What is it with you Hollywood? There’s just no in-between with you. Why are CG movies only ever definitely for children (any Pixar movie, any Disney CG movie) or definitely not (Beowulf, Sausage Party)? Antz was nice and in-between! It wasn’t exactly for children, but it wasn’t excessive and offensive either! Can’t we have more and better Antz?
Well, I suppose if you want to make a CG movie for adults/teenagers in America where most people think all cartoons and CG films are for children regardless of their rating, the movie had better be as obnoxious and obvious as possible. “Hey parents… GET YOUR ****ING KIDS OUT OF THE ROOM! WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH YOU!? Also, watch me! Take me seriously as a film for an older audience! Please I beg of you! Look at my adult content! Look how adult I am!”
It’s cool to see an adult-oriented CG movie outside of the action movie genre. Perhaps PG-13+ CG movies are finally evolving! I just don’t know if going from bad action movies to offensive comedies is an improvement.
After being amused, confused, and enraged by .hack//G.U. Trilogy, I decided to find a “Let’s Play” of the .hack//G.U. games to figure out what the hell the movie is supposed to be about. I watch a lot of movies based on video games I’ve never played, and usually, they contain enough information for me to review their effectiveness as a standalone story. In this case though, I didn’t feel right beating on a movie based on a three games that supposedly had a “crazy good story.” .hack//G.U. Trilogy isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it is the most frustrating to watch. It was badly paced; made little to no attempt to explain anything; painted the protagonist as a compulsive asshole and his love intrest as a needy, selfish, idiot; and left me wondering why anyone would think that the story was good. I felt I needed to at least attempt to understand it though. People like it for some reason, right? After finding that my hatred for .hack//G.U. Trilogy was rivaled only by my hatred of .hack//Roots, I went searching for Let’s Plays of the games. I’m through the first two and am pleasantly surprised to find that I like the story they tell much better. I still don’t like the movie (in fact, I think it’s even worse now), but at least I feel more justified in saying that.
Anyway, I found a very nice story walkthrough of the first two games that features all the cutscene in them as well as relevant transitions and gameplay between them. Best of all, there isn’t hours of leveling up and some guy talking over the top of everything about fan theories, lore, and other things that I don’t want to hear/want to find out for myself. Unfortunately, it appears that the uploader’s videos for the third game were flagged for copyright infringement. If I find a good story walkthrough for it out there, I’ll probably post that here as well.
It’s easy to find information about Oddworld and its creator Lorne Lanning. It’s more difficult, to the point of being comedic, to find information about Sherry McKenna. Most places on the Internet, including the Oddworld Wiki, describe her as only the co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants and the executive producer of the Oddworld games. If I learned anything from researching Kaena: The Prophecy though, it’s that executive producers are very important. This sent me off on a search for information about McKenna, who I suspect is a somewhat unsung hero of Oddworld. I found this interview with her on the Oddworld website recently. Among other topics, she discusses what she does as a producer to help people complete projects and her part in the beginnings of computer graphics.
Netflix has informed me of yet another CG movie, but I can’t figure out what it is. The trailer suggests it is a game judging by its ESRB-rating of T in the trailer above. IMDB claims that it is a mini-series with three episodes. Netflix simply shows it as an hour-long film. I guess I’ll just have to watch it to find out. 🙂
According to the box, Antz tells the story of one ant’s struggle to win the right to express himself and his individuality in a society of overwhelming conformity. By going against the grain, the protagonist Z ultimately saves the rest of his colony and leads a revolution.
A free-thinking individual can find happiness and save the world would seem to be Antz message. Z is different than everyone else. He dances differently than everyone else. He has the gall to impersonate a soldier even though it’s strictly forbidden. He survives a war while everyone else who conforms to the rules of society dies horribly. He kidnaps the princess and the worst thing that happens to him is he finds Insectopia while near everyone who goes after him for the good of the colony dies horribly. General Mandible who acts for the good of the hive mind dies horribly while Z who fights for the good of the individuals in that colony marries the princess and finds happiness.
But there was one thing about this theme that didn’t make sense. In one scene, Z and his companion Princess Bala meet two bees named Chip and Muffy. Out of the kindness of her heart, Muffy offers to find the ants something to eat… Then, she dies horribly, leaving her husband Chip to a life of depression and alcoholism. Why? Chip is against his wife’s act of charity and suggests that such an offering is unusual for a bee to do for an ant. She isn’t prescribing to the thoughts of some collective. Everyone else in the movie who dies horribly dies because they were mindlessly following orders or because they were fighting for a conformist society. Why does this strange and terrible scene exist at all?
This event reveals a deeper theme that runs through Antz: the virtue of selfishness.
Z is an incredibly selfish person even if he didn’t live a society that discouraged self-expression. The first thing we hear in the movie is Z, talking about himself. Sure, he’s in a therapy session, but other characters acknowledge his selfishness, suggesting that he’s like this all the time.
[“It’s not about you. It’s about us.”]
[“All you think about is yourself.” “Of course. Who else is going to think about me?”]
[“Think about all the things I’ve done for you.” “…I can’t think of any.”]
For most of the movie, Z is so self-absorbed that he’s even disdainful of everyone and everything else around him, even his so called friends.
[“What a bunch of losers. Mindless zombies capitulating to an oppressive system.”]
He acts on his own personal whims, feelings, and desires with little regard for the people around him. Near the beginning of the movie, Z wants to see Princess Bala, who he met at a bar and fell in love with when she secretly snuck away from the palace. He comes up with a plan to impersonate his friend Weaver even though this is extremely dangerous for Weaver. Z does get to see Princess Bala, but as soon as he’s found out, he uses Bala as a living shield and holds her hostage for his own safety. Z’s despicable behavior peaks after he escapes the anthill with Bala. When he finds out that she has no romantic feelings for him, he abandons her to the wilderness, showing absolutely no concern for her.
Bala is also a selfish person, being a spoiled princess. She’s clearly bored and even disgusted with her duties especially her engagement to General Mandible.
[“Look at the order… the precision.”]
[“Remind me why I’m marrying this guy.”]
[“What if I don’t like my place?”]
[“Labor? I’ll tell you about labor. Can you imagine giving birth every ten seconds for the rest of your life?”]
She even waves off an army of soldiers on a suicide mission with a yawn. Her selfishness also shows most once she’s outside the oppressive society of the anthill. She talks about herself as much as Z talks about himself and seems unaware of her own selfishness as she points out Z’s.
Their behavior changes after Z is trapped inside a water droplet. Bala rescues him presumably for the same reasons that she followed him as far as she did from the anthill. She needs him to survive in the scary world outside. When Z is freed, he thanks Bala and then returns to ignoring her… but then, he appeals to her selfishness to convince her to come with him to Insectopia and stop complaining.
[“Bala, look. Do you really want to be Mrs. Raving Lunatic? I promise if Insectopia doesn’t exist, I’ll take you back to the colony.”]
This appeal to selfishness occurs at several other points in the movie and each time results in the betterment of everyone involved. In order to convince Weaver to switch places with him, Z appeals to Weaver’s desire to meet sexy worker girls, which he does. When Bala and Z discover General Mandible’s plans to drown the rest of the colony, they decide to stop him instead of returning to Insectopia for personal reasons. Bala wants to stop Mandible’s plans to save her mother.
Z’s decision is based on his experience in the termite war that he unintentionally got involved in earlier in the movie. This event, particularly his experience with a soldier named Barbatus, who protected him and listened to him, deeply affected Z. He was devastated that Barbatus died having never made his own decisions. Z knows that the workers digging the tunnel towards the lake are mindlessly doing so on orders. He isn’t about to let a colony of ants die the same way that Barbatus did.
These two characters who began the movie as hateful and contemptuous have now developed complex and caring relationships with the people around them. They are both as selfish at the end of the movie as they are at the beginning. The movie ends with Z talking about himself. It was the free expression and acceptance of their selfishness that allowed them to develop into more humane people. Selfishness was suppressed or ignored by everyone, including Z and Bala, for most of the movie.
[“I’m tired… I’m hungry… Let’s go back to the colony.” “Blah, blah, blah. Take yourself back.”]
[“All you think about is yourself.”]
[“A hero? But I didn’t do anything.” “Good. I don’t like heroes.”]
[“I was born two seconds after you and ever since I’ve listened to you. What are you bitching about?”]
Under such conditions, neither of them could develop. When Bala rescued Z from the water droplet, both of them realized that they selfishly needed one another and began their transformation.
Under this lens, Antz depicts the theme of selfishness vs. selflessness. Z survives the war against the termites because he refused to fight a battle that earned him nothing. Barbatus died because he selflessly fought to protect Z and the colony. Everyone in the termite war died for the colony for nothing in return. The soldiers who followed Z died for the colony. General Mandible dies for attempting to create the perfect colony from soldiers, individuals who are so selfless that they would die for other people.
This is why Muffy died and why her husband Chip was likely doomed to a life of depression induced alcoholism. Muffy acted selflessly by offering food to ants who had nothing to offer her in return. Later, Chip helps Z by giving him a ride back to the anthill in memory of his cuddly-widdles. While Chip doesn’t die, this act of kindness occurred while he was in a state of drunken misery.
This may sound heartless… and at the same time familiar. Objectivism a philosophy described by Ayn Rand states that a man’s highest moral aim is the pursuit of his own happiness. A man should strive for a life of purpose and joy and should not sacrifice his desires for the sake of others. This is not to say that people can selfishly gain happiness by exploiting others. It is, in fact, in everyone’s own self-interest to treat others as individuals, trading value for value. Even married couples can’t expect each other to sacrifice their own happiness for their spouse’s sake. Yes, while it isn’t as obtuse as Atlas Shrugged, Antz portrays many of the qualities of this philosophy even down to its nuances.
Antz is much more than what was written on the box. Today, Antz is better remembered as that rip-off of A Bug’s Life that really should have been rated PG-13, but under its surface, it presents a fascinating, well-written, and entertaining political and philosophical commentary.
Talk at you next time!
[“Oh, Muffy, not another crusade…” “Chippy, we have a social obligation to the less fortunate.”]
I recently heard about the Skip Ender’s Game pledge. I’m all for supporting gay marriage and the LGBT community. My best friends and at least one of my family members are gay or transgendered. I personally haven’t figured out what I am, but I wouldn’t have anyone punish me for whatever I decide. But something didn’t sit right with me about this pledge.
It seems to me that this movement is boiling down thousands of hours of work into the hateful personal opinion of one man, an opinion that has nothing to do with Ender’s Game. Pledgers aren’t just hurting Orson Scott Card. They’re also hurting Harrison Ford, this kind-eyed child, and the hundreds of other people who made this movie possible. These people didn’t sign up to make a political film that would support anti-gay activism. They just wanted to make a movie based a good book… and money.
By making this campaign, Geeks Out suggests that Orson Scott Card is so horrible we shouldn’t give him any money even if it means hurting innocent people in the process. Anti-LGBT perspectives are very interesting to me. They give me an idea of who these people are, what they believe and why, and what they may know that I don’t. So I decided to look into Geeks Out’s claim that Card is a monster.
Card’s view was particularly interesting in that he didn’t rave about God and that it was based around the sad knowledge that humans exist only to breed. Basically, he believes that because everyone should want to pass on their genes and have their children pass on their genes, all of society should be dedicated to encouraging and supporting people to do just that. As much as they may want to, homosexual couples can’t have children of their own, so that behavior shouldn’t be encouraged for the survival of the human race.
This is a pretty legitimate argument in comparison to the usual argument, God hates gays, or the conspiracy theorists’ argument, the government is making us gay to reduce the population. Card lost me, however, when he started ranting about “The Left,” an unspecified group of people that he made sound as infamous as Alex Jones’ “Bilderberg Group.” It also didn’t help that he writes about how heterosexuals will be the ones discriminated against in the future… Oh my god…
I could spend hours debating Card’s arguments, but the point is that I don’t think this article, or any that I’ve read of his so far, establishes Orson Scott Card as evil. I don’t know if it even establishes him as a homophobe. I think he’s genuinely concerned about the survival of the human race and the welfare of children in a new age where behavior that doesn’t seem to be conducive to survival is acceptable. How will children develop with two parents of the same sex? Will they choose to have children of their own? How will humans and society evolve in the coming generations? Will we survive? These are kind of scary questions, ones that scare a lot of people and ones that I don’t think have been answered definitively. Card is only doing what he thinks is right, and that’s hardly worth punishing hundreds of unrelated people for.
If you think Card’s fears sound stupid, think of your own daily anxieties, what they’ve driven you to do, and how dumb they may sound to someone else. I like to think that humans aren’t stupid enough to die off without constant reminders of how to have productive sex… but I could be wrong.
So if you’re not going to see Ender’s Game in November, do it for a better reason than “because Orson Scott Card is anti-gay.” Don’t see it because you love Ender’s Game. Don’t see it because you’re still shocked by how horrible Man of Steel was. Or don’t see it because you’re too damn lazy. Or do see it! See it because you love Ender’s Game. Or because you believe this child is the next Keanu Reeves. Or because you have nothing better to do.
I give you permission. Either way, you aren’t supporting or denying the gay or anti-gay communities. Now go! Watch a stupid movie! Any movie! Talk at you next time!
I posted this clip on YouTube a while ago, but I’m reposting it here because it needs an answer.
The existence of Elysium (2003) baffles me for many reasons, and this clip is one of them. As part of a much longer story about my search for Elysium’s origins, I purchased the German DVD of it on the belief that it contained the original Korean audio. When I listened to the “Koreanisch” audio track though, it didn’t sound Korean. It sounded Chinese with hints of Spanish. I don’t speak Korean and I don’t hear it often, but I’m pretty sure that this audio track is not Korean. Can anyone prove me right or wrong? Does anyone know what language this is?
There exists in the world a DVD that tries to pass off some other language as Korean, and that is insane.
There’s this British/French computer-animated movie called The Magic Roundabout. It was originally produced in English in the United Kingdom, but when it was imported into the United States, it was completely redubbed in English AGAIN with a new cast and renamed “Dougal,” the name of the protagonist. The American version has an all-star cast including Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon, Kevin Smith, Ian McKellen, and even Jon Stewart (yes, The Daily Show Jon Stewart). Despite this, the American version (not the original British version) is considered to be one of the worst animated films ever made partly because everyone was outraged that almost all the original voice actors were replaced and partly because of all the pop culture references that were added in. Going by the ratings of the original British version, everyone seems to generally think that it’s okay.
I’ve read complaints that the American version is also terrible because the story is stupid and boring. I haven’t seen either version of the movie yet, but I wonder if the story in the American version was changed significantly? Or is the story in the British version equally stupid and boring, but no one complains about it just to further emphasize how much they hate the American version? I guess I’ll have to find out…
