Comment by Affric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Affric | Hacker News Reader

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I think there’s a bit to this and also a bit where he gets it wrong. What’s right:

1. A Bug’s life was underwhelming after Toy Story. I grew to like it more after having entered the workforce.

2. Luca is understated.

3. Kids love Cars way more than adults.

4. Coco is a real diamond in a whole lot of (relative) rough.

5. The second half of Wall-E is quite good.

6. People aren’t unkind enough regarding Toy Story 4. Not amount of unkindness will be enough enough.

There’s lots more wrong but I want to zero in on one thing, Up.

De Boer says that without the first 10 minutes the movie is awful… but that’s the point of the movie. It’s about a miserable grieving man… the scene sets up the rest of the movie. Of course the movie sucks without it. It tells the story on the basis that you have just watched that scene.

Imo it’s not just that Up sucks without the first 10 min, it’s that the last 90% of the movie is aimless, emotionless, and feels unnecessary. Like the first 10 min should have been a pre-film short that they drew out because it was too depressing to just end like that.

Carl is old and he builds new memories and shared his life with a child and a dog. Carl hates his companions.

The child he must suffer is simple and naive. The dog is plainly an idiot. But Russell is trying to improve himself and Dug is pure of heart.

The adventure and how these two creatures display virtue and improve his life in spite of being unable to compare to his late wife nor the more sophisticated and accomplished Muntz reveals to him that life is still worth living and that connections are still to be made.

I think it makes sense.

It makes sense and I intellectually understand the premise, but emotionally it fell flat for me. This could be due to a number of reasons, e.g. the writing, the animation, the voice acting, my headspace at the time of watching… I had to pause the movie to stop bawling after that first 10 minutes, so it’s possible that the bar for emotional connection was simply set too high after that.

Yeah, I find that’s something I do too (though mainly when cringing). Pausing these things kills their impact.

That would be the one piece of Netflix data I would love to see: when do people pause feature films.

but the first half of wall-e is the good one!

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