Movie Sequel Delight

On Sunday, I saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 at the ever-excellent Museum of the Moving Image. The movie is good, even allowing for my brain damaged overreaction, and I want to call attention to an aspect of the story that I think is admirable*.

By this second movie, the protagonist, Hiccup, has lost a lower leg, and designed a fantastic prosthetic leg. His dragon is also disabled and is only able to fly with a prosthesis. Neither refers to their disability with anything but humor, and informationally.

There is a significant moment when Hiccup has just met Cate Blanchett**, and points out his "peg leg". There are obvious nerves there, but her character just carries on. The disability is part of Hiccup, but does not define him by any means.

So, I think that's pretty cool: the protagonist, the hero, is the disabled kid who is beloved by his village and his family, independently of his disability. The movie is not about the lost leg, the prostheses, positively or negatively, they're just there, like the sheep.

For me, that's not where the good ends, and although I may be stretching here, I think that they got something else right. (Spoilers ahead!) The villain of the story, Drago, is revealed in the last act to have a prosthetic arm. He lost his arm to a dragon as a child, and has lived since then to wreak revenge on all dragons. In most movies, that would be motivation enough, he lost a limb, of course he became a bitter and vicious murderous warlord, right?

Hiccup is having none of it, though, and calls him on his lie, saying words to the effect of: you're a bad person anyway, irrespective of your supposed justification, you like being a vicious, murderous warlord. The villain can't demur (and doesn't).

There, writ large, are choices that face those of us with disabilities, and those without: How do I approach the disability (which informs and is informed by everyone around me)? How do I approach my life?

Hiccup's choice, buoyed up by everyone around him, is the opposite of Drago's. He chooses to go forward, rather than justify bad behavior with a hidden and shameful disability. Hiccup doesn't hide, and is not ashamed.

It's not the core of the story. It isn't greatly highlighted. It is there, though, and having disability be part of the scenery and a small, significant part of the narrative, is a good thing, and progress.

* I do think it's a shame that Hiccup and Astrid weren't gender-flipped in the first movie, but that's life; perhaps DreamWorks Animation SKG will make a different choice in future.

** I'm trying not to spoil the story!

Moving Pictures

Recently I've seen Hunger Games 2, Thor 2, Hobbit 2, Filth and last night, The Night of the Hunter. I'm lucky to live very close to the American Museum of the Moving Image, and a 10-screen cinema. The museum's website is shit for mobile and accessibility by the way, but the movies are good.

One of the features of my brain damage is that some level of critical faculty, or some intellectual processing is absent. So, I respond to things rapidly and honestly. This often means that I am easily manipulated by movies, but has another side effect: I can't rationalize a movie I'm finding dull with intellect.

As a case in point I was very engaged by Catching Fire, Thor and Filth least, perhaps the Thor movie, but Chris Hemsworth is yummy. I was so engaged by The Night of the Hunter, which has child actors who could be replaced by wooden blocks with little loss, that I am still thinking about it and its imagery today.

I thought the Hobbit was a bit dull. For all its flair, stellar effects and so on, I was bored. More Smaug, less New Zealand, and get a sodding move on.

Of them all, if you're looking for a good movie to take tweens and up to, then I would recommend The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. While you're there ask yourself who you are most like in real life. Snow's granddaughter? Effie? Senna? Be honest. I dare you.

The effect of the damage is interesting; it makes me a pretty cheap date: if a movie's well enough made, I will enjoy it regardless. It does have something of an emperor's new clothes effect though. You can't hide boring behind glitz. 

Sucker for Movies

I went to the cinema today (after a follow-up to one of the research studies I volunteered for), and saw the Avengers movie.

Now I've enjoyed the recent spate of comic book adaptations quite a bit, I liked Thor and Iron Man, I really didn't hate most of the Hulk attempts, and although I think they missed making the end of Captain America almost unbearably poignant, it was a jolly good movie.

Also, I'm not approaching this particular oeuvre with an eye to high art; I'm looking to suspend a bit of disbelief and relax while people smash things up and quip and get a bit angsty. I'm also not completely without critical faculties, though: Ryan Reynolds sold me on the GL movie with his panel oath at Comic-con (look it up on YouTube, he makes some kid's year), but the movie was still bad.

Cut back to me watching the Avengers today, armed with some Maltesers (one of the few things I miss by comparison with going up the block to a movie back home), and the effect of the stroke is quite profound. I'm suddenly a total sucker, in the best way possible.

I've mentioned before that some months ago I thought I had some emotional lability that meant I laughed uncontrollably at the most childish of things. Well it turns out that the effect is not lability at all, in my case, it's a lack of motor control to suppress the laughter. In other words, just as I did when I was six years old, I think unexpected farting is hilarious, and I always did, I just learned not to laugh out loud at it sometime before adulthood.

Some of that impulse to control my laughter has returned: There are things that I find amusing that it's really not OK for other people around me know that I find them giggle-worthy. But I am often caught off guard, and I suppose I generally laugh a bit more than before my stroke.

A movie like the Avengers film is engineered to provoke responses from us, especially if we read a bunch of comic books. I mean, it's a classic hero team story: The protagonists spend about 2/3 of the time fighting each other, then team up to kick ass for the last third. There are beats of pathos, beats of humour, moments where we're supposed to respond to Robert Downey Jr.'s glib responses, to Chris Hemsworth's studly godliness, to Mark Ruffalo's fist, and to Chris Evans' old-fashioned morality. 

Those emotional responses have a physical component that adults usually dampen, but I still don't do. The brain and mind respond to the body, and whether that's always the case, or as adults we associate more extreme physical response with more heightened emotion, it's hard to say, but the end result was that I really enjoyed the Avengers movie, to the point that I can't tell if I squealed out loud or not. (I'm pretty sure that I didn't, but maybe everyone was super-polite to the disabled guy.)

I'm all in favour of this return to the child-like pleasure of going to the movies. Even considering the exorbitant cost of Maltesers, I so got my money's worth from it. I'm not sure I would ever take movie recommendations from me ever again, but I would go with myself to see something stupid and explode-y.