Inside Out

The filmmakers of Inside Out created a brilliant story that says a lot about embracing our bad experiences along with the good versions, accepting change, and the dangers of repressed emotions (especially our “negative” feelings).

Inside Out proves a thoughtful movie that performs its every turn with the precision of a BMW.

The movie stars a young girl named Riley and the personifications of her five core emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger (casting Lewis Black as Anger sold me).

Fortunately, the writer’s didn’t base this movie on me; otherwise those five emotions would’ve been Horny, Horny, Horny, Hungry, and Still Horny (kids don’t read movie reviews, right?).

Riley’s a likeable kid whose world get turned upside down when her parents move her to San Francisco.

She ought to feel a mixture of emotional discomforts about her new home and school and the loss of her old friends, but her parents tell her how proud they feel of her positive attitude, so she smiles and represses her negative feelings.

In Riley’s head, Joy works hard to keep Riley happy. Joy censors all “bad” emotions that her coworkers (the other aforementioned emotions), especially Sadness—who Joy wouldn’t allow to touch Riley’s memories (represented as color-coded spheres).

Due to an accident, Joy and Sadness get booted out of the control center of Riley’s head and discover themselves lost in the labyrinth of her long-term memories.

This represents Riley’s inability to acknowledge her sadness or experience real joy, which leaves her filled with nothing but a confused mess of misguided fear, disgust, and anger.

Joy and Sadness must find their way back home to the control center of Riley’s mind, but, to accomplish that, they must cross one of several bridges from several islands.

I’ll get to those islands in a moment, but first I want to mention, on that last note, that bridges play an important role in this movie (as bridges often do).

I believe that the writers chose to move Riley to San Francisco to move her over the Golden Gate Bridge as a representation of her crossing into her new life.

To illustrate the point that she feels less than thrilled with her family’s move, she observes that the bridge isn’t actually made of gold.

Riley decides, towards the end of the movie, to run away from home, and she nearly crosses that same bridge again, taking her away from her family.

Back to those islands in Riley’s head . . .

Each island represents a foundation of memories that anchor Riley’s personality. While she fails to process her depression, allows her other negative emotions to take control, she behaves in ways that prove unlike her, and thus these islands crumble and take with them the bridges that Joy and Sadness require to return to their command center and restore Riley to normal.

Inside Out knows how to press its audience’s emotional buttons, and it knows when it’s pressed hard enough and needs to break out some comic relief. Many of the jokes seem, at first, merely clever, but they each provide a certain amount of payoff before the final credits roll.

I know that 2015 has a long way to go, but I safely predict that the winner for this year’s best-animated feature already arrived.

If I had to list a grievance, it wouldn’t regard Inside Out so much as the animated short that precedes it. Lava, which features a musical volcano, comes across as tone deaf.

I couldn’t decide if I ought to feel sad, amused, or a combination. The entire short felt longwinded and confused with itself—although I do see how that might accidentally foreshadow Riley's predicament.

Inside Out reminds me of an early episode of The Simpsons when Lisa felt depressed, and not even the most decorated Care Bear could cheer her up . . . until her mother grants her permission to feel sad if that’s what she needs.

Long story short, don’t miss this movie . . . but you can take an extra few minutes to grab some popcorn. You won’t miss the volcano short.

Thanks for reading.

You can find my novel series (fantasy based on Japanese mythology) at: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Darkwana&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3ADarkwana

Movie reviews at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com

A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.

An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Tips to improve your fiction at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

Tomorrowland

Tomorrowland seems, at first glance, to lack a proper hero’s journey, until I realized that all three of its main characters (Walker, Newton, and Athena—and, yes, those names matter, as does that of our antagonist, Nix) serve as the same character.

No, I didn’t just spoil a major plot twist for you. These characters only serve as the same person metaphorically.

We meet, at Tomorrowland’s start, childhood Walker: a boy filled with wonder, curiosity, courage, and optimism. He ducks under signs that say, “do not cross.”

He falls in love with young Athena, who represents all his best qualities. Athena leads him to another dimension, where Earth’s brightest and most creative people built a city called Tomorrowland.

Athena reveals to Walker that she exists as a robot.  Walker afterwards feels betrayed by her and, by association, his better merits.

This mirrors our own sense of betrayal when we advance from early childhood to our teenage years and start to believe that these qualities exist only to indulge silly fantasies, to blind us from the “real world.”

We feel foolish for our childish beliefs against the “impossible,” and grow angered by our former optimism while we travel that awkward path between child and adult.

Walker eventually invents a device that allows people to see the future. He witnesses the Earth’s destruction, instigated by pretty much everything (global warming, obesity, poverty, etc.) with such synchronization that he sets a countdown to the exact second that everything goes apocalyptic.

He might as well have named his invention “Cable News.”

The plot crumbles here.

Nix serves as . . . the leader of Tomorrowland . . . I . . . think (maybe I missed that explanation)? He uses the future-seeing device to beam warnings into every Earthlings’ mind, to push her or him into action against their demises.

However, humanity embraces the easy mindset of complaining about the world without the slightest action to save it.

Nix consequently banishes Walker and Athena to Earth—even though that makes zero sense. Nix fails to tell them about the whole we-beamed-a-warning-to-Earth-but-they-just-shrugged thing.

The movie shows us one image of Walker at this age. He marches, his back turned against Tomorrowland, into a transporter that will return him to Earth.

About as subtle as an atomic bomb, but I liked it.

Just as we saw young Walker filled with wonder, we see young Newton the same way.

We afterwards fast forward to her as a teenager. She seems desperate to improve the world, yet pessimistic adults, who preach doom without a single solution, surround and suppress her efforts.

I, based on the extended preview I witnessed before I saw this movie, expected Tomorrowland to offer me yet another helpless, passive, female protagonist who weeps while a male character leads her through her journey.

You know, the sort of character involved in the story merely because she’s “special,” and it’s “her destiny.”

Newton proved no such character. She remains active, and she enjoys the sorts of activities (such as engineering) that Hollywood rarely equips upon a female character without sounding somewhat sarcastic about it.

Yeah, Athena involves Newton in the story because Newton’s “special,” but since Newton represents her generation as a whole, and the movie serves as a call to arms for that generation, I don’t mind.

Newton ignores signs that say such warnings as “No Trespassing,” much in the way that young Walker ducked under signs that said, “Do not cross.”

Newton discovers the existence of Tomorrowland and that Athena expects her to save Earth.

Then killer robots chase Newton around (a lot of robots in movies this year). These robots serve no purpose beyond, “Hey, look! Robots!” The movie never explains why they chase Newton, who sent them, or . . . anything, really.

I suppose Nix sent them, but only because he serves as our bad guy. Honestly, though, he holds no reason to want to hurt Newton, and he passes up plenty of opportunities to do so.

I can’t even understand why Nix becomes the bad guy. He just does. I get what he represents and how that attitude stands in direct opposition of Newton’s goal (to save Earth), but this only works metaphorically. None of this makes sense from a literalist’s standpoint.

Newton’s quest leads her to Athena, who drives her to New York, drops her off, while she sleeps, on Walker’s front lawn, and drives away. She returns later with no explanation of where she went or why.

Adult Walker lives as a symbol of cynicism and paranoia. Newton argues with him the way a person might argue with her- or himself about adult realism versus childish optimism.

We see, at one point, all three of these characters (character) while they sit in a truck. Young, anything’s-possible Athena behind the wheel; old, cynical Walker; and teenage, about-to-become-her-true-adult-self Newton squeezed between them.

The three of them (after a few battles with the inexplicable robots) return to Tomorrowland, where Walker explains to Nix that Newton can defeat Earth’s march to doomsday via her optimism.

Nix’s responses include an attempt to murder them for no reason.

Again, I comprehend that these characters represent emotions and ideologies that battle in our heads and hearts—but they also represent characters. They shouldn’t perform actions for no reason. This isn’t Phantom Menace.

On that note: Disney uses every opportunity in this movie to remind its audience that a new Star Wars movie will soon arrive and we should all feel very excited about that (which we do).

I liked Tomorrowland despite its confused, convoluted plot. It serves as a prep rally to dream big again, to risk failure, and to hope.

I remember when Homer Simpson said, “America’s the country that stuck a flag in the moon and said, ‘Now we stop trying.’”

The annihilation of a NASA launch pad serves as one of the first things that Tomorrowland shows its audience. Newton’s journey begins in Florida for that very reason (and to remind us that we should visit a Disney theme park).

NASA used to launch unthinkable missions that defied the impossible from Florida. Now, people move to Florida because they’ve grown old. They basically go there to die.

Once a disgusting swamp filled with bravery, curiosity, and hope. Now a disgusting swamp filled with gloom and surrender. That’s Florida.

Where did Newton’s journey first take her? Texas, out west to bravely explore a new frontier, to search for moreness.

Where did Newton discover Walker? New York—filled with people who pride themselves on cynicism as if it serves as a badge of practicality and adulthood (Relax. I didn’t say all New Yorkers think that way).

Tomorrowland stands on a soapbox and screams its message with zero subtlety, but I like that message enough to like the movie, gapping plot holes and all.

Thanks for reading.

I apologize for the lack of posts over the last few weeks. Army reserve drills, my next novel, and the creation of my card game based upon my novels swallowed a lot of time. I'll try my best to post frequently despite these projects.

Movie reviews at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com

A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.

An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Tips to improve your fiction at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road reminds me of a pretty date with nothing of interest to say.

While Fury tries to offer a philosophy and political statement, both fail to penetrate even skin deep.

Disclaimer: I should, before we continue, confess that I never watched any of the previous Mad Max movies and know next to nothing about them.

Fury stars Tom Hardy as Max because Mel Gibson, several years ago, drank too much, allowed someone to record him while he said something anti-Semitic, and now everyone feels sort of uncomfortable about him.

The movie takes place in a desert-covered version of the world where oil has become so scarce that everyone drives around in giant, armored, gas-guzzling vehicles designed for gang warfare because . . . um . . . just go with it.

One such gang (tens of thousands of members strong) kidnaps Max moments before all five (give or take) of their women decide to escape and seek out the “green place” ruled by women.

Max also escapes and reluctantly assists these runaways while their former gang pursues them. The gang’s leader claimed all these women as his wives, and so he launches a thousand armored, gas-guzzling war machines to capture them.

Kind of reminds you of the Iliad, huh?

I’ll start with the good news.

Fury proves stunningly gorgeous. It never lacks for action, and the cinematography blows my mind. I constantly ponder just how the director shot certain scenes.

Now, the bad news.

Other than Furiosa, who drives the bad guy’s former wives towards the “green place,” these characters feel flatter than Nebraska.

Max, the supposed main character, whose name appears in the movie’s title, holds no stake in anything and can walk away at nearly any point. He tries to, bless his heart, but circumstances force him to play along . . . at first.

Max soon regains the option to walk, but he theoretically went through some sort of character arc when I blinked and now cares about the safety of Furiosa and her insipid sidekicks.

Nothing causes this radical change in Max. His character arc results from nothing. Likewise, one of the gang members becomes a good guy, but for no satisfactory reason.

Max exists in this movie for no reason beyond its title. The writers could remove him from their story and (with very little rewriting) their audience would never know the difference.

The action scenes (about 99.9% of the movie) and the desert in which they occur feel monotonous. You could, because of this, scramble these scenes in any order and never notice.

Max’s world sits buried in sand, but couldn’t we pass through a scene in which a half-buried city exists, or perhaps a section of desert bombed into rooster tails of glass? Something to differentiate the scenes?

The movie tries to make a statement about a woman trapped in a man’s world filled with violent, contagious, irrational behavior.

This makes Max’s already unnecessary attendance problematic, as a violent man rescues the women, via violence, from the violence of men.

Fury provides a fun film. The action explodes literally, enough to justify the extra expense of 3D glasses and an Imax screen. It excels in all things visual, from costumes to cosmetics to setting (notice I made that singular).

I wish half as much creativity went into character and plot.

Fury seems a great movie to watch muted while you blast your favorite rock album and abuse your brain with something highly illegal.

Thanks for reading.

The third book in my series, Diaries of Darkwana, recently arrived on Kindle. You can find the entire series at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Darkwana&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3ADarkwana

Movie reviews at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com

A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.

An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Tips to improve your fiction at FictionFormula.blogspot.com