Disney/Pixar In General

The purpose of those characters was to show the power of friendship in troubling times, and how important it is to allow other people in so that they can support you in your grief.

Song of the sea has an equivalent to it by throwing in all those mythical characters, which are interesting to me because I am a sucker for folklore, no matter from which country, but they aren't necessarily interesting as characters. But what is actually the reason why I put Big Hero 6 above Song of the Sea in this specific category is because it does a great job to explore Hiro's different stages of grief. Song of Sea addresses the same process not nearly as detailed. There isn't much character development in the protagonists.

Yeah, but that's one purpose these characters have that's shared between the four of them collectively. It's enough of a story purpose for one character, maybe two. And if that's their purpose, they fail at it because their friendship with Hiro is hollow, bland and underdeveloped. That's one of the worst parts of the movie for me, personally — there's nothing to their friendship. We're introduced to them as Tadashi's friends, we see them have one montage with Hiro, and then we're abruptly meant to buy that they're now his best friends. When Baymax calls them in to comfort Hiro I sort of did a double take, thinking "But he barely knows these people!" And that's the feeling that permiates throughout the movie; you don't get the impression that Hiro really knows or has a bond these people, just that they're sort of tagging along with him because they knew his brother.

The mythical creatures in Song of the Sea weren't advertised as central characters nor did the movie attempt to push them as such. If the elves Ben and Seorsie met tagged along with them throughout the entire movie and took away the focus otherwise spent on developing their relationship I could see how that would get annoying real fast.

edited 11th Dec '17 6:19:42 AM by DrDougsh

Well, I believe in their friendship because it is pretty much impossible to work together for months on a project without getting to know each other pretty well. Though this might have gone a little bit differently if Tadashi hadn't died.

Having us just infer that they must be friends is no substitute to actually showing us their friendship.

Yeah, first rule of film-making, "show, don't tell".

They did 2 things wrong.

• Marketing it like an ensemble film. This isn't the team's story. It's Hiro's story. Why pay this much attention to 6 characters if you know you're only writing it about one???

• Write a 90-minute movie that paces clearly and simply but infusing it with like 10 characters. These writers were not up to the task of doing this.

“Kubo” to me was an neat myth-like film up until the ending which made no sense, crammed too many themes into an sudden monologue, then defeated the villain by blatant New Powers as the Plot Demands, and leaving with some troubling implications.

edited 11th Dec '17 10:34:06 AM by Tuckerscreator

Eh, I wasn't bothered by it. Given the context of what the Moon King had been trying to do to Kubo, it seemed like a fitting end, and besides it's not like the heroes do it to him on purpose

edited 11th Dec '17 1:11:34 PM by DrDougsh

Yes they do it on purpose. He loses his memory, and everyone deliberately lies so he'll think he's a kind member of the community. They absolutely choose to rewrite his identity.

@Swanpride Concerning the Brisby comparison, I think what made Ni MH feel a bit more hallow compared to Zootopia (and even Bluth's later films) is that Brisby didn't really have any growing chemistries with the cast around her like Judy did.

Most of her relationships with the characters she newly interacts with never grow much like Judy against Nick. Justin was a Nice Guy to her, but didn't develop much as a Love Interest or even much platonically besides a altruistic hand for her. Meanwhile Jeremy almost ended up the opposite of a buddy comedy, with Brisby coming to regret getting accustomed to the buffoon and getting more disdainful of him until she eventually coaxes him away (and unlike most other Bluth comic relief types like Petrie, Jeremy doesn't ever really get his big redeeming moment at the end, so what was the nearest to an abrasive element to Brisby isn't disproven either, adding to your aforementioned criticism).

edited 11th Dec '17 1:15:19 PM by Psi001

That's after the damage is done. And, honestly, would you really have a problem with doing this if you were in their shoes? What should they have said to him? "Oh, you're a god-like entity with a seething contempt for humanity who was just brought down to human form and deprived by your power by this kid over there, whom you were trying to kill. There's no hard feelings, right? Please don't kill us." Sounds like a great idea.

I feel like there's a certain amount of logical dissonance you can get away with in a mythical/fairy tale -like film like Kubo that would be more difficult to swallow in a film taking a more modern approach to its story, if that makes sense. Kyle Kallgren and That Jerk With a Camera discussed a similar phenomenon in their comparison of Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Jean Cocteau's Le belle et la bete — that film takes a very dream-like approach to its material, where things are more interested in making emotional sense rather than necessarily being logical in concrete terms. The ending of that movie, at face value, arguably makes no sense, but it's consistent with the movie's surreal tone and its emotional themes so it doesn't feel out of place if you're willing to go with what the movie's trying to do.

Some of Disney's movies take this same surreal, fairy-tale approach to their stories, notably Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Pinnocchio. Those films have many elements in their plot and visuals that don't make a ton of sense and arguably even carry Unfortunate Implications if you think about them too hard. But on an emotional and thematic level, they make sense, at least if we're willing to meet the films on those fairy tale terms.

I'm not that bothered with Kubo's resolution to the Moon King's plot for similar reasons — yeah, in real life terms you could argue that what happens to him is ethically dubious, but it's appropriate karma for what he tried to do to Kubo and a fitting counterpoint to the Moon King's misanthropic worldview so I think it fits given the myth-like tone Kubo was going for.

Disney has always had a problem with ensemble casts, in that those characters invariably turn into a band of one-note (and often irritating) character types rather than really being developed as characters - Oliver And Company did it, Atlantis did it, and Big Hero 6 did it too. I'd agree that the two possible exceptions Disney has are Treasure Planet and Wreck-It Ralph with it's four/five major character respectively - though both still have a bit of waffling to them.

I'm not sure I'd agree that Kubo was significantly better, though. It ran into the problem that a lot of fairy/folk tale-styled films do: that unless you either transition into epic-style storytelling or commit to a shorter runtime or (at least) a quicker sequence of events, there's often going to be a part between the middle and the end where things kind of peter out and lull before the climax, which also tends to affect the character arcs.

edited 11th Dec '17 1:19:39 PM by KnownUnknown

Don't forget the film that started them all.

Hell even the Disney shorts did it to some degree with the likes of Mickey, Donald and Goofy (if you count Mickey as having even a one-note personality).

edited 11th Dec '17 1:17:36 PM by Psi001

Even Atlantis did a better job with its ensemble cast than Big Hero 6, though. In that movie, all the various characters at least have backstories and go through a little bit of an arc when they decide that going along with Rourke's plan isn't worth the money. They have their own agendas and their own reasons for being there. In Big Hero 6 every character is a Satellite Character who seems to exist only to further Hiro's story.

I can't believe I am saying this, but logic in movies is overvalued. And yes, I am the type of person who can get really hung-up about a plot hole - if I notice it immediately. And that is kind of the point.

Incidentally, that Belle doesn't ride back on her horse in La Belle et La Bete as well as the notion of stealing a treasure one can't use were things which did bug me when watching the movie. The diamond tears or anything else not so much, but I guess I can easily accept a crazy world but not if people start to act without any rhyme and reason within it.

Anyway, otherwise most of the details don't matter....granted, I have started to count with the movie whenever I see a countdown (not the overlapping scenes but the vague timeline), just to see how much they cram into the supposed one minute, but that is more because the trope has been so overused.

Speaking of Beauty and the Beast, it's the topic if this years fairy tale month over at my blog. The Disney version hasn't been uploaded yet, though.

Ehem, I think the discussion has gone a little off-topic, considering this is the "Pixar In General" thread and the last two pages have been about anything but Pixar. X) Not that the discussion isn't interesting, just saying.

Dammit, I reat it as "Disney Pixar" instead of "Disney/Pixar". My bad.

edited 11th Dec '17 1:36:51 PM by Lyendith

It's Disney/Pixar in General, not just Pixar.

My response is fairly long and spoiler-heavy, so I'm just going to post it on the Kubo thread.

So I'm seeing reports that the Disney/Fox deal has been reached, and now it just needs Federal Approval to go through.

If it does go through (and honestly, I can't see a reason why it won't), Disney will essentially be the most powerful Film Company in the USA (and possibly the world).

Because that last sentence is why.

We have antitrust laws in this country. Disney buying Fox, as I've been saying since the deal came out, means that they'll be incredibly powerful. It falls to the FTC to stop the deal and cut the company down to size, and I hope to God that they do so.

(It's a horizontal merger anyway, which means that it's going to be under a lot of scrutiny.)

edited 14th Dec '17 5:13:09 AM by Aldo930

Considering every other merger they've accepted and approved this Century, and that only 1 Merger has been put under scrutiny (and it might be because of how petty our 'President' is), I'm 90% sure that this will go through.

But a merger this big? With gigantic implications?

It's going to be a long while before anything really happens, but suffice it to say there's a lot of things that could go wrong in the meantime.

edited 14th Dec '17 6:17:36 AM by Aldo930

yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for something to happen. As noted, given past "enforcement", it's basically a done deal at this point.

... I honestly have no words to say for this...

I don't think a lot of people understand why this is a big deal. There have been very few instances in the past of a major studio selling itself to another major studio.

Read this if you want to understand what lies ahead.