Finding Dory

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by LotsoA113 » June 20th, 2016, 1:36 pm

Bill1978 wrote:So about those lesbians...yes? No?
They're not explicitly referred to as a couple on-screen...but they are seen walking hand-in-hand in the last few seconds of their super brief on-screen appearance. Make of that what you will. It'd be cool if they were since mainstream American feature film animation (ParaNorman and the teaser trailer for The Boxtrolls not withstanding) is well over due for LGBTQA representation.

And yeah, Finding Dory works quite a bit better than expected. It's story isn't as tightly constructed as the best of the studios output, but its got a lot of great new characters and really well-done emotional moments.
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Re: Finding Dory

Post by James » June 20th, 2016, 1:50 pm


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Re: Finding Dory

Post by EricJ » June 24th, 2016, 9:12 pm

Bill1978 wrote:So about those lesbians...yes? No?
Answer, after examining the film: No.
It's a sudden public disturbance after Hank, the "septopus", and Dory use a stroller to make a break for it, and since we're not even sure it's the two females' stroller, in the frenzy, it looks more like grown mother-and-daughter.
Oh, and they don't "walk off hand in hand" (where the heck did that come from?--No, don't tell me, I can guess), the short-haired one quickly hustles the other one out of shot by the arm in a "Just walk away, we didn't see anything!" panic.
So....another bit of wishful-thinking bites the dust. :roll:
LotsoA113 wrote:It'd be cool if they were since mainstream American feature film animation (ParaNorman and the teaser trailer for The Boxtrolls not withstanding) is well over due for LGBTQA representation.
(I dunno--Just watched Disney's "The Reluctant Dragon" over the weekend, and the title character was a bit jawdropping for his day...And what's the "A" now, no, seriously?)

-----
As for the movie itself:

It was...okay, and while it wasn't AS bad as Cars 2, I found myself not liking it for one of the exact same reasons--
Lightning and Mater were a good duo in the first Cars, since Lightning was caught in the grim frustration of being surrounded by his problem, and Mater's friendly, cheery dimness lightened him up and frustrated him at the same time. In Cars 2, it was all about Mater, and with no one else to lighten up, that left only the "frustrating" part, and it got old FAST.
I remember seeing Dory's bad memory gag in the first Nemo teaser, and thinking, "Lord, will we have to put up with this for a year?..."--But she worked so well as a cheery, optimistic foil to Marlon's neurotic pessimism, it was just what he needed, while also being pure unstoppable frustration to him at the same time, and we all liked her for it.
And as it turns out, the only really appealing scenes are when she's back with nervous, pessimistic Marlon again--and providing those impulsive attention-deficited inspirations that help him out--and when she's by herself, she's just a pathetic brain-damaged babbler.
Except that, like Mater in Cars 2 ("Y'mean, everyone thinks I'm an idiot? :( "), it's hard to develop pathos for a character who lives to frustrate the hero without trying, and who suddenly realizes the reason he or she frustrates everyone around them.

Oh, and that's the other thing: Here, Dory's bad memory is treated like some kind of "medical condition" from childhood, like we're watching a Disability-of-the-Week movie on Lifetime.
Now, maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I was always under the impression that the joke about Dory's bad memory in the first movie was that ALL fish have rather short term memories...Which is why you wouldn't give complex instructions to a goldfish, as by the time you told it step 3, it had already forgotten step 1.

I admire that Pixar still twists their sequels even when they "have" to make them, but it seemed like they grabbed all the Dory fandom and running jokes from the first movie (and gave her a whale to "speak whale" to) without really understanding the context of what made them unexpectedly work in the first place. Or guess they just forgot.

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Ben » June 25th, 2016, 4:18 am

Lesbians: they're there if you want to see them that way, not there if you don't.

And it's Marlin. Like, y'know...the fish.

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by ShyViolet » June 25th, 2016, 12:09 pm

Cool Lovely Bones reference Ben! :)
You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Dan » June 25th, 2016, 12:33 pm

There is a change to what we saw at D23 in comparison to the final product.
At D23, they explained that Destiny was having identity issues. She thought she was a whale, but she's really a whale shark. They had a clip with her and Bailey arguing this.

Destiny: I'm a whale!
Bailey: Shark.
Destiny: No, I'm a whale!
Bailey: You're a shark.

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Ben » June 25th, 2016, 2:04 pm

@Vi: ;)

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by EricJ » June 25th, 2016, 8:03 pm

ShyViolet wrote:Cool Lovely Bones reference Ben! :)
(Yeahhh, the more you start wondering why Peter Jackson did Lovely Bones, the more it starts to explain a lot of things in the Hobbit Trilogy... :? )
Dan wrote:
At D23, they explained that Destiny was having identity issues. She thought she was a whale, but she's really a whale shark. They had a clip with her and Bailey arguing this.

Destiny: I'm a whale!
Bailey: Shark.
Destiny: No, I'm a whale!
Bailey: You're a shark.
Probably because they didn't want it to be Destiny's overcoming-dysfunctionality story, when it was Dory's.
Which, again, was the big problem in making Dory's memory a "problem" she has to overcome, rather than have it be the aforementioned obvious fish gag--
The Pixar writers starting taking the "Different/Damaged" metaphor and running too far with the ball, until it became like depicting the Seven Dwarves as "Can a group of dyslexic, narcoleptic, misanthropic and mentally-challenged miners overcome their dysfunction with the help of the one 'normal' girl who teaches them to accept their differences and make them work?"

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by ShyViolet » October 12th, 2016, 6:17 pm

You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Dacey » October 12th, 2016, 7:21 pm

Spoiler alert: Zootopia will win. Unless Moana really knocks it out of the park, but even then, Zootopia has had momentum going for this since before it opened in March.
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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Ben » October 13th, 2016, 9:55 am

Can't see Bory taking this. If it does then it proves the "voters don't watch the films they just see the Pixar name" theory.

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by EricJ » October 13th, 2016, 5:04 pm

Ben wrote:Can't see Bory taking this. If it does then it proves the "voters don't watch the films they just see the Pixar name" theory.
As first postulated when Brave beat Wreck-It Ralph.
However, just about every social group imaginable has latched onto Judy as "empowering", so her voter-fandom outdoes Dory's "courage to be ill/different"...

(C'mon, when we got the wishful-crackpot theories about Zootopia, you know which Frozies are backed up behind it--It's going to be a battle between the Judy's-Next-Door-Neighbors supporters and the Stroller-Couple supporters...)

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Bill1978 » October 14th, 2016, 4:04 am

I just think the Academy will feel like they've already recognised the world of Nemo with Finding Nemo's BAF win and there was nothing extraoridinary with Finding Dory that wasn't done in Nemo to justify a 2nd trophy.

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by Ben » October 14th, 2016, 5:14 am

Yes, mainly there is that it is a sequel over an original that really did have something to say. But again, it's whether the voters get around to seeing the films or just seeing the logos...

It can go both ways: "I did not have time to watch all the animated films, but I loved Nemo, so..." :roll:

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Re: Finding Dory

Post by EricJ » October 14th, 2016, 4:19 pm

Ben wrote:Yes, mainly there is that it is a sequel over an original that really did have something to say. But again, it's whether the voters get around to seeing the films or just seeing the logos...

It can go both ways: "I did not have time to watch all the animated films, but I loved Nemo, so..." :roll:
Zootopia was around long enough to see (with socially obligating "trend" attached), Ralph wasn't--Hence the "I'll vote for Pixar" problem on Brave.
Both struggled to get out good word of mouth for movies that didn't immediately look like they'd be Disney's greatest idea for a movie, but Z had less competition and more trend-kissing, and got their word out faster. Think more voters got out to see Zootopia in March, since they weren't going out to see Batman v. Superman.

Ralph's big problem was that nobody expected it to be a good movie (they'd spent too much time promoting Sonic the Hedgehog's cameo, and non-gamers didn't want to go see a "gamer movie"), and outside of core Disney fans who were first in line for anything, it took all of October to get good word of mouth to drag folks off the street to see it.
By which point, we were in November, and all the voters "had" to go see November's The Hobbit and December's Les Miz, which were the "surefire" winners that race.
Even despite a good box office, Ralph's really a movie that built its reputation out of obscurity, while Zootopia just rode all the 00's Renaissance good feelings most non-fans were just starting to become aware of after Frozen-mania.

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