Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

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Sunday, June 2, 2002

01:44 - Spiwit, bwavado, and dewwing-do

(top)

I just saw Spirit tonight. And despite the worrisome marketing angle, despite the seemingly pandering nature, despite the fact that almost none of my animation-loving friends seem to have any inclination to see it, I really enjoyed it. It was all the things that I predicted it would have, when I posted about it a couple of weeks back.

Like all such things, it has its good and bad points.

Bad points:

Really atrocious song-soundtrack by Bryan Adams. Featureless, uninspired soft-pop-glop songs that dribble out one after another, they illustrate some of the emotion of various scenes (and act as a surrogate for elided dialogue), but if you heard these things on the radio you'd forget the damn thing was on. It wasn't sufficient that the Canadian government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions; he's clearly still a threat. Maybe war-crimes accusations are in order.
Slightly too many aaawwww moments for my taste... but then, this thing is marketed primarily at pre-teen girls, so I'll allow them this conceit. It'll probably actually be more bearable without said pre-teen girls squealing and cooing in the seats behind me throughout the whole movie.
I take some issue with the gratuitousness of the setting changes. Sorry, but you don't get to go from Yellowstone to Monument Valley to Yosemite on foot.
Similarly, how many horses does it take to drag a steam locomotive on sledge rails up a mountain? Would a 150-horsepower engine (like the one in my Jetta) be able to do the job? No, didn't think so.

Good points:

Outstanding animation, probably the best and most pleasing blend of "look" I've seen to date. Since all the characters are modeled in 3D before being rendered by hand in 2D, there's a lot of camera rotations and a lot of shots that would have been very expensive before; we've lost a little bit of sharp spontaneity in the decreased pure-2D, but what it makes up in directorial freedom is immeasurable.
Hans Zimmer's orchestral soundtrack is delicious. I think I'll have to pick this up on CD. God bless MP3 players and the ability to make playlists of just some tracks and not others.
Gorgeous backgrounds and set pieces. This is one of the most visually stunning animated features since The Iron Giant.
This is about the most dialogue-free animated feature I've ever seen. Most of the interaction between characters takes place in horse vocalizations and facial expressions, and it's done shockingly well. You think you wouldn't be able to tell when a horse is saying RUN? Trust me, you would.
The resolution of the "villain" plot is both innovative and supremely satisfying. It's the least trite ending that I've seen in a long time. Katzenberg should be very proud of having pulled it off the way he did.

As I'd hoped it would be, it's a paean to the art of animation and the visual backdrop of the American West, and any allegory that might be present in it is obscured by the purity of the character piece that forms the movie's backbone. There are some nods in vague, disparate directions to larger movie-type issues: the Noble Redman, the Heartless Bloodthirsty U.S. Cavalryman, the Relentless Manifest-Destiny Push West. It's got elements of that whole Dances With Wolves milieu that makes you shudder at the sight of the Stars and Stripes. But when that resolution comes at the end, and you see into all the characters' hearts in a blinding instant and understand all of their motives and values without a single word being spoken, you can do nothing but smile-- the Indians aren't perfect after all. The Cavalry are just trying to do a job. The railroads represent a great sacrifice on the part of the pristine wilderness, but what we buy with that sacrifice-- say those wordless gazes in that blinding instant-- is well worth it. Things change, says the movie. What's important is not that you stand firm against the very concept of something you don't like or even understand. What's important is making the most of what time we have, riding the waves of change, and helping to modulate them. You can't stop a rising tide, but through your actions you can help it be a good thing rather than a bad thing.

The feeling one is left with, upon exiting the theater, is that of the nature of legends: a hero can do great things in his lifetime, but it's only after he's died and the world has changed that the true power of his legend is realized. Likewise, the wilderness that plays such an active character role in Spirit is a legend, a myth-- but we never would have appreciated it to the degree that we do now if we had never lost it.

If the World Trade Center were still standing today, we'd still be giggling at the Klau Khalash vendor in the plaza and barely giving a glance upwards at the nondescript duoliths casting those huge shadows. But now, those buildings are raised to the level of myth. Memory and legend makes them greater than they ever were.

... Anyway. It's been a pretty good weekend, all considered. Babylon 5 movie marathon, DV editing, and emulated video games. It's a rest I needed.

Oh, and Lileks is proposing a Star Trek-style "odd movies good, even numbers bad" scheme for the Indiana Jones series.