If you're depressed about
being a fuck up then it's probably Disney's fault. I'm not blaming
the house of mouse for the fact that you're seemingly incapable of
achieving happiness but rather that you consider it your own fault.
Being the constant miserabilist that I am, I've taken to asking most
people within my social circle if they're happy and the two most
positive responses that I've had are “I'm in a happier place”
and “I don't like this line of questioning”. Am I happy? No. I
wake up every morning, rate my joy out of eight and then stick my
head in the oven, on that gas mark and for that equivalent amount of
minutes. Literally nobody will admit to being content because nobody actually
fucking is, but in this world of social media we assume that
everybody is swimming in an ocean of success whilst we're trying not
to drown in a swimming pool of piss. People used to be worried that
the grass was always greener on the other side but some days I can't
help but feel it'd simply look better from six foot below.
The reason that Disney should be paying for our therapy is because it teaches a simple message; “Good things happen to good people”. What a load of shite. We live in a random and godless world in which events are dictated by chaos and with karma simply being the conformation bias of the fucking deluded. The problem with Uncle Walt's message is that we're brainwashed with it as children before growing up to become the adult-sized, flesh bags of incapability that we feel we are. We're taught that good things happen to those that deserve it, we know we aren't happy and so slowly but surely our Krang-like brains turn against us and form an unjust conclusion. We must be bad people. We deserve our shitty lives. It's our own fault. Parents rave about how Disney's films are able to get their bratty little kids to shut the hell up for a couple of hours, but that message is a Russian roulette of self-hate and future depression. I know children are too noisy and I know that Disney's films are really good... but with that underlying message you may as well entertain your kids by strapping them to a spinning wheel and throwing circus knives at their fucking heads.
It's refreshing
therefore to come to The Good Dinosaur and
discover that Pixar have made a family film that shares a knowledge
of my existential anxieties and absurdist world views. The
film begins with the dino-killing asteroid heading straight towards
Earth and then like a twatty bus driver on a rainy day it simply
carries on past us. No collision, no extinction, just a random near-miss. As a result, dinosaurs are now given a few extra million years
to continue evolving, which is one of the many things that this film
then fails to explore. Essentially they learn to speak English and
figure out some basic farming skills but that's about it. With our
wireless internet, motorised vehicles, foot-long Subway sandwiches,
and those naughty green herbs that people like to smoke, I can't help
but feel humanity has done a little better. Instead The Good
Dinosaur is a simple coming-of-age story about a young apatosaurus who gets lost and so is forced
onto an adventure with a tiny, feral, human child. So shock-shitty-horror, Pixar have made a film in which a mismatched couple slowly bond
during their attempt to find their way home. Kind of like you know..
every fucking Pixar film ever.
So you'd be hard-pressed to successfully argue that this is one of Pixar's best films because it really isn't. It's a simple story about a dinosaur's journey home in which you spend the entire running time in awe of the animation. I mean, seriously- this film looks amazing. The backgrounds, landscapes, and general believability of the environment are now so photo-real that they may as well have just filmed the actual places for real and saved themselves a few years of pissing about on the pixel-machine. However this studio has always prided themselves on prioritising story and character to the point that if you're noticing the animation then they've kind of failed. If you spend the entire running time of a film about a talking dinosaur thinking “fuck me, that tree looks good”, then something has clearly gone wrong. Not only that but the locations look so stunning that they actually start to contradict the cartoonish looking creatures we're meant to be following. It's kind of like seeing John Goodman walking down the health food section of the local supermarket.. something just don't quite seem right.
So you'd be hard-pressed to successfully argue that this is one of Pixar's best films because it really isn't. It's a simple story about a dinosaur's journey home in which you spend the entire running time in awe of the animation. I mean, seriously- this film looks amazing. The backgrounds, landscapes, and general believability of the environment are now so photo-real that they may as well have just filmed the actual places for real and saved themselves a few years of pissing about on the pixel-machine. However this studio has always prided themselves on prioritising story and character to the point that if you're noticing the animation then they've kind of failed. If you spend the entire running time of a film about a talking dinosaur thinking “fuck me, that tree looks good”, then something has clearly gone wrong. Not only that but the locations look so stunning that they actually start to contradict the cartoonish looking creatures we're meant to be following. It's kind of like seeing John Goodman walking down the health food section of the local supermarket.. something just don't quite seem right.
That's
not to say that I didn't enjoy the two main characters at all, with
the touching bond between the dinosaur and the human often finding
various ways to kick my heart in the balls. There was one scene for
example in which the two find a primitive way to bond over the loved
ones that they've lost which was particularly tough. And when I say
primitive, I mean they use sticks and mud as opposed to making finger
paintings with their shit. Although considering the little boy runs
around semi-naked and on all fours, there were a few moments that I
worried that I was going to get a wink from the little pink eye of
his anus. Oh and to quickly move away from that subject, there was
another moment involving the ghost of one of said loved ones that was
like getting donkey-punched in the feels. It's just a shame
that those moments were simply the cherries on top of a particularly
average cake. This is obviously in stark contrast to something like
Toy Story in which the entire
film was essentially one giant fuck-off cherry on its own.
The
joke of this film is that its makers are referring to it as being
about a boy and his dog- it's just that in this specific case the boy
is a dinosaur and the dog is a boy. As far as subtext goes,
that's really all there is. Whereas this years Inside Out was
able to deconstruct the inner workings of a young girl's brain and
attempt to explain the benefits of feeling sad, all The
Good Dinosaur does is mildly
subvert an old cliché. Thank God then for the shite that they
put the two characters through which I really do think is the saving
grace of the movie. Neither of the two main characters are morally
bad and yet they're subjected to a hailstorm of shite as the movie
relentlessly fucks them like a one armed knobbing machine with its
drilldo on full charge. If they're not having their family die,
getting hunted by predators, or being washed away in floods, then
they're constantly cracking their heads on rocks. In fact the lead
dinosaur seems to smash his skull so many times that the suspense to
the film isn't so much about if he'll get home but rather in
wondering how brain-damaged he'll be if he ever gets there. In
contrast to all of that Disney shite that I was banging on about
earlier, this film doesn't subscribe to the notion that good things
happen to good people. Rather it leans more heavily on the fact that
the world is a miserable fucking place and that as bad as being born
might be, it essentially only gets worse from then on.
Of course this isn't
necessarily the kind of message that parents want to expose their
children to and as a result a few of the over-protective
procreators have begun to moan. There was even one loud brat in our
cinema screening who kept loudly exclaiming “I don't like this
Mummy”, every time shit began to get real. Well tough titties
kid, because that's what life's about. You aren't going to inherit a
castle, become a princess, or somehow stumble upon an ancient
treasure. However you might get lost, attacked, and have everybody
that you care about die. That's life, get used to it. It's not the
films content that the children have been frightened of but rather a
fairly believable depiction of what they themselves can expect
between now and the grave. Essentially it goes, birth, chaos, chaos,
chaos, death. Also we have a stupid system in the UK in which a 12A
rating from the BBFC means that anybody below the age of 12 can see a
film if accompanied by an adult. The problem is that 12 and older
really is the only age that the BBFC think a film is acceptable for
and so only reduced the strictness of the certificate on the grounds
that some very slightly younger children might just about be mature
enough. However this has resulted in fucking thick, irresponsible
parents taking their insanely young children to see films that are in
no way appropriate. So fuck you, you moronic parents... if your five
year old is mature enough to see the dead Heath Ledger dressed up as a
psycho clown and jam a pencil into a gangsters eye then they're
mature enough to watch a dinosaur's world fall apart as it gets
unjustly tortured by nature.
So yeah.. The Good
Dinosaur isn't up there with
Pixar's best, although even an average film from that studio is worth
seeing. It's also a miracle that the film is any good at all
considering how much of a balls up its making of seems to have been.
To cut a long story short, the movie took about six years to make and
then at last minute the director and cast were all removed and
replaced as a new script was frantically written instead. So I guess
chaos really is the theme running through everything from the films
depiction of reality to simply the process by which it was made. So
if you're feeling like you're to blame for how shite your life is
then perhaps this is the film for you. There are better movies out
there that you could watch but this is one of the few that might make
you realise that nothing is your fault and that we're actually all
riding the same shitty flume of life together. In fact, it actually
joins the ranks of a few other films that have been out this year and
that seem to be examining the reality of absurdism and
existentialism. Although unlike Sicario and
Birdman, The Good Dinosaur might
actually help future suicides by being aimed exclusively at those
fucking horrible little bastards that we call children. Thanks for
reading motherfuckers, and see you next time.
You can visit the blog picture artist at _Moriendus_
You can visit the blog picture artist at _Moriendus_
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