Review of Onward

I’m running sort of behind on my movie viewing, but have been traveling, so caught some films on the (somewhat lengthy) plane flight. Onward is a 2020 urban fantasy adventure film animated by by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film is directed by Dan Scanlon, produced by Kori Rae and written by Dan Scanlon, Keith Burnin and Jason Headley. It stars the voices of Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Octavia Spencer. This review contains spoilers.

Suburbia has overtaken the elven world, and magic is in decline. Ian Lightfoot has just turned 16, and he’s struggling with self-image. His older brother Barley is a gamer and has done his best to be a good mentor to Ian, whose father died before he was born. It turns out Ian’s father has left him a gift for his 16^th birthday, which includes a wizard’s staff and a magic jewel that will combine with a spell to bring Dad back for a day to visit with the son he never knew. When mom Laurel leaves the boys alone, they try the spell, but Ian doesn’t get it quite right and only resurrects the bottom half of Dad. Barley says they need to go on a quest for another jewel so they can finish the spell properly and bring Dad back. They set off to the Manticore’s Tavern, where they find a placemat with a route and instructions to find the jewel. Along the journey, Ian and Barley have to come to terms with Ian’s lack of confidence and Barley’s tendency to screw up. Can they successfully fix Dad before the sun sets on his day?

Like most Pixar films, this one is first rate. The animation is charming and engaging, and the characters are all strongly developed, trying to deal with issues that will help them become better people. Half-a-Dad feels his way around with his feet, displaying an amazing amount of personality for just the bottom half. Laurel is the concerned parent, risking the dangers to save her boys, and Corey the Manticore assists, trying to add some excitement back to her life. The boys deal with various challenges, and the plot has an action line that builds to a nice climax and a heart-breaking twist ending. Highly recommended.

The only negative I can come up with is that this is so carefully produced for kids that none of the threats feel like real dangers. If it were a little bit darker, I’d have been more concerned about the boys getting hurt, but the threats actually seem to be more about personal development than risking life and limb.

Five stars.

Review of “A Beautiful Whimper” by Stephen W Henkel

This is more flash fiction from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. This story runs about 701 words. Stephen W. Henkel is a New York teacher who writes SFF that leans toward the ideological and technological. He starts the story off with the poem “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot. For anyone unfamiliar with it, this is the source of the widely used quote, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” This review contains spoilers.

We’re in the future and AIs have developed to the point where, first, they take over composition of music. After all, they do it so much better, providing songs that work like a drug, pacifying emotions and ending problems like war and conflicts. Then next is films, and finally, customer service. The rain forests recover. The human birthrate drops off, as that isn’t needed any longer. And finally, humans began to eat only in virtual reality. It’s so much more satisfying, after all.

There’s very little here of setting, world-building, or imagery, and no actual characters. That means the narrative is pretty much philosophical and ideological, as Henkel represents his interests. There is a subtext that emerges in the passage on virtual eating that suggests this kind of total coddling prevents the victim from experiencing life in its fullest.

I gather this is a cautionary tale about becoming too comfortable and totally complacent. It’s nice to have everything taken care of for your and to always feel safe, but that means your own interests aren’t necessarily the same as the unit that’s taking care of you. Henkel could easily substitute other entities into this story, like government, and over-protective parents or spouses. The result, he suggests, is going out with a whimper.

Four stars for the subtext.

Review of Incredibles 2

This is an animated film written and directed by Brad Bird, starring Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson and Samuel T. Jackson. It was produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and released to theaters June 15, 2018. This is the second animated film in this series. For anyone who missed it, the first film titled The Incredibles was released in 2004. This review contains major spoilers.

This film picks up right where the last one left off. The Parr family are “Supers” who are hiding out under a government enforced program of secret identities called the Super Relocation Program. The Underminer bores into the Metroville Bank and the Parr family (a.k.a. The Incredibles) tries to stop him from vacuuming all the money out of the vault. There’s a lot of property damage but they fail to stop the robbery. This leads to bad press. Man-in-Black Rick Dickers informs the Parrs that the Super Relocation Program has been discontinued, which means, at this point, they’re on their own in maintaining their secret identities. The program will only pay for two more weeks at a motel, so the family is facing homelessness. Bob and Helen are approached by media mogul Winston Deavor and his sister Evelyn, who admire superheroes and want to launch a media campaign featuring Elastigirl to get them back to work on stopping crime. Bob agrees to watch the three kids, Dash, Violet and baby Jack-Jack, while Helen takes the job. This turns out to be more than Bob bargained for, as he has to deal with math homework, budding romance and Jack-Jack’s emerging powers. He gets support from his buddy Frozone and super-costume designer Edna Mode. Meanwhile, Helen finds her job isn’t what she thought. Can Bob and Helen figure out what’s going on? Can the kids save the day again?

So, Brad Bird made his point about superheroes hiding out in the first film, and the messages here are a little different, leaning heavily to the adult philosophical. Some of it comes out in straightforward conversations between Helen and tech talent Evelyn, and between Helen and Bob, while more of it is embedded in the characters and plotline.

Message #1: Can you help people too much? Evelyn thinks superheroes make everyone weak and unable to fix their own problems, while, as a Super, Helen thinks it’s right to help people in any way she can. When asked what people really want, Evelyn thinks it’s always ease over quality, and to be taken care of by Supers, which will lead to disaster. Again, I’m not the greatest on ideologies, but this looks like libertarianism vs. socialism with some overtones of Social Darwinism. How much should we help others? Does too much help really keep people from reaching success on their own?

Message #2: What should you do if laws are wrong? If laws are immoral, is it more right to follow the rules or to break the rules? Helen decides on breaking the law to appear as Elastigirl, with the hope her actions will bring about a change in government policy.

Message #3: Role reversals are tricky. Everybody needs to respect the jobs other people do to make the world run—especially moms. Bob really struggles through the family thing, but eventually gets it under control.

Message #4: Beware of social media. Evelyn turns out to be a social media activist. In her role as Screenslaver, she hypnotizes anyone who looks into her screens and forces them to become her minions in a bid to destroy the Supers. Besides this, Winston looks suspiciously like someone who recently testified before the US Congress about the use of social media in the last US presidential election.

Highly recommended. High five on the Ideation Scale.

Five stars.

The Incredibles, an Elitist Skreed?

When I was reading the press leading up to the release of Incredibles 2, I was (and also wasn’t) surprised to find that The Incredibles (2004) was apparently criticized as elitist because of the message it sends.

The Incredibles (a.k.a. the Parr family) are all “Supers,” that is, people with talents that make them different. Mr. Incredible is super strong and fast: Elastigirl is stretchy: Dash is really fast, and Violet can become invisible and project force fields. Because of government policy, they are required to bury their talents and to adhere to secret identities and live as ordinary people. The kids have grown up under this program, and are surprised that mom and dad, when things get dire, expect them to step up and perform as superheroes. Syndrome, the villain of the story, means to sell inventions that will make everyone super, so everybody will be the same. As I interpreted this, the message to kids is: Don’t hide out; step up and learn to use your own talents for the good of society.

So, is this message really elitist? Where did it come from leading up to 2004? And why did writer/director Brad Bird feel it was necessary to say this in a children’s animation film? Everyone is supposed to be equal under the law, of course, and democratic ideals say that everyone should be respected the same regardless of race, creed, talent or color. But does that mean everyone should be an ordinary interchangeable cog in the great machine of society?

There’s some background here: For anyone who isn’t aware of how the Bush era No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 was interpreted, it meant the US educational system should work for equal outcomes from all students—no one should have undue advantage or disadvantage. The Act set minimum standards and required that schools spend their time and resources to bring all children up to this level, but no further. In some states, funding for gifted programs was cut by 90% as a result. Schools shifted to achieving the mediocrity of minimum scores. Add to this the tendency of children to persecute anyone who is different, and the result was that talented kids were hiding out left and right, without any avenue to discover and develop their talents. All the emphasis in the public schools is still pretty much on achieving minimum performance, and anyone who stands out is pretending they are better than everyone else. Right?

So, what do we do about the fact that people really do have individual talents? Some people are world-class athletes and some are Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and some are Nobel Prize-winning scientists. If you try to substitute a scientist for a ball player, then there’s going to be a problem. Right? And if you try to dump all those kids who have been encouraged to adhere to minimum standards into a job market, then there’s going to be a problem there, too. Right?

But then, maybe I’m wrong. Surely it’s elitist to look for the best job candidate.

Ahhh. Okay. Now I feel better.

Next, a review of Incredibles 2.

Review of “Laws of Night and Silk” by Seth Dickinson

This short story was published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It currently has six recommendations on the Nebula Reading List.

Kavian is a sorcerer of the Cteri, the people of the dams, making war against the Efficate that wants the water they have captured in their reservoirs. The Efficate have wizards, too, but they are weak in comparison to the weapons of the Cteri. These weapons are abused children called abnarch who have been kept in dark, solitary confinement for their whole lifetimes. Kavain is given the abnarch girl, Irasht, to use as a weapon in the war. Her own abnarch daughter, Heurian, is given to another sorcerer, Fereyd Japur. The two use the girls to destroy the Efficate armies. Heurian dies, but Irasht is saved when the Efficate break off the war. Kavian then revolts against the system, challenging the female warlord Absu to release the imprisoned children.

This is a fully developed story, very personal and written in the present tense. Because it’s about abused children meant to be used as vessels, it’s very emotionally charged for our society that protects children so heavily. Absu is very pragmatic, without any apparent feelings clouding her decisions. However, both Kavian and Japur are plagued with guilt and get attached to their charges. By the end of the story Kavian has taught Irasht to talk and think, and uses her to press the revolt.

This is a very competent work meant to be emotional manipulation. I’m impressed at Dickinson’s skill at putting it together–he hits on a lot of current memes, strong females and disadvantaged men, etc. However, I’m a little hard to manipulate emotionally, so this just comes across as offensive because of the child abuse. There are also some other issues: First with the Cteri, who seem to be hogging all the water in the region and then abusing the children as a means of defending their civilization—there’s no mention that maybe they should just share. Next, I doubt very much that sorcerers who have grown up within this system would wallow in guilt or even question how it works—that’s imposed from our culture. Last, children who have been kept in the dark this way will likely be insane and not loving or trainable in any way. It’s also likely they will be blind.

I’ll give it some extra credit for the quality of the writing. Excellent imagery, character development and world building.

Four stars.

I think this one is a potential nominee.

More on coddling (or not)

Still on the trail of what makes some recent young adult novels so bland, I’ve unearthed several articles on overprotection of children. The article by Lukianoff and Haidt has been the most powerful, but there are also other writers who are expressing concerns about overprotection. The question of free-range versus helicopter parenting hit the news recently when parents in Maryland were turned in to Child Services for letting their children walk to the neighborhood park alone. Less has been said in the media about the perils of overprotection.

Like many splits in social philosophy, these extreme attitudes have worked their way into print. On the helicopter side, I’ve already reviewed Sarah Monette’s The Goblin Emperor. In this novel, the elf emperor’s half-goblin son lives in exile from the court after his mother dies. When his father and brothers are assassinated, young Maia has to quickly rise to the occasion. In a situation where it looks like he would be eaten alive by court politics, his virtue and goodness win acceptance and support from all of elf land. This goes relatively smoothly, too, with only a couple of attempts at assassination, both quickly foiled by his personal guards. There’s nothing really upsetting here.

On the free-range side, let’s have a look at Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King. It’s basically the same story, but here the stated theme is “A king must win, the rest is dust.” Young Prince Yarvi is the youngest son of the King of Gettland. Yarvi has a crippled hand, so is disrespected as weak at sword work and other arts of war. When his father and brothers are assassinated, Yarvi rises to the throne, but is quickly deposed by his uncle and left for dead. Sold into slavery, he finds a place as a rower in a merchant galley. He escapes the vicious captain with a group of men including a swordsman, an archer and a baker, and they begin a hard trek south through a frozen wasteland. Yarvi swears fealty to his uncle’s enemy the King of Vansterland in order to regain the throne and exact revenge. Things don’t go quite as he expects, but after a bloody coup, he finally confronts his real betrayer.

This is more like it. A child who ascends to the throne is probably lucky to become the pawn of older politicians. In this case, Yarvi’s uncle meant to murder him immediately, and only luck and some serious determination on Yarvi’s part kept him from being successful. The fact that Yarvi returns to Gettland with an army doesn’t cure his crippled hand, and he still suffers from that humiliation. He loses the throne, but he takes his revenge.

This story uses pretty much the opposite of Monette’s approach, exposing us to the dark underbelly of Gettland, where murder, slavery and abuse run rampant. In the end, Yarvi turns out to be a child of his father.

So, we have the opposites here. Which is going to produce the more politically intelligent and socially conscious reader? Half a King is a little strong for kids, but I’ll vote for it. Do I think really young kids need some protections, though, or at least a chance to talk over disturbing things with adults? Yes. I was absolutely terrified by H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds when I was 11 years old. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have read it until I was a little bit older.