What I Really Think: Cinderella

Growing up Cinderella was my favorite of the pre-renaissance princess films.  The mice really help carry the movie, keeping things active and interesting, especially for a young boy.  Cinderella is also the most interesting of the three original princesses.  She’s much more proactive than Snow White or Aurora.  She tries to stand up to her step-mother several times.   The step-mother may not have evil magical powers, but she’s imposing nonetheless. 

Still, for me, it really feels like it’s the supporting cast that keeps thing really interesting.  The mice, the king and grand duke and even the step-sisters are all amusing to watch.  Cinderella may be the title character, but it’s the rest that really give the movie form.   

Although Cinderella ranks low when compared to some of the more modern classics, it’s still a high point of the era. 

What I Really Think: How To Train Your Dragon 2

(Spoilers Ahead)

I was never the biggest fan of the original How To Train Your Dragon.  I liked the setting and themes but the third act always felt a bit flat.  Still, I went into this film with high expectations, and I would say this movie met them.   

One of the things this movie and the original do well is build an interesting world that feels like it has depth.  It’s a very interesting idea to have dragons as friendly and commonplace, instead of rare and fearsome.  There’s a lot of untapped potential there, and this movie dives deep into the possibilities.  

I liked all the stuff with Hiccup’s mother.  In particular I liked that they didn’t try to push any drama into it.  It would’ve been easy to put some conflict there.  To have one or more parties upset at the others.  But instead everyone is just happy to be together again.  Of course, it’s clear why they play it this way when Stoic dies.  It creates a bigger emotional impact.  But it was nice to see while it lasted.

The third act again felt a little weak.  It was a little too short to me.  But it was pretty solid, and overall I liked how it was handled.  

Overall a good movie.  Probably ranks in the lower end of my top five for this year.  I’d recommend it even if you haven’t seen the first one.  I don’t think there’s anything from the first one you really need to know to enjoy this one. 

Extradiegetic: Cinderella

For any story, it’s important to quickly establish the boundaries of your story.   The first few scenes should set the tone, and inform the audience what sort of things are and are not possible.  People bursting into song, talking animals, magic; these are all things that audiences are willing to suspend their disbelief for, but not if they’re suddenly presented halfway through the movie.  Disney’s return to full length animated movies with Cinderella has a lot to set up, and it does it very smoothly and quickly.   

Cinderella begins like Snow White, with a literal storybook opening.  A brief narration establishes Cinderella’s backstory.  As is typical of Disney princesses of the era, she possesses nearly unlimited optimism and is a friend to all living things.  The opening scene is easy to overlook, but it conveys a lot of information about the movie very quickly.  As the movie begins we see she lives at the top of a tower, both separated from, and above the rest of her family.   The view moves into her room, sparsely decorated with secondhand and broken furniture.  Patches spot her bed sheets.  These visual cues set up her current position as a servant in her own home.  It speaks to the attitudes of the Stepmother, only allowing Cinderella to use what has already been thrown away by them.  

Next, Cinderella is woken by a pair of birds.  They don’t speak, but they are wearing bits of clothing.  This in addition to their actions establishes that the animals are intelligent.  A fact quickly reinforced as we see many other animals acting with greater than natural intelligence, including the mice who can even speak.  Once awake, Cinderella quickly moves into singing “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, thus marking this as a musical movie, where people break into song.  

Within five minutes of the film opening (including credits) the audience is set up to expect a fairy tale musical in which animals are intelligent and songs are commonplace.  This is clearly not the reality of our world, but because these facts are established so early on the audience has no problem believing these things for the rest of the movie.  This sets the tone for the rest of the movie, and gives the viewer a frame of reference for what is and is not possible.  

Much like Snow White before her, much of Cinderella’s strength is in her ability to make friends.  Her freeing Gus from a trap then clothing and naming him demonstrates her kindness and her ability to make friends with even those others would ignore at best, and consider pests at worst.  This friendship with the animals pays off throughout the movie, but especially at the end where they free Cinderella just in time. While Cinderella might not seem active, it was her actions early on that set her up to succeed later when she’s otherwise powerless.

Gus also provides the role of outsider, giving the other characters an excuse to explains things to audience.  This role is very common in stories and is often filled by the protagonist, when they are suddenly thrust into a new situation by the plot.  Since Cinderella is already in an established situation, not having a character to explain things to could result in characters speaking to each other in unnecessary detail about things they already know. This logical inconstancy that can take the viewer out of the native.

When Cinderella goes down to the kitchen she finds Bruno, the dog, dreaming of chasing Lucifer, the cat.  After singing about how great dreams are, she now chides Bruno for his dreams and tells him that his dream is bad.  This is an ironic mirror of her own situation, as her dreams are suppressed by the Stepmother, so she is doing the same thing to Bruno.  But, ultimately it is Bruno following his dream and chasing Lucifer that literally frees Cinderella to follow her own. 

The magic of the fairy godmother is a sudden shift in what is an otherwise non-magical world.  Presenting magic this late in a story can be problematic, but Cinderella has a few things helping it out.  First of all, it’s not unreasonable to expect the audience to familiar with the genre of fairy tales.  And magical intervention is a common occurrence in them.  Additionally the characters themselves treat the magic as something unusual and exceptional.   Because it’s novel to them, it’s okay for it to be novel for the audience as well.  The audience doesn’t feel like they should’ve known like something like this was possible.  

How to start a story is an important consideration, with many factors to balance.  Cinderella is an excellent example of how to quickly give the audience an understanding of what sort of story to expect.  When someone comes into a story for the first time, they come in willing to accept things that would otherwise be illogical.  This brief openness allows the writer to create fantastic worlds.  But this period of acceptance is quick to close.  An early foothold is necessary for people to take a story seriously.    Without that solid foundation, you risk losing the reader later.

What I Really Think: Edge of Tomorrow

(Spoilers ahead)

Edge of Tomorrow combines two plot types I’m a sucker for: the alien invasion and the time loop.  The resulting film does not disappoint on either front.  

There’s fundamental problem with the scale of alien invasions.  They typically present a threat to the entire world, require a huge fleet and vast armies.   Yet, a band of plucky heroes still must singlehandedly defeat the entire invasion force.  I liked Edge of Tomorrow’s approach.  The idea of the invasion force is really a single organism is interesting and plausible enough that I accept it.  Also the fact that the invasion was starting from a central point, and working its way out across land, rather than flying around on ships simplified things greatly as well.  Their mechanism for time looping works for me as well. I’m sure it’s full of holes, but it makes just enough sense for me to go with it.  Going into the movie you know you’re going to accept that part of it no matter what anyway.

Time loops are always an opportunity for comedy, and Edge of Tomorrow is no slouch.  The first third of the movie is full of dark humor as Tom Cruise’s character dies in a variety of ways.  But because of the time loop, the deaths have no real bite to them.  It felt like a cartoon in a good way.  It was a sort of deadly slapstick.  The film does settle down later and get more serious, the whole movie is not a laugh riot.  But it has enough humor to keep things from getting too dour.

It’s probably a bit much to call it a twist, but I like how the dam is a trap.  The shift in plot provides a refreshing change of pace.  Up to that point the movie had felt very linear and predictable.  But then the change-up gave the movie a second wind.  I think without the extra shift in direction I would’ve felt the movie was too short.  

I wasn’t a huge fan of the romance sub-plot.  It was pretty predictable.   I did like how it created a dilemma for him where she never survived past the helicopter.   I liked his realization that he doesn’t actually need to bring her at all, that he’s learned enough to do it alone. 

One thing I was curious about was how they were going to edit this together.  You don’t want to go through the details of every time loop.  But you do want to see some of the loops, to see the difference he makes.  I thought they struck a good balance.  They showed enough of certain events repeating different ways to scratch that itch, but not enough to wear become boring.  Sometimes they would skip ahead, showing him suddenly knowing exactly what to do for an extended period of time, indicating he had been through it many times.  The switch up once they get past the beach where it goes into an extended scene without loops provides a nice change of pace, and gives the audience a rest from seeing things over and over again.   It’s also fun to spot the hints that this isn’t actually the first time he’s done this.  In particular I like how he comments that sometimes he tells him things that she ordinarily wouldn’t, then later when she dies she tells him her middle name, which he had asked about earlier.  When she dies is when she talks, and it really puts the earlier scene in a different light once you realize that.  

I was disappointed when he lost the time loop abilities, but I understand why they did it.  It’s much more interesting in the finale if there’s actually something at stake.  They did kinda cop out with a happy ending with everything resetting to before anything happened, but with the alien still dead.  For some reason.  Not entirely sure how that worked, but could tell it was a bit of a cheat to get the happy ending.  

Overall, it’s a good movie that I really enjoyed watching.  Probably my second favorite after X-Men First Class this year, but it’s a close one.  I feel like I wouldn’t mind watching it again, which is rare for me.

What I Really Think: Maleficent

(Spoilers ahead)

I like the idea of the story Maleficent was trying to tell better than the actual execution.  The idea of having a character acting in haste and later regretting it is a good simple idea, and one that can resonate with a lot of people.  I feel like the movie would’ve worked better without the baggage of being a version of Sleeping Beauty.  Making it a retelling increased the profile of the film and got people into the seats, but it also creates odd disconnects with the audience when the narrative strays from what’s expected.  Ultimately, this is not a retelling of the animated Disney movie Sleeping Beauty, but really its own version of the whole thing. Though it borrows many elements from the Disney version.

The weakest part for me was the first act.  I think the relationship between Stefan and Maleficent is glossed over a bit too fast for the audience to really connect with the characters and their relationship.  I also feel like seeing more of Stephan might have been good so we understand more why he betrayed Maleficent.  The film would’ve been better if this was allowed a bit more time to breathe.  

I feel like the second act, with Maleficent’s turn to evil and Aurora growing up is where the film really shines.  I liked seeing Maleficent change as she basically ends up watching Aurora grow up.  That all worked for me.  But, the scene with defeating the soldiers before showing Aurora the moors felt really unnecessary to me.  The fairies were a little bit too useless for my tastes, but I can see why they did that, effectively forcing Maleficent to intervene.  But some of their antics was good comic relief.

The bait and switch with Prince Phillip was fun, though I thought it was pretty obvious how the kiss of true love was going to play out.  I did like the way the true loves kiss breaking the spell was set up.  With it being an ironic echo of what Stephen told Maleficent.  Which is another reason I think it would’ve been nice to actually see that scene, instead of just having it voiced over.  

I wasn’t a fan of Stephen overall.  He just felt too shallow a character.  Ironically, in attempting to make the previously shallow villain deep, they end up creating another shallow villain to oppose her.  Mostly he comes across as obsessed and crazy.  It would’ve been a lot more interesting to me if he was driven more from love of his daughter.  But even when she shows up he’s still more interested in fighting Maleficent.  Having two sympathetic villains would’ve been a lot more interesting.  

The final action climax felt more tacked on than anything.  We had already reached the emotional climax of the movie earlier with waking Sleeping Beauty, so the action at the ends doesn’t have much purpose other than to kill of the king (in traditional Disney fashion).  It would’ve been much better if they could’ve held of the emotional climax and made it a bigger part of the end.  For example if Maleficent realized outside the castle that her own love for Aurora could break the curse, and then have to fight her way in to reach her that would’ve been much more satisfying.