The Book of Life

Just came back from watching it with my family.

It was great!

I'm gonna be straight, I didn't expect Xibalba's snake biting Maria first in order to coax Manolo into dying voluntarily, thinking he would find her in the afterlife.

And who else was surprised that the tour guide and security guy were La Muerte and Xibalba respectively?

Bottom line, great stuff! Consider me in the "hope this does great in the box office" camp!

I saw it last night. Loved it. Really cool use of folklore motifs. Like the wager reminded me of this folktale involving Good Luck and Bad Luck making bets about the outcome of the protagonist's life and manipulating things accordingly. La Muerta and Xibalba have a sort of Persephone and Hades dynamic- interestingly, in "The Merchant's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales, the two show up in sort of the same role- observing humans and making bets. And while I don't know how much either of them corresponds to Mexican folklore/mythology, Xibalba kind of felt like a reconstruction of Hades- presenting the character as villainous in the way which is typical, but also bringing in positive traits.

Another related mythology thing, when Maria was bitten by the snake, I figured the story was going to become a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice and that Manola would go into the underworld to rescue her- which is what Manolo thought too- I guess both of us are Wrong Genre Savvy and Xibalba is Dangerously Genre-Savvy.

Another interesting thing is it's very common in folklore for magical figures to go incognito and give gifts to people who help them and don't give anything to people who don't. The movie cleverly inverts this- Manolo selflessly helps the disguised La Muerta, but doesn't get anything other than her blessing (since she was playing fair); Joachim the (comparably) bad character is the one who gets the magic item (because Xibalba was cheating) and was only helpful after being promised it in exchange for bread.

Speaking of Joachim, I liked that the movie doesn't have him become evil and throughout, whenever he does something jerky, he's still shown as having positive Hidden Depths.

Regarding the complaints, yeah, Chakal doesn't have any personality and is only there to serve a plot function- he's a definite case of Generic Doomsday Villain. I don't know if that's a bad thing though. He's really more of a symbol than a character anyway (he's to Joachim as the Bull is the Manolo). I mean the film could have had a connection between Xibalba and him, but that would be at odds with Xibalba's character.

With Maria, I think the film did a pretty good job of navigating the golden mean between having Maria as just a prize to be won (which she kind of is at least as far as the gods are concerned), and falling into Positive Discrimination. So, I liked how the movie presented her as an independent person with various positive traits, but added some Lampshade Hanging by having her actually say I Know Kung Fu.

edited 1st Nov '14 4:42:27 PM by Hodor

Saw it again this afternoon, this time in 3D. If you haven't seen it in 3D yet and still have the opportunity to, I highly recommend it. It adds a lot of depth to the picture, and the "stuff pokes/flies out of the screen" moments aren't too overblown.

As for the movie, I thought the pacing was better this time around. And the pacing was my only real complaint when I saw it the first time.

edited 1st Nov '14 5:50:16 PM by Mort08

So it's finally made back its budget AND got to #1 at the box office on Sunday. Good weekend.

I guess people felt the actual Day of the Dead was the best time to see it.

2 weeks too late.....

F*cking four days left.

edited 2nd Nov '14 11:09:27 PM by TheLemsterPju

What??? It was November 2nd, the actual Day of the Dead! that's fitting to me!

It would have been nice to see it have that kind of success a little earlier.

Gutierrez celebrated Day Of The Dead with a huge cake!

I'm getting freaking tired of asking stores like Target and Walmart about Book of Life Merch and they keep telling me to go to the book section. OTL They think I'm talking about that one book from the witch series and they have no idea the movie exists.

It's happened more than once now??? Oh, dear.

I'm curious about what part of not knowing about this movie you blame them for. If they don't go to the movies often (which is a far and far more frequent thing these days) and don't spend much time on the right websites, I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't all that informed about this movie being a thing. It hasn't exactly gotten a huge-deal of wise-spread publicity or entered the public's collective conscious in any real manner.

Frankly, if I didn't go to movies and didn't spent as much time on the TVT forums as I do, I might even have forgotten that this movie exists.

I mentioned the movie to a someone I know and his response was "I don't read books." I told him it was a movie and he said "I don't watch movies about books." Which, to be honest, is kind of a weird filter to have.

"Not gonna watch The Jungle Book or The Butter Battle Book either; mentioning a book in the title is just plain toxic to my moviegoing experience!" Eh?

I did see the Mc Donald's ads while I was watching Nickelodeon shows online...

People won't go see movies if they have "book" in the title. It's a proven fact.

How so?

Well, besides the anecdote related above, and Book of Life's all-around failure except on Day of the Dead, the original title of Evil Dead was "Book of the Dead"; distributor Irvin Shapiro changed the title so that audiences would actually go see the movie.

Ah, so the masses are even more stupid than I thought.

It was made for 50 million and has earned more than 70 million...what's considered a "success" in Hollywood these days? Something has to make back twice its budget or something?

Yep.

No sequel. No trilogy. -_-

I find it stupid that actual words in the title can affect the amount of people seeing a movie. It just sounds superstitious to me! If this world were ideal, "San Fransokyo" wouldn't make it past the first suggestion of it!!

edited 8th Nov '14 8:13:01 PM by kyun

I still say it's too early to call. I think it can manage at least $100 million once it's opened everywhere.

I know you're pissed off about that, but it has nothing to do with the conversation. Leave it at the Big Hero 6 board.

edited 8th Nov '14 8:21:49 PM by Mort08

Makes sense to me. The title is often one of the first things you hear about a movie. Of course they want a title that makes a good impression.

Sorry for my frustration. I guess I'm just jealous when I see posts on Tumblr about how they got their merch at Target and my store doesn't.

Same with those bottles of Jarritos with those papers that have the characters on them. Wish my Walmart carried that piece of merchandise as well. We just have the plain bottle.