Ishal said:
Therumancer said:
Disney should be doing. Disney is supposed to be... I don't know... like audio-visual comfort food.
And ya know, funny thing about comfort food, it sometimes can give you diarrhea.
It's great to have the old stuff in out comfort zone to rely on, but sometimes things need to be shaken up, and I think this did that rather well. Not everything has a happy ending, and the closest people can and will betray you as Bob pointed out. It was a neat little subversion of tropes, but it's not the end of the world. I think you do a discredit to kids and teenagers by insinuating that they might not be able to handle it. True things aren't that great, but I hardly think something like this coming from a Disney movie is anything to be worried about. I also don't agree that this is anything to be likened to that Abortion of a film Man of Steel.
This is something that a lot of shows have been doing lately, and frankly, I think they need to. Change has to come in some form or another otherwise you get stagnation and rot. I'm NOT in any way a fan of the concept "Tough Love" or any stupid twisting of its meaning. I think we need what you mentioned, but I don't think it should remain dominant in the children's sphere of entertainment. I've heard the saying, "Nothing will destroy a happy child more than his first day of school." Now, that saying is a bit of stretch, but it does have application. A sheltered child finally getting thrown into the world by way of school is going to learn things. Sometimes things go to shit, sometimes you don't get what you want, sometimes things don't go as planned, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. The world is less idealic. And I think having a little taste of that in our kids entertainment as a cautionary tale isn't so bad, in fact it's good, and more importantly, its wise.
Heck, MLP even did this with the finale of its first season. All the 6 main ponies were so hyped for this Ball and they all had their dreams and ideas of what would happen when they finally got there. When it happened, every single one had a crappy time and many of their plans and desires backfired. It wasn't shit, but it certainly wasn't ideal and what they wanted. Learning to cope with something like that is healthy.
The thing is though that there are plenty of other sources that do exactly what Frozen did, and far better, without relying on existing tropes by the production company to make the central "deception" work on the audience. It's been like that for years. My point is that Disney's work represents what you compare those other works too, being the comfort zone other things are supposed to play around with, not to play around with themselves. Disney hasn't ever really been truly stagnant as it does what it does well, and has been able to make a bundle year after year pretty much without fail. "Frozen" seems to be the result of some greedy, cigar smoking exec, sitting there and looking at darker, youth oriented literature, and saying "you know, we'll make a bundle doing that, and when we do it we'll shock people and get even more attention because nobody will expect it from us". In the process entirely missing the entire point of their own product and what made them successful to begin with.
To be honest when I use "Superman" as an example, I'm not just talking about the most recent movie. I'm talking about all the attempts to do this to the character, starting with the whole "Death and Return of Superman" where he was supposed to come back as a more grimdark character even after getting his powers back (before that we had black clad superman with guns... I kid you not). It didn't work. Recently in the comics the most recent DC reboot has had Superman being a much more angst driven character as well (or they did) less of a paragon, and certainly not entirely for "Truth, Justice, and The American Way" which is the defining tagline for the character. The of course we had "Superman Returns" which was pretty much "let's make an angst ridden metrosexual superman who returns to earth and faces relationship issues with what's supposed to be his perfect true love, to show how not-so-super he is despite all the powers", then of course we had "Man Of Steel" which as you pointed out was kind of an abortion right from the trailers, instead of Superman being a respected icon that inspires everyone, let's have a superman coming out of hiding and dealing with a world that doesn't really trust or respect him, and get into his head over that as a central element of the movie. Superman more or less trying to prove himself to the world, as opposed to being an ideal for everyone else to aspire to.
Those changes largely happened because of the success of dark comic stories, the ones about fairly brutal heroes with emotional problems, angst, and bad home lives, who aren't loved for saving everyone, and certainly aren't the types of guys to finish a story by replacing a toppled American Flag on top of the capital building, or have cheering crowds happy to see them when they fly by to save the day, relieved by the mere sight of the hero. The thing is those characters work because of guys like Superman who show it the idealistic way and have it work, no strings attached. Those stories lose meaning without anything to act as a counterpoint to.
What's more stories like say "Irredeemable" and one version of "Supreme Power" (which was a reboot of Squadron Supreme, Hyperion being Marvel's version of Superman in an alternate earth) asked a lot of the questions these movies did. Indeed the whole point of "Irredeemable" is that their version of Superman, called The Plutonian, basically goes off his rocker due to everyone being scared of him and plotting behind his back because he's so powerful. He eventually pretty much gives them what they are afraid of. In "Supreme Power" Hyperion is pretty much mistrusted by the same government that he works for because of his power, and it covers a lot of the same material, although I don't believe he ever goes off the deep end (though I don't remember finishing that series, which for all I know could still be ongoing). Those stories work largely because of the default "Real Superman" and how he functions and the fact that it works for him, and how he remains iconic and more or less pure even when he runs into concepts like "Department K" or finds out that guys like Batman have contingency plans in place to potentially kick his butt. Indeed he meets evil versions of himself that have gone off the deep end, and comes away from it more or less unphased in the long run. The way how Superman shakes it all off, and still saves the day, remaining more or less untouched is pretty much the essence of the character and what makes him Superman.
When it comes to Disney, it's pretty much the "Superman" of youth entertainment. The other stuff by other companies which subvert it's tropes, the "Irredeemable" and "Supreme Power" equivilents in kids animation, are already out there. When the original does it, well it's not cool, because in part people can enjoy the weird spins on the format because they know the "real" version is out there still.
To be honest, if Disney wanted to make some bucks off the subversion of their own tropes as opposed to just letting everyone else do it, it should have used another label ad maintained distance from it. Disney has a few sub-companies just for that kind of thing already (I could be wrong, but I believe Miramax and Dimension are both associated with Disney for example). Much like how DC decided to use "Wildstorm" (which will be much missed) to play around with concepts like "What if The Justice League decided to try and rule a twisted version of earth under their own high principles using force, dictating terms to nations both big and small, and acting as global enforcers of their own declarations and policies", and "What if Superman and Batman were gay lovers?". "The Authority" (one of my favorite,
now sadly defunct, titles) was pretty much that in a nutshell. Had DC had The Justice League pretty much take over the USA directly people would have freaked out, ditto for having Superman and Batman get hitched (despite the fact that some people would probably cheer in the short term for political reasons), that's why all of these tropes were subverted under an entirely different label and in no way associated with the main continuity in any way for a very long time (and later when they brought Stormwatch into the main DC universe, or so I heard, they apparently sterilized almost the entire thing of pretty much everything Wildstorm-like with nuclear fire to keep away the taint).
At the end of the day we'll have to agree to disagree, at the end of the day Disney did it, and they did it under their own label. I don't think it was a good idea, but at the same time I don't think it's the end of the world as long as they don't make a habit out of it. Unlike Bob I do not think it's especially praiseworthy. Released under almost any other label (Disney owned or not) I wouldn't be saying this, I pretty much feel that like Superman, Disney's movies belong on a very specific pedestal, being perfect as they are, for what they are meant to do.
