Animation can make the real world surreal. Animation can be the stuff of brightly colored,phantasmagorical flights of imagination or vivid,grotesque nightmares. They can resurrect all the old daydreams you used to have. Animation will do this in exciting rejection of the laws of physics, reasonable possibility, or narrative convention. And get away with it.They are not bound to anything other than the imagination of their creators. Our suspension of disbelief is even greater with animated films giving them even more opportunity to shoot for (…wait for it…) infinity and beyond.
Shut up. That was golden and you know it.
Hollywood live action blockbusters and animated features are entering some sort of weird topsy-turvy Philip K. Dick universe: As live action films become more unbelievably digital – Animated films are becoming more “realistic” looking. As Hollywood studios make movies full of cartoonish characters that just don’t act the way real people do – Animated films create cartoon characters with heart and humanity to spare. Even if they aren’t human. Of course, film probably isn’t the right word anymore, given the dominance of computer animation over the old hand drawn ways. Still, I have been (and will always be) a fan of animation.
Here are my favorites in animation. Keep in mind, I’m a big nerd. Science fiction. Comic books. That sort of thing.
The Iron Giant (1999)
Let’s get this out of the way now and never speak of it again: I cry like a baby every time I see this movie. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration. I don’t ball up into the fetal position and sob uncontrollably. I just sort of,
y’know, well up with tears.
It’s always at two parts. First: Right after Hogarth and the Giant fly through the air and, seemingly, escape the chasing fighter planes. The Giant get shot out of the sky and, just before impact with ground, covers Hogarth up to protect him. The crash is excellent as the Giant bounces and skips along the ground, finally coming to a rest. The giant awakens to find that he is no longer holding Hogarth. He panics. He looks left and right. He sees Hogarth motionless on a snowy hill. The Giant nudges Hogarth’s body, but nothing happens. The boy does not wake up. The Giant had been through this before. He had seen the dead body of a deer and tried to move it, only for Hogarth to have to explain the concept of death the Giant. Now, his little friend (who had saved his life) wasn’t moving either. The Giant’s began to heave up and down and that grinding, mechanical voice begins to sob.
Telling you. Every single time.
The second time comes at the end: Hogarth (who was not dead just knocked out, go figure) and rest of the town of Rockwell look on in horror as an atomic bomb begins its descent down. The Giant takes a look around, sees the horrified faces of the people of Rockwell and decides what to do.
“I fix”, he says.
And with that, he says good-bye to his friend and leaps in the sky to sacrifice himself so the town can live. And as he gets closer to the bomb, he hears Hogarth’s voice in his head, “You are who you choose to be.” The Giant breathes out the word,”Superman”, smiles, and is obliterated in the sky above Rockwell. Like David Johansen said in Scrooged,” Niagara Falls.” (You have to do the little jazz hands movement from your eyes,too.)
Besides being one of the few movies that gets me to show my sensitive side (*ahem*), The Iron Giant is just a well-told tale of an outcast kid (we’ve all been there, right? [p.s. how can we all have been outcast? Somebody had to be a cool kid, amiright?]) who befriends a giant metal eating robot from outer space. There are so many great, little moments in this movie. The kind of moments that you might miss if turn away from the screen for more than a second: the way the Giant let’s out a sigh of contentment during the beauty of autumn in New England, the way Hogarth sighs out of exhaustion and the Giant sighs along with him, or the way the Giant’s disembodied hand plays with the toilet paper while hiding in Hogarth’s bathroom.
Directed by Brad Bird (who would also write and direct Ratatouille, and the brilliant The Incredibles), this movie has a depth to it that most animated features from major Hollywood studios didn’t aspire to at the time. Not only are the characters intelligent and humorous, but the time of the action (the so-called “Atomic Age”) brings with it a serious context. Hogarth lives with his mother and there is no mention of his father, but a picture by Hogarth’s bedside shows a man who is probably his father getting into a fighter plane. The movie is set in the late ’50s, implying that his father died in the Korean War. There is also the rampant McCarthy-ism of the early ’50s, here represented by G-man Kent Mansley. His xenophobia is a parody of the kind of anti-radicalism that many hardliners in the Government were taking. It isn’t just that there’s a giant robot on the loose, it’s that it wasn’t made by the U.S.A. and that’s reason enough to blow it up.
I could probably fill another terabyte of information talking about this movie. It would probably be quicker for you to just watch the movie and let it become one of your favorite movies. As of this writing, it’s on streaming on Netflix, so get to it.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut (1999)
Has there ever been a more deliriously offensive movie ever shown in theaters? I mean, one that was still funny? Oh,sure, There’s Something About Mary had its moments of “I can’t believe they did/said that”, but the entirety of South Park: B,L,U is a push against the boundaries of good taste and a test of what exactly you’re willing to laugh at. In this case, I laughed at Saddam and Satan in an abusive gay relationship, I laughed at Kenny dying and staying dead, I laughed at the overuse of supposed potty language (my mouth was hanging open just as much as the South Park kids mouths after “Uncle Fucker”), and I laughed at that little French kid who keeps making abortion jokes…it’s an odd transition, isn’t it? Going from The Iron Giant to South Park?
Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)
Thematically related to The Iron Giant, this direct-to-DVD release begins with the end of the Korean War and continues on into the beginnings of the Space Age. There are rumblings of McCarthyism, G-Men with an “if it ain’t American it can’t be trusted” attitude, and (in a blink and you’ll miss it moment) America’s ugly history of Jim Crow racism.
I’m a big DC fan and of pretty much anything that Darwyn Cooke draws. This movie is an adaptation of Cooke’s six issue miniseries for DC Comics (which actually was titled and, like most adaptations, the original work is far superior. The animators did a great job of sticking to Cooke’s simple, retro art-style.One of the big ways this movie succeeds (and what I know was obviously its intended goal) was making a Hal Jordan fan out of me. Hal was always “the old Green Lantern” to me during my comic collecting heyday. He was a symbol of comics “holy Silver Age, Batman” past: cheesy, pat morality tales where good is always good and evil is always defeated. Superman is still a boring character,the all-star boy scout, but Wonder Woman’s character is pretty fascinating. Unlike Superman, who seems to readily stand up for America’s interest at first call, WW questions the morality of America’s interest in Vietnam. She also frees a village of women from the thugs who raped them and then stands by while the women exact their revenge. She is disillusioned with the seeming failed ideals that Superman is standing for and, in the end, rejects her ambassadorship to stay on Paradise Island.
The only real flaw in the movie is in what gets omitted from the source material. The saga of the masked avenger John Henry is left out of the movie (except in passing reference on a news report) which I find to be a shame. There is plenty made of the Cold War paranoia that swept through America, but the racial segregation of America (especially in the deep south where John Henry stomped KKK skull) gets glossed over. Sure, it’s “children’s entertainment”, but, given the barrage of adult entertainment that kids are exposed to through pop culture, a mature handling of the topic of America’s history with race might be enlightening.
What all three of these movies (yes, even South Park) show is that animation can be used as a way of discussing actual ideas and not just used as a way to sell toys and breakfast cereals. Not there’s anything wrong with breakfast cereals. I like breakfast cereals. Some of my best friends are breakfast cereals.
