The Legend of Sheik

Hello, Space Monkees!

Do you know who one of my favorite "Legend of Zelda" characters is?  Well that should be easy considering the drawing above.  Why its none other than Sheik, the sexually ambiguous alter-ego of Princess Zelda herself from "Ocarina of Time" and the "Super Smash Bros" series.  Sheik (whom I'll refer to with female pronouns because Nintendo seems to have finally decided that she's indeed a "she") helps Link out during his battle with Ganon after the fall of the Kingdom of Hyrule, usually in the form of advise or magical Ocarina songs.  But you never get to see her in action, sadly.  The only time Sheik even gets the chance to fight is seconds after she returns to being Zelda - and as Zelda she is immediately kidnapped, which was always something of a disappointment to me.  And after that...  Sheik is never seen again.  Not once.  Now that's a real travesty right there.

Luckily there is Smash Bros, where Sheik has been over and over again one of the coolest characters on the board.  She's almost as good as my fav, Fox.  More importantly, since Sheik is so fast, she's my favorite character to fight against with Fox, making lighting fast battles all throughout the board.  And to be one of the best characters in the best fighting games ever made is really saying something.  This was actually where I first found Sheik - and like everybody else was very confused by her gender (though not as much as with Marth and Roy, I should add).  Yes, I was attracted to Sheik, I still she's hot.  And she's definitely not male.

...Seriously, not male.

...stop looking at me that way.

I'm not gay!*

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that Sheik is really badass... and sexy, no matter what gender she is.  So obviously Sheik deserves her own game.  Think about it:  Tingle, the most hated character in pretty much all of video games, has his own game.  In fact, Tingle has like three now, none of which will ever be released in America because Nintendo knows we won't buy crap like that.  Anyway, Sheik would be the perfect hero for a video game.  And to celebrate that fact, I draw that little bit of fanart right up there.  Just my little interpretation of how Sheik should look (pretend its actually good for a second then you'll see what I was going for).  What's a good name for this title?  Easy:  "The Legend of Sheik".

Naturally there's no way in Hell Nintendo is going to do this, because I'm just some loud-mouth idiot on the Internet.  But I can dream, can't I?  FANWANKARY LEVELS TO THE MAX!!!

And here's the storyline pitch.  Just a bit of a warning its a bit dark:

"This is but one of the legend of which people speak...

Hyrule has lived in peace for hundreds of years following the victory of the Hero of Time over the evil king of the Gerudo sands, Ganondorf.  To guard the kingdom, a Great Eastern Wall has been built to lock out the evils from the now empty desert.  The kingdom is in joyous celebration as Queen Zelda has given birth to the newest heir to the throne, Princess Zelda, nicknamed "Tetra".  (This makes keeping the two characters separate a lot easier, and its a cool continuity nod, isn't it?)  But something stirs in the dark empty sands...

A dark army, lead by a reborn, Ganon marches out from the desert onto kingdom, resting after a long day's celebration.  The Wall, thought to be so eternal, is smashed, and soon the entire kingdom is overrun.  Hyrule's armies can only put up a token resistance before they too are broken and crushed like the kingdom they tried to defend.  Darkness overtakes the land, and the desert spreads out into Hyrule field, turning everything that was good and green into empty ruined sands.  The young Princess Tetra is sent off into the mountains, where she can be safe far from the bestial eyes of Ganon.  Of Princess Zelda, nothing is known.  The people fear her slain by the Dark Beast.  They call their prayers up to the heavens, hoping that the Hero of Time will return.  However, there prayer is not answered.

(This bit is debatable to me, it seems just too dark, and out of character of this series.  I feel I need to explain why Ganon was not defeated, but the implications here are just too much for me.)  A hero clad in green does appear, Master Sword in hand.  He rides to Ganon's Tower in the desert, and breaks through to the Dark Beast's chambers.  But his strength fails him, and the boy is defeated.  The Triforce of Courage is shattered, flying off to the four winds, along any hope of Hyrule's salvation.  (But Link can't lose!  If its too much, I'll just ignore Link altogether.  No explanation is probably better than this horrible one.)

Instead all that is left is a loan warrior, Sheik, who stands against the forces of evil.  Not being the Legendary Hero, and unable to lift the Master Sword, Sheik has no hope of defeating Ganon, but that will not stop her hope of saving the desperate Kingdom.  Traveling across the land, she attempts to find the five peaces of the [insert McGuffin name here], an ancient artifact that can speak to the Gods themselves, each piece hidden in a dungeon far in the mysterious Gerudo Deserts where no man has walked for generations.  With it, Sheik hopes to contact the Gods and seal away the great evil.  She also searches for the Ocarina of Time, hoping to use its power to save her daughter from these terrible times of evil.  Though the foes she faces are mighty, Sheik's has strength of her own.  With her daggers, her whip, her magical harp, and her tantō, Sheik will overcome any enemy.  Acrobatic agility, and speed are her allies, and the bane of all who would stand in her way. 

Ultimately, the call is made.  But Ganon's power has grown great enough to retake human form, Ganondorf has returned in full.  With this strength he could stop the intervention of the Gods.  Sheik must herself go to Ganondorf's abode, to give enough time for her people to be freed and so that the Dark King does not learn of her plan.  The battle is desperate, nay hopeless.  After a long battle, Sheik's body is broken, and her disguise revealed.  Ganondorf learns much to his delight that the last warrior who has stood against him so long is none other than the lost Queen Zelda herself.  But while he laughs in what he thinks is his victory, the Gods send down a Great Flood to cover the land in ocean, sealing away Ganondorf's evil forever.  The Gods show mercy on the people of Hyrule, bringing them up to the surface so that they may live in peace on Hyrule's mountaintops, which have now become the islands of the Great Sea.

In her last act, as she lays dieing, Zelda plays a final song on the Ocarina of Time.  With it, Tetra, still too young to remember her true name or her mother's face, is sent into the far future, so that she may live in a time of peace, and found a New Hyrule.  Knowing that she has saved her people, Zelda closes her eyes happily.

So ends the Legend of Sheik...

Now how awesome would that game be?  Seriously, beyond awesome.

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*Well, except for some very serious cases, like with Sephiroth or George Clooney.  I mean, come on.  Like damn!  Tell me right now that you wouldn't if the Cloonster asked you to.  You can't can you?

Saw Franchise

Hello, Space Monkees, I want to play a game.

By the way SPOILER WARNING.  There are going to be spoilers up the wazzoo, so if you want to watch this franchise fresh, just read up to about the first ellipsis.

Living in the 21st century can sometimes be rather difficult.  Oh yes, its nice that the Internet allows a global exchange of ideas like no other before, that cellphones allow for a form of quasi-telepathy, and that visual effects have grown more and more impressive in video games, movies, and TV shows, but still there's something a bit missing in this picture.  That's horror movies.  Frankly, the genre is a walking corpse, breeding silly foreign adaptations, zombie remakes of earlier classics, and just plain old crap ("The Strangers" comes to mind).

Living in this century, you get the feeling that all the great horror has already come and gone.  "Halloween", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "The Shining", "Evil Dead", "Hellraiser", "Night of the Living Dead", etc.  Its like, I come around and then suddenly:  party's over!  Personally I have to blame the "Scream" movies, which despite being actually really fun films, through horror in such a tongue-in-cheek manner that it basically killed the genre.  When you go to a horror movie these days, everybody in the audience is trying to be Tom Servo - its just a bit giant joke.  Nobody is scared, nobody is grossed-out, nobody is enjoying the film for its own merits.  You're laughing at it.  Horror is a bigger comedy genre than Comedy.

(By the way, if you're looking for the force that's doing the most damage to Horror, don't look at Stephanie Myers and "Twilight".  No.  The actual Dark Man is none other than Michael Bay.  Yeah, that Michael Bay.  You would not believe how many terrible horror remakes he has his on as a Producer.)

But its not all bad, let's try to find some last stand fortresses against this rising tide of the World Moving On.  There were indeed a few really good horror movies last decade.  Rob Zombie had a couple of wonderfully disgusting red neck brutality movies ("House of 1000 Corpses", and "Devil's Rejects" - both horrible and awesome)... but then he started raping "Halloween", and now he's mired deep in remaking old classics.  Zombies are far more popular than ever, and there were a few classics made like "28 Days Later" and the surprisingly good remake of "Dawn of the Dead".  But for every living and breathing zombie movie, there's six animated corpses (ex. "Land of the Dead", "28 Weeks Later").

And then there's "Saw", the shiny glorious last holdout of what once was the great Horror civilization.  Its the Byzantine Empire of Horror, the last piece of an ancient and lost culture surviving many years after that culture has ended.  "Saw" is pretty much all that's left.

...

Yeah, "Saw".

...

Fuck you, I like "Saw"!  I don't need your friggin' judgment.   Shut up!

Every single year since 2004, there has been a new "Saw" installment.  And every single year, I've been entertained.  I didn't go see the first movie, because it just looked like another cliche supernatural slasher movie (with the puppet being the killer).  Actually the only reason I even rented it was because Danny "I'm too old for this shit" Glover was in it.  And boy was I surprised.  It was the most original horror movie I had seen since "Se7en", these movies' spiritual predecessor.  The basic plot begins with two men trapped in an abandoned bathroom, and they're both tied down by their legs.  In between them is a corpse, and a saw.  What is the saw for?  They have to CUT their own feet off to escape.

The killer, Jigsaw, instead just running around a summer camp ground and shoving his knife into big-breasted sluts in a flurry of Freudian subtext, he would turn their deaths into a moral test of character.  Its never (in his eyes) "murder" because supposedly every victim could survive.  You see, Jigsaw  If you truly wanted to live, you would overcome your vice (symbolically represented by mutilating yourself or another somehow) and survive.  Or if lacked the will to survive, you would be torn to shreds by some maniacal apparatus that was a mixture of black steel and fluid nightmares.  And then the twists started coming in.  And then more twists were thrown in too.  And then it all ended with the mother of twists:  Jigsaw isn't the guy who the movie set up, instead the corpse in the middle of the room was villain all along - and he's very much alive!  But what really pulled the entire movie together was the raspy voice of Tobin Bell as the killer saying the classic line:  "Hello, [Insert Name], I want to play a game."

Like most films, "Saw" was never intended to be a franchise.  But the ever-seductive smell of money made Lion's Gate demand more, and then more, and more, and more, and more.  We're up to six now.  From this comes the basic formula of the films.  There's always a central character or characters stuck in an abandoned building.  They must go through a series of tests involving other people, typically a choice between their own maiming and the person's life.  Finally when they reach the end of the "game", they mother of all twists hits them, and they almost never survive in the end.  (The main character of the first movie is still MIA, and the main guy of the third movie lasts about five minutes into the fourth before being filled with bullets.)  Even with Jigsaw himself being dead for now half the franchise, it still lives on with through his apprentices, one was a victim from the first movie (now dead), and the other is the totally badass detective Hoffman, who now holds some kind of record for longest-running character in the series.  At the very least this horror franchise is a franchise, instead of the same movie being made over and over again just with different casts.

Yeah, "Friday the 13th", I'm talking about you!  Suck it!

I'm not going to call any of these movies Shakespeare - Jigsaw's philosophy is completely insane and yet nobody ever calls him out on it.  Numerous victims actually are not bad people at all, and some just seem to die from random chance.  In one movie, I swear to God, a guy was picked for a test because he was a smoker.  Come on, Jigsaw!  You can find much bigger assholes than that!  Also, ever since "Saw III", the franchise really has not been nearly as good.  I actually stopped going to the theatre to see these last year.  At that point it looked like thing were never going to be settled, and everything would continue like another 80s horror franchise.  Some people I know refuse to believe that any more movies were made after "Saw II".  I, however, still enjoy these movies.  Not because there's anything to learn or understand, but because this is all just a lot of fun!  And that's what a movie should be.

Then I watched "Saw VI".  It was the best movie the franchise had done in at least four years.  Hoffman went from a side-character, to a fully fledged badass, surviving impossible situation after impossible situation.  He even lived through a "game" that was purposefully designed to be unwinnable -a first from Jigsaw.  Not to mention that the kills were nice and gruesome, the tension was back up, and finally it seems like things might be moving towards a conclusion.

So I'll be watching "Saw VII" when it inevitably comes out next October.  With "Saw VI" ironically being the least profitable of the entire franchise, it seems that perhaps this newest movie might be the end.  I know Lion's Gate is just making it all up as they go along, but I'll follow them down into the pits of Hell until there comes a final conclusion to this storyline.  I might still be watching if they make a "Saw XII".  This plane might be in a nose dive straight down to Earth, but I aint putting my parachute on.  If need by, I'll go down in a glorious rain of fire when the franchise finally smashes into the ground.  And you can be sure, the Q? will have something to say about it.

Oh yes, there will be blood.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Hey, Space Monkees!

This is a review I've been meaning to do for some time now.  However, do to other games, I've put "Spirit Tracks" on the backburner for awhile.  I'm not a professional, or even aspire to be one, so that luckily frees me up from any standards of timeliness.  Even better, I don't need to be objective, helpful, or reasonable.  But I am anyway because if I weren't I would end up like Captain Running-Joke, Armond White.

Let me being the review with a classic trick I liked to use in my walkthroughs, the parable of the Teacher in a classroom filled with idiots.  (By the way, I never mentioned this earlier, but its actually an adult night school.  That's an important detail.)

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Teacher:  Class, can we please smoking weed for just a minute so that we can answer one question for ol' Blue?  Okay, here we go:  what is the greatest video game series of all time?

Classroom:  ....?

Teacher:  Okay, you must have all been either too high or stupid to hear what I said.  I'll repeat:  what is the greatest video game series of all time?

Billy:  Uh...  I know!  Weed!

(The Classroom bursts into hysterics.  But then they stop when they realize the Teacher is laughing too.  In fact, Teacher is laughing really loudly.  Inappropriately loudly.  Disturbingly loudly.  This goes on for a very long minute, which seems a lot longer because the entire Classroom is baked out of their minds.)

Classroom:  .....

Teacher:  Alright then.  Its time to break out the "learning tools" then.

(Teacher grabs a yardstick and beats Billy to a bloody pulp.)

Teacher:  Oh by the way, the answer was "The Legend of Zelda".

--------------------

...I really do need to get that Teacher into an anger management course one of these days.

I think the point Teacher was trying to make is that "The Legend of Zelda" series has been, without a doubt, the most consistently fun, entertaining, and just plain old excellent video game franchise ever created by human hands.  What else could you possibly claim even comes close?  In order for you to top Zelda, you would first need over three decades of glorious tradition, then a timeless ability to adapt to new advances in video game technology and standards, and finally a universal appeal that any person can enjoy.  "Final Fantasy"?  Hell no.  Metroid?  Not even close.  Mario?  Just maybe, but still no cigar.  Ultimately you must surrender yourself to the fact that Zelda is just a plain above all the rest.

I think what really makes Zelda so much better than the other franchises is the fact that pretty much every single game has been, over and over again, constantly at a standard of wonderful quality.  Nobody in the world likes every single Final Fantasy game, but very few fans of the Zelda series can honestly claim they really dislike one game or another.  You might not find "Phantom Hourglass" to be as good as "Wind Waker", but that's a petty complaint, not really based in the idea that one or the other actually is a bad game.  Tingle sucks, but he never ruins the game.  The dungeons in "Minish Cap" are too easy, but it isn't a deal breaker.

Of course, there are loud and annoying people - what TV Tropes calls a "FanDumb" - who cannot be happy even with this.  Some of these "fans" will find nothing but things to complain about:  "every game is too similar", "this game is too different", "Ganon isn't the villain", "Ganon IS the villain", etc.  I've never met these people or heard from them first hand, so I assume they're partially a thing of myth.  But if they do exist, they should become Final Fantasy fans - there's never a shortage of things to complain about in Final Fantasy.  As for Zelda, its as near to perfect as a series can ever hope to get.

Or maybe that's just me and my opinion.  I can never tell, you know.

Anyway, "Spirit Tracks" is the latest successor to the Zelda tradition.  Its a sequel to "Phantom Hourglass", taking place 100 years later after Link (whom I always name "Blue", so Blue he will be for the rest of this article) and Tetra have settled a new Hyrule where the main method of travel has become Trains mostly so that Nintendo can reuse the "Phantom Hourglass" engine.  Once again you're Blue, but a different Blue than the last on, actually you're no relation at all from what I've seen.  After an act of betrayal, the ancient evil sleeping under New Hyrule's soil is almost about to be reawakened, and an Evil Train is on the loose.  Worse yet, the new Princess Zelda has had her body snatched away, so now she's stuck as a ghost.  Blue and Ghost-Zelda must now travel around the world fighting evil to save the day.

So its basically the typical Zelda affair.  If you've played "Phantom Hourglass", you'll know exactly how this game plays, as it truly is that game's sequel.  Many of the problems that game had are still around.  You'll spend a lot more time than you'll want to exploring the World Map, only thing time you're on a train instead of a boat.  That means that unlike "Phantom Hourglass" and more unlike "Wind Waker", there really is not much exploring to be done around the world, because you can see all the locations already.  Luckily there are a few issues resolved.  For example, even though the Master Dungeon is back, its much more fun this time around because 1) the Time Limit is gone, and 2) you don't have to go through the floors over and over again.  Also you can take those awful Phantom enemies from the very beginning.

The main addition is in Zelda herself.  At first she works as just the Fairy Companion archetype, giving you hints and following you around.  She does serve in an exciting new mechanic though:  in the Master Dungeon she can posses the Phantom enemies, making her a walking tank of enemy destruction.  With two characters, all sorts of puzzle opportunities are created, and Nintendo being Nintendo, you'll see them all by the end of this game.  Phantom-Zelda can even be used in a few combat sequences against minibosses.

Another major new thing is the return of a musical instrument.  I've always loved this mechanic - mostly because I cannot actually play any instruments, and this sorta fills out that fantasy of mine.  This time you have a pan flute which is played by blowing into your DS's microphone while scrolling for the proper pipe using the stylus.  Its an extremely intuitive system that makes you feel like you're actually playing a pan flute, and it can be a lot of fun.  Only one problem....  it means you absolutely cannot play this game outside in the view of strangers.  Unless you're completely immune to the glints of critical light coming out of the eyes of people you've never met as they stare at you like you're an insane homeless preacher on a subway train, this is a game that can only be played at home - hopefully far from even your loved ones.

But beyond that the gameplay is the classic Zelda glory.  Dungeon crawling, enemy slaying, and puzzle solving:  the three tenets of the sacred Triforce of days of enjoyment.  This series is so consistently awesome that I've run out things to say and I'm already starting to wrap up.  I still haven't really beaten the entire game yet, but I'm about halfway through.  There's one badass-looking villain who I cannot wait to fight, and a silly looking Irish guy with two hats who also really needs to taste sword.  I'm sure the rest of this adventure is going to be just as fun as the first part as been.

Fanwank Corner:  Nintendo, can we please get a trailer or even just a real name for the upcoming Zelda Wii?  I really cannot wait.

"Tale" From the Q?: Winner

Hey, Space Monkees!

Last semester I wrote a short, short story for my college's campus literature magazine.  I'll spare you my suspense - it was not accepted.  So, if just to give poor Hollander's story some immortality, I'll repost it here.  Enjoy:

Winner

After several panicked moments of hunting for forgotten quarters in the empty hallway of the shopping mall, Hollander finally found enough change to page the $1.75 the soda machine demanded.  With a moment of hesitation, Hollander debated pressing the buttons marked “A” and then “7” to buy a bottle of lemon-lime soda.  He knew that once those buttons were pushed, the point of no return would be passed.  He would no longer be able to hit the “change return” button.  Once that bottle hit the bottom of the machine, Hollander would have lost his very last bits of money.  The combined amount of all his assets in the world now amounted to just a few ounces of green plastic and the carbonated beverage inside.   But the dry feeling in the back of Hollander’s throat overrode his financial concerns, and he made the purchase.  With a loud thump, the soda fell to the bottom of the machine.

With his soda in hand, Hollander decided to rest his body on the bench several feet away in front of a men’s room.  The soda machine, the bench, and the bathroom were all off in a hallway away from the rest of the shopping populace.  Those people had money to burn on video games and scented soap and fancy clothes with designer labels, certainly the purchase of a just single bottle of soft drink would not be a big problem at all.  Hollander was not one of those people anymore.  Perhaps tonight this bench would be his bed.  It all depended upon whether a security guard would decide to confront him.  Hollander did not want to begin walking again today.  A long day’s march had left his feet worn and blistered.  Overcoming a weak sense of modesty against stripping in a public place, Hollander took off his shoes.  At this point he did not care if passing shoppers could smell his feet or notice the huge hole in his sock.  The sweet air chilled his ragged feet.  Feeling more relaxed; he twisted off the soda bottle’s cap.  He drank deep from the sugary liquid.  There was a slight tang of pain as the bubbles scratched his throat, and his eyes watered up a little.  Yet even so, Hollander felt for a just a short moment a bit at peace.

It didn’t last long.  The negative thoughts, the worries, the fear, they all would not stay down for long.  As much as Hollander tried to suppress himself - to ignore it all for just a bit longer – the troubles polluted his mind.  Now it was gone, just like his job, his home, his family, his life.  All gone.  He had been forced out of regular society, and now belonged to the bitter underbelly.  He was now a person that most people preferred to ignore or brush away with loose change – a homeless person.  Just how long could he wander the streets like this before he began to look like what he now was?  When would his cloths become tattered, his face pock-marked, and his skin dirty?  Where would he be sleeping tomorrow?  Just where in the world was he going, now that he had nowhere in the world to go? 

A more mundane question:  what time was it?  Hollander looked down at his wrist out of an automated reflex, but all he saw was a band of pale skin where his watch used to lay.  Compared to everything else he had lost, that watch was unimportant, but even so the loss of time seemed to hurt him the most.  People in his position didn’t need to know what time it was.  You don’t punch a clock when you are out living on public benches.  Time is a luxury for people with a purpose.

Hollander tried to wash back all these dark thoughts with another gulp of the soda bottle.  To avoid going through the same old mental exercise of trying to find out exactly how it had all come to this, he decided to read the wrapper around his soda bottle.  “Nutrition Facts:  Calories – 100, Total Fat:  0g, Sodium 20mg, Total Carbohydrate 28mg, Sugars 28g, Protein 0g, Not a significant source of other nutrients”.  There was a phone number listed for “Any Questions”.  Hollander might have actually called, but he had thrown his cell phone away days ago.  There was nobody left in the world who he could call anyway.  Nobody wanted to speak to him.  Instead Hollander took another sip of his 20mg of Sodium and 28g of sugars, and then flipped the bottle over to see if there was anything else to read.

There was.  In fancy cursive font, the soda bottle teased:  “ARE YOU A WINNER??”  No, thought Hollander, I am most definitely not a winner.  The bottle continued to tease:  “Check under the cap to find out if you are the lucky winner of ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!”  Underneath the caption there was a drawing of several dozen cartoon dollar bills sticking out with sparkles all around.  It seemed to Hollander to be a promise of unfathomable wealth and happiness – all the more unfathomable to him since he currently had none of either.

For a moment, Hollander went to look for the bottle cap to check if by some lunatic miracle he had won.  However, he knew all too well that these games were completely impossible.  It would be more likely to be hit by lightning, or eaten by a shark, or die on a roller coaster or whatever stock statistic people use to describe impossible odds than for his bottle - one of millions manufactured - to be the winning one.  For all Hollander knew, somebody had already won and the contest was over.  How long this bottle had been in the machine?  Quite simply, even checking the bottle cap was a waste of time.  If such sure things such as having a job and a house could fail you, then long-short daydreams like winning a soda contest were surely beyond your range.

Instead, Hollander decided to lie down on the bench in front of the men’s room.  He could hear the shuffling traffic of the many mall shoppers begin to die down.  Soon enough he heard the metal shriek of store owners lowering down their metal fences to keep out midnight thieves and vagrants – like him.  The day had grown late, and he was tired.  Hollander shut his eyes and tried to keep out the thoughts of his lost life so that he could finally get some rest.  But after ten minutes he was far more awake than ever before.  His eyes felt too big under their lids, and he wanted to open them.  When he started to look around, he noticed a mall security guard walking towards him.  To avoid a potentially awkward confrontation, he surrendered the bench and moved on.  Where would his tired feet take him tonight?  Nowhere, most likely.  The best he could hope was for a nice place to finally rest and leave his ruined dreams behind.

By the bench, a small green plastic bottle cap rolled along the tiled hallway before finally stopping face up.  Within the bottle was a printed massage written in choppy computer font.  It said only a single word:  “WINNER”.

(I was sure to ask later why this story was not accepted out of hopes of finding some kind of major flaw in my style that I am too inexperienced to spot. Instead I was told that the story was rejected because "Sprite would have made him more thirsty". I guess that means I bored them... sorry.)

The Princess and the Frog

Hello, Space Monkees.

This is going to be a hard post to write.  I actually saw this movie two weeks ago, and I've been avoiding penning this commentary.  No less than three times did I open up a new post window, and three times did I delete everything out of dissatisfaction with what I wrote.  Now here begins Try #4.  Let's see how it goes.

If I were in the target audience age bracket for "the Princess and the Frog", I would not have gone to see it, that much I can assure you.  If I were five to twelve, or whatever that arbitrary range the sales people at Disney had came up with, I would have immediately done a gag noise if I were asked to go see it.  Because this is a "girl's" movie, made entirely to fulfill the Princess Dream that all little girls have at some point.  As a child, my dream was to fly an X-wing and fight T-Rexes; not to put on lace and marry Prince Charming.  Being an incredibly immature person, I cannot help but suffer a bit, knowing that I have not stayed true to the person I was once.

But no matter.  These days its so hard to find classic 2D animation movies outside Miyazaki, I simply had to go see this movie out of the hopes that it could bring back "the good ol' days".  I remember being a little kid playing with mountains of plastic Disney VHS movies at the foot of Mommy and Daddy's bed.  There were so many great cartoons then:  "The Little Mermaid", "Aladdin", "The Lion King", "101 Dalmatians", "The Jungle Book", etc. etc. etc.  I could keep on naming these things until the end of the post if I so felt inclined.  So while Disney made this movie to expand their "Disney Princess" line into another shade of the politically correct racial rainbow, I'm here to celebrate a revival in the glorious tradition of 2D animation.

Obviously the fact that this movie tries to turn Black culture of Jim Crow New Orleans into yet another attraction in Disney's history gloss-over theme park means that its destined for endless controversy.  And where can I even stand in such a battle?  I have no clue.  The movie generally ignores pretty much all of the racial tensions of the time, moving them into the background of the painting.  Except for the state of the heroine, Tiana's economic position and one single throw-away line from a racist real estate agent, you might think that Jim Crow never happened at all.  Which is, suffice to say, a weird sort of choice.  There are all sorts of powerful stories that could have been told in this environment, only expanded to be more kid-friendly with some magic and Princess motifs.  Being "kid-friendly" should not mean that our history needs to be ignored because its unpleasant.  Then again, some of the more insane protesters for this movie are just looking for things to complain about.  "Tiana isn't dark-skinned enough!  The Black princess is turned into a frog, the White princesses stay human!  The main villain is a voodoo priest!"

I don't think Disney really ever intended for anything prejudiced.  They were just trying to be more inclusive with the Princess Club, and they found the Jazz Age New Orleans of the 1920s to be a visually and musically inspiring backdrop.  Its all really innocent, we should remember that.  So having navigated the minefield, I can now actually do a review.

Plot time!  Tiana, despite the title, is by no means a princess by birth.  Her father was a good, humble man with great dreams of opening a world-renowned restaurant named after his daughter.  Unfortunately, he's killed in WWI, with his dream far from being completed.  With her father's extremely vague advise of "remember what's important" Tiana takes up his mantel and works hard to save up the money, sacrificing the frivolous games of youth just so that she can get a few more dollars.  In the process she becomes a brilliant Cajun chef, and all this hard work does not at all spoil her good looks, naturally.  Thanks to her wealthy White girlfriend's need to impress an incoming prince (who may or not be African, his ambiguous skin color and Pepé Le Pew voice do not help at all), Tiana manages to finally get enough money to buy an old sugar factory.  But then those racist real estate agents I mentioned earlier ruin those dreams.  Desperate, Tiana decides to return to a childish idea:  wish upon a star.  (The lack of a "Pinocchio" music queue at this point is one of the movie's biggest missed opportunities.)

By the way, at some point here Tiana is supposed to have a character flaw.  I'm not sure what it is, and its one of my biggest complaints with this movie.  Its made incredibly clear that she needs to learn something fundamental, but whatever the heck it is I never figured out before or after her big adventure.  When faced with greater adversity, Tiana decides that she needs to work even harder, which causes the movie to let out a big ol' sigh of "she's not getting it".  Getting what?  I find her tenaciously and work ethic to already be a good role model already, I don't see what she's missing.  I really do hope that the answer here isn't a man, Disney.  I really do.  Having balance between career and life is a good thing, but when the situation is as slanted as Tiana's, does she really have room for a penis?

The penis in this movie is played by Prince Navi  --I mean, Prince Naveen a freeloading party goer who has so disgusted his royal parents that they've cut him off.  Naveen is luckily not just a pretty face Prince Charming, he has a character of his own.  Namely he's Pepé Le Pew with a conscious, so to speak.  So in search of money, he goes to New Orleans to marry Tiana's bratty White friend.  He also runs into a voodoo wizard played by none other than our old friend Mr. Keith David, the guy who almost saved "Dissidia Final Fantasy"!  Naveen is turned into a frog, and a doppelganger is put in his place.  Frog-Naveen runs into Tiana, who is in a nice dress on loan from Bratty White Friend.  Thus begins the movie's central irony.  After a kiss, Naveen is not turned into a human, but rather Tiana is turned into a frog too.  So they must go on a magical adventure across the bayou, run into a few annoying comic reliefs, fight the rednecks from "Deliverance", fall in love, save the day.

On the one hand I'm charmed by a Disney movie that's foward enough to make it obvious that its the man that needs to grow in order to get the woman.  He doesn't deserve her, that's obvious, so he must grow as a character.  But on the other hand that weird unmentioned character flaw that Tiana has really bugs me.  I'm pretty sure its somewhere where "staying true to what's important" is located.  I don't know what that is either, so the entire premise is lost on me.

On the other hand, the movie is quite good to look at.  This is what so-called "traditional" animation can do these days.  I really do not think in the slightest that we need to treat it as "old fashioned" or "yesterday's animation".  It still has a place in this world, I'm sure of that.  3D is nice, but it certainly does not need to be the only style.  At one point, Tiana gives her mother a tour of her future restaurant, all done in a style of 20s Art Deco advertisements.  Its a ever nice, striking style, and I can't help but wonder if this movie could have been improved if the entire thing was done this way.  Musically the movie keeps with the Disney standard, though I really can't actually remember much of it weeks later.

So now that we've reached some kind of wrapping up, let me give the final word.  Its an okay movie all around, a little shaky by its premise, but done quite well.  The fact that such an important plot point was lost on me is a real failing, as is the by and large avoidance of the Jim Crow situation.  I would have liked to see some Southern racists get whats coming to them, and Tiana to overcome them, magically or otherwise.  Is it as good as the classic Disney movies of my childhood?  Honestly no.  Pixar still has all the magic, but this is a small spark from the dying world of Disney animation.  Hopefully its a stepping stone to a greater renaissance.

Update:  Thinking back on this movie, I just realized something I didn't notice the first time. After a firefly character dies (for real, not a Disney Death), he is reborn as a star right next to his beloved North Star, which he calls "Evangeline".  So the ultimate conclusion here is that Timon from "The Lion King" was right.  Yes, the stars actually are fireflies that "got stuck up there".  There are probably more references to other classic Disney cartoons hidden in here, which is totally awesome.  "The Princess and the Frog" gets five points on the non-existent review scale.