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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 5, 2009 20:36:22 GMT -5
Somebody else said props before I did 0_0 It officially say's that M.I. machinery is being "sabotaged" (which seems like something...dark Ran would do). Of course HOW would that look to the "heros". THEY involve themselves in hurting Ran again, and that is just a replay of how undeserving they are of the role.
I've had deep conversation with a friend on the movie, no direct spoilers, but mostly about the main "villain"...and we actually got around to comparision with Ran....
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Post by pitbulllady on Jun 5, 2009 20:55:27 GMT -5
Somebody else said props before I did 0_0 It officially say's that M.I. machinery is being "sabotaged" (which seems like something...dark Ran would do). Of course HOW would that look to the "heros". THEY involve themselves in hurting Ran again, and that is just a replay of how undeserving they are of the role. I've had deep conversation with a friend on the movie, no direct spoilers, but mostly about the main "villain"...and we actually got around to comparision with Ran.... But that's the thing...it's like the Nazi's "Big Lie"-if you repeat a big lie often enough, and to enough people, everyone will soon come to accept it as the truth. The Big Lie in the whole Monsters, Inc. Universe in virtually all of its incarnations-movie, books, comics, coloring and activity books, games, etc.-has been of course, that Mike and Sulley are "heroes", Good Guys, and as such, anything they do is acceptable and good by default, while Randall is the opposite, inherently evil, so everything HE does is evil or bad by default. MOST of the people who read the comics aren't going to see Mike and Sulley as being in way bad, or even imperfect, even if they actually saw them dress in white hoods and sheets and saw them mutilate and torture and kill Randall with their own bloodstained hands, because they will be convinced that he absolutely deserved it, since they've been told the Big Lie for so long. How many times have we tried, unsuccessfully, to argue that point on Pixar Planet, that Mike and Sulley were WRONG to do what they did to Randall, and that their actions ultimately made them just as guilty of crimes as HE was? Those two are absolute saints in the minds of many fans, and they simply cannot see beyond the Big Lie. I think this is exactly why shallow people like Dan-E and Rachelcakes state that they would NOT want to see a sequel in which Randall underwent any sort of character arc, and wound up being more or less on the same side as Mike and Sulley, because their minds are simply unable to wrap around the complex concept of someone NOT being either cut-and-dry Good or Evil. To them, as to a very young child, there's no "gray area" of morality and behavior, and once it's established that a character is one way or the other, there's simply no changing. They cannot accept that Randall Boggs could have EVER done a good thing in his entire life, or that he ever would, nor can they accept that anything Mike and Sulley have ever done could possibly be bad. The complex realities of behavior is too much for such people. pitbulllady
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 5, 2009 20:59:58 GMT -5
Actually their Big Lie was toxiticiy of humans...not it seems it's this now 0_- In some honesty we HAVE opened the eyes of a few of them to at least start to question things. Or at the least see Ran in some sympathy. Because those people are ignorant incarnate.
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Post by mentalguru on Jun 5, 2009 21:17:50 GMT -5
No-one is perfect. People need to see that.
Pitbulllady- NEVER get into Harry Potter the 'white hats' syndrome at the end of the serise will make your head hurt. First Four books? Fine mostly for morals- the end of 5th book surprised me- but I thought they were merely injecting that Harry and Hermione weren't all 'white' either- and they'd be called out on their crap.
They weren't. They got worse.
Book 6 was simply boring with bullying being praised.
Book 7? Imagine the hero if you will torturing a man or the crime of SPITTING and being PRAISED for it.
HP was a major disappointment, and not just for the plot holes.
As for the Avatar thing- its probably a sign that the early hours are going to my head but I've assigned Four major M.I characters to Avatar ones (of Season 1 anyway). Ignore ships though- pretend all the interactions are completely platonic here.
Zuko: Randall- for reasons already mentioned. Tragic past, has lots of issues which makes him act the 'bad guy', Difference of course- Zuko got redemption. And kick ass uncle as already mentioned. Wants to get Aang/Boo to regain honour/respect? (Delete as appropriate)
Aang: Boo- optimist, completely alone and the one one of his/her 'kind' in a new world/time, likes being a kid, also I'll admit partial inspiration comes from him with regards Boo' s character in 'connections'- though she more has a bit more temper than he does admittadly (just a bit)... For both though be warned: Do not put friends in harms way, it takes alot but can be vicious when provoked...
Katara: Sulley. Katara is the motherly (fatherly?) type and wants to become a master waterbender (Break scare record?) she... sometimes does some pretty morally questionable things which raise eyebrows (Stealing waterscroll, and in S3... well I won't spoil you; cough-banishment-cough) but overall she's not bad. She gets angry if those she cares about are in harms way (particulary Aang/Boo).
Sokka: Mike- (Sokka In the first episodes anyway)- Sokka in the beginning is utterly sarcastic, sexist, racist etc etc. I didn't like him much in the beginning of the series. He tolerated Aang/Boo at the beginning more or less for Sulley/Katara.
Unlike Mike though, Sokka got better.
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Post by pitbulllady on Jun 5, 2009 21:25:26 GMT -5
I did not get into the HP fandom because of the very first book, in which the House of Slytherin and therefore their "totem", the snake, was established as the Bad Guys, or "Black Hats", for the whole series. Same old stereotypes-cute furry animals and birds=Good, snakes and spiders(Aragog, anyone?)=BAD. Jees, when will writers EVER learn to get beyond that?
pitbulllady
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 5, 2009 21:28:02 GMT -5
Unfortunately the "perfect" people think they don't need to *shakes head*
*sides steps from Harry Potter bit*
Of course Zuko also has temper issues ^0^ I REALLY liked this bit in "The Beach", where Zuko has returned to his homeland, with Azula and her two friends. And they're all around the fire, and everyone comes to pointing at their trouble stories (such as one girl being a "circus freak", the other girl being so emotionless, and Azula....well she admits that "her own mother called her a monster"....then she replies to her own words "she was right of course"). It gets to Zuko and they ask him what he's angry about. And in holding himself in anger, they ask WHO'S he angry at. In the end he screams with the fire "I'm angry at myself!".
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Post by mentalguru on Jun 5, 2009 21:38:09 GMT -5
Ha ha true. I loved Azula in that too.
(Actually has a form of the "I'm angry at myself!" planned for Boo in fic. You'll see. Just like Aang and Zuko, although different in many ways are more alike than they probably know... if that makes sense.... Aang and Zuko's eventual friendship was the REAL yin and yang of the show.
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 6, 2009 18:45:30 GMT -5
Of course in the end she just goes nuts 0_0
Yin and Yang is probably the better way to describe it. Afterall, Aang learned himself that peace ISN'T always achieveable, and Zuko learned that fighting ISN'T always neccessary.
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randomdrifter
Randall's Skivvy (0-299)
Humility and Strength have never looked better.
Posts: 142
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Post by randomdrifter on Jun 8, 2009 9:45:21 GMT -5
I should probably mention that my whole post is a spoiler fest for Up. So here goes. Spoilers galore ahead! Speaking of Up, have any of you actually seen it?(Possible major spoilers ahead, so if you don't want to read 'em, stop right HERE). I haven't, even though it's playing at our local theater, because I can't even afford to buy popcorn right now. From what I've gathered, though, it seems that Peter Docter is a firm believer in the "Two Wrongs DO Make a Right" concept, or as I've put it, "Let's Get EVEN!" Is there not a villain in this movie, a Charles Muntz, who is sort of the stereotypical "mad scientist"? Is he not killed by the two heroes and his stuff taken by them, back to civilization, and no one even questions where they got those things from, or how? Even his pack of dogs, with the exception of the Good-Guy dog, "Dug", are of breeds like Rottweilers, Dobermans, Pit Bulls...dogs that are automatically stereotyped as "evil" or "vicious". Maybe Michael Eisner was not as much the cause of Randall eventually being type-cast as the main "Bad Guy" after all, but Docter WAS! pitbulllady I've seen it already, but I don't recommend that you watch it. Although the real story behind the film was sweet and incredibly touching, everything you mentioned was a major flaw that stood out. Some of it was painfully stereotypical and cliched, including the dogs that were used as the bad guy's minions. I don't get what Pixar's deal is anymore. Everyone has just been madly in love with their latest films that I'm just at odds with friends and prestigious movie reviews when I'm not right there cheering along. I never thought that the story behind Cars was anything special or touching, nor the idea of talking cars groundbreaking. But after finding Nemo, lately Pixar films, to me, have been feeling like one disappointment right after another. There's been an increasing trend of appointing a bad guy annually and killing him off, or just making him unpleasant and stupidly two dimentional. And people are okay with that! We even had a "bad guy" in WALL-E, though it was just a machine whose name I've completely forgotten. It was the autopilot who had to take charge and make decisions for a pack of morbidly obese humans who had become too stupid to know how to make decisions for themselves, let alone know how to survive on their own. And these have been the biggest hits. On a somewhat related note, has anyone seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson? We saw this years ago in my psy 101 course, and I must have been the only one during our discussion that did not think Nurse Ratchetd was a sadistic, authoritarian, heartless *****. There's always a reason for everything, including behavior. EDIT: I'd rather see asterisks! apologies.
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 8, 2009 19:50:37 GMT -5
I'd watched that film before, and also read the book, which is from the POV of an african american....janitor I think. And boy was that surreal...and Nurse Ratchet in THAT...man...she was a BEAST....not a beauty.
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 8, 2009 19:51:27 GMT -5
On a side note, I think Randall could take up Jack's role ^0^ He's not neccessarily unstable, but still a defiant rebel ^0^
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Post by pitbulllady on Jun 8, 2009 20:38:37 GMT -5
I should probably mention that my whole post is a spoiler fest for Up. So here goes. Spoilers galore ahead! Speaking of Up, have any of you actually seen it?(Possible major spoilers ahead, so if you don't want to read 'em, stop right HERE). I haven't, even though it's playing at our local theater, because I can't even afford to buy popcorn right now. From what I've gathered, though, it seems that Peter Docter is a firm believer in the "Two Wrongs DO Make a Right" concept, or as I've put it, "Let's Get EVEN!" Is there not a villain in this movie, a Charles Muntz, who is sort of the stereotypical "mad scientist"? Is he not killed by the two heroes and his stuff taken by them, back to civilization, and no one even questions where they got those things from, or how? Even his pack of dogs, with the exception of the Good-Guy dog, "Dug", are of breeds like Rottweilers, Dobermans, Pit Bulls...dogs that are automatically stereotyped as "evil" or "vicious". Maybe Michael Eisner was not as much the cause of Randall eventually being type-cast as the main "Bad Guy" after all, but Docter WAS! pitbulllady I've seen it already, but I don't recommend that you watch it. Although the real story behind the film was sweet and incredibly touching, everything you mentioned was a major flaw that stood out. Some of it was painfully stereotypical and cliched, including the dogs that were used as the bad guy's minions. I don't get what Pixar's deal is anymore. Everyone has just been madly in love with their latest films that I'm just at odds with friends and prestigious movie reviews when I'm not right there cheering along. I never thought that the story behind Cars was anything special or touching, nor the idea of talking cars groundbreaking. But after finding Nemo, lately Pixar films, to me, have been feeling like one disappointment right after another. There's been an increasing trend of appointing a bad guy annually and killing him off, or just making him unpleasant and stupidly two dimentional. And people are okay with that! We even had a "bad guy" in WALL-E, though it was just a machine whose name I've completely forgotten. It was the autopilot who had to take charge and make decisions for a pack of morbidly obese humans who had become too stupid to know how to make decisions for themselves, let alone know how to survive on their own. And these have been the biggest hits. On a somewhat related note, has anyone seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson? We saw this years ago in my psy 101 course, and I must have been the only one during our discussion that did not think Nurse Ratchetd was a sadistic, authoritarian, heartless *****. There's always a reason for everything, including behavior. EDIT: I'd rather see asterisks! apologies. I'm glad you told me that, randomdrifter. You just saved me 8 bucks, not to mention the cost of popcorn and a diet soda. I was actually going to try to go see Up tomorrow, but for the first time since Pixar has been making movies, I'm going to give it a miss. This makes me sad, really, because while everyone else is still gushing, I'm going to step out and say that Pixar is sitting right at the edge of that proverbial shark tank, IF they haven't gotten airborne already. They are running out of fresh ideas, and are having to fall back on a very old, worn-out, moldy concept that's been around since the earliest days of movies-the pure-evil villain who torments and threatens the "good guys", then inevitably "gets it" in the end, or who is a stupid, bumbling buffoon, the constant butt of jokes. Pixar is also relying on negative stereotypes to sell their brand, and that's even worse. From Randall Boggs being reptilian and scaly, to Charles Muntz's dogs being of "bad" breeds like Rottweilers and Dobermans; what next, a guy in "black face" trying to rape women or an Arab guy bombing buildings? How about a lazy Mexican, or a perpetually inebriated Irishman? Or a money-hungry Jew? If they're gonna go with negative stereotypes, might as well go all out, eh? Just curious, Charles Muntz didn't have a German accent, by any chance, did he? Gotta be a Nazi mad scientist, then, since we all know that all mad scientists are Nazis and Germans. Back when Finding Nemo was about to be released, John Lassetter appeared on television, and told a bunch of LIES. He showed a framed copy of what he called "The Ten Commandments of Pixar", which he insisted was the key to their success. One of those, which really stands out in my mind, was "NO VILLAINS". They stuck with that in Finding Nemo, and in Cars(which would have been a good redemption story if it had not been virtually word-for-word copied from Doc Hollywood-another sign that the shark hath been jumped already), but they had a real villain in WALL-E in the form of "Auto"(who was not original either, *cough* HAL *cough*), and of course, now in Up. They are also trying to drive home the point that they want everyone to believe that Randall, NOT Waternoose, was the villain of M.I., and evil to the core. I honestly believed that Pixar was above that. Not anymore. It's going to take a lot to restore my faith in them now, and their quality of story-telling. I'm afraid they have chosen style over content, as many of their earlier detractors said they would. pitbulllady
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 8, 2009 20:55:07 GMT -5
....hmm...say...I know this may sound like a rookie question...but doesn't Disney own Pixar now? Can it be that Pixar, while albiet TRYING to hold onto it's morals, is too close to Disney that the "worn-out and predictable" storylines of Disney is rubbing off on them?
I honestly hope people WILL read the next to last chapter of my Pixar Kingdom Hearts story for Wall-E...as I show Auto is NOT as bad as he seems.
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Post by RandallBoggs on Jun 8, 2009 20:57:52 GMT -5
....hmm...say...I know this may sound like a rookie question...but doesn't Disney own Pixar now? Can it be that Pixar, while albiet TRYING to hold onto it's morals, is too close to Disney that the "worn-out and predictable" storylines of Disney is rubbing off on them?
I honestly hope people WILL read the next to last chapter of my Pixar Kingdom Hearts story for Wall-E...as I show Auto is NOT as bad as he seems.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2009 21:34:25 GMT -5
Sorry, but I gotta step in as there's complete lack of logic here. NOW....before I get into ANYTHING....let me remind everyone here of one thing. By definition an argument is a series of statements that asserts the truth of the conclusion it reaches is grounded in "logic." A fight on the other paw is one or more wills trying to impose itself on another, and therefore not be dabbled in. What I'm posting is an argument, not a fight. Also another thing to bear in mind is that an attack on an on opinion is NOT an attack on the person itself. To say your opinion is you is completely ludicrous. Just because you form and craft something, does that make it you? Nope, how can it be? It's not a living, breathing copy of you. Unless you can reproduce yourself perfectly nothing you create is you and at best is only a part of you. So while I might not like an idea, it has nothing to do with how I feel personally about people here on the site. I still think you're all fine folks really, but I'm gonna step up and throw in my two cents because there's just some inconsistencies that don't fall into place here when looked at a logical standpoint. First off, in my opinion Pixar has not broken the rule of no villains yet. Auto the autopilot is a what? Computer. And a computer by definition can do nothing more beyond it's programming parameters. No matter how much we'd like to think so, Auto was not an AI. It was carrying out it's directive that someone ELSE programmed it with. It can't be seen as good or bad because of that. If it has no reason and no logic it can't be saddled with morals. It was carrying out the directive based on input it received. It was programmed to prevent a return to Earth, and that was that, and let's face it, the humans DID achieve this return on their own, after being goaded out of inactivity. Second, let's look at Charles Muntz. No, he did not have a German accent. Christopher Plummer spoke in his natural tone as far as I could tell, and a real in depth look at his character reveals he was more of a twisted, paranoid individual than a pure "villain." I'd label him antagonist, not villain. First off, he was stripped of his prestige and his standing due to a false accusation brought against him. He left to clear his name, but spending most of his life in a remote jungle locale with little human contact only served to amplify his fears that people were out to steal his discovery and discredit him, and this isolation and spiraling thought process led to a very selfish, and paranoid man. He does have warmth about him, but his paranoia has grown so much that you cross that very thin line and he immediately suspects you of trying to steal his credit. This shows signs of nervous breakdown and mental degradation than outright villainy. Yes he did quite reprehensible things, but it was more of a result of his circumstances and the breaking of what was once a very respected and loved hero (to his audiences at least). The clue to his altered mental state was when he was talking about the killing of what most probably were innocent people he had come across. Now yes, I was a bit unsure of having Muntz killed off, as that seemed a bit extreme, but at the same time the years of devoting his life to his clearing of his name and the development of his paranoia and fostering avarice made it unlikely he'd suddenly receive an epiphany and change. Now for the dogs......all of them (even the "evil" ones) are seen doing good things when Carl takes them back into civilization so to say that they were filling stereotypes when you just admitted yourself PBL that you haven't even seen the movie is rather unfair I think. That last bit about what's next was a bit of wild speculation I think and not very well grounded. Alright, well now that I've spoken my piece if we look at this logically no, Lasseter did not technically lie, and no, I'm not attacking anyone here....just opinions, which is not an attack on the people who originated those opinions. Opinions are not people, and can not be people. Just because I originate a thought does not make it me. If I have thoughts of self-destruction, those thoughts are in opposition to me....opposition to ME.....thoughts and me are two separate things. As said, an opinion is a very small part of a person, not the person itself. I have nothing personally against anyone here, I just wanted to break stuff down with logic, look at things from a different angle and come to some conclusions. So yeah, hope no one is offended, wasn't an attack on anyone personally here, only on opinions. I still like you PBL quite a lot, and always think you have great insight to offer. It's just that this time I wanted to say a few things just to give what I felt were logical views on the whole situation. No need for anyone to feel debased either as that wasn't what I was doing. Just arriving at an answer through deductive reasoning. I won't voice my personal views on Pixar though, as they've got good stuff and bad stuff about them and don't really feel like getting in to it as it's not that important in my opinion. Anyways, that's my two cents.
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