This week has brought us new trailers for both The LEGO Movie Part Two-vie and Another Rickets Ralph. These are sequels to movies from 2014 and 2012, respectively. They've both been in development for a long time, so I'm sure it must have been at least a bit disappointing for everyone involved that both trailers hang their hats on the same joke.
The first movie's cool, capable female character with a lot of personality was overshadowed by a comically bland and inept man who saved the day because the script said he should be the special one. It's a common pattern that both movies replicated, but now it's okay because they've hung a lampshade on it. Mea culpa! All is forgiven.
Let's compare and contrast. If you haven't already seen both trailers, I'd recommend beginning there.
Here's Ralph Breaks the Internet (yuck, bad name):
And here's The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (ooh, great name!):
If anyone wants to get into a deeper breakdown of these two, you bet I'm down to participate. (That's Dance Dance Revolution X2 in the opening shot!) For now, I'm going to stay focused on the feminist meta-joke.
Vanellope gets her moment in a sea of doe-eyed caricatures of Disney Princesses, which is quite a feat considering they were already cartoon characters with impossibly large peepers, but, folks, these new models look like Diva Starz.
This would be a good time to remember that classic quote from Frozen head animator, Lino Disalvo:
"Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, âcause they have to go through these range of emotions, but theyâre very, very â you have to keep them pretty and theyâre very sensitive to â you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if theyâre echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry.â
Hoooo, boy, there's a lot to unpack there.
Girls have to stay pretty and poised. They all look the same. Putting TWO of them in one movie? A Herculean feat.
As far as I can tell, Disalvo isn't directly involved with Ralph (he's currently wrapped up in an untitled Playmobil movie, of all things). His work on Frozen and Tangled, however, provides the visual foundation for this Princess scene. These character designs are mired in sexism. To be clear, I'm not saying the look is informed by intentional malice of any kind. That's possible, but I believe it's more likely to be an accidental result of uncorrected ignorance. Still, it's sexist.
Moreover, did you notice Mulan and Jasmine? I couldn't take my eyes off of them. All the Princesses look bad, but, wow, they really could not figure out what to do with non-Caucasian facial features in this style, huh?
Let's zip over to The LEGO Movie for a moment.
In this scene alone, I spy the edgy-but-insecure-but-amazing-and-not-a-DJ Wyldstyle in her post-apoc desert get-up, Unikitty, endearingly boring ol' Emmet, a glowing A.I. orb, an angel-winged anime cyborg woman, Benny the damaged spaceman, MetalBeard the pirate robot, a crowd of freaks on their way to the nearest Thunderdome, and Batman. Pretty white and male, but the visual diversity is a real feat considering the movie's unified style.
I want to throw it over to Raphael "Raizin" Bob-Waksberg of BoJack Horseman fame. Please read this Tumblr post he wrote about casual, unintended sexism.
Raphael was brought in a few years ago to rewrite The LEGO Movie 2. The post linked above reflects his constant, if imperfect, dedication to feminism. No one ever would have known he wanted the dog to be male if he hadn't publicly volunteered that information. He called out his own stupidity because Lisa knew better than him, and he wanted to pass that message along to others. I wonder if he would have gotten the LEGO job if his praise hadn't been tempered with criticism of the first movie's ignorant gender politics. (It probably helps that there's significant overlap in the BoJack and LEGO casts. Incidentally, his comments on the very white cast of BoJack deserve a few minutes of your time.)
Aaaaaand, back to Disney:
Disney Weighs Return of Pixar Co-Founder John Lasseter After Concerns on Behavior
Please note that the complaints against Lasseter go beyond unwanted hugs. #LoseLasseter
I won't pretend I'm looking at these movies without bias. Ralph Breaks the Internet (ugh, joking about your bad name doesn't make it good) is a sequel to a disappointing stinker. It looks like Foodfight! meets The Emoticon Movie. The first LEGO Movie, meanwhile, kept me grinning like a dope from beginning to end, even while I saw the unfortunate flaws.
I expect to like one of these and not the other.
The Ralph joke isn't all bad. They quick-fade the music and really hammer the joke to sell the bit. Cinderella with that glass slipper is a great subversion. They go hard, hyper-actively bouncing from Princess to Princess, letting Snow White underline the gag with her little trill before slamming the slider back to Daft Punk. Sarah Silverman brings it.
I love Elizabeth Banks. She isn't given as much assistance in her LEGO scene. The music drops out, some dry banter is exchanged, and then we kick it back to the Beastie Boys. We're in and out for this joke. It asks a little more from the audience and provides a little less. I'm not sure it's going for the big laugh.
The difference is that I trust one of these movies more than the other. There's no such thing as a feminist joke in isolation. It is based on our culture. The first LEGO dipped onto the wrong side. Disney, meanwhile, spent the last century on the ground level. Disney is the establishment. They've given us some tremendous female role models, but even at their best, those movies are at least as questionable as The LEGO Movie.
Ultimately, that Princess joke, set in a "super-intense and really nuts" manifestation of Oh My Disney feels to me like a reflection of fan discourse. It's saying something in the same way a parrot does. It's mimicking the sounds, but what is that actually worth? We'll see in November. Or when Disney announces a decision regarding John Lasseter. (#LoseLasseter)
The LEGO Movie 2 trailer ends with an introduction to the an intergalactic locale called the Sis-Star System. That sounds to me like this doesn't start and end with a silly meta-goof. Itâs going to revel in silly meta-goofs, no doubt, but it will go there with a purpose. Feminism isn't a way to cash in on the zeitgeist.
Maybe this all ends with Raphael Bob-Waksberg writing another apology for getting it wrong again. I doubt it, but maybe. And if that is how it goes, it won't forgive they mistake, but at least it we'll have seen someone try to do something real.
