Next batch of Pixar films after the Monsters Inc. prequel

Also, achieving that one elusive goal will not instantly transform your life and your fundamental being.

moodles i think you summarized the themes of the movie very well, so ... was it truly muddled?????

moodled

In some way it's the opposite of the Randian message of "The Incredibles." Instead of "I am special and unique and that makes me better than others," it's a gentler (and imo more reasonable) "not everyone has to be special and unique and better than others to make life worth living."

moodles so otm

Muddled because it has to invent a whole elaborate and confusing cosmology and various wacky scenarios to get him to that point, and even then it's not really clear why.

Let me rephrase:

The movie spent so much time painting and reinforcing Joe's disillusionment with his life that his final acceptance rang hollow and came across more like "just kidding, we meant THIS all along" rather than feeling like an actual arc of growth or realization, particularly since he never saw 22's connection with his student (whom he dismissed with "oh she always does that" when 22 tried to describe the interaction), he mostly glossed over 22's growing enchantment with life on Earth, ignored all the auditors when they congratulated him on getting 22 to have a spark, mostly ignored 22's anguish at giving up their pass to be born, and seemingly had no idea, purpose, or drive left after not feeling a sea change in the wake of getting his dream gig until an old White dude spinning a sign told him "but hey, you're alive"

The more I think about this movie, the more I hate it actually.

hm ok! what felt forced and hollow to you went unnoticed by me

imo joe is inadvertently being a teacher to 22 throughout the movie but ends up learning more from 22 which is yet another stray theme they packed in

Muddled because it has to invent a whole elaborate and confusing cosmology and various wacky scenarios to get him to that point, and even then it's not really clear why.

I think this is what I meant by "loved the human parts, iffy on the rest"

i do think the afterlife bureaucracy doesn't really make a ton of sense but... this is also fine for me, it's just a theoretical construct lol (which the movie's self-consciousness of i found charming but others may find cheap, and i'd get that)

like i feel like in any version of this scenario there'd be a ton of 22s, they wouldn't be a special case

The afterlife bureaucracy was the best part of the movie, mostly because it wasn't the part where they had Tina Fey playing a Black man.

Admittedly, I would likely feel differently about a lot of this movie had we not just lived through 2020 and an armed insurrection at the Capitol largely predicated on White people's fear of being supplanted by non-White people

i def agree that was a choice that could've been avoided xp

and it's not a point i'd disagree with anyone's dislike of this movie on

A stronger movie would have included some discrimination and forced a conversation between Joe and 22 where 22 incredulously asked why Joe was working so hard to get back to Earth in the face of all of this and Joe argues that experiencing the bad parts of life are worth it for how wonderful the good parts are and then both that choice would have been defensible AND the entire movie wouldn't have come across to me like a fable that people shouldn't try to explore and use their talents, particularly Black people.

afterlife bureaucracy

It's kind of interesting that this is such a reoccurring concept in movies. Defending Your Life, Beetlejuice, Matter of Life and Death, Here Comes Mr Jordan, Kore-eda's After Life ... I know there are plenty of more.

Dan, i dunno if you stuck around for the credits, but here's the star heavy and occasionally confusing council of "cultural music and faith based" advisors they worked with to presumably think about some of your concerns:
https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Soul_Credits#Cultural.2C_Music_.26_Faith_Based_Advisors

Its wonderful to me to see a movie that isn't like, uh, The Wrestler or Whiplash or A Star is Born or all these other terrible toxic artist myths, and is more realistic but still positive about being an artist. (Though I DO still like The Wrestler and Black Swan.)

Admittedly, I would likely feel differently about a lot of this movie had we not just lived through 2020 and an armed insurrection at the Capitol largely predicated on White people's fear of being supplanted by non-White people

moodles i think you summarized the themes of the movie very well, so ... was it truly muddled?????

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, January 13, 2021 11:06 AM (one hour ago)

In some way it's the opposite of the Randian message of "The Incredibles." Instead of "I am special and unique and that makes me better than others," it's a gentler (and imo more reasonable) "not everyone has to be special and unique and better than others to make life worth living."

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 13, 2021 11:09 AM (one hour ago)

some interesting thoughts about why Soul (and Coco, which I didn't know!) did well in China
https://musingsonmouse.substack.com/p/movie-equations-souls-win-in-china

another reason?

Soul was one of the most unexpectedly Buddhist films I'd seen in a long time.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Saturday, December 26, 2020 11:15 PM (three weeks ago)

Coco is very Mexican (I mentioned on here it's probably the most Mexican movie I've ever seen) but the way it treats the afterlife in a very non-JudeoChristian manner could be another reason why Coco resonated more in China perhaps.

This has been on Netflix for a while and we've put off watching it for reasons that now seem lame... but this was fantastic. Hands down the most unabashedly (capital M) Mexican film I've ever seen from Hollywood. Seems like this stands up to rewatching so we will watch it next time in Spanish (also on Netflix!) Def. echoes of Spirited Away & Mulan (note: Coco is 100000x better than Mulan, which desperately needs a reboot/reimagining). Loved the allegory of the border (replete with bureaucratic red-tape) between the living & the dead as well as the border between memory-conditional legacy/impermanence.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, September 30, 2019 11:08 AM (one year ago)

you can discover if you are correct by clicking the link!

(note: Coco is 100000x better than Mulan, which desperately needs a reboot/reimagining)

So, uh, how'd you think this one came out? (note: I only saw about the last ten minutes when my son watched it last month, thought what I saw was slightly better than what I'd expected, but not enough to make me want to start it over)

@forks: nothing in the article addressed any culture considerations.

whoops one brief aside:

focuses on cherishing family members, both alive and those who have passed.

What changed in-between the first and second week for Coco to soar that much? Word of mouth, good reviews on Chinese sites like Douban Movie, and a cultural connection to the film helped spur it into Pixar’s most successful title ever in China, and Disney’s second most successful animated film behind Zootopia ($236.1 million). The Qingming Festival is one of the most celebrated in China, and focuses on cherishing family members, both alive and those who have passed. Coco’s message, about that exact thing, likely resonated well with Chinese filmgoers, Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at USC’s US-China Institute, told The Wrap in 2017.

China may be thousands of miles away from Mexico, but the film’s embrace of Mexico’s Dia de Muertos and honoring the dead have resonated with Chinese audiences who have similar traditions, said Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at USC’s US-China Institute.

One of China’s biggest holidays is the Qingming (which roughly translates as “tomb-sweeping”) Festival. The Chinese mark it by celebrating family both living and dead: Loved ones travel together to graves to pray and offer food and drink.

“There have been films in the past that Chinese audiences have embraced for their message about family,” said Rosen. “What we’re seeing with ‘Coco’ is similar to what we saw with ‘Dangal,’ which was about the first women wrestlers to compete for India and their father who trained them. That film also had a strong message about putting family first and became a huge hit in China.”

watched this without really knowing what to expect beyond thinking it was going to be something about about jazz and the power of music starring jamie foxx. was definitely not prepared for it to be mostly about the complicated rules of new age afterlife with the black character on the poster voiced by tina fey and jamie foxx voicing a wacky cat sidekick, with music by beloved jazz duo trent reznor and atticus ross

DJP heavily otm here, tbh im kind of shocked this movie isnt getting dragged like crazy for its tone deaf racial stuff (unless it is?)

Here's one review that talks about the issues with the movie:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/soul-feels-like-pixars-first-black-movie-made-with-whit-1845956107

Also here:

https://colorwebmag.com/2020/12/28/mo-reviews-soul-disney-pixar/

This one is less about the racial aspects and more about the message, which I agree mostly settles on "why bother having dreams":

https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/soul

with music by beloved jazz duo trent reznor and atticus ross

Doing their ambient thing, but Jon Batiste handling all the jazz.

I thought some of the comments on the gizmodo post provided good food for thought.

yes, i noticed his subordinate credit of "jazz compositions by", right after the "original score" credit for reznor & ross. i guess his jazz compositions werent original enough to get equal credit

imagine hiring a jazz person handle the original score for a jazz movie without the steady hand of two white goth dudes to guide him

Yeah, I don't know how that works. But I guess they can be seen as "original songs" whereas the stuff Nine Inch Nails did was the main score?

Eh, that's semi-expected re: the difference between a movie's score and the songs/soundtrack used within it. Theme/incidental music vs actual full-on songs written for the movie happens all the time, see for example the Moana soundtrack where the first disc is all of Lin-Manuel Miranda's and Opetaia Foa'i's songs and the second disc is all of the connecting instrumental music Mark Mancina wrote.

Re: the comments on that Gizmodo piece, I am reading this one and wondering how high this person was before watching the movie:

Joe had to stop being Joe to appreciate his life because he only wanted his life back so he could return to not living it. The transformative nature of him being put into a cat doesn’t remove his blackness because the center of the movie is still a black man’s voice and a black face onscreen almost 100% of the film.

I view it as a dialogue between the interiority of Joe’s blackness in the form of a cat viewing the world disconnected from it and the physicalness and presence of his black body interacting with that world from the perspective of someone who has absolutely no experience with it. Joe gets to filter his own world through his own understanding without being trapped in the person-ness of reacting like Joe.

This paradoxically uplifts and emboldens the black voices AROUND him. When Joe leans back, black men and women in his community talk that much louder and we actually get a movie with MORE black experiences than just the one. We get the specific voiced perspectives of a single black mother, a black barber, a black woman who’s an expert at Jazz, all of these other people expressing themselves and explaining themselves as black people rather than just riding along with one man imposing himself on the narrative single-mindedly with nothing to play off of. If Joe KNEW what he had to know without learning, then he’d possibly fall into the black mentor trope instead of being the one who needs to grow and experience an arc.

And at that point Soul becomes a movie about BLACK COMMUNITY instead of simply middle-aged black maleness. The idea that the movie can only progress and grow by Joe learning from even more experienced and diverse black voices than his own is something I found really precious and valuable as a black audience member.

And I think one thing missed in a lot of reviews is what 22's role actually is. She’s not just an obnoxious kid who doesn’t like to learn even though she has the smartest people. She’s specifically a kid stuck in the education system that inner-city children are most susceptible to — rote learning and recitation with no experience or exposure. The experiencing and participating is something schools are paring down and throwing away.

It’s not subtle that Joe is specifically a music teacher at a time when schools in his neighborhood are likely experiencing cuts to music classes and extra-curriculars. He’s a man with a huge opportunity who doesn’t realize how much he contributes to that world and how hard these kids are struggling and how much they need him. And Joe is also a black music teacher trying to explain why music is good to someone who can only THINK about music but can’t actually feel music like a human being through real experience.

This felt really rewarding in a way. It’s probably the first Pixar movie in a long time I felt actually GOT its material and knew what it was trying to say. And it did it patiently and thoughtfully in a way I really enjoyed.

This would have been a fantastic reading of the movie had Joe the Cat actually spent like one iota of time listening to and learning from his black community. All of the lessons this person is ascribing to his growth were given to 22; it's explicitly how they developed their spark.

i dunno, that comment seems on point to me! Joe (slowly) figures it out by the end

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/pixars-troubled-soul

(copy the URL and paste this to the end of it if you want to annoy sic: ?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned&fbclid=IwAR0ondKr-iZh840L7Z--kNoqfvJGw2ZTlrPz5sJzJrMxH6uBlC9Lm44IqhA )

that’s fantastic

i enjoyed this movie a lot when i watched it but djp’s critiques and others’ (and now this) have made me look at this film differently

Looks lovely -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYfJxlgR2jw

The look of these things freaks me out now. I thought soul looked almost like a real life new york with 3d cartoon characters walking around in it.

Luca is visually lovely, but slight, and a bit of a cheat: it sets up a queer metaphor that it is not quite willing to go all in on. Still, it is inspiring some great review titles; I can't decide if I prefer Calimari By Your Name (AO Scott) or Call Me By Your Nemo (someone on letterboxd).

Only just caught up with Onward which was better than I was expecting. Not top tier but solid, and did get the waterworks going a bit.

Luca felt like it was on Onward's level, but with a much more visually appealing setting

ums otm, that's about where I'd land. quality wise they felt pretty similar, but the visual charm of Luca pushed it over the edge.