![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Encanto and Reacher - MAJOR SPOILERS
Feb. 20th, 2022 08:38 amLast night, we watched Encanto, the latest Disney movie, and I have mixed feeling about it.
I loved Mirabel as a new entry into the Disney princesses canon. I loved the house as a character, though it could have been featured more. I loved that Mirabel discovered both her sisters were also unhappy, because of the pressure of their magical gifts (Luisa's song was especially powerful - "I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service"). The film totally made me cry at the end, and definitely gave me a warm glow overall.
BUT - the prologue was really clunky, offering a massive dump of background exposition, without really making anything particularly clear. And then there was the worst example I've ever encountered of characters telling each other things they would already know. The film proper opened with three kids from the village asking Mirabel to tell them who all the members of the Madrigal family were and what their powers were. These kids were about six years old and had grown up their entire lives in this village, where the Madrigals were the most important family, and they would have been interacting with them all every day! Sigh.
ALSO - I felt that the shift from the darkest point (of Mirabel confronting Abuela and the house falling down) to everything being solved was way too fast, and I actually couldn't follow Abuela's progression towards realisation of her mistakes. And then, after presenting us with the great message that it was each family members' unique character that made them special, not their magical gifts - that message was completely undermined in the last 30 seconds of the film, by them getting their magic back! Sigh.
Overall, the film was gorgeous - I loved the design, the colour, the exuberance of it. And Mirabel was a fantastic protagonist. But it was bookended with fairly insurmountable issues for me, which marred its effect.
On a completely different note, we also finished watching the new Reacher TV series last night. Now, I've read all 26 Reacher books in the last nine years, so I think it's safe to say I'm a fan. And the first two or three episodes of this new series really leaned into pleasing the hardcore fanbase of the books. At the start of the first episode, Reacher got off a bus and I cheered! He looked absolutely right (which hasn't been the case with any previous adaptation), he 'said nothing' for about five minutes, his folding toothbrush was present and correct, and he was funny.
I still wasn't quite sold, but then I realised I was counting it against him that he didn't sound like Jeff Harding (the narrator of nearly all of the audiobooks), which wasn't his fault. I also initially thought he was too young, but Reacher was actually 36 in the first book, and Alan Ritchson is 38, so that was fine too.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed him taking his shirt off a lot, and initially the violence was telegraphed well enough that I could easily avoid the ickier bits if I wanted. I also really liked Finlay and Roscoe as secondary characters.
BUT - as the series went on, the violence increased as the humour decreased, and the plot quickly got so ridiculous that it stretched the credibility even of a Reacher story. I'm planning to read the first book again shortly, as a comparison, and may be proved wrong on that count, but I definitely lost interest in the second half of the TV series. Which is a real shame, because it showed such promise at the start. Ah well, I'm invested enough that I'll carry on with it, if there's a second season, in the hopes that it finds its feet again, but it was a bit disappointing.
I loved Mirabel as a new entry into the Disney princesses canon. I loved the house as a character, though it could have been featured more. I loved that Mirabel discovered both her sisters were also unhappy, because of the pressure of their magical gifts (Luisa's song was especially powerful - "I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service"). The film totally made me cry at the end, and definitely gave me a warm glow overall.
BUT - the prologue was really clunky, offering a massive dump of background exposition, without really making anything particularly clear. And then there was the worst example I've ever encountered of characters telling each other things they would already know. The film proper opened with three kids from the village asking Mirabel to tell them who all the members of the Madrigal family were and what their powers were. These kids were about six years old and had grown up their entire lives in this village, where the Madrigals were the most important family, and they would have been interacting with them all every day! Sigh.
ALSO - I felt that the shift from the darkest point (of Mirabel confronting Abuela and the house falling down) to everything being solved was way too fast, and I actually couldn't follow Abuela's progression towards realisation of her mistakes. And then, after presenting us with the great message that it was each family members' unique character that made them special, not their magical gifts - that message was completely undermined in the last 30 seconds of the film, by them getting their magic back! Sigh.
Overall, the film was gorgeous - I loved the design, the colour, the exuberance of it. And Mirabel was a fantastic protagonist. But it was bookended with fairly insurmountable issues for me, which marred its effect.
On a completely different note, we also finished watching the new Reacher TV series last night. Now, I've read all 26 Reacher books in the last nine years, so I think it's safe to say I'm a fan. And the first two or three episodes of this new series really leaned into pleasing the hardcore fanbase of the books. At the start of the first episode, Reacher got off a bus and I cheered! He looked absolutely right (which hasn't been the case with any previous adaptation), he 'said nothing' for about five minutes, his folding toothbrush was present and correct, and he was funny.
I still wasn't quite sold, but then I realised I was counting it against him that he didn't sound like Jeff Harding (the narrator of nearly all of the audiobooks), which wasn't his fault. I also initially thought he was too young, but Reacher was actually 36 in the first book, and Alan Ritchson is 38, so that was fine too.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed him taking his shirt off a lot, and initially the violence was telegraphed well enough that I could easily avoid the ickier bits if I wanted. I also really liked Finlay and Roscoe as secondary characters.
BUT - as the series went on, the violence increased as the humour decreased, and the plot quickly got so ridiculous that it stretched the credibility even of a Reacher story. I'm planning to read the first book again shortly, as a comparison, and may be proved wrong on that count, but I definitely lost interest in the second half of the TV series. Which is a real shame, because it showed such promise at the start. Ah well, I'm invested enough that I'll carry on with it, if there's a second season, in the hopes that it finds its feet again, but it was a bit disappointing.
