Fiction: The Adventures of Princess Sarah, Part 2!

Filling out another week while it's still the weekend, didn't have anything better to work with than a second chapter of the adventure of Princess Sarah, the spin-off to my retro gaming parody novel (which I just dumped on a free platform I probably should have been using all along). This has what's already my best gag, and as a bonus, I worked in the original owlbears!

Sarah’s first sensation was falling. The next was landing on her face. She skinned her knees in gravel, and one of her teeth came out against the rock. She started to cry, before she remembered she was a big girl now. She raised her head, and found Prince Robert looking down at her, his frog pack on his back and his beloved toy Frog Frog in hand.

“Sarah fall down,” he said. “Sarah ow ow?”

“Oh,” said a distant, murmuring voice, “look at them!”

“Oh, don’t talk like a baby,” Sarah said. She scrambled to her feet, briefly looking left and right. There was another murmur, as if one voice pressed another to be silent. They were in what was clearly a streambed, empty but still damp. Her River Cow bag had landed in a murky puddle beside her. She snatched it up and absentmindedly used her skirt to wipe it off. “Oh, poor Missus Cow… I mean, I hope it’s not wet.” She reached into an outer pouch and pulled out a jar of salve. Robert helped rub it on her knees.

“Ooh,” came the distant voice. “Look, the little one’s helping the big one!” The other voice rumbled louder than before.

“Well,” Sarah said, “we must have opened a magic door. Father said that was how he met Mother.” She smiled at Robert. “It will be an adventure, just like in the Guidebook! Ooh! I hope it didn’t get wet!”

She pulled out the book, and sighed in relief to find it dry. Indeed, she could feel no dampness at all on the inside of the bag. That was because it was, in fact, lined with real Water Cow hide, something Mother and Father had so far neglected to explain. She half-spoke the table of contents: Cartography, Topography, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Ethnography, Diplomacy, Polity. She flipped to the second chapter, then the third.

“`In your surroundings, you can see the past, present and future,`” she read. “`If there is a clamshell in desert sand, then it must once have been an ocean. If there is a tree or the cornerstone of a house still rooted in a riverbank, it must once have been dry ground. If there are stones that look round and smooth, then they must have been worn down by slow and gentle currents water or other elements. If there is gravel and large stones with sharp edges, then stronger forces may be in effect…’”

She looked up and down the channel. There were indeed a number of angular rocks. Then, half-buried in the gravel, there was the keel of a capsized boat. “Oh, dear,” she said. “`…If you see evidence of floods or falls of rock, vacate to higher ground as quickly as possible.’”

“Frog,” Robert said. He pointed to a purple toad with oddly long legs. It was struggling to climb up the steep edge of the bank, without appreciable success.

They quickly scrambled up the streambed. “Aren’t they adorable?” said the distant voice. “I just want to hold them! Those packs! Aww, look at the little boots! Really, can’t we help them?”

“Now, now,” came the lower voice. “We can’t interfere. Besides, if they have our smell, their parents may not take them back…”

 

They reached a hilltop where a tree grew from an outcropping. Sarah declared they would have lunch. She poured them each a glass out of Dink. She took out a safety knife and cut up the roll. She tried spreading the pomegranate jelly on a small piece, but she spat it out as soon as she tasted it with the hard and sour bread. Instead, she cut up the cheese and half of the sausage and served them on the bread. “`A lady in the wilderness should encourage the gentlemen with food prepared well and served with aesthetics and good cheer,’” she recited from memory. She offered the stacked slices to Robert.

“Frog,” he said. He opened Frog Frog, and the purple toad hopped out.

“Robert, Mummy and Mother told you, you can’t take anything real for your collection,” Sara said. The Prince offered a crumb of the bread to the creature, which showed no interest.

“Help frog,” he said. He tried again with a sliver of sausage, which the toad swallowed.

“Oh, he is kind!” cooed the voice. “And so brave!”

As the Princess and Prince ate, the sky grew overcast. Before they had finished, it began to rain. Robert opened the umbrella to deflect what the branches of the tree did not. The toad hopped about on the dry ground, which it evidently preferred to the rain. Sarah flipped open Dink’s top and leaned out, collecting a smattering of rainwater. When she looked downhill, she saw that the streambed was already half full. She again took out the Guide, and opened it to the fourth part.

“`To travel and survive in an unfamiliar land, the first priority must be to identify and harvest edible plants,’” she read. “`There is no better preparation than learning the flora of the known realms, yet this is but the first step. It is essential above all not to let familiar appearances lead to false conclusions. Even the most learned and experienced have perished because they took a deadly plant for an edible one, or disregarded a source of valuable nutrition because it resembled a noxious weed…’”

She flipped through a series of illustrations that filled a good part of the guide, pausing occasionally to consider the plants around them. None of them looked familiar or welcoming in the first place, and several that had looked at least vaguely similar to ones in the book proved to be among the strangest of them all. She reached out and pulled down one of the very branches overhead. The leaves, on examination, were strings of separate fronds. What looked like a single flower was similarly a cluster of tiny blossoms. She examined one of number of white globes that she had taken for fruit. Its surface proved papery and translucent. She found that it had no stem, but bulged directly from the branch. At a gentle poke, it split, revealing a pallid worm that hissed at her. She squealed and let go of the branch. As it snapped upward, the grub went flying.

“Let’s go,” Sarah said as soon as the rain cleared. “We need to find a safe place.” Robert shrugged and shouldered his pack. The long-legged toad clung to one strap. His sister read as they walked from an earlier chapter. “`When possible, follow waterways. They will lead to centers of agriculture, population and even government…’” When they reached the streambed, now full of coursing, muddy water, she turned upstream.

“Oh, no,” said the distant voice. “We can’t let them go that way…”

“Now, dear,” rumbled the answering voice, already grudgingly, “it’s going to be a bother…”

 

Sarah tramped along the bank, Robert following behind her. Something almost but not quite like reeds grew along the edges, sometimes well back and sometimes so far forward they had to push through it. Ahead was a stand of trees like the one they had sat under. She read aloud from the fifth part of the Explorer’s Guide, on zoology. “`The next and most vital step in understanding an unknown land is to catalog its animal life,’” she said. “`Consider the size, shape and habits of each creature. Does it consume plants, meat or a combination of both? Is it alone, or does it gather and travel in groups? Are its colors and mode of life a match for its surroundings, or could it be a traveler from elsewhere like yourself?” As she spoke, she took a closer look at the strange toad. They were mere Cubits from the edge of the trees when the creature stepped into their path.

It was three Cubits high and utterly massive. It had scales on its belly and limbs, and long, fibrous quills on its back. It seemed to have no neck, only a massive head that protruded from between its hunchbacked shoulders. Its face was dominated by a long, stout beak, a helmet-like carapace and two red eyes.

“Please,” she said, carefully enunciating, “you must go back. I will show you…”

Sarah froze and stared. Robert huddled behind her. The squawking cries hurt her ears. It was like the roar of one of the engines Father’s craftsmen wouldn’t stop tinkering with, drawing out every note with prolonged reverberations. But what she found most disconcerting was that its cries sounded almost like words. She hastily consulted the Guide.

“`If intelligence is unknown, treat a creature as you would a strange dog or a menagerie beast outside its cage,’” she quavered. “`Maintain an upright posture, firm eye contact, and an authoritative voice. If possible, withdraw deferentially, without haste or any sign of panic…’”

As she edged deeper into the almost-reeds, she straightened and called out, “Leave us alone, we don’t want trouble!” She added, “I’m a princess, not a little girl! I’m six, almost six and a half!”

Suddenly, a second and even larger creature burst out of the trees, as tall as the armoire. “No, no!” he bellowed. “Stay away, see!”

Sarah and Robert both shrieked, and immediately turned and ran. The girl took her brother’s hands, though within moments, it was he who pulled her forward. As they disappeared, the larger creature embraced his mate. He groomed her mane as she shook with honking sobs. “Ohh,” she said, “did we have to do that?”

“There, there, he said. “I’m sure they’ll be all right…” He gave a honk that made the children run faster still.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Return to the wild!

 

It's Tuesday, and I've been busy enough to consider throwing in the towel a while longer. Fortunately, it just happens that I spent some decompression time at the Store of Stores, source of the silliest AWESOMEST dinosaurs to appear in this feature. So, here's a quick lineup of the latest sightings there, plus a few more things that even I wouldn't pay money for, which I swear I almost had ready over the weekend. To kick things off, how about a dinobot?

This here is, of course, a clear if generic knockoff of the Transformers Dinobots, previously represented in my original dinobot lineup and my relatively recent Grimlocks followup. This one looks good enough that I genuinely considered buying it, except that its price tag was in the same range as a real Transformer, and not just the discounted and/ or small ones I usually buy. Of course, I did consider that the exact same store sold me the mindbogglingly awful generic ankylosaur dinobot, possibly the worst thing I have reviewed for this feature that I bought new. The mask you can kind of see didn't help; it really is a full-sized Halloween mask with an alleged electronic feature. If that's what drove the price up, they lost the sale twice over. Oh, well. And then there was this...

So this is a bag of big dinos that appears to be from the same makers as the generic dino bag and the Oviraptor. This time, there's only about three of them in correspondingly large sizes, as far as I can tell solidly built. There's even signs of articulation on that ceratopsian. The problem, which you might or might not be able to see, is that the included T. rex has two heads, which somehow failed to be a selling point for me. It all comes down to the dictum I laid down with the patchisaurs, if you're going with dinos as an excuse for fantasy monsters, don't try to make them look like "real" dinosaurs. And here's another pic that might or might not give a better view. One more thing, I swear that Styracosaurus thingy looks exactly like a stop-motion model used in Son of Kong. Dammit, I'm going to go back and buy this thing, aren't I?

And here's another item, clearly intended to look like a therizinosaur. Wow. Just... wow.

On the other hand, there's this. I'm actually impressed. Is this supposed to be a dino, or the Alien as a plush toy?

And while I'm at it, a sighting from a previous visit. I'm sure this is from the same offenders as the generic bag. Well, if kids aren't traumatized, how will they get into dinosaurs?

And while I'm at it, a few from Walmart. This is the source of my header illustration. It feels like what would happen if a real therepod thought he could host a kid's show...

And another Walmart entry. It's brought me the Lanard megafauna, a Marx clone set, the cyborg zombie T. rex, and the actually good spinosaur; so you can't win 'em all.

And here's something different, from the store where I got the anime space jet transformer, now finally closed down. This had definitely been there a very long time...

And speaking of Walmart/ Lanard, I found this outside the direct-to-Walmart channels.

And that's enough for me to call it a day/ night/ week. This is truly what I do, and this time around, I've felt good going in and coming out. My material isn't always great, or epically bad, but I can always come up with something interesting. And while I'm at it, here's one more pic from the Store of Stores. Sometimes, something normal is the weirdest thing of all...

That's all for now, more to come!

Mystery Monday/ Legion of Silly Dinosaurs crossover: Random dino box!!!

 

As I write this, I'm preparing for my one-item bucket list trip to the Field Museum. In the meantime, I already had a surplus of dino material, and it has been a while since I did a Mystery Monday post. To cover the backlog, I decided to cover some material that was already the subject of my first unboxing video. I present a completely randomized online lot of dinos, only some of which were clearly represented in the listing. To get things going, here's the one that got my grudging interest, yet another incarnation of the Hideous Abomination (also already the subject of a video), pictured with one that turned up in a dino bag featured here before I bought it.

"Daddy, when will I grow a foot that supports weight?"

As previously recounted, the Abomination is a knockoff/ bootleg of the "skinny" T. rex issued by Marx after retiring their original (see my actual science post from last month). The most significant feature carried over was a pose that had one foot lifted off the ground, which the unknown persons responsible botched badly enough that one foot looks like a sloth's and the other, raised foot looks like a frog's. It is often identified with the patchisaurs, though I believe it is of independent origin. On the whole, it is if anything even more mysterious than the patchis, to the point that even its age has been difficult to assess. In my further opinion, it probably isn't much younger than the patchisaurs, but I have been hard-pressed to prove it. The best I had done up to this point was find pics here and there of specimens that were evidently older and definitely of far better manufacturing standards than those I had previously acquired. Notably, some of these had halfway decent painted detail, such as white teeth. I decided to acquire one, and ordered this lot because it had the most extensive and interesting additional material. Here's more pics.

On examination, this proved to be indeed a better specimen than any I had encountered before. The "feel" alone is a vast improvement, solid and far more pleasant. It has a number of details that are hazy or lost on newer examples, particularly extensive scales and bumps on the feet. The differences are most pronounced in the head, where the very silhouette is different. What looks like a wonky Kanamit brain on the copyis here a robust and well-defined cranium. Alas, the old version already has all the worst features, from the misshapen feet to the wonky ears. You can kind of see that whoever did this was really trying, but the only place to go from there was back to the drawing board. Here's a last detail pic.

Of the rest, the one that really convinced me to buy was a Carnotaurus of uncertain vintage. The photos provided in the listing were no help; I could only just tell what it was. As matters stood, it seemed very possible that this was the first toy to represent this very remarkable dinosaur, so I paid the price and waited to inspect it. What I got turned out to be smaller than I expected, and strange even compared to the creature. Here's a pic.

My immediate assessment was that it looked like a cake topper, a description that was repeated when I went looking for other examples. The quality and feel were on par with a "big mouth", though it lacks the characteristic open mouth and exposed hollow body. Beyond that, my best guess was that this was from sometime in the 1990s, at which time its "tripod" stance was already outdated. The most curious part is the head, which only looks as goofy as it does because it captures and even exaggerates the very unusual shape and proportions of the actual dinosaur. Here's a couple more pics.

"Bunny ears and buckteeth? We prefer lagomorphic and premaxillary enhanced."

For the remainder, it was a matter of course that a random box would have a few Marx clones. And here they are, a nicely colored stego and an Allosaurus.

Then there's a sampling of sauropods. The littlest of these is by my assessment the most interesting in the whole lot. It seems to be loosely based on the Marx Brontosaurus, scaled down and heavily stylized. The final product is attractive enough that I would very much like to know who made this and what their other products may have looked like. The largest one also shows a certain Marx influence. The third, however, is just odd, as if someone was given the description "long neck" without understaning that the tail was at least as long.

One more thing that might be expected is erasers. I got these two, which might or might not be erasers, but are very flexible rubber. They bear more than a passing resemblance to the Diener dino erasers, with detailing that is in some ways better. The only major con is that the stego is badly discolored on one side.

I also got a pair that seem to be of common origin with another group I've had backlogged for a very long time. These look like a Brachiosaurus and a Corythosaurus, and I'm sure the later is the same as one in a set of arcade prize dinos I picked up in the early 2000s. This just might be what gets me to post about this bunch.

And here's the last two, which are very different but fit together to me. The first is a big mouth that's practically unobjectionable (apart from the teeth), with a sculpt that's a good compromise between realism and stylization. The other is a quite modern stego that's very nice apart from the missing tail spikes. Here's a few pics.

And one more pic of the stego. Beautiful!

And how about an extra shot with the Battle Mountain?

That's all for now, more to come!

Featured Creature Kaiju File 3: The one that's better than Godzilla

 

 

Title: Gamera 2: Attack of the Legion

What Year?: 1996

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

In the course of this little lineup, I have already ranted about whether Western audiences and filmmakers can really “get” the kaiju genre (see Colossal). One of the more obvious problems is that our experience and thinking has been limited to the Godzilla franchise. For those who really knows the landscape, this is a blessing in disguise. Sure, we missed out on a lot, but a lot of that is kaka that makes the least of the Toho offerings look tolerable by comparison. To round out this little trilogy, I had to go with a movie to prove that non-Godzilla movies can be good, and I had one in mind. I present Gamera 2, a movie about a giant turtle and a bunch of bugs.

Our story begins with a recap of a previous adventure, in which the jet-propelled giant turtle Gamera defeated the boomerang-headed monster Gyaos. We find Japan in somewhat uneasy peace, where a nominal heroin reporter to annoy various military and government officials without retaliation. Things go downhill with the arrival of a swarm of bear-sized alien bugs and a giant alien plant that sustains them symbiotically. Gamera soon returns to fight them, but can only manage a Pyrrhic victory against the vast numbers of the bugs, dubbed the Legion in a convenient Biblical reference. Things get worse when a bug bigger than Gamera either emerges or spontaneously mutates. It’s up to Gamera to destroy the swarm, the queen and their plant, before the space-borne weed launches its seed to another world!

Gamera 2: Attack of the Legion was a 1996 kaiju film, the second in a 1990s revival of a character introduced by Daiei Film (see Warning From Space) in 1965. The series had effectively ended after 1971’s Gamera Vs. Zigras, though Daiei had previously attempted to revive the franchise with Gamera Supermonster in 1980. Gamera 2 was directed by Shusuke Kaneko from a script by anime veteran Kazunori Ito, both returning from the original remake/ reboot Gamera Guardian of the Universe. Ayako Fujitani also returned as Asagi Kusanagi, a girl able to communicate with Gamera, billed behind Miki Mizuno as the reporter Honami. The monsters and effects were  created with a combination of practical suits and CGI, with Akira Ohashi performing as Gamera and Mizuho Hoshida as the Legion queen. The film was released in Japan in 1996, with distribution by Toho, prior to the US release of the first film in 1997. A third revival film Revenge of Iris was released in 1999. Ohashi and Hoshida continued to perform in both Daiei and Toho films. All three 1990s films are currently available for free streaming on Amazon.

For my experiences, I first heard of Gamera in books on kaiju films and “bad” movies in general sometime in the early 1990s. It took quite a bit longer for the revival films (I know, “Heisei”) to drift into my awareness, including a passing mention by Roger Ebert and a sighting of the first film as part of a museum exhibit. What’s impressive about the whole saga is that absolutely nobody disputed that the original films were far inferior to the Godzilla/ Toho stable. (I’m sure I saw one of them, not long ago, and I honestly don’t remember it.) Yet, someone saw fit to try to revive the franchise while Toho was going strong (see Godzilla Vs. Biollante), which was about as inauspicious as doing a reboot of Starcrash to coincide with the Star Wars prequels. The end result was a film that was quite dark yet also well-attuned to the psychedelic vibe of vintage kaiju genre (see, dear Logos, Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster), and well-made to boot. The sequel was, if anything, an improvement, and that in itself is saying a lot.

Moving forward, most of the arguable pros and cons of this film, particularly compared to Godzilla and its own predecessor, come down to the “rules” of the genre. The science is absolute nonsense. The human plots and side plots fill a lot of time without having much effect on the outcome or getting the viewer invested in the characters. The conventional military forces only appear to prove their own uselessness. The outcome of the monster fights are dictated by how close we are to the end of the movie rather than tactics or comparative strength. However, these issues are if anything less frequent and intrusive than usual. I especially like that the military is good for something here. They actually succeed in getting civilians to safety, including several of the main characters. They make a decent accounting for themselves in battle with the swarm. Even the queen bug seems to take human tanks and artillery seriously enough to shoot back with its bio-plasma weaponry rather than simply stomping them underfoot. These might seem like trivial concerns, but for those who want anything close to realism from the genre, it helps just to get past having the genius scientists, beautiful damsels and plucky kids wandering unscathed long after trained and armed soldiers have been wiped off the map.

That brings us to the monsters. As often happens, the “good” kaiju is less interesting than his foes. Gamera is a suitably balanced hero/ antihero, always looking grim and vaguely disgruntled without turning actively malevolent. There are also plenty of times he shows genuine concern for humanity, at least collectively, as seen in a harrowing fight at a helipad where his little friend is being evacuated. On the other side, the drones of the swarm are truly hallucinatory in their strangeness, like nothing so much as the Medieval-psychedelic demons of a Hieronymus Bosch painting (or a really wonky patchisaur…). It’s stunning to see them literally cover Gamera in their first encounter; this is surely done with CGI, but I can’t see anything that would prove it with certainty. There’s an extra eerie touch when a soldier quotes the Gospel at their approach, which doesn’t seem to make sense for Japanese audiences yet seems to have been taken for granted by the filmmakers. By comparison, the queen is conventional enough to be a tad disappointing, notably lacking any counterpart to the bizarre single eye of the “little” guys, with a lot of further roughness for such a late film. It’s still a very strange and striking kaiju, menacing in its non-anthopomorphic alienness and towering even over Gamera. To me, it feels like what might have been if the Pacific Rim creatures had been portrayed with 1960s-‘70s tech. Considering how many kaiju films Guillermo Del Toro admitted copying from, I’m definitely not writing this off as just me.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one I hadn’t figured out from a viewing alone. At the hour mark, Gamera is wounded from his fight with the queen, while the military has figured out that the plant is ready to launch its seed back into space with a sort of biological rocket. (What are the chances they didn’t rip off Larry Niven?) A commander says, “We were defeated the moment it flowered,” then orders a general retreat. As the last of the soldiers withdraw, Gamera charges toward a building engulfed by the alien plant. What gets odd even for a movie like this is the camerawork, which seems either over-exposed or washed out. Gamera reaches the plant, then manages to knock it over. The camera zooms in on the nose of the seed, only to zoom out again as the resulting blast tears through the city. It’s a truly horrific scene that leaves the moral in a gray area. Would there have been any more devastation if the plant had just launched? Would the Legion have been nearly as destructive as we’ve seen if they and their plant had just been left alone? There’s no answers forthcoming, nor a clear acknowledgement of the question, yet even allowing the implied doubt is an intriguing twist on the genre.

In closing, the main thing I have to say is that this movie and series is a major reason I started this feature in the first place. What I hadn’t  necessarily planned on was comparing any entry in the series to Godzilla films or each other. In those terms, I favor the present film to the preceding one, though in most respects, they’re about even. I would also put it about even with Godzilla Vs. Biollante, if only because that film didn’t rise as far above new and old cliches. What really makes the difference in the rating is how far the Gamera revival had come from its motley roots. When a studio that once made a bad knockoff of When Worlds Collide can go toe to toe with the one that made Rodan, we can all take heart that filmmakers can do better if they try. That’s enough for me to call it a night.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Unidentified creepy pachycephalosaur!

 

It's my weekend post, and that means time for a dino blog. This time around, I have something I don't suppose I ever doubted would end up here sooner or later, but didn't have a plan for. It's the kind of acquisition I make all the time, yet still quite different. In fact, it could be among the weirdest dinos in what I have long since shown to be a vast and eclectic collection, though it remains difficult to say why. Here's a pic in full glory of my mystery pachycephalosaur in full glory, with its counterpart from the Definitely Dinosaurs line.

As usual, I have a definite recollection how I got this one. About 10 years ago, during my chronic unemployment, I went with friends to the state fair a few years in a row. On the grounds, there was always at least one merchants' floor with an impressive and eclectic selection of kaka even by my standards. On one of these expeditions, I found and purchased this. In further hindsight, there would almost certainly have been others conceivably from the same manufacturer, but even I don't recall what else was there. This certainly stood out to me then and since. The first thing of note about it is that it's quite large for a clearly cheap toy. (I definitely wasn't buying anything expensive back then....) It's also of pretty good quality, made of evidently sturdy, almost rigid plastic. Finally, it's a unique restoration, dated overall, yet with interesting touches, like a beaky snout that seems to emphasize (or overemphasize) both a significant part of the dinosaur's anatomy and its relatively close relationship with ceratopsians. Then the really odd part is the pose, which to me feels almost skulking, more like what might have been shown for a pre-JP dromaeosaur (why not take a look at the retro raptors post?) than an herbivorous dinosaur. Here's a pic with the Truckstop Queen (and Connie). I said this thing is big...

And a couple closeups...

"That's him! That's the dino who gave our chief paleontologist a heart attack!"

In the course of this post, I finally looked into who may have made this. It's marked "Made in China", which is as unhelpful as it usually is, plus two letters, one maybe an "S" and the other definitely an "H". In online research, I had no trouble finding pics of dinos that are clearly either the same dino or variations (some with the tail off the ground) that may have come from the same manufacturer. Unfortunately, it was clear none of the posters knew any more than I did about its origin, which is the main reason I have neither linked to other content or added any photos. I was especially suspicious of repeated claims that this was "1980s". By my assessment, it's certainly in the style of that period, and I can easily believe that this is from a mold handed down from manufacturer to manufacturer for decades. However, none of the examples I found showed significantly greater wear or even distinct paint variants; therefore, I diagnose them as almost certainly of the same origin and age as mine. 

Now, while I'm at it, here's a few pics of the Definitely Dinosaurs specimen. It's everything that made the line "classic",  but alas, even less accurate than the sketchy flea market dino.

With that, I'm through my pics and ready to call it a day. What comes to my mind finishing this is that the pachycephalosaurs were one of the major influences of the dinosaur "renaissance" of the 1980s onward. They were cool, they were dynamic, and they proved that even an herbivorous dino could have a dangerous vibe. And how about one last pic with Connie?

I literally could not keep her on the other one.

That's all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one with a PG robot apocalypse

 

Title: The Mitchells Vs. The Machine

What Year?: 2020 (completed)/ 2021 (release)

Classification: Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, it’s been a while since I did an animation review, and I definitely felt like doing something new. As it happened, I had just taken another look at a movie that would really shake things up simply by being from the last year. It is also one of the more willfully strange films to come to my attention from any time recently, which isn’t too surprising given that it’s from the crew behind The Lego Movie. Without further ado, I present The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, a teenage non-lethal version of Terminator.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to a family running from hostile robots in a station wagon, provided by the high school graduate Katie. We then flash back to the start of a road trip, instigated when a plane ticket to her new college is cancelled under suspicious circumstances. Her father Rick is conveniently prepared to cross the country with her mother and Aspie-analog brother Aaron in tow. While they are stopped at a dino-themed tourist trap even Aaron is critical of, a product launch party becomes a full AI uprising, led by a tech genius’s discarded and disgruntled cell phone. The vaguely humanoid robots begin herding humans into modular cages with tractor beams and offers of free wifi, but the Mitchells escape them with help from a pair of defective/ renegade machines and a pet whose appearance overloads the bots’ target-recognition programs. The family takes the fight to the machines at a mall overrun by murderous Furbys, but when their plan to upload a kill code fails, they must go to the heart of the tech company. Can the family prevail, and make peace with who they are? Do we need to put this as a question???

The Mitchells Vs The Machines was a 2021 Sony animated film directed and cowritten by Mike Rianda and produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, known for Gravity Falls and The Lego Movie respectively. The voice cast was led by Abbi Jacobson as Katie Mitchell and Danny McBride as Rick, with Maya Rudolph as Mrs. Mitchell and Rianda as Aaron. The soundtrack was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, with an original song “On My Way” by Alex Lahey. After a planned 2020 release was postponed, the rights to the film were purchased by Netflix, which made the film available for streaming immediately after a limited theatrical release. Rianda confirmed that the main character was written as LGBT. The film received an Oscar nomination and numerous additional awards. The film remains available for free streaming on Netflix, as well as on disc.

For my experiences, I first heard of this one through the usual animation-fan channels, without taking immediate interest. Once I added Netflix streaming to my Neolithic disc rental plan (see Neverending Story), I gave it a look, and then watched it again along with some other material. What settled me on reviewing it was simply that I reminded myself that I not only hadn’t done an animation review since Chicken Little, but still haven’t hit 10 reviews for this feature. On top of that, the total of 9 reviews I had done for this feature was no greater than the count I had done for my other features. So, I set aside another very worthy movie to review this one. I even factored in that this one is actually good.

Moving forward, most of the pros and cons for this one come down to the fact that it runs on pure random. The result is a high-energy presentation with a steady stream of gags, slapstick/ action sequences and general wackiness. It’s worth further note that this feels increasingly like Katie’s comically bad in-universe movies, which in turn leaves a strong impression that what we see are her perceptions as much as reality. Predictably, there’s some further hit-or-miss elements that don’t quite fit, like a Dawn of the Dead reference that should be over the younger characters’ heads. (I have already recounted my quest to get it on Blu Ray…) The one real downside to this approach, common to such things, is that the “off-beat” notes start to feel predictable in their own right. The deeper problem, again a common issue, is an uneven tone. The weirdness alternates with serious moments with the family, which is fine, but the latter moments work well enough to wish for much more of them. It opens up in my mind the possibility of a movie that’s just about the road trip, with no science fiction/ fantasy elements at all. That, in turn, brings up more strongly the question of bow much, if anything, should be taken as reality, an intriguing subtext that never quite gets developed.

The flip side is the rebellious robots, and these are intriguing. The fact that they don’t simply start Skynet-style genocide is clearly dictated by the “family friendly” tone, yet the conceit evolves into a plausible scenario. The drone-like mechs that form the main force seem unable to kill or harm a human, at least by direct action. The elite battle mechs that arrive for the finale show no such restraint, though bey then, the fights are even more slapstick than they were before. The wider plan is in some lights never quite resolved.  At first, they seem to offer what they might consider benevolent rule over humanity, in line with their polite ultimatum to “remain calm” at the outset. Even when the hilariously evil cell phone giving eventually reveals her plan to launch humans into space, there’s still traces of ambiguity what the actual or expected outcome will be. (Someone else I discussed the movie with noted to be the same as “The Marching Morons”, otherwise covered when I reviewed Idiocracy.) The big plot hole is that this has all clearly been planned long before the supposed slight that drives the villainess (???) to implement it. What happens really appears to be one of a number of contingency plans. Fortunately, this is certainly a case where it’s more fun to imagine the alternatives than have them explained.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one that’s close to my own heart and experience. As the movie passes the 20-minute mark, the father teases the kids with the sign for the dino tourist trap. Aaron immediately becomes excited, while Katie tries to muffle  him long enough to announce that her brother now hates dinosaurs. It’s clear at this point at least as much as elsewhere that the voice is an adult actor, but it works for the character. Naturally, the arrival at the tourist trap underwhelms even the boy; I was especially amused by the sauropod that has its neck propped up yet still droops pathetically. The boy says repeatedly, “What’s wrong with the dinosaurs?” He gets more agitated as he sees what’s inside, broken up by gags that will probably age as well as the Facebook jokes of ca. 2010, but as I keep saying, bad paleo art will last for a geologic epoch. It all flows so naturally that the first streaks of light falling from the sky look like one of the exhibits, until Aaron looks through the window and it becomes clear that it's a reflection from outside. Trust me, kid, I know how you feel. I collect patchisaurs, and I’ve been to Holbrook, Arizona. (And while I’m at it, here’s my Terminator fan novel; it will make sense at chapter 28.)

In closing, all I really have to say is that this is one movie that’s been as fun to review as it is to watch. In fact, I gave it one more viewing I hadn’t even mentioned while I was getting this done, albeit as background noise during my actual job. It might seem like I’m critical, and this really is the way I look at movies. I may be analytical to a fault. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating a really good movie, and this is very good. With that, I’m done for a while. Dog, pig, loaf of bread...

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs! Generic dino unbagging

 

As I write this, it's the start of the first week of a new month, even though I already posted a review that was going to round out last month. The last post went badly enough that I very seriously debated taking the whole week off. What talked me into going through with an off-week lineup was a new acquisition from a store that previously figured in this feature as a source of my worst dinobot and a lot of the pics from my "in the wild" post. I just made another trip over the weekend, and found something halfway decent that was cheaper than a lot of other stuff. To get things rolling, here's a few pics in the bag.

If there's one thing I hate more than hearing my own voice, it's seeing my own hand in semi-closeup.

At first glance, this is a pretty routine, vaguely modern dino set. As seen here, it's named "Dino Outbreak", with some decent art that's definitely above the quality of the actual set. My favorite part, which might not be wholly visible, is a notice that reads, "Tested according to international standards." Of course, there are no such laws or regulations nor any body to enforce them, for generic dinos or anything else. What this is presumably meant to imply is that the toys were confirmed to meet the laws and regulations of the US and most other industrialized countries. The part that amuses me is, what would they be testing for? Lead paint? Narcotics? Velociraptor DNA?

Meanwhile, something I went back to cover is the size of the things. They're definitely bigger than average, a bit more so than they might look. Here's a group with Sidekick Carl for scale. As you can see, the tallest ones are almost exactly his height, which I previously confirmed to be 3.75 inches, where more typical examples top out at 3.

Now for the lineup of the individual dinos, I covered most of them two at a time. The best in the set is the pachycephalosaur, a little old-fashioned but with good detail and no obvious improbabilities. The next in line is the triceratops, a little wonky with a sort of senior-citizen vibe. As a plus, they actually lived in about the same time and place.

"What do you want to do tonight?"

"The same thing we do every night, try to take over the North American seaway!"

Next up are the stego and a spinosaur. The stego is nothing special, still somewhat interesting, if only for that decidedly indifferent expression. The spinosaur is similarly inoffensive, at least when compared to many of the ones I covered  in my dedicated post on the subject. It's at least clear that the people who did the sculpt were trying to match what we know about the dinosaur; consider for further comparison the Invicta Baryonyx, the first representation based on a decent specimen, which still had plenty of great and small flaws.

"I'll say this one last time, you are not affiliated with me."

Then there's the raptor. I guess they kind of got the head right, and the toe claw's pretty good, on the foot that has one. However, the spinosaur actually comes closer to the "right" shape. And I can handle no feathers (see the retro raptors post), but this looks like it was actually plucked. 

And that brings us to the T. rex. It's a beauty, the way an exploding grain elevator is beautiful. This is what happens when you start with a sound reconstruction and still do everything wrong.

"Keep your hands off my Social Security! I have enough trouble with my own..."

And a closeup; took three shots to get this. Tip, a dinosaur does not need to look like it's actually 65 million years old.

And to wind down, here's a few more pics from that store. I swear, this place is all patchisaur...

You don't see many generic therizinosaurs. This is why.

With that, I'm calling it quits. I will probably be back with another before the month is up, with material I had obtained and planned for a little before this. It's truly the surprises that make this feature worthwhile. That's all for now, more to come!