Hey everyone!
Wow… it has been a struggle to write in here lately. Not
because I haven’t had time. I’ve actually had time for once! But I have been
feeling so uninspired and I can’t just crank something out without inspiration.
It’s too hard for my heart haha.
I know people were asking if I would do a follow up to my
most popular post on X-Men: First Class by doing X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Now I LOVED Days of Future Past, it was brilliant, but for whatever reason I
just felt no inspiration to write about it. I think because it’s so connected
to First Class that I feel like I would be writing about a lot of the same
things. It’s a connection story binding X-Men films together and thankfully
undoing the damage of the deplorable Last Stand film. But even still, in all it’s
awesomeness. I just don’t feel like writing about it…. Sorry!
I think the reason for my lack of inspiration to blog is I have been very upset about the
film/television world lately. Mainly my beloved Disney and what their company is
doing, but even just other aspects in general. I wrote a post last December
kind of a long these lines, but my heart just grows sadder and sadder each day
seeing what’s happening in my beloved industry and how certain creative engines are
being destroyed. As a passionate creator, I have actually been very depressed about it
lately, to tell you the truth.

Walt wasn’t about the money. One of my favorite quotes of
his is “Money doesn’t excite me, my ideas excite me.” I completely understand
that. I have never wanted to be rich and famous, but I HAVE wanted to make big
films that will make an impact the ways his have. That’s the priority. Ideas
are why we do what we do.

Disney is now just regurgitating old ideas, recycling old
stories and old productions. This is NOT moving forward. This is not the root vision. The company as a whole
is like a carousel. They are just going around and around in circles heading nowhere
new and pretty soon it will cause so much dizziness that the world will be sick
of it and give up on them forever. But if Walt were still here he would make
those horses fly right off the carousel and into a new world… in fact, he did
that literally in one of their greatest pictures...
Now I explained in a previous blogpost (http://reelreflections11.blogspot.com/2013/12/yo-movies-what-gives.html)
my problems with Frozen. I don’t dislike the movie, in fact most of it I really loved, but it fell short in so many ways it left me feeling a dissatisfaction. It was missing something. In my own opinion, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were far
superior because they were created by people who seemed to understand Walt’s ideas of new ways and new
worlds. But anyway, another good example I can give of carousel story-telling is
Maleficent which came out this year.
I liked the film, but I didn’t love it. It wasn’t because of
anything mechanical… the actors were superb, the visuals beautiful, the score fantastic,
and the idea of the retelling was great. However it was the execution of that
idea that made the movie fall flat.

The movie then twists the tale even further by having
Maleficent and Aurora form a sort of mother daughter bond and that mother’s
love being the true love that breaks the spell and awakens Aurora from her sleep. True love takes many forms and shapes and meets us in so many
ways. I like the idea that romantic love is but one of those loves and showing
Maleficent that true love does exist and is alive within her. This was a
wonderful theme!
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I ♥ Diaval haha |
But the film made some mistakes. Numero uno is that it
was rushed… ugh just like Frozen and just like every other movie being cranked
out right now. The story fell victim to this ADHD catering our culture seems to
be obsessed with. It’s crap. Secondly, it also fell victim to
commercialism and appeasing people to get butts in the seats. Mainly this was
brought up with Prince Phillip who was an utterly pointless character and the
movie did not need him to be good or to make it’s point. But they felt, as they
always do, that if there’s isn’t some cute One-Direction-wannabe actor in it,
girls won’t go and see it. Stop insulting everyone’s intelligence! Not having
Phillip in the movie would have been a risk but it would have been one worth
taking. His presence was jarring, random, and completely unnecessary.
Personally, I was hoping they would twist the tale even further and have Aurora
fall in love with Maleficent’s “servant” Diaval who was much hotter and cooler
than Phillip haha… but that’s my own imagination at work.

In my previous post regarding Once Upon a Time I explained how the
show spiraled downhill. This was also the handiwork of post-Walt Disney, commercialism,
and fan appeasement to get ratings and to make money. ABC and all involved made horrible decisions for that show
that desperately need to be fixed. The show went from 2.5 brilliant seasons to flushing itself now swirling around the
toilet bowl of entertainment. I am mad about a lot of things they did that
show, but I think the commercialism has me the most upset. I HATE that they are
bringing in Frozen. First off, the movie just came out, give it a rest! But I suppose there is no rest when there is more money to made. Secondly, Frozen isn’t even the best source of the fairy tale, it’s Disney’s completely retold version of the Snow
Queen. OUAT is now about remaking Disney movies and not about retelling fairy
tales into their own story which is how it began. I can’t imagine the Frozen storyline will be even
remotely good, but because I am a true fan I will stay loyal to the show… for
now… and see how it plays out.
If you feel like I do about the wretched decisions ABC and
the Once writers have made for the direction of the show, please post with the
hashtag #FixOnceUponATime and tell them you aren’t happy. If all the Captain
Swanners and Frozen fanaticals can make an impact, than so can we. If we ban
together to reclaim the heart, soul, and roots of a beloved show we can have a chance to pluck it from
the toilet before it officially reaches the sewer of entertainment.
Anyway, I know this has been kind of a rant. But in my
depression about the state of our industry and art, I just can’t bear to hold
these feelings inside. We have to stand for good material. In an age of a
gluttony of content, we must strive for quality not quantity. Our aim must be to please the
story and everything/everyone else second. To be true to our hearts and the hearts of the
stories we are telling. Stories are living things, but if we keep going the way
we are with film and television they will soon become an entirely artificial
intelligence.
“Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for
the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond
the reach of time.”
(All quotes in this post from the late, great Walt
Disney)
P.S. Did you know they are making a live-action Dumbo film with a guy who helped make Transformers? Heaven help us all! I can only say, WTF!?
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