ztmillers-2
Joined Jan 2010
Badges12
To learn how to earn badges, go to the badges help page.
Ratings3K
ztmillers-2's rating
Reviews16
ztmillers-2's rating
Any follow-up to the 2016 masterpiece, Zootopia, is going to be disadvantaged. Cinema was still a year ahead of Jordan Peele's "Get Out" when Disney released one of the most articulate explanations of race, allyship, and accountability ever put to film. Now that everyone knows how good, even "timely," a Disney pic can be, how do you surprise everyone a second time?
The insights in this sequel won't spur any new chapters in your sociology 101 textbook. Though honestly, neither was the deflection of white saviourship that novel back in 2016. We more or less knew how racial profiling and biases played out in the landscape. What surprised many of us (and validated the rest of us) was the idea that these ideas could be articulated so eloquently in a children's film.
It seems that the studio tried the same thing here with Zootopia 2 that it did with Frozen II six years ago. I think a lot of people wanted that movie to find more princess tropes to rebut; what they ended up doing was just following the tracks of the characters and unearthing deeper insights, richer epiphanies. I found myself really appreciating that then, and I think it works here too. Byron Howard and Jared Bush appear to have caught onto the idea that nearly ten years later, the world still needs mirrors for examining what it means for all sorts of animals to exist in one space, and we luckily have a rabbit and fox who know something about that.
At the start of this film, Nick and Judy are still early into their official partnership, and not everyone's sold on this whole idea of a fox and a bunny working on the police force--let alone as partners. And frankly, Nick and Judy themselves are still trying to convince themselves that it's not just wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, Zootopia is fast approaching the centennial celebration of the device that allows for the distinct climate districts in the city. Everyone knows that this invention happened to coincide with a deadly reptile attack, which is why there are no reptiles in Zootopia. And so when a certain blue serpent slithers onto the scene, everyone is nervous--except of course, a soft-hearted rabbit and the shrewd fox she drags along for the ride. If they want to prove to everyone that they belong on the force, they'll have to figure out what exactly happened 100 years ago and how to tell the world.
The nucleus of this film is Gary De'Snake, brought to life brilliantly by Ke Huy Quan. He is darn near the cutest reptile ever put to film--and also woefully underused. A lot of Judy and Nick's revelations about reptiles tend to be fueled more by conversations they have about him than actions he takes himself--you really want to see more of the snake.
A few parts of this film feel like they were edited for broadcast. This is another one of those movies where they obviously did a lot more research and made a lot more drawings than they needed to. That's all good and fine for worldbuilding, but the film feels a little crowded with cameos or one-off characters. Too many faces from the first movie wanted to make sure you remembered they were there.
The animation team builds on the playground of the first film--we were absolutely overdue for a marine-mammal section of Zootopia. But it's not just that the animal metropolis makes for some stunning vistas. We get to dive into the wheels and gears of this animal kingdom, and almost always while we're on the run. This film takes us on so many roller coasters that could only exist in this world.
A part of me wants to give this film a tepid review simply because I'm scared of what it represents. Particularly in the wake of last year's Moana 2 tumor, I'll always be hesitant to sign off on any Disney Animated movie with a number in its title. (Seriously folks, if you are going to feed Toy Story 5, consider also checking out Pixar's Hoppers or Disney Animation's Hexed next year.)
But this sequel sidesteps what made the 2010 Pixar sequels so nauseating. This film's external conflict fits alongside a compelling internal conflict between the characters--and not like a "Wreck-it Ralph is being forced to resolve some attachment anxiety that he definitely didn't have in the last movie" kind of conflict. Judy and Nick have some of the slickest verbal repartee of any animated pairing, but this kind of writing is even more important.
Nick and Judy are in conflict here, yes, but the film finds the optimal balance. Their mismatched viewpoints generate real tension between them and put their viability as a partnership into question. Judy asserts "The world will never be a better place until people are brave enough to do the right thing." To which Nick returns, "Sometimes being a hero doesn't make a difference." But they're never so biting that you lose sight of what makes their friendship so endearing in the first place.
So if I am to be subjected to Encanto 2, perhaps they can at least take notes from this movie.
The insights in this sequel won't spur any new chapters in your sociology 101 textbook. Though honestly, neither was the deflection of white saviourship that novel back in 2016. We more or less knew how racial profiling and biases played out in the landscape. What surprised many of us (and validated the rest of us) was the idea that these ideas could be articulated so eloquently in a children's film.
It seems that the studio tried the same thing here with Zootopia 2 that it did with Frozen II six years ago. I think a lot of people wanted that movie to find more princess tropes to rebut; what they ended up doing was just following the tracks of the characters and unearthing deeper insights, richer epiphanies. I found myself really appreciating that then, and I think it works here too. Byron Howard and Jared Bush appear to have caught onto the idea that nearly ten years later, the world still needs mirrors for examining what it means for all sorts of animals to exist in one space, and we luckily have a rabbit and fox who know something about that.
At the start of this film, Nick and Judy are still early into their official partnership, and not everyone's sold on this whole idea of a fox and a bunny working on the police force--let alone as partners. And frankly, Nick and Judy themselves are still trying to convince themselves that it's not just wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, Zootopia is fast approaching the centennial celebration of the device that allows for the distinct climate districts in the city. Everyone knows that this invention happened to coincide with a deadly reptile attack, which is why there are no reptiles in Zootopia. And so when a certain blue serpent slithers onto the scene, everyone is nervous--except of course, a soft-hearted rabbit and the shrewd fox she drags along for the ride. If they want to prove to everyone that they belong on the force, they'll have to figure out what exactly happened 100 years ago and how to tell the world.
The nucleus of this film is Gary De'Snake, brought to life brilliantly by Ke Huy Quan. He is darn near the cutest reptile ever put to film--and also woefully underused. A lot of Judy and Nick's revelations about reptiles tend to be fueled more by conversations they have about him than actions he takes himself--you really want to see more of the snake.
A few parts of this film feel like they were edited for broadcast. This is another one of those movies where they obviously did a lot more research and made a lot more drawings than they needed to. That's all good and fine for worldbuilding, but the film feels a little crowded with cameos or one-off characters. Too many faces from the first movie wanted to make sure you remembered they were there.
The animation team builds on the playground of the first film--we were absolutely overdue for a marine-mammal section of Zootopia. But it's not just that the animal metropolis makes for some stunning vistas. We get to dive into the wheels and gears of this animal kingdom, and almost always while we're on the run. This film takes us on so many roller coasters that could only exist in this world.
A part of me wants to give this film a tepid review simply because I'm scared of what it represents. Particularly in the wake of last year's Moana 2 tumor, I'll always be hesitant to sign off on any Disney Animated movie with a number in its title. (Seriously folks, if you are going to feed Toy Story 5, consider also checking out Pixar's Hoppers or Disney Animation's Hexed next year.)
But this sequel sidesteps what made the 2010 Pixar sequels so nauseating. This film's external conflict fits alongside a compelling internal conflict between the characters--and not like a "Wreck-it Ralph is being forced to resolve some attachment anxiety that he definitely didn't have in the last movie" kind of conflict. Judy and Nick have some of the slickest verbal repartee of any animated pairing, but this kind of writing is even more important.
Nick and Judy are in conflict here, yes, but the film finds the optimal balance. Their mismatched viewpoints generate real tension between them and put their viability as a partnership into question. Judy asserts "The world will never be a better place until people are brave enough to do the right thing." To which Nick returns, "Sometimes being a hero doesn't make a difference." But they're never so biting that you lose sight of what makes their friendship so endearing in the first place.
So if I am to be subjected to Encanto 2, perhaps they can at least take notes from this movie.
I'm conflicted about how to approach this review. I know everyone has their own yellow brick road to the myth of The Wizard of Oz as a whole and the specific Broadway adaptation that brought us all here. I don't want to write this only for others who are familiar with the source material.
Even so, I can't help but review this from the perspective of a fan of the Broadway show--someone who has been tracking the potential for a film adaptation since before Jon M. Chu's participation was announced for the ambitious undertaking of translating one of Broadway's most electric shows onto film. I can't help but view this from the vantage point of someone who knew just how many opportunities this had to go wrong.
And it's from that vantage point that I now profess such profound relief that the gambit paid off. We truly have the "Lord of the Rings of musicals." I'll give last year's movie the edge for having a slightly better hold on the pacing. But what Jon M. Chu and his team have done here with these two installments is nothing short of extraordinary--in ways I don't know the world will appreciate until they've walked down the yellow brick road some.
We pick up with Elphaba and Glinda some time after they have found themselves on opposite sides of the Wizard's war against the animals. Both of them are following the paths they have chosen for themselves, yet neither of them have really gotten what they wanted. Elphaba's justice quest is having minimal success, and all the parades in the world can't quiet Glinda's unrest. Most of all, they miss one another, and they want to imagine a future where they can find one another again. But as the casualties in the Wizard's tyrannical reign threaten to consume everything, these two friends will have to make unimaginable sacrifices to bring peace back to the place over the rainbow.
Outside observers tend to resign the musical field as a space that just exists for the fireworks and other such pageantries. And this is largely true. The human soul just yearns for spectacle. Some of us get it from seeing spaceships crash into each other. Some of us get it from song and dance.
But the advantage that the musical has over the action-adventure field is that its hold on human imagination has always been both macro and micro. This installment has fewer opportunities for the kaleidoscopic group numbers from the last movie. But in its wake, we see the camera pulling in closer to the face of the performer, peeling away the mask. There's very little of what we'd normally call "choreography" in the love duet between Elphaba and Fiyero, just the constant exchange of charisma between two star players.
And speaking of the film's fantastic cast ... it's very difficult to overstate just what an impossible task Ariana Grande-Butera and Cynthia Erivo were charged with. The rhythms and flourishes of their lines are well rehearsed in the hearts and minds of musical theater fandom. Yet these two girls with their own individual forms of courage and vulnerability make veteran audiences feel like they're discovering this story for the first time, and the reciprocal may also be true.
It's been Chu's gift to musical theater that he's figured out how to apotheosize the source musical--without actually altering anything in its design. Most of what he's done across these two films is reinforce a scene with an added human layer, and this gave the scenario a little more weight--made everything feel a little more somber.
But his methods wind up having the opposite effect with the saga's conclusion. I've seen the stage show live twice now, and the ending of the stage production has always left me feeling rather sobered. But seeing the finale play out on film left me exhilarated. This is the one space where Chu's ability to key in on the human piece actually lightened the show. There are some very specific directing choices that can perhaps explain why, and I'll let everyone else see them for themselves.
The same thing that made Chu's outing with In the Heights such a knockout makes these films a score. Where even the MGM film had to frame Dorothy's adventure in an REM cycle in order to make it more palatable, this film believes in the fantasy--it asks you to grab the broomstick with Elphaba and defy gravity.
And it's for that reason that I imagine that some players will choose to reject this movie, or insist that it stay in its lane. That's fine. Those folks can still come over for Thanksgiving. But those of us who have been paying attention to this conversation for some time know just what a special thing a fantasy is, and they really want you to know that too.
Elphaba herself notes in her new solo, "There's No Place Like Home," it's not just that Oz is a physical place. It's the idea and the promise of it that gives it power, but only if you choose to believe in it. And for films that instruct us in how to close our eyes and take that leap, the gratitude owed can scarcely be described with simple words.
Which, I suppose is why we even have musicals in the first place.
Even so, I can't help but review this from the perspective of a fan of the Broadway show--someone who has been tracking the potential for a film adaptation since before Jon M. Chu's participation was announced for the ambitious undertaking of translating one of Broadway's most electric shows onto film. I can't help but view this from the vantage point of someone who knew just how many opportunities this had to go wrong.
And it's from that vantage point that I now profess such profound relief that the gambit paid off. We truly have the "Lord of the Rings of musicals." I'll give last year's movie the edge for having a slightly better hold on the pacing. But what Jon M. Chu and his team have done here with these two installments is nothing short of extraordinary--in ways I don't know the world will appreciate until they've walked down the yellow brick road some.
We pick up with Elphaba and Glinda some time after they have found themselves on opposite sides of the Wizard's war against the animals. Both of them are following the paths they have chosen for themselves, yet neither of them have really gotten what they wanted. Elphaba's justice quest is having minimal success, and all the parades in the world can't quiet Glinda's unrest. Most of all, they miss one another, and they want to imagine a future where they can find one another again. But as the casualties in the Wizard's tyrannical reign threaten to consume everything, these two friends will have to make unimaginable sacrifices to bring peace back to the place over the rainbow.
Outside observers tend to resign the musical field as a space that just exists for the fireworks and other such pageantries. And this is largely true. The human soul just yearns for spectacle. Some of us get it from seeing spaceships crash into each other. Some of us get it from song and dance.
But the advantage that the musical has over the action-adventure field is that its hold on human imagination has always been both macro and micro. This installment has fewer opportunities for the kaleidoscopic group numbers from the last movie. But in its wake, we see the camera pulling in closer to the face of the performer, peeling away the mask. There's very little of what we'd normally call "choreography" in the love duet between Elphaba and Fiyero, just the constant exchange of charisma between two star players.
And speaking of the film's fantastic cast ... it's very difficult to overstate just what an impossible task Ariana Grande-Butera and Cynthia Erivo were charged with. The rhythms and flourishes of their lines are well rehearsed in the hearts and minds of musical theater fandom. Yet these two girls with their own individual forms of courage and vulnerability make veteran audiences feel like they're discovering this story for the first time, and the reciprocal may also be true.
It's been Chu's gift to musical theater that he's figured out how to apotheosize the source musical--without actually altering anything in its design. Most of what he's done across these two films is reinforce a scene with an added human layer, and this gave the scenario a little more weight--made everything feel a little more somber.
But his methods wind up having the opposite effect with the saga's conclusion. I've seen the stage show live twice now, and the ending of the stage production has always left me feeling rather sobered. But seeing the finale play out on film left me exhilarated. This is the one space where Chu's ability to key in on the human piece actually lightened the show. There are some very specific directing choices that can perhaps explain why, and I'll let everyone else see them for themselves.
The same thing that made Chu's outing with In the Heights such a knockout makes these films a score. Where even the MGM film had to frame Dorothy's adventure in an REM cycle in order to make it more palatable, this film believes in the fantasy--it asks you to grab the broomstick with Elphaba and defy gravity.
And it's for that reason that I imagine that some players will choose to reject this movie, or insist that it stay in its lane. That's fine. Those folks can still come over for Thanksgiving. But those of us who have been paying attention to this conversation for some time know just what a special thing a fantasy is, and they really want you to know that too.
Elphaba herself notes in her new solo, "There's No Place Like Home," it's not just that Oz is a physical place. It's the idea and the promise of it that gives it power, but only if you choose to believe in it. And for films that instruct us in how to close our eyes and take that leap, the gratitude owed can scarcely be described with simple words.
Which, I suppose is why we even have musicals in the first place.
This decade has seen a renaissance of movies claiming to be "this generation's ET," but you probably can't remember their names any better than I can. We could have all sorts of debates why it is no one seems to know how to access that these days, though I don't think for a moment that it's because 2020s America is actually beyond considering what it means to touch that childhood innocence.
But A24's newest film, The Legend of Ochi, does have me thinking this mental block is mostly self-inflicted by a world whose extoling of childhood is more driven by a dislike of the older generation than anything else. Fitting together narratives like How to Train Your Dragon with Fiddler on the Roof and tossing it in the sock drawer with 1980s dark fantasy, The Legend of Ochi is intermittently enchanting, but it's undermined by its own cynicism.
On an island stepped out of time, a secluded community wages war against the local population of monkey-like creatures called Ochi. These little guys may or may not be eating the sheep herds, but William DeFoe sure thinks they are. Makes sense. These guys totally look like the kinds of beasts that would naturally feast on livestock ... Our protagonist, Yuri, finds one of their young in a trap and spends all of ten seconds deciding whether or not to help it out. Daddy DeFoe's not a fan of this idea, but that's fine and good. Yuri's not a huge fan of her dad either. All interested parties find themselves converging over whether or not this little guy gets to go home.
The real star of the show is the golden monkey on Yuri's shoulder. Ochi reportedly had six different puppeteers orchestrating him at any given moment, resulting in an intricate tactile performance. The best thing we can ask for from this film is that storytellers might be curious to replicate this kind physical filmmaking, willing the fantastical into our world without always relying on the interface of computer-generated creatures.
But tragically, the magic of the puppet-work only winds up working against the movie.
The Ochi are presented as wholly natural in this world. Director Isaiah Saxon likened it to an existing primate species that hadn't featured on a BBC special yet. They are not supernatural and have no magical properties that would trigger the kind of superstitious hysteria that fuels this movie. Neither is Daddy some capitalist overlord trying to raze their territory to build like a shopping mall. The plight of the Ochi has no basis in real world discussions about deforestation, nor of adult distrust of childhood innocence or the concept of progress. And so the movie utterly fails to capture the realities of why people ever hated the mysterious or precious things of the world in the first place.
The movie quickly devolves into a lampoonery session for William DeFoe, who gets to the mouthpiece for some kind of amorphous archaism. William DeFoe hates the little critters because that generation can just be so backwards sometimes, don'cha agree? What attempt there is at psychology winds up feeling very shallow and incurious. The movie has this unspoken suggestion that his character is so mired in traditionalism because he just can't conceive of a world where it was okay for his wife to have left him. Yuri's dad has no microtraumas that would benefit from some examination, only a patriarchal delusion handed to him by some invisible hand in the sky.
More disappointing, there's no sign that Yuri herself ever bought into the propaganda she was raised on. And so her rescue of and subsequent adventure with the creature carries no thematic weight. Helena Zengel herself plays a believable weird girl, but her character is not being challenged and is taking no leap of faith. This is How to Train Your Dragon where it never crosses Hiccup's mind that the dragon might kill him if he lets it go. Congratulations, Yuri, for finding it in your heart to not kill fluffy Grogu ...
There are fleeting suggestions of ET that make you wish the movie was better than it actually is. Mostly in the golden lighting, or the wide shots of the mountain scape. I love childhood reverence for the mystical as much as the next film critic, but this film isn't really about the natural love children have for the small things of the world, or the tease of future discovery. It's about grown-ups.
Even if it doesn't want to be.
But A24's newest film, The Legend of Ochi, does have me thinking this mental block is mostly self-inflicted by a world whose extoling of childhood is more driven by a dislike of the older generation than anything else. Fitting together narratives like How to Train Your Dragon with Fiddler on the Roof and tossing it in the sock drawer with 1980s dark fantasy, The Legend of Ochi is intermittently enchanting, but it's undermined by its own cynicism.
On an island stepped out of time, a secluded community wages war against the local population of monkey-like creatures called Ochi. These little guys may or may not be eating the sheep herds, but William DeFoe sure thinks they are. Makes sense. These guys totally look like the kinds of beasts that would naturally feast on livestock ... Our protagonist, Yuri, finds one of their young in a trap and spends all of ten seconds deciding whether or not to help it out. Daddy DeFoe's not a fan of this idea, but that's fine and good. Yuri's not a huge fan of her dad either. All interested parties find themselves converging over whether or not this little guy gets to go home.
The real star of the show is the golden monkey on Yuri's shoulder. Ochi reportedly had six different puppeteers orchestrating him at any given moment, resulting in an intricate tactile performance. The best thing we can ask for from this film is that storytellers might be curious to replicate this kind physical filmmaking, willing the fantastical into our world without always relying on the interface of computer-generated creatures.
But tragically, the magic of the puppet-work only winds up working against the movie.
The Ochi are presented as wholly natural in this world. Director Isaiah Saxon likened it to an existing primate species that hadn't featured on a BBC special yet. They are not supernatural and have no magical properties that would trigger the kind of superstitious hysteria that fuels this movie. Neither is Daddy some capitalist overlord trying to raze their territory to build like a shopping mall. The plight of the Ochi has no basis in real world discussions about deforestation, nor of adult distrust of childhood innocence or the concept of progress. And so the movie utterly fails to capture the realities of why people ever hated the mysterious or precious things of the world in the first place.
The movie quickly devolves into a lampoonery session for William DeFoe, who gets to the mouthpiece for some kind of amorphous archaism. William DeFoe hates the little critters because that generation can just be so backwards sometimes, don'cha agree? What attempt there is at psychology winds up feeling very shallow and incurious. The movie has this unspoken suggestion that his character is so mired in traditionalism because he just can't conceive of a world where it was okay for his wife to have left him. Yuri's dad has no microtraumas that would benefit from some examination, only a patriarchal delusion handed to him by some invisible hand in the sky.
More disappointing, there's no sign that Yuri herself ever bought into the propaganda she was raised on. And so her rescue of and subsequent adventure with the creature carries no thematic weight. Helena Zengel herself plays a believable weird girl, but her character is not being challenged and is taking no leap of faith. This is How to Train Your Dragon where it never crosses Hiccup's mind that the dragon might kill him if he lets it go. Congratulations, Yuri, for finding it in your heart to not kill fluffy Grogu ...
There are fleeting suggestions of ET that make you wish the movie was better than it actually is. Mostly in the golden lighting, or the wide shots of the mountain scape. I love childhood reverence for the mystical as much as the next film critic, but this film isn't really about the natural love children have for the small things of the world, or the tease of future discovery. It's about grown-ups.
Even if it doesn't want to be.
Insights
ztmillers-2's rating
Recently taken polls
3,209 total polls taken
