Ah, OK. I’m not playing the “I refuse to acknowledge that movie’s existence” game; I did actually mean to see that and just never got around to it.
Along the same lines, the Butter Battle War (I love Dr Seuss) is currently an inexplicable favorite of my three-year-old’s, and when he gets to the end where the Zook general and the Yook general each have their little itty bitty destroy-everything bombs in hand and the book ends on the question of which one will drop it first, he will always gleefully tell you which one.
Oh god I hate that book, for exactly all those reasons.
I’ll add Ferris Beuller’s Day Off - the first time I saw it as a teenager I identified with Ferris’ sister the “brain” and thought Ferris was a complete jerk. I’ve since gotten over the blow to my ego and can enjoy the movie, but he still is a jerk.
The message I take from the Harry Potter books is that governments and institutions are ineffective or corrupt (and within institutions, capriciously wielding power is never punished); being the favorite pet of the most powerful individual is a better path to success than hard work or intelligence; servants really prefer to be exploited and trying to help them only embarrasses both of you; and the only way to defeat evil individuals is to physically conquer them with a single, more powerful individual.
Frankly, Mussolini would have loved the series.
The main Law & Order series recently came to an end, and while the obvious moral might be “Crime doesn’t pay” (since almost every week sees the guilty party convicted), that’s not what I took away from it. I think the real moral of the series is: “Don’t talk to the police.” Seriously, most episodes would be really short if the perpetrator politely declined the detectives’ offer to discuss matters downtown.
Secondary moral: Keep your composure on the witness stand, you fucking idiot. "Yes, alright?! I was in love with her and she betrayed me THAT BITCH!!! eep"
You’re thinking, perhaps, of Allie Sheedy?
Haha, that’s what I was thinking too. I wanted to sit the main characters down and say, “Look, you’re all very charming people, but you can’t just hang out all day spreading AIDS and not paying your rent.”
I know this is kind of a zombie thread, but I think it’s a cool concept and I wouldn’t mind seeing some more responses.
The Incredibles seemed to me to have an odd, pro-bullying message. It starts with our huge musclebound hero putting a very tiny man in the hospital. Then looses his job over it, and we’re supposed to feel bad for him. Yeah, the guy was a prick, but so what. The little prick had no power over Mr. Incredible. He could have flown over and saved the mugging victim. If he didn’t want to break the masquerade, he could have picked up the phone and called the cops, like any other non-powered guy. He didn’t even need the job. He punched the guy because he was pissed at himself and frustrated.
Someone told me once that great power comes great responsibility? Anything like that? Nah. Guy was a prick. ** It’s perfectly all right to lash out, as long as the target of your rage has it coming.** Any consequences that come of it are the unjust result of contemptible, jealous weaklings trying to pull you down.
Then we meet the bad guy . . . and he’s the little kid he was a jerk too years ago! Should this, perhaps, highlight that how we treat people can have consequences? That perhaps we should treat those weaker than us with respect? Nah. The kid was, and is a loser. Justifies the whole being a jerk to him thing, dosen’t it? Anyway, he’s defeated with minimal effort, because in the end, he was just a loser pretending to be a hero, not a REAL hero.
It wasn’t just Mr. Incredible, though. The daughter starts out shy and scared of everything. How do we establish that she’s overcome her shyness? Why, we’ll change her hairstyle so it looks just like everyone else, and show that now, she’s the one doing the intimidating! She was a loser. Now she’s not, because the boys are scared of her!
And the whole sports thing? Our hero wants his speedster son to ‘compete’ in sports, with people who could not possibly compete with him. That’s like Andre the Giant complaining they won’t let him spar with four year olds. No one points this out, they just repeat that it would let the mundanes know how special they are. Because that’s what competition is all about. Showing the losers just how much better you are than them.
It seemed like the movie had been written with the theme of 'Mr. Incredible is forced to confront that his superhero career was motivated more by vanity as the desire to help people. He struggles with that, accepts the consequences of it, understands that because it was done for the wrong reasons doesn’t undo the good he did do, and goes back to heroing in a more responsible way, now doing the right thing for the right reasons." The sports thing makes perfect sense in this context. He wants some reflected glory, and can’t see that said glory would be unearned and meaningless. So do the bad guys motivations and actions. In that context, he’s a twisted version of Mr. Incredible, motivated only by the glory, not caring about the harm he’s causing in the process.
Then they changed the message to ‘when everyone’s special, no one is,’ without bothering to change the plot so that message made sense, just by having people SAY it a lot.
Kind of a pity. I didn’t mind The Incredibles. It was fun to see the old comic-book beats animated. Could have done without the smug 20 years behind the ball ‘observations’ about comic book tropes, but that wasn’t a big deal. But I would have really liked to see that other movie.
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Well, and if they’d changed the character designs so all the male characters didn’t look like their faces were drawn on the head of a penis, that would have been a plus, too, but you can’t have everything.
That’s what I got out of A Doll’s House. I Could feel for the woman until what she said about her kids. Then I realized she was the villain of the piece.
I also completely missed the Christian symbolism of Narnia when I first read it as a kid, and, by the time I got to the seventh book, thought it was evil.
The first time I watched it, I did not know Fight Club was a black comedy. I honestly thought it was encouraging violence, nihilism and violent anti-consumerism.
Listen to the audio commentary on the DVDs sometime, they’re a hoot.
Ferris Beuller was the movie I came in here to mention… I don’t know if these kinds of movies actually carry any profound message. Ferris is a prick. I hated that movie and that character so much, I still refuse to watch it on re-runs, Broderick still pisses me off when I see him on screen because I still tie him in with that character (that’s weird!), the kid that played Cameron was such a tool, FB would have NEVER been friends with him in real life… unless of course FB could use Cameron - maybe to fuck up his dad’s rare car.
But to think this movie was supposed to carry a legitimate issue? I don’t see it. I think it’s just supposed to be one of those fun “kid rebels against all authority and has a great day.” kind of movie. I didn’t identify with FB, but apparently I was and am the exception. I have adult friends that still love this movie.
Not sure I saw all that you saw. I know I didn’t see the penis heads, and I’m glad. I have to admit I loved this movie, and the only thing that irritated me was the drawing of Elastigirl. Why on earth would they draw her with such an out of proportion body? Narrow waist, but hips that would have put her in a circus side show. Narrow her hips, and her body isn’t even an issue. But I’m stuck looking at her fat ass and hips for 2 hours. Why did they do that to us!? GAH!
I came away with that impression too.
That pretty much was the point of capital punishment back when most people believed in a literal afterlife and judgement.
IIRC, she didn’t look like that in the early scenes, pre marriage and kids. In the intervening years, she experienced middle-age spread. Her husband didn’t have the spare tire in the early scenes, either.
I should try and watch Reality Bites again, because I saw it (when it came out) right after watching Mike Leigh’s Naked, and couldn’t help but see RB as an American version of the same massively dysfunctional and unlikeable characters. I’m pretty sure that the filmmakers intended the Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke characters to be sympathetic, but Ben Stiller’s “villain” was the only character I had any positive feelings for. And he was kind of an asshole too. But I don’t think “these people are all assholes” was what they intended.
*The Wizard of Oz. *Of all the “messages” in that film, the one I DON’T get is “There’s no place like home.” To me, it’s more like “If you want a life of challenges and adventure, you have to leave home to get it. And if you want a boring, conventional life, go back home.”
The Matrix Reloaded - Nobody gives a fuck about pod-people. Like many people, after the ending of the first film I thought the sequel was going to be about a pod-people uprising.
Jurassic Park - A dinosaur theme park would be cool. Hell, even Disneyworld had its teething troubles. Maybe stick to herbivores next time.
In Bruges - Bruges would be a nice place to visit (so I did).
Saving Private Ryan - The needs of the many outweigh those of the few, and definitely those of the one.
The Great Escape - Serve your time quietly.
Where the Heart Is. I’m supposed to think that if I’m just kind and have faith in my fellow human beings, everything will work out in the end.
What I think is that if I’m a pregnant teenage girl with nowhere to go, I should take no responsibility for myself and wait for others to do everything for me, which they will: Coming my way will be a free house, a job, a hot guy, and my best friend, who in the book was an obese black woman, will magically transform into Ashley Judd!
Hell yeah it’d be cool. Jurassic Park didn’t fail because nature is inherently chaotic and uncontrollable. The park failed because it had no fucking staff and no common sense. I understand that there was a hurricane, but not including the owner and the guests I think they left what, 4 employees on the entire freaking island? Why have electric wire be the only thing containing the dinos? Why not put them in some sort of pit enclosure like regular zoos use? Oh and more and larger guns.
Speaking of The Devil Wears Prada, a movie that severely pissed me off, I feel like the message was “sure, this woman is demeaning and cruel to people around her for no reason whatsoever. But she’s a Very Important Person in a Very Important Industry, plus she’s dying, so really we should forgive her”. Which is a load of BS.
I hated Ferris too. I never did get the greatness of the movie, and all my friends rave about it as well. I just don’t get it.