Right, so where were we?
Jesse: Is it like the bible says?
Right. Well, as they say in Japan... TIRO FINALE!
From start to finish, the burning’s a climax all the way!
Jesse: Is she going to hell?
Fuck no. No one’s going to hell, and here’s why: God is kind and accepting. Yes, his Old Testament counterpart told his people to kill a guy for picking up sticks because it was Sunday, but after that, he became kind-hearted to the humans. How do I know this? He sacrificed his only son to save us from eternal damnation. Heck, Leslie believes this message is bullshit. “God doesn’t go around damning people to hell” is right. If he was damning people to hell left and right, why the fuck would he decide to give Jesus, his only son, up?
I know that certain spins of Christianity think you can still go to hell for sinning, but then that would mean that Jesus’ sacrifice would have counted for shit. In fact, how the fuck do we know someone would go to hell or not for sinning or not believing? How do we know if going to Hell is as easy as saying “I don’t believe in God” or swearing? For all we know, there might be no Hell, or if it is, it’s reserved for Lucifer and any other devil and not us. I mean, before Paradise Lost came around, Hell was meant to be a prison for Lucifer.
We don’t know the outcome, of who is right and who is wrong, and we’ll never find out because dead men tell no tales. I might go as far as to say “the afterlife is what we make it to be”. Drilling the message that you’re going to hell if you’re a non-believer into a kid’s mind is downright despicable. Hell, Kyubey’s contracts are less evil than this. I know Disney dabbled with damnation before, but the guy talking about it was the bad guy! Thank God the story and Jack Aarons agree with me on the message that God damns innocent people is bullshit.
So no, Jesse Aarons, she’s not going to hell. And you’re not going to hell for not bringing Leslie with you either. You know, it’s funny. Leslie would have originally died from a bolt of lightning. You know, a random thunderbolt that is symbolically associated with the idea that God is smiting the wicked? It was changed to project some realism, but really, if that were kept, we all would have been thinking the same thing: God is a dick and probably would have sent Leslie to hell, just because he wanted a laugh.
There, rant over, can we finish up this movie? So Jesse creates a bomb boat (pinecone grenades, remember?) and then Jesse gets the idea of making the titular eponymous Bridge to Terabithia. He goes to Leslie’s parents, who think “Screw This, I'm Outta Here” and get the fuck out of dodge while they still can. Who knows, maybe they outlived their usefulness in the film and decide to leave. Maybe Mesogog is moving back to Reefside and attempt to create a mutant Leslie clone... Or implant a monster inside him, find Leslie's corpse and implant the Philosopher's Stone into her, and cause the Sabbath. I’m surprised Jesse could keep up with a moving car. Maybe he IS Sonic.
So he goes to May-Belle, who was just as miserable as Jesse at the start before he goes up to her with the offer of becoming Princess. Don’t fall for it, May-Belle! Once you become a Princess, the fans will rage about the movie and leave the fandom! Oh wait, wrong kid’s show. So Jesse gives May-Belle... a crown of thorns... SYMBOLISM!
I will admit, it was a pretty heartwarming moment, so I give it some mercy points. It’s ironic, since this ending had pissed me off to no end that I was ready to throw my popcorn bag at the screen.
The burning... has ceased.
Huh... Wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. I’m not kidding, I thought I’d end this movie saying that it sucked the bag, but it seemed all my hatred for it had ceased and went into the past. But I can’t really say I enjoyed it either. Well, maybe I enjoyed it a little. I’m gonna see the pros and cons for this.
There’s some decent acting and some nicely scored music. The CGI, when used, manage to create a nice fantasy feel to it, especially at the end, where it actually looks like a fantasy kingdom. The slice of life moments are... okay at best. They weren’t really as good as Annabelle’s Wish or Madoka’s slice of life feels are. The movie actually offers some nice foreshadowing moments, as well as some call back moments. There’s an example in a scene where Leslie asks Jesse if he’s scared to stand up to the bullies when he can easily beat them up in the fantasy world. The exact scene plays back with Janice when Jesse asks her if she’s scared to talk to Janice even though they tickled her Troll counterpart.
Then there’s the bad. I doubt anyone would be able to handle going through Jesse’s life without snapping, especially after Leslie’s death. Heck, I doubt Jesse would have been able to cope with Leslie’s death had his father not went and comforted him. I mean, I joked about this before, but the lack of caring adults, at least before Leslie’s death, is so heavy, I expected Jesse to go postal on the school. Leslie is easily his Morality Chain. Except after it snapped, he only went evil for a bit before his dad smacked some sense into him.
Where am I going with this? Well, it seems the world outside of Terabithia is so mean and bleak to Jesse that had Jack not connected to his son, he probably wouldn’t have left. And really, do you want to force that sort of cynicism onto a kid who wanted to see a fantasy film? Keep Your Mind Wide Open maybe the Arc Words to this film, but this might have the opposite effect, or the warped effect of “escape from reality and join the fantasy”.
Speaking of warping, it’s odd how after Leslie dies, everyone is more kind and caring towards Jesse. I know that 1) they thought he died and 2) he just lost a friend, but it just comes across as this: you live in a shitty situation, just hope your best friend dies and they’ll instantly connect to you. Then there’s the religion. Do we really need to know if someone is gonna burn in Hell because they aren’t a believer? I know it might be on the minds of people when they experience loss, but from my rant above, everyone has a mixed opinion on just who goes to hell and why they’re going to Hell. It’s like the question of if they accept pets into the afterlife or if they just rot.
Fridge Horror and Warped Aesop aside, there are some legit flaws with this. First off, there’s some massive pacing problems. One minute it’s all happy happy joy joy, and then the next scene, someone spiked the punch and drugged Jesse with a depressant, all in the span of a minute. There’s also some pointless scenes. There’s that kid who decides to do two essays, there’s a random scene where the bullies bump into Jesse for the umpteenth time, and then there are the montages. When they’re not doing that, they’re speeding up scenes that need more time to be shown, like Janice’s beatdown of the two bullies. I say they should have increased the time length by about thirty minutes or so.
Heck, I probably would have accepted an additional hour if just to fill out all the necessary scenes and maybe some good build up and character development. I mean, there’s some characters that just feel flat and static, yet they have some depth to them. For example, Gary Fulcher, in the books at least, was The Rival to Jesse and was the prime motivation for why he was running in the beginning: to practice for the time when they would race each other. Instead, he became one of two generic and clichéd school bullies.
In fact, there’s a lot of clichéd characters. The Sadist Teacher, the school bullies, the antagonistic father, the annoying little sister. When they’re not clichéd, they’re flat and uninteresting. The rest of Jesse’s family, for one. Heck, Leslie’s own mother got more depth to her than Jesse’s, and she only had a few lines at best. The plot itself isn’t as clichéd, though. I think the biggest flaw, and one I am never able to let go of, ever since I was a kid, was the way the trailer lied.
This would have been a great movie had the focus been more on the fantasy, but the problem is that it was never fantasy to begin with. It disappointed me to see that this movie was another genre altogether, since it would have had a cooler story if it stuck to fantasy. The father being the Dark Master’s host, the Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World story, the battle against the Dark Master’s forces, heck, Leslie not dying and instead was held hostage by the Dark Master would have been an interesting twist.
But it wasn’t fantasy. It was Slice of Life. It’s meant to show the ups and downs of life. The depths a character can go when faced with a painful loss, something I wish now was put into more depth instead of a short fifteen minutes. If I was told from the start when I was a kid that this story wasn’t fantasy, I would have accepted it. Maybe then my opinion of the movie would have been different. But as it stands, Bridge To Terabithia was the film that changed my life, not for the better, but for the worst.
And now? Now it’s not the case. This movie is to me a slice of life now. Needless to say, I neither enjoyed or hated it, but I would watch it over a million other things any day of the week. If you want a fantasy movie, look elsewhere. If you want a slice of life or a movie based off the book, hop right in. If you wanna just watch a movie? Well... That’s for you to decide. Well, this is Psyga, reminding you to keep that mind wide open.
Sayonara.
Oh, and the ironic part now is that the Critic called it a godawful flick and reviewed it.
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