Animated ‘Astro Boy’: Marxism Aimed at Your Kids?
by Big Hollywood
Crude posters of Lenin and Trotsky adorn the threadbare walls of an office in a desolate part of town, and a group of outcast revolutionaries hatch a scheme to overthrow the ruling powers and bring equality and a classless society to mankind. The beginning of an Eisenstein film? Bunuel? Renoir?
Try ‘Astro Boy,’ the upcoming animated film featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage and Kristen Bell about a boy robot (Freddie Highmore) that leaves his scientist father after finding out he isn’t human. Ostensibly a film for children — with a fringe following of fanboys, thanks to its comic book series — the movie features very adult ideas of ownership and class structure that will most likely be future fodder for college philosophy classes around the country.
While it’s no secret that Hollywood films tend to skew left in general, ‘Astro Boy’ may be the first animated blockbuster to discuss, if not necessarily endorse, explicit Marxist ideologies (albeit in cute robot form, of course.) In the movie, the aforementioned outcasts, led by Robotsky, form the Robot Revolutionary Front, stenciling their logo on city walls and chanting “Viva La Robotolution” at anyone within earshot. On the whole, it’s played for laughs, but makes us ponder the question:
Have animated films gotten more leftist in recent years?
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114 Comments
Along the same lines:
Find out why a cartoon from 1941(!) is the best portrayal you will ever see of President Obama's philosophy of governance and view of the medical profession.
Enter if you dare:
BARACK OBAMA'S FAIRY PALACE
http://naturalfake.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/barac...
I'm trying to build a quality blog. Please come by and comment. Thanks.
sorry guys but I can't get excited either way about this movie.
Didn't care when I was a kid and I don't care now that I have one.
Osuma Tezuka, the creator of Astro boy was an MD who became a cartoonist in postwar Japan. He's also often tauted as the "Walt Disney" of Japan. He lived through the war and it greatly influenced his work. If you grew up, like I did, watching his Japanese cartoon series "Kimba" and "Astro Boy" you can see his main themes were peace and equality. I haven't seen the new film yet, but I will say that having chosen this particular movie to make the producers were definitely doing something that's going to be embraced by the left.
Well it looks like those NEA conference calls asking 'artists' to back Obama in their work have paid off.
I never even heard of Astroboy until now… and I don't know too much about it to be in an uproar over it.
"Have animated films gotten more leftist in recent years?"
Brilliant. Moviefone's writers might as well have just asked if water has gotten more wet in recent years.
I also love the leftist agenda in films like "Recess: School's Out", bluntly focusing on William Bennett. At the end of the article it asks if we might be reading into it too much. Having sat in on writing sessions, it is a no brainer that leftist agenda is splattered all over the recent cartoons. The NEA would be proud.
I'm tempted to say that Hollywood's leftism has been explicit in animated films as long or longer than any other category — it's very easy to preach soft leftism to children. Think Bambi. Disney has long demonized hunters and been fond of a sort of "victimization" narrative.
But recent works have outdone themselves. I was appalled at the depiction of humanity in Wall-E — I've possibly never seen such an explicitly misanthropic, anti-human vision on-screen. It manages to portray humans simultaneously as planet-raping villains, helpless victims and buffoons, while reserving all the bravery, heroism and, yes, humanity, for its robot characters.
"Have animated films gotten more leftist in recent years?"
Does Captain Planet (Ted Turner's first foray into envirowhacko animation) ring a bell?
Don't forget "Ant Bully"'s implicit marxism.
For some reason my kids are generally disinterested in Hollywood cartoons. They liked "Up" quite a bit, but that was the first one in a looong time. This one just hasn't generated any interest.
But as far as the question of whether animated movies have gotten more leftist. I can only ask, have you seen "Wall-E?" That movie is the most heavy-handed bit of leftist propaganda ever. I seriously doubt "Astro Boy" could outdo that one.
Looks expensive. Here's hoping it crashes and burns at the box office. If it truly pushes Marxist themes and ideas, Americans (everywhere except the Yankee north and Left-Coast) will get pissed enough to get the word out. Just a word to the theater owners, if a conservative asks for his money back, just go ahead and give it to him, you just played a flick to his kids supporting communism, that's not a fight you wanna get caught up in. It's been a long Marxist summer.
Why would you even ask? All cartoons are marxist propaganda
Looks expensive. Here's hoping it crashes and burns at the box office. If it truly pushes Marxist themes and ideas, Americans (everywhere except the Yankee north and Left-Coast) will get pissed enough to get the word out. Just a thought for the theater owners. If a conservative asks for his money back, just go ahead and give it to him. You just played a flick to his kids supporting communism. That's not a fight you wanna get caught up in. It's been a long Marxist summer.
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Of course there is Open Season as well. An out and out anti-hunting cartoon. They don't even pretend to be down the middle on that issue.
Sadly we have to be careful what our kids view. My daughter is all excited over the Astroboy just from the TV spots. Unfortunately for her I will be exercising my parental dictatorial powers and not allowing her to see that one.
The anti-hunting themes in Bambi were even more subtle than what we get today. Remember the cartoon Open Season?
Plus you could argue that any animated film with talking animals is trying to personify animals as "human-like". And therefore anti-hunting. They even have talking plants in animated film now, an obvious overture to the environmental crowd.
Your take on Wall-E is a good one. The humanizing of the inanimate has also been a common theme in animated film, and Hollywood. Pinocchio comes to mind. Even live action film has done this with movies like Short Circuit and The Bicentennial Man.
I have heard people say that about "Wall-E" and I sort of see why, but as a geeky, unloved guy who was constantly "in love" with a Babe, I saw something else, and thoroughly loved it. My wife does not care for it, but I thought it one of the best stories in a long time. Plus, the first few minutes are the best Buster Keaton since Buster Keaton stopped making movies.
Sorry, got a bit off topic. I'm a Nic Cage fan, but I think I'll probably pass on "Astroboy."
Am I the only one who got the ZOG reference in the trailer scene showing the large robot smashing Astroboy and his pals? I don't think it was accidental that the robot was given the name of the favorite bugaboo of such folks as Ayryan Nation, Christian Identity and other extreme racist groups. Yes dear readers it is the Zionist Occupied Government boot licking lackies of the evil Israelis (sarcasm here).
I don't want to speculate why they did this. But it does seem they are pointing out two extremes in opposite political philosophy. I suppose it was necessary as being a public school teacher just pays too little to make it worth their while to use that venue for educating the masses.
You reactionary fools. Hollywood has NOTHING to do with this movie other than re-releasing it. It's made in Japan, which has the second-largest capitalist economy in the world, behind us.
I think this will crash and burn. I'm the target demo (creepy anime dork) and I had zero interest in seeing this even before I knew it was Marxist propaganda. Its like Speed Racer. Its technically 'anime' but its from an era earlier than what anime fans like. The Marxist thing certainly doesn't help but I can predict this one being a disaster from a mile away.
Wall E is a good litmus test for politics. I found it anti-human and the enviro-whining was endless. I mean, I'm a human. I don't want to see a movie against me. My daughter (5) was bored. Yay!
Never did care for his works to be honest, I'm more of a Miyazaki fan myself. Miyazaki can lay on too much of the New World/New Age mumbo jumbo for my liking if I choose to think about it, but dang he can create some fun stuff and great characters to root for. Then again the Great White Garafalo (LOOK OUT!!!! LOOK OUT!!!!!!!) does a voice in "Kiki's Delivery Service" which just kills the dubbed version for me now….
Sorry, wandered off course there I think, I need some food.
I grew up dodging Captain Planet on the Saturday morning lineup. I'd take the unsanitized Bugs Bunny reruns over CP any day of the week.
I can see why you'd see "Wall-E" that way. I couldn't get past the mountains of garbage. I felt like I was being bludgeoned by the recycle message. My husband fell asleep.
My husband fell asleep and my daughter was bored to tears. My son liked it though. He was too young to get the message part. I think he just like the fact that much of it was set in space.
[I was appalled at the depiction of humanity in Wall-E -- I've possibly never seen such an explicitly misanthropic, anti-human vision on-screen. It manages to portray humans simultaneously as planet-raping villains, helpless victims and buffoons, while reserving all the bravery, heroism and, yes, humanity, for its robot characters.]
Here' isdirector Andrew Stanton's explanation for why he chose robots as the leads in Wall-E
Well, what really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that's not always our priority. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was trying to say—that irrational love defeats the world's programming. You've got these two robots that are trying to go above their basest directives, literally their programming, to experience love.
With the human characters I wanted to show that our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we're not really making connections to the people next to us. We're not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14127
In short, Wall-E is promoting a Christian worldview, not a radical environmentalist or anti-human one.
On a different level, it is a retelling of the Fall. A robot named Eve discovers a plant and mankind is expelled from paradise. Does it ring a bell?
On a different level, it is a retelling of the Fall. A robot named Eve discovers a plant and mankind is expelled from "paradise". Does it ring a bell?
This just in: After a special sneak preview at the White House, President Obama called ASTRO BOY "Movie of the Year" and recommended it to all his Obama Youth groups. "I think Astro Boy should win the next Nobel Peace Prize!" the former community organizer told genuflecting representatives of CNN and CBS.
We were driving to go fishing in Wyoming, and after an hour of hundreds of miles of nothing in all directions — no telephone poles, no electric wires, no fences, nothing but a dirt road heading into the Wind Rivers — my son sighed from the back seat and said: "You know, mom, those Wall-E guys are idiots."
Regarding the trash in Wall-E, World's interview with the director Andrew Stanton clears things up:
WORLD : Now that you mention people misconstruing your intentions, how do you feel about reports that WALL•E is an environmental movie?
STANTON : People made this connection that I never saw coming with the environmental movement, and that's not what I was trying to do. I was just using the circumstances of people abandoning the Earth because it's filled with garbage as a way to tell my story.
I always knew that I wanted WALL•E to be digging through trash for two reasons: One, I wanted him to be the lowest on the totem pole. It's a janitorial job; it's the saddest, lowest status amongst his kind; and it just makes him that much more of a lonely guy. Two, trash is really visual. Even the littlest kid understands when there's stuff in the way and it needs to be picked up, so I didn't need to spend time explaining his job. And then I just reverse-engineered from there, "OK, if there's trash everywhere, how did it get there?"
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14127
So, it's a knee-jerk reaction to conclude that a "trash-covered Earth = recycle or else message" in Wall-E.
Yes, there were green-tech crazy liberals who enjoyed Wall-E, but that doesn't make it "leftist." By that standard, The Dark Knight is leftist because lots of liberals enjoyed that film.
That, along with the analogy to The Fall, certainly make sense. But it doesn't address the complaint that the story is reserved for the robots, while the humans are depicted as virtually useless.
I didn't actually dislike WALL-E for a political message. I disliked it because it's misanthropic. And, frankly, quite boring.
So, I guessed you missed Planet of the Apes (original) starring Charleton Heston. That movie also focused on humanity's flaws.
At least in Wall-E humanity repented of its materialist, lazy, and rather socialist ways and become self-reliant and loving again. That ending is a lot more hopeful than Apes' conclusion.
SQT wrote
[But as far as the question of whether animated movies have gotten more leftist. I can only ask, have you seen "Wall-E?" That movie is the most heavy-handed bit of leftist propaganda ever.]
Really? I thought the movie cleverly slammed the lazy, do-nothing mindset of those under socialist rule. The movie's director Stanton confirms this as he explains the reason for humanity's portrayal (emphasis mine):
Well, when I started outlining humanity in the story, I asked myself: What if everything you needed to survive—health care, food—was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect—nobody's reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn't it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14127
It is sad that a clearly anti-socialist message isn't appreciated by some conservatives.
Agreed, when Hollywood personified animals in animated movies, they were laying the ground work for today's eco warriors.
And while I agree with your interpretation of Wall-E, I still think the movie was cute as hell.
Huh. I have to give you that one. I never saw it that way. I was too struck by the piles of garbage. But you have an excellent point.
In short, Wall-E is Christian not socialist as the director intended. Read more here:
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14127
You beat me to that line! That's exactly what I was going to point out as the real grand daddy.
Well the thing about Captain Planet is that it was a crappy show on a good network, so we would watch it knowing that something good or bad was bound to come up sooner or later. If I remember correctly though my brother and I would use it as the time to go eat breaksfast so we didn't have to worry about missing Ninja Turtles.
No, I don't think so. See my other post, I think it is a pernicious subversion of Christian doctrines.
Yeah, I suppose. If you consider the fall a good thing. Like, oh, say, Satan might.
The director's line is BS. He can talk until he's blue in the face about what he "intended," but I think he's just pulling the wool over World Mag's eyes. The leftist, environmentalist, anti-corporate, anti-consumer, anti-human messages were explicit and heavy-handed. See my posts in a thread higher up in the comments.
Hmm? Because someone saw anti-human themes in one move, they didn't see anti-human themes in another completely unrelated and until-now unmentioned movie? That makes no sense at all.
the fall appears to be a victory for satan. But it is what allowed Adam and Eve to gain knowledge of good and evil. in their innocent state, would they have had children? not if they were innocent like children themselves. So yes it was a fall from grace but it also allowed mankind to exist.
If you use the term "reactionary" you are automatically a fool. You are the one who is "reacting" to a conversation about a Marxist cartoon. Now, is this film about Groucho or Harpo?
Humanity didn't redeem itself. Wall-E and Eve redeemed humanity. If it wasn't for them, humanity would still be sailing along on its float chairs, sucking down the shakes and watching the video. That was one of the most pernicious parts, that humanity couldn't even recognize its problem and take its own action. Yes, those ignorant masses just needed Obama, uh, I mean Wall-E to come along and save them from themselves. Pfft.
Yes, I would say the 1850s is definitely an era before anime caught on.
I would say the 1850s is definitely an era before anime caught on.
I'm sorry, the humans needed help from an outside force? Like in Christianity, where we can't attain salvation on our own but require Christ's death and resurrection?
I don;t think so. Pixar movies are basically children's adaptations of Ayn Rand's Themes.
The Incredibles had A LOT in common with Atlas shrugged and Wall-E was basically Anthem.
if we belive Adam and Eve to have been perfectly innocent, and also not having knowlwdge of good and evil, i imagine there are alot of things they didn't know. They didn't know about labor or death or i imagine pain or any of the opposites. So in that sense they were like children.
So eve eats of the fruit, she now has knowledge of good and evil. she will be banished. He decides to eat and stay with her. So each excercised their free agency and got more thatn they bargained for. They were able to know sorrow but also joy.
The fact that we would all be living in paradise with them but for the expulsion from the garden seems as to remove each person's free choice
It seems like the humans needed a shove to get back on the right track. And in this case it came from a character with humble origins.
Humans are fat and lazy and unless we have a goal we can get complacent.
this used to just be a movie for me, but now…
I agree re: The Incredibles. A great animated film with a very conservative message about family and responsibility to do the right thing, in addition to the Atlas Shrugged themes.
I also enjoyed Meet the Robinsons (not nearly as good a movie, but…), which manages to celebrate hard work, persistence and individualism (in the form of some very entertaining quirkiness.
So it's not ALL bad out there….
But wasn't Bambi an anti-hunting cartoon as well?
Meh… I watched Captian Planet as a kid and I am by no means an enviro-nazi…. I think I was more damaged by watching Pee-Wee's playhouse…
i imagine there are alot of things they didn't know.
That's it, you're imagining, not speaking from knowledge. In Genesis 1:28-29 (before the fall), God says to man and woman: "Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food. And it was so."
Kind of hard to be fruitful and increase in number if you don't understand sex. And the mandate God spells out hardly seems like a passive mandate to live like children in innocence and idleness. To rule and subdue the earth — seems like a pretty tall order. Seems like it would take effort and knowledge.
You make the mistake of confusing spiritual innocence with worldy innocence. Adam and Eve (even if you only believe in them allegorically) weren't a couple of ignorant morons. They simply hadn't been exposed to evil, nor committed it. There is no reason, particularly, that things couldn't have gone on that way, if you believe in free will.
It is if you believe the fall was inevitable that you deny free will. It would only be if they, or none of their descendents, was capable of breaking God's rules that it would be a denial of free will. If we had all, through the generations, kept God's rules then theoretically, we could all still be in paradise. The fact that it seems incomprehensible to us now that such a situation could be maintained says some complex and not altogether flattering things about us, and with the supposition of an omnipotent and omniscient God in whose image we were made, maybe some unflattering things about God, but that's a whole discussion of itself.
The bottom line, back to the point is that the only one in the Genesis narrative who thought of the fall as a desirable thing, was the Serpent, the tempter. So, if you postulate that this movie is presenting a "second fall" as a desirous thing, then it is doing so from the viewpoint of the Serpent. Of course, I'd disagree with you that the humans were living in anything that was more than a (maybe intentional) mockery of the Biblical paradise.
My best friend was the same way about the Golden Compass. She was even going to buy the books for her son. Until I told her that it was an athiestic anti-catholic propaganda series. I told her they supposedly cleaned up the film, but the books were…well, what they were. I don't think her son ever saw the movie.
Consider another point: are any of the people involved in this film depraved enough to have supported or worked with that child predator, Roman Polanski?
You don't necessarily have to be in an uproar, but when we send our children to these films, when we go to these films, we are mostly financing people who believe we are stupid, want to indoctrinate our children and are morally bereft. People who believe the rules do not apply to them. And we need to be aware of that before we lay down that $10.
my husband I must be too young too… because we saw pretty much the same thing….
As I said, "Yes, a Christian should acknowledge his need for Christ's salvation, but that does not translate into the necessity to see ourselves in all areas as the blubbery, helpless ineffectual babies of the movie. Christ promoted an active, brave, intellectually and spiritually strong Christianity, not a victimization narrative."
Peter, Paul and the other apostles who suffered and died for their faith were hardly helpless victims of circumstance. There is a vast difference between the nature of Christian salvation and the "salvation" that was offered by Wall-E. Christ did not think humans were victims of anyone but themselves, and salvation is an individual choice. The movie presents the humans as utter victims and we see precious little choice being exercised. Mostly the human sheep are just along for the ride. You're not "along for the ride" on your Christian salvation. You have to make choices and stand by them.
I really didn't notice the garbage too much (but that might have been ingrained in me from the captian planet years mentioned above) but the obese, lazy people are what stuck out the most at me and the fact that the orchestrator of the whole "vacation" space ship (which reminded me of a cruise ship) thing, never wanted the people to go back to "earth" so he kept brainwashing them and trying to suppress the truth that there was life on "earth", even if ever so small.
Nice regionalism, jackass.
A+++ comment, would read again
"You reactionary fools." ?
What are you some sort of cartoon villain?
"I'd of gotten the money if it wasn't for you reactionary fools!"
Go back to Scooby Camp mister.
if i am being imaginative, you are as well. The verse you quoted says nothing about them understanding reproduction. That would be waht the tree provided, knowledge. They may have been comissioned to do all these things but unless they had knowledge how could they have carried it out? (ignorance is not unintellegence)
Adam and Eve didn't have to eat the fruit. but since they did, the fall was the casting them out from the presence of god (Spiritual Death). Where they would then suffer physical death. Christ's overcoming of both allows us to return to God.
God had to cast them out or they may have eaten of the tree of eternal life while in this fallen state.
"Be fruitful and increase in number" equals reproduction.
Not if we don't send our kids to this. We can bankrupt this film, you know. The industry is already in deep trouble.
You know what we should do? We should start a list of good films that represent our values, with a short assessment of the particular principles the film depicts. That way people can go an buy those.
yes it does
Sounds like another piece of leftist crap I can't wait not to see.
the natural man (lazy and unambitious) sometimes needs a reason to get off his fat butt and do something. Who cares why they changed, they did and during the credits you see them redeveloping civilization and relearning lost skills.
All of this worry over a cartoon is a bit over the top, but Wall-E as Obama? I can't go there with you, this is where i bow out.
now that is a nifty angle
wow and here i was thinking this was just a cartoon.
cloudbuster wrote:
"That was one of the most pernicious parts, that humanity couldn't even recognize its problem and take its own action. "
Isn't that the central doctrine of Christianity? That humanity can't recognize its chief problem (sin) much less solve it without intervention by the Messiah (Jesus Christ).
Doesn't Romans 3:23 say that ALL have sinned and fall short of the Lord's standard?
I can see an atheist sneering at this idea. But I'm baffled by a Christian being upset by this accurate view of sinful humans when we're left to our own devices?
Ok … so he instructed them to reproduce before the fall … but they didn't know how to do it until after the fall…. I'm sorry, I don't think there is any scriptural support for your contention that the only way for them to gain the knowledge to fulfill God's mandates was to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
it is certainly a complex part of the plan and one that quite frankly i don't understand it, so i will research it. I can't think of any other reason why the Tree of knowledge was there. God tells them not to eat from it and yet he created it. Did he set up the circumstances for Eve's temptation?
it isn't made for us…
Or the U.S., either. Oh, it'll do ok here. But it will clean up in the Asian markets and do okfine in the European and Middle Eastern as well. This is what it's come to.
We no longer really make films for American consumption. Ergo the lack of pro-US themes from Hollyweird.
Yes, Virginia, they do hate us…
The Tree of Knowledge was there because we had to have the option of "First Refusal" you might say. We had to be able to make the choice to either believe God and live, or disbelieve Him and die. It is all very well for Him to set things up, but with no real chance of our ever disobeying Him, we are not really choosing to obey Him. This is mirrored in what Satan tells God about Job. We love Him because it works for us, but what if it doesn't? What then?
Truth is, it doesn't work for us, but because we are truly created with a Free Will – we had the ability to choose to disobey. When we made that "choice" it cemented the fact we'd need something else to redeem us. God decided even before that Tree that there would be another Tree to put things to right.
That is hilarious.
You make a strong argument. It´s not what I got out of the movie – and it´s so rare that I like a movie these days – but I see your point. It is hard to argue that the movie doesn´t have a condescending view of mankind.
What a great debate. You make a strong argument. It´s not what I got out of the movie – and it´s so rare that I like a movie these days – but I see your point. It is hard to argue that the movie doesn´t have a condescending view of mankind.
Though it bugged me that Syndrome, the baddie, is the self-made guy and creator of his own powers. The Incredibles are after all just born as genetic supermen, without any effort on their part.
It´s a load of fun anyway. So what is the Ayn Rand connection with Monsters, Inc.?
Err…from what I've seen, Astro Boy _fights_ the other robots, so doesn't that make the "Marxist" ones the villains? The piece above even says they're being played for laughs. Does anyone actually SEE the movie they're denouncing before declaring it propaganda of one kind or another? It's too much a kidflick for me but I suspect it's just Pinocchio with robots. The knee-jerk condemnations are as tedious as the people who screeched that "Passion of the Christ" was anti-semetic before seeing one frame of it.
That's your witty retort, "nice regionalism, jackass." First of all, I'm mot a Democrat. Second, hows that regionalism exactly. Left coast=California, Yankee north=New York. That's more a state-ist comment really. And third, why don't you go F@#K yourself. Go reply on someone who gives a damn what some Marxist coddling prick such as you has to say.I'm one of those people that still believes communism is evil. You don't like it, too F@#KING bad.
not the Incredibles.
I used to watch Captain Planet — and I enjoyed it.
But that was because there was nothing better on. I knew the environmental messages were bull even when I was 10.
Astro Boy was probably made out of cans of Campbell's soup!
(Yes, I am familiar with the character's history and backstory, so don't flame me over it.)
Did you learn this strawman tactic in post-post-post-modern debate for socialist-indoctrinated losers?
Don't let the facts get in your way! It's directed by a British director (who has worked on major Hollywood productions since he was involved with Roger Rabbit), written by an American writer and features an almost exclusively American cast. Yep. It's Japanese!
I'm uptight when it comes to liberal messages in movies, but I didn't have a problem with Wall-E. It's a nice companion piece to Idiocracy, which also had mounds of trash but didn't really concern itself with an environmental message either. In light of Fred's analysis of the path humanity took to get to where they were in Wall-E, it's probably a little more conservative than Idiocracy.
.
Does Astro boy sing the Praises of the Messiah?
'Bama, Mmmm Mmmmm Good !
Ripped from Cambell's soup?
.
.
While I think this movie is just for money, it has not been released yet, so what is to judge now?
Besides, too many ignorant audiences misinterpret films made by animation. WALL-E never had a political theme. If it did, writer Andrew Stanton would have gone more into the theme. and maybe even delete that whole "Define Dancing" scene Even Stanton states clearly that he was only doing a love story, not a satire. The whole big-infant humans and polluted Earth were plot-devices surrounding the love story of WALL-E and EVE. If WALL-E was really meant to ridicule us, then the humans would have been portrayed as mean and ruthless. But were they? No, the humans are generally very nice to the robots and they are a major assistance to WALL-E. Humanity and moral glory is present within the robots and humans alike. WALL-E was about reviving humanity (within humans) and discovering humane autonomy (within the robots).
bet0001970
Loved Serenity.
Rewatch it and Firefly when I can't find any decent DVD from the library.
One long time favorite of mine 'The Net' about identity theft in a major way, and sort of fighting an intrusive system.
I have to disagree on Wall-E. The humans were decadent, living in total dependency in a society where everyone is equal and everything is provided for. They are literally running on autopilot. To show this as negative is not unconservative or unrealistic. The essence of leftism is the utopian vision of a perfected "new man", and the movie doesn´t buy it.
I am very sensitive to the evil (and I mean evil) anti-human tendencies of certain movies that send the message that humans are a cancer. But that is not the message of Wall-E. There is no human baddie. We only get to know three humans and they are decent people who learn to know good from evil and take the right side – the side of freedom, if you will – when they get a chance. And they take action, make the decision to go back to Earth and take responsibility for their lives. What´s the problem? The environmental message can make you groan, but concern for the environment is not of the left, it is exploited and abused by the left. I refuse to buy into the narrative that only libs care.
Maybe, but what makes us "reactionary" in your eyes is our resistance to its message, no?
And second-largest capitalist economy is redundant. It´s not as if there´s much competition from the centrally planned, communist economies of North Korea, Cuba et al.
Not to mention that they were both genuinely funny! "Meet the Robinsons" deserves more attention than it got.
Every time I see Astroboy, I can't help but think of how he got refueled in the comics:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17626_5-creepiest-... (scroll down to #3)
I'm guessing that's not how it works in the movie.
No, I don't buy it. The humans were literally and visually infantilized, even their "goodness" was the ineffectual goodness of small children. The pernicious part of this is that it portrayed the humans as ultimately unable to recognize their situation, remedy it and save themselves. They required assistance from an outside, non-human agency. This is the ultimate victimization narrative — it's exactly the way the left views the masses — oh those poor (pick your favorite victim group), they can't solve their own problems, they need better, wiser heads to lead them on the correct path.
Oh, and there is a human baddie the, evil corporate despoilers who raped the planet and enslaved us all to cheap consumer goods and high calorie fast food. It's all so laughably predictable. It was every leftist environmentalist, nanny-stater's wet dream: "See? This is what you'll turn into if you let Wal-Mart and McDonald's have their way! The masses cant' be trusted to shop where they want, buy what they want, eat what they want or make their own choices, because they will despoil the planet and themselves like mindless, gluttonous beasts."
As a Christian world view, this is the worst sort of leftist, social gospel interpretation of Christianity, which emphasizes all our weakness, helplessness and need for salvation, while acknowledging non of the human bravery, inspiration and individual responsibility that comes of being made in God's image.
Yes, a Christian should acknowledge his need for Christ's salvation, but that does not translate into the necessity to see ourselves in all areas as the blubbery, helpless ineffectual babies of the movie. Christ promoted an active, brave, intellectually and spiritually strong Christianity, not a victimization narrative.
In a previous post, the director is quoted as saying: "With the human characters I wanted to show that our programming is the routines and habits that distract us to the point that we're not really making connections to the people next to us. We're not engaging in relationships, which are the point of living—relationship with God and relationship with other people."
Again, I don't buy it. This is a profoundly dishonest explanation. If humanity became as the movie depicted, simply masses of disconnected, ignorant, bloated lumps of flesh that seem to exist to do nothing but consume, it would not be because of "routines and habits." Can't you see that's what the victimization culture wants you to think? That end is the result of choices, and what the movie shows is the result of generation after generation of failure of human will and aspirations. I postulate that not only can those pitiful lumps of flesh not be considered "good" in any meaningful sense, but that they are the product of generation after generation of hideously evil choices.
I had a hard time figuring out why I should care about them at all or why they were worth saving. I had an even harder time believing in the ending: that all it took was being shown some pictures of the way things used to be to get them to give up their float chairs and lives of ease to live lives of hardship and toil establishing a new human colony on an essentially barren earth. Again, I feel that the idea that was being flirted with here, subtly, was the leftist fascination with indigenous peoples and "sustainable agriculture" — give up your high-tech consumerist lifestyle and go work the fields and live in agrarian paradise. Ignoring the grinding poverty and toil required for such a lifestyle. Clearly the movie wanted to contrast the past despoiling of the planet with the bright new sustainable future the robot-rehabilitated humans were going to develop.
I must have been too young to get the message too. I enjoyed it.
It seemed that once people gave up on the group think, they were able to have ambition again.
I saw it as humanity ultimately redeeming itself.
(But I don't really think that deeply when enjoying a movie with my 3 year old.)
Interesting how things can be seen so differently by each audience member.
In my view, Pixar is quality storytelling. Up was the best yet.
We just saw Toy story 1 & 2 in 3-d and i rediscovered the movie (even though my son watches them all the time)
Mankind existed just fine before the fall. God didn't want to burden them with the knowledge of good and evil. Are you saying God wanted the fall? That he set them up with rules and manipulated the situation so that they would break them?
Adam and Eve were human before the fall. They had dominion over the planet, and they walked with God and were in harmony with the world. There was nothing good about the fall.
Edit to add: Are you implying that sex is not innocent or natural in some way, that they could only have children after the fall? That sounds like kind of a pathological view of sex and reproduction.
[...] Big Hollywood, Moviefone reports: Crude posters of Lenin and Trotsky adorn the threadbare walls of an office in a [...]
When you think about it, it's a very Libertarian film. It's one of my favorites. It sort of feels like what's happening now. Like they think they can make us better.
I've seen this and, suffice it to say, there's nothing close to a fire here. The "Marxist" stuff pertains to THREE minor characters who are played as a parody of wannabe-militant activist groups (think "The Judean People's Front" in Life of Brian, same exact joke) and exist to be the victims of physical comedy at the hands of the main good and bad guys.
I guess a few people liked that idea so I have a movie.
Serenity.
A movie that should never have been made. It was the continuation of a canceled series that never even finished it's first season. But it had a massive following. This film is about independence, individualism, the evils of government control and how socialism kills. It's a traditional western set in space and it will make you want to see the original series.
Be sure to watch all of the special features. Joss Whedon (creator/writer/director) even makes a timely comment about health care. This movie was specifically made for fans so it didn't bring in a lot of money. I suggest we revive it's box office proceeds. Go out and order this DVD (if you like) and then recommend it to a friend. Become a "Browncoat" and tell Hollywood what we really want in films.
PS: Please reply by recommending another good film with good principles.
Actually, it's a co-production between Americans and Hong Kong-based IMAGI Studios (producers of the New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.) based on the Japanese manga and anime series created by Osamu Tezuka. So technically, it's Half American, Half-Chinese (at least the capitalist part of China) with ancestral Japanese to boot.
This sounds like another hit piece against us fans of Japanese anime. Whether it's the complaints about pulling a volume of "Drangonball" from the library because Son Goku waves his little wang all over the place while fighting bad guys or those United Nations ninnies trying to take away our hentai games, it never ends!
How about this: we'll keep the "Left coast" and the "Yankee north" in addition to the Pacific Northwest, New England, all of the worthwhile cultural, artistic, and educational centers, and you can go hang out at a pie tin museum in the "Cracker South" and get type 2 diabetes while waiting on your gov't assistance check and bitching about incipient socialism?
Much more subtlety so. Open Season was in your face: hunters are evil rednecks bent on killing anything that walks.
Good point, and in fact one whole point of the film was that the human's were happy in their ignorance! As long as their base needs were met, they had no ambition. This is antithetical to the God given human-spirit within us. Only the lazy are happy with their base needs being met, and the vast majority of us are not lazy (unlike portrayed in the film).
Good point, and in fact one whole point of the film was that the humans were happy in their ignorance! As long as their base needs were met, they had no ambition. This is antithetical to the God given human-spirit within us. Only the lazy are happy with their base needs being met, and the vast majority of us are not lazy (unlike portrayed in the film).
Hm… well I hope the creators of Open Season never go to Missouri then…. becuase they might not come back..
Sorry, I was being snarky with the Obama comment. Didn't mean to imply it was an actual metaphor in the film. I was just riffing on the whole Obama as messiah thing.
A central doctrine of Christianity is that we all have sinned and fall short of God's standard and that we require Christ's sacrifice to pay for that sin, but I'd disagree that it's a central tenet that we can't recognize the chief problem — I think it's in Ephesians somewhere, I could be wrong, that it says that the truth is written in all our hearts. We all recognize the problem deep down, and it's up to us individually to make that choice.
Also, had they been left to their own devices? The movie takes place in a future earth, so presumably there was a Christ and a Bible. What happened to them?
Christianity is not a religion of helpless sufferers, it's a religion of people who recognize the truth, recognize their place in the scheme of things, show gratitude for what is offered, and then stand by those truths and that gratitude even when things get rough. I've never been fond of the sack-cloth-and-ashes version of Christianity where some constantly flagellate themselves and focus on how sinful they are. The great Christians I've seen throughout history all seemed to have said to themselves, "Yes, I'm fallen and imperfect, and I thank God for my salvation — now what can I *do*?"
The movie doesn't just depict humans as spiritually vacuous, but physically, emotionally, socially and morally weak, too. I don't know. I guess people have gotten so wrapped up in their fallenness and sin before — the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah — and there have even been some cases, such as in Job, where someone interceded and saved a sinful population.
Yet this movie still offends me. Compare to another explicitly Christian allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan requires so much more of the fallen humans to whom he reveals himself. Compare the redemption of Edmund, for example, with the bland good intentions of the ship's caption in Wall-E. Edmund took responsibility for his own sin, suffered the consequences of it and emerged better for it. He's not a bumbling comedic figure. I haven't seen Wall-E since it came out, but I remember feeling at the time that the Captain's "redemption" went far less than halfway. He was no Edmund.
If there was a redemptive message, the fact that all the really hard work went on "off-screen" in the credits demeans the message.
BTW, I don't know if you'll come back and read this thread, but thanks for a mature, thoughtful discussion. It encouraged me to think and consider my arguments, and that's always a good thing.
The manga that this movie Astro Boy was based on was all about anti-discrimination, cast in a sci-fi/fantasy world where robots were the downtrodden and scientists, politicians and criminals the evil masters (there were good masters too – in fact, Astro himself never really lobbied for his own independence, content for the most part to serve humanity – because he loved it. He was a boy hero who wanted to help people, and often used his fists to do it. What's Marxist about that?) I think this whole issue has been overblown. Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, was a fan of compassionate capitalism and hated communism. He'd be flabbergasted at the whole idea of his creation being characterized as a shill for the left.
Just enjoy the movie, people! It's ENTERTAINMENT. Just like the manga.
Um… you do realize that the marxist robots were comic relief, right? They were in the movie to be laughed at, and in the end all of their efforts amounted to nothing….
Also, I'm pretty sure that the anti-war stuff would have more to do with Japanese passivism since the U.S. dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII, especially since Toby, Dr. Tenma's son, gets vaporized right at the beginning of the movie, just like many people did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This sort of thing is actually very standard in Japanese entertainment. For example, Godzilla is produced by hazardous effects of the atom bomb on the environment, etc.
And, in case you are wondering, I have voted for the Republican candidate for president in every election so far. I am closer to being a libertarian than a communist, and I certainly support family values. I just happen to think that this sort of paranoia may be a little unfounded guys.
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