthened the inclusive and quite simple overall message of the story: ANYONE can be Spider-Man.

Now, if INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE said "anyone can be Spider-Man", ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE asks what that "anyone" must go through to be Spider-Man.

Can Spider-Man truly be anyone?

What is "canon"?

Miguel is adamant that every Spider, from man to woman to animal to insect, must experience some major tragedy in order to truly be a Spider-Something. A loss of a family member, close friend, or any kind of loved one... That's that about that, that's the nature of the "Spider-Verse", it is set in stone, no other way! Seems to contradict "Anyone can be Spider-Man", right? Apparently Miles can't have a relatively normal non-costumed life, someone he loves HAS to be axed... And that's the case with... How many Spiders? Over 280?

... which quite frankly sounds very controlling and lacking in imagination. And kinda dumb on paper. Miles knows that, even... It all relates back to what his mother and father want for him vs. his ambitions and desires.

"Nah, imma do my own thing"...

Such a liberating line, during such a literally and figuratively heavy moment in the film...

Between Miles' arc and Gwen's story, this autistic queer right here felt something quite resonant from all of this... I needed to see and hear these classic story tropes pulled off in such a great new way at a crucial time in my life...

Now, this works even beyond one's personal journey and how a film relates to someone: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE seems cleverly critical of contemporary superhero movie culture and most nerd-dom, from its most toxic swamps to its most boring offices. Adherence to "canon", shackling oneself to hard-set rules that mustn't be deviated from. It's especially potent coming from a movie series where the main Spider-Man is a black/Puerto Rican teenager, and his pals include a trans Spider-Woman, an older adult Peter Parker who has a child, and many more.

The insistence that Spider-Man has to be this one thing, i.e. Miguel running a Spider-Society that makes sure all Spider-People have that very "Uncle Ben" tragedy happen to them, with NO ANOMALIES... Miles' whole existence as Spider-Man, of course, is revealed to be said anomaly... In that a spider from another universe, Earth-42, got to his, Earth-1610, and bit him... Messing everything up... He's even blamed for Earth-1610 Peter Parker's death, to add insult to injury!

Or DID he mess things up?

Maybe "canon" is a bunch of bullshit.

The very kind of thing that shackles whole characters and franchises down, instead of letting those who come to the sandbox play with the toys THEIR way. INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE came to CG animation and didn't do the Pixar style, didn't do what most other mainstream animated movies were doing, didn't follow the accepted "standard" or "canon"... A friend of mine, in his review of ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, noted something very interesting: This also ties into how a lot of very online animation fans insist that every new movie now must be like SPIDER-VERSE. And like PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH. And like any other animated movie that they consider "top tier" or "based" or "cinema". Including a relatively-panned Mario movie. Screw off if you're Pixar making "mid" movies like TURNING RED and ELEMENTAL, or Disney Animation making equally "mid" movies like ENCANTO or RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON... "Canon" in feature animation, apparently, is now movies that must be like SPIDER-VERSE or PUSS IN BOOTS or whatever. Animated movie "requirements". You have to have scary dark villains, you have to have the most amazing unseen animation style ever, you have to do it all THIS WAY...

This whole "canon" nonsense also ties into superhero movies in general, as well. Even comics, like a lot of runs of Spider-Man are apparently doing... especially in a time of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC movie-verse being clamped down by such hard continuity... That has only morphed into a bigger cluster-cuss, post-SPIDER-VERSE.

I remember when watching the LOKI Disney+ series, thinking... This series is trying to explain in FIVE 40-MINUTE EPISODES something INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE effortlessly explained in less than 5 MINUTES... Then you bring in the Doctor Strange follow-ups, all this stuff about "incursions". Incursions this, Sacred Timelines that... Why is this so goddamn convoluted and wracked head-to-toe with all these RULES? Other multiverse stories don't do this, and Marvel's characters span DECADES... And a big criticism of the recent MCU output is that the continuity, the canon... Doesn't allow for the characters to have their own unique stories, told by filmmakers with individual unique visions working within reasonable guidelines. I feel these two movies, along with EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, show what a multiverse story can still be in this day and age.

And by using Miguel's rule, ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE goes right for the jugular bearing its spider-fangs.

Anyone can be Spider-Man, Spider-Man can have ANY life.

May I also add? The Spot... He's not in the movie much, but his arc... Tying this back to the worst of toxic nerd culture. The Spot is shook by being called some villain of the week and everything else that happened to him (like getting conked by the very bagel from the first movie), and instead of using his weird abilities for something good, he's going to go great lengths to prove that he is not some villain of the week. To become a larger scale threat... And for what? To fill a literal hole in himself? What validity and happiness will this bring him? I see something similar in some aspects of nerd culture, where they take being wronged (I'll humorously compare this to being shoved into lockers, circa 1988) at some point in their life, and turning it into their literal villain origin story... Growing up to be the jocks that bullied them, growing up to be the ones making life harder for other people in the community... The very people complaining about how "w0ke" this movie is for having "forced diversity", the very people who also lob that stolen word at harmless things like the LITTLE MERMAID remake and virtually anything "W0ke Disney" puts out these days, the very people who had literal shit-fits over MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, every new STAR WARS movie, GHOSTBUSTERS 2016, SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER, new MUPPET BABIES, any new STAR TREK media, the list goes on and on... That's The Spot. Funny how some superhero movies, even animated superhero movies, have these villains who feel like they've been wronged and feel like they're entitled to something...

Just more texture to this ludicrously-textured layer cake movie... Yeah, CAKE itself is a big part of the movie, too. Look at that-

All this, amidst a backdrop of hundreds of Spider-People, a surrealistic smorgasbord of visual styles and animation techniques (Spider-Punk alone, YOWZA YOWZA YOWZA!), a multiverse-spanning story, and at the end... All of it tying back to who Miles Morales wants to be. How he wants to tell HIS story... When he defies Miguel on the train, it's a monumental moment...

And the story isn't even over yet... This movie is something special.

[nateascendingskies]

Two Pixar veterans, Angus MacLane and Galyn Susman, are out at the Emeryville studio following layoffs that axed 73 other employees...

MacLane and Susman, most recently, directed and produced last year's LIGHTYEAR, respectively.

Susman's tenure goes way back, all the way back to the first TOY STORY. She is the very woman who, while working at home on maternity leave, kept a backup of *a version* of TOY STORY 2 after the files for the film at the studio had all accidentally gotten deleted. I say *a version* specifically, because this was for the TOY STORY 2 that we never saw. The one that was being developed as a direct-to-video sequel and done by a B-team, that Pixar heads ended up throwing out - deliberately - less than a year before the film's projected fall 1999 release. Even then... Talk about saving the day! In a studio that was, for many years, predominantly a "boys club", she was a prominent woman there and managed to have a long career within those walls: All four TOY STORY movies, MONSTERS INC., FINDING NEMO, RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, etc., she had a hand in.

And now she's no longer there...

MacLane, who helped make TOY STORY 2's epic Lightyear video game opening sequence, who went on to direct TOY STORY OF TERROR!, co-direct FINDING DORY, and direct LIGHTYEAR... Among many other endeavors... Now also gone...

Whatever the reasoning is for these layoffs, they're unfounded. But this is what happens in capitalism-land... A studio faces hardships, or is about to face hardships, they or their parent company land the hammer... And often times, it's the filmmakers and talents and creatives that get hit the hardest.

If you ask me, Susman and MacLane are not at all to blame for the failures of the people on top. Unless they were toxic people to work with for so very long, there - to me - is no good reason to axe them like this. No matter who ordered it, whether it was Bob Iger or Pete Docter. LIGHTYEAR might not have been considered a good movie by many, but it was no less a labor of love than the other movies made at Pixar. MacLane, Susman, the crew, give it their all and they all felt during its 5-year journey from idea to finished picture that they had something going. That they made the right choices, but the late screenwriter William Goldman will always be right about this kind of thing: In that, no one knows anything when a movie is being made, and if a picture hits it big at the box office, it was luck. A good guess. June 2022 was not the right time for LIGHTYEAR, and the world is an ever-changing place... How could the film crew behind LIGHTYEAR have known what 2022 was going to look like when beginning production on that movie circa 2018-2019? It failed to make much of a stir at the box office...The first two months of its existence... Its infancy, never mind that the movie will exist forever and that a movie's life merely begins at its original theatrical release. Nope, its status is defined by existing for two months in a building with big screens. Box office is often fun to predict and watch, but the deification of it... Especially post-COVID-outbreak, is all utterly silly and not really conducive to moviemaking.

This makes me worry about other directors and creatives at Pixar. Peter Sohn, whose new film ELEMENTAL is out in less than two weeks, made his feature directorial debut with THE GOOD DINOSAUR... Which was Pixar's first money-loser, and yet, he locked another picture. I fear, if ELEMENTAL doesn't do well for whatever reason, his long and impactful career at Pixar might be on ice as well... Which is why I don't get why many so-called animation and film lovers online, armchair experts they are, seem so gleeful about its possible floppage, much as they were with LIGHTYEAR last year. In a very condescending "that'll teach'em!" manner...

I don't root for animated movies I dislike to fail, because it's a loss for a team that worked hard for years on, and honestly, we kind of all lose when this kind of thing happens. It hurts employees more than it forces a studio to make the kinds of movies you specifically want to see. Hell, LIGHTYEAR (and ELEMENTAL, knock on wood) flopping could have an adverse affect and make Pixar greenlight nothing but franchise movies and a slew of movies that are required to be something people don't like. They could very well turn around and say "let's make movies for 3-year-olds for here on out, and compete with Cocomelon!" Okay maybe that's an exaggeration, but you catch my drift, right?

I think, ultimately, MacLane and Susman will be fine. Their experience speaks for itself, and other studios would be silly to not hire them, and I wish them well in the endeavors they pursue...

But, this is very saddening news no doubt. Much like director jail, this is obtuse punishment, not at all a reflection on the real meat of the problem: The ever-changing zeitgeist, how Disney themselves handled the release of the film in question, how management up above messed around, how much money was spent...

I know people online like to cut to the chase and say "Well, they should've made a better movie!" THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE made over $1.3b at the worldwide box office, but most of its critical reception has been mixed to negative, and many have called it a subpar movie. That's all subjective, and box office doesn't validate or invalidate a picture. In another universe, movies like INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE or COCO or PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH or ZOOTOPIA would've flopped hard. In another universe, the likes of LIGHTYEAR and GOOD DINOSAUR and STRANGE WORLD and TURBO and RISE OF THE GUARDIANS would've been blockbusters.

You see how silly this all is? Strip away the recognizable IP, pretend this is a world where the Mario franchise never happened: How would THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE had done at the box office? As an original weirdo-cutesy isekai adventure picture about two plumbers and a fantasy world with little mushroom guys and funny turtle bad guys? That could've been a massive flop. Heck, Mario itself literally exists because Nintendo couldn't get the license to adapt Popeye into an arcade game circa 1980, so Shigeru Miyamoto and crew chose a similar concept - a man who uses powerups, a woman to rescue, and a big brute bully - to make a marketable project. Because, what Nintendo games before DONKEY KONG do lots of people know? Is there any pop cultural footprint that RADAR SCOPE left? Or SHERIFF? I thought so... And little did they know what this simple concept-turned-game would metamorphose into some four years later...

No one knows what'll work, and in the world we live in? You gotta make an impression, or else. It's a brutal game, like these big works of art enter an arena and have to survival the initial brawl.