The Mary Sue: I was nervous going into The Boxtrolls. Real nervous. See, in 2012 Laika put out ParaNorman, which is in my top five animated films of all time. It’s hard to overstate how much I love this movie. I love how it looks, I love the acting, I love how it features both complex examination of social issues (specifically, bullying) and the line “I think that statue just pissed at us.” It can be tough for me to keep my expectations at a manageable level, and for Boxtrolls I just was not able to do it.
3 comments:
When I saw Laika mentioned in the title of this article, I had to read it. I really love their work. What was interesting about this post is that the focus was pretty heavily on the storyline and themes of the movie, which I wouldn't necessarily expect. While the author does share some opinions about the visual world of the movie, I would say that her main focus here was on recognizing and evaluating the themes of the movie, the focus largely being on social prejudices and family. I appreciated her focus on these aspects of the movie, because I would typically be more drawn to focusing on the visuals as Laika's animation style is so cool. Although I found some of her writing to be a little off, I can really respect the way in which this author presented her opinions, recognizing that even though there are parts of the movie she questioned, one can never expect to think a movie has everything.
So, I had never really given much thought to Laika, never heard of ParaNorman, and never actually gotten to see Coraline (although I want to). I had heard of Boxtrolls and thought it'd be a nice movie to see, but wouldn't have really been bothered if I didn't see it either. After reading this article, I really do want to go see all three of the movies, they sound really interesting both in terms of visuals and knowing how much went into them, as well as the story each movie is telling. These definitely sound like movies that could last through the ages and have people coming back to watch them again and again.
I applaud the creates and writers for what they are trying to accomplish. It's about time creates of films targeted toward the younger audience stops bashing the message, bullying is bad over their heads. How they are going about spreading their more complex and though out message is where I have an issue. The best way I can describe it is that the movie is similar to an adopted child of gay parents speaking out about marriage inequality and the hatred toward gays. While yes they do have more insight that the sympathetic ally and they can be seen as a bridge between the two sides, it's just not as powerful as someone who is truly faces the hatred and discrimination. Granted I have not seen the movie so I don't know if the adopted boy open the door for the rest of the box trolls to speak out but the whole idea of how they are going about spreading the movie's message makes me feel very conflicted.
Post a Comment