Happy Holidays! As you can tell, this year has not been the best for my writing inspiration. I’ve been busy with school and my mental health has been up and down (world events don’t help), so I was only able to write *checks blog* 2 posts for the whole year? And one was just an update? Goodness.
Anyway, 2023 is almost done. Here’s a general reflection of my thoughts of the media landscape, as well as what my fave movies, games, and TV shows were.
As someone who is still a hardcore Disney fan, seeing the company have a pretty disastrous 100 year anniversary was a bit depressing to witness, but sadly, not surprising. Lately, the company as a whole seems to care about appealing to as many people as possible that they end up not really appealing to anyone. I think people are sick of Marvel and Star Wars all the time (as well as other movies trying to BE Marvel and Star Wars), and it doesn’t look like Disney is really taking the hint. The company has gotten extremely risk-averse, which goes against Walt Disney’s original methodology of pushing boundaries.
Now, I have studied the history of the company extensively and throughout their hundred year history they have gone through peaks and valleys. The 1990s were a peak, the 2000s were a valley (albeit with a few cult classics), the 2010s were a peak, and the 2020s are a valley. Because of this, I’m not scared of Disney ‘dying’, but I do think they need to have some major shakeups if they want to save their reputation. Some fresh faces at management who actually research and listen to criticism of how to make better products and experiences are a good start. And budgeting their films more reasonably so they don’t have to rake in a billion dollars just to break even (seriously, what movie needs to cost $200 million?).
I gotta say tho, the Disney film that came out in 2023 that disappointed me the most was Wish. It was supposed to be a celebration of Disney, but instead it fell flat on its ass. I wrote a review of the film HERE, but basically, for a film that was supposed to be all about the magic of Disney, it lacked anything that made previous Disney films so great. There are no charming or likeable characters, no spectacular moments of animation, no heart. Even the music is bland. It is the most boring and lifeless Disney movie I’ve seen in a long time. That may be because one of the writers (Allison Moore) has literally never worked in animation before and the other writer (Jennifer Lee) is just not a good writer. Jennifer Lee is well known for helming the lucrative Frozen franchise, a franchise that I happen to have extreme prejudice towards (except for the second movie, but that’s besides the point). Lee was placed in charge of Walt Disney Animation Studios after John Lasseter was given the boot, but, unless the problem lies with upper upper management, she’s clearly not fit for the job, as only Encanto was able to rekindle the Disney magic that’s been lacking for many audiences since the highly polarizing Ralph Breaks the Internet.
The magic isn’t completely gone, as the short film Once Upon A Studio was VERY well received and reminded me why I loved Disney so much. But it needs better, more experienced leaders and focus less on making as much money as ungodly possible and more on telling a good story that will be cherished for years to come.
The best film I saw this year–by a country mile–was Godzilla Minus One. Literally everything about this movie is great. The acting is great. The writing is great. The visuals are great. The spectacle and scope are great. It’s just great. It’s one of the few Kaiju movies where you actually give a shit about the human characters, and realize just how dangerous and horrifying creatures like Godzilla actually are.
I don’t want to spoil too much since this is absolutely a film you need to see in theaters, but at its core, it’s a movie about trauma and survival. This movie takes place in Japan right after WWII, when the country and many of its people were in shambles. The characters in the film must make a conscious decision to live despite Godzilla trying to destroy them and the rest of the world being apathetic to them, and it makes for an emotionally captivating, breathtaking epic. In an age where many people have become sick of Hollywood, foreign cinema is here to remind us that film is still a legitimate art form, and a great form of storytelling.
After the disappointing ending for Steven Universe, I put off watching television for a long time because I was scared of facing similar heartbreak (the show ended on a bad note for one of my all time fave characters). Thankfully, I was able to watch a few shows that managed to lift my spirits.
The first of these shows was Disney’s The Owl House, which I watched earlier this year. It’s a children’s animated show about a human girl traveling to a world of witches, Titans, and magic, and finding love, friendship, and defeating evil on the way. Like Steven Universe, The Owl House also deals with found family and queerness, but is superior in pretty much every way. The characters are VASTLY more likeable and well-defined, the story is tightly-woven and compelling from episode-to-episode, and even though the show was forced to end prematurely because of a studio exec who allegedly claimed the show “didn’t fit their brand”, it managed to deliver a mostly satisfying finale, giving everyone proper closure and having a truly epic final showdown between good and evil.
Another show that I’m enjoying so far is Invincible, which had its second season premiere this November. Invincible is an adult animated superhero show where the eponymous hero must struggle with his father’s legacy. When the man you looked up to and considered a hero for so long did something so unspeakably brutal, how do you reconcile with yourself? Invincible is a well-written, mature story, and a perfect antidote to Marvel fatigue.
But my fave show this year is probably Blue Eye Samurai, a show my mother and I practically binged earlier this month. Set in Edo-era Japan, the show is about the journey of Mizu, a half-Japanese, half-white warrior out for revenge against the four white men who lived in Japan when it was closed to the outside world and therefore would’ve fathered Mizu. Mizu’s entire life was filled with discrimination, hate, and hardship, and Mizu is out for bloody, bloody revenge. The show is gorgeously animated (every frame is art), the action is fantastic, and every character is richly written and developed, making for an exciting and engrossing view. It also has some of the best disability rep in any media, with a wide range of disabled characters that are not made to be pitied or ‘cured’. The show recently got renewed for a second season, and I am beyond hyped for more.
Those are the biggest things I wanted to reflect on for this post. Some other movies I’ve seen this year that I enjoyed include Nimona, Across The Spider-Verse, and Suzume. I haven’t seen Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron yet but I hope to catch it before the year ends.
As for games, I’ve played a lot of great indies this year. Some of my faves that came out this year include Slay the Princess, A Space for the Unbound, Sanabi, Little Goody Two Shoes, and Dave the Diver.
Okay, I think a wrote enough for now. I hope I made up for lost time. May 2024 bring more great art to watch, play, and read!
The Flying Red Robot 
You must be logged in to post a comment.