writinRepo/destruction/2024-06-07 The Rescuers.md

This hardly qualifies as a *story*, let alone as a film. Next time you watch it, try to think of the purpose for ANY scene in this film and you will find yourself grasping at straws to try to justify its existence.

Classic Disney worldbuilding issues in that the mouse world is in sync with the human world. If mice had governance, their system would scale to their size. A settlement under or inside a human house would be considered a city, the society in an entire human city would act as a State. Their world would be so large, they potentially wouldn't know what's outside of these states. They may not even know that other mouse societies exist, kind of like when the New World was discovered and colonized by Europe. But of course, because it's a children's movie, we have to pretend that a ridiculous concept like this could possibly exist within the context of this story. I reject this premise. If your story is "present day, except mice have human reason," that would require a knowledge of when mice became reasoning, and how their society developed as such so they develop alongside the human cultures without their culture and policies being vastly different. The assumption I made with The Great Mouse Detective might actually be the easiest fix: some sort of cosmic force causes every single human being to have a Mouse counterpart that mirrors every single thing that happens in the human world. It's bizarre, but so is the basic concept in the first place. A Zootopia-like evolutionary pathway would make more sense.

So either way, for whatever reason the mice have their own version of the UN, but again, for whatever reason, it doesn't do what the UN does, it's just the Rescue Aid Society? So the mice don't govern themselves, and try to represent themselves on the world stage via a body like the UN? Or is that a different meeting? Lazy worldbuilding. So there's a body that for some reason needs mice from every country around the world, to decide who they should *rescue*...? Alright. And they're responding to a message in a bottle, so of course they need a janitor, of all people, to enter into the top of the bottle, rather than just knocking it over, because Disney wants to animate his funny struggles. They decipher the message and decide to send Hungary She-Mouse and Janitor Mouse, because Hungary liked that Janitor spoke up, because it was attractive? Janitor is "just the Janitor" when he's voluntold, but he still thought his voice should be heard when dictating policy to (presumably) representatives from the entire world... okay...

Quick aside, this may be dependent on my subjective perception and bias, but this film seems to be... sociopolitically nonsensical? It romanticizes the UN as some kind of wonderful bastion of global solidarity and peace, its visual language seems to communicate a big "diversity is our strength" messaging. Besides this being childish nonsense in that diversity has no inherent value, it becomes more childish given that the Society is presumably intended to be the mouse version of the UN. There's nothing in the story to suggest that the Mouse-UN meets elsewhere, the Society is it. So the implication is that the purpose of the UN is to... rescue people... It should be self-evident to anybody with any semblance of geopolitical awareness that this is utterly ridiculous on its face. Conversely, when Janitor and Hungary visit Ex-Wife's pawn shop, there are decals indicating that this shop is affiliated with, donates to, or is supported by, the NRA, and that they sell firearms. This seems to me to be a tell, that the creators of this film see Ex-Wife as representative of pro-2nd Amendment Americans, or at least, that the exposition of a current-day (1977) villain includes being pro-2A. This is laughable and childish. Couple this with the fact that the gun she uses later vaguely resembles a tommygun, with a box mag, that clearly fires 20-gauge, 12-gauge, or perhaps .410 rounds, yet it *sometimes* has significant spread at close range, and *sometimes* at far range, but *sometimes* has the opposite. It can simultaneously shave Ex-Wife's Stooge's hair at mid-range, and blast pellet spread holes in the ship and other objects at point blank to far-range. The barrel of this mystery weapon resembles that of a rifle, which would make it impossible for it to fire any of the shotgun rounds it clearly fires. Box magazine-fed shotguns existed at this time, and still do, but they were highly impractical for feeding plastic shells, given the plastic would get bent out of round and prevent chambering or cause misfires or other hazards, which is why most shotguns feed their rounds via tubes. Leave it to somebody who knows literally nothing about firearms to malign over half the country by implying they're just like this woman. News flash: pro-2A people also believe in gun safety and responsibility; they would clearly see that Ex-Wife's mishandling of her Impossible™ Rifle was irresponsible and demonstrated egregious disregard for human life.

So did they send them to save, or did they send them to investigate? Does the Society rescue any who are in need of rescue, or do they only rescue mice, given that they may not have the resources to rescue them otherwise? What resources do mice even have? We see all the Society's equipment are repurposed items from humans. They don't manufacture their own ladders, they just use combs. Do the mice manufacture anything? Do they have any sort of market? I'd imagine leftover human technologies would drive every aspect of commerce; construction for housing or otherwise, weapons, clothing, all possible technology would come from discarded, missing, or stolen human technology. But they don't seem to iterate on hardly any of it, only in the case of a few items. Good worldbuilding would make this a CONSTANT underlying visual, but they only seem to do it for a few items. Actually, the Bayou creature's home has miniturized technology. So they can manufacture their own stove and furniture from scratch but can't manufacture their own ladders?

So the Society sent a Janitor and a spokeswoman from Hungary on a mission to do *something* about an unknown person who sent a message in a bottle, and their only lead is the name of an orphanage and a name, Penny. Presumably they knew it was a human orphanage, but if that was the case, why didn't they try to figure out how to get this message to humans so that their authorities could deal with it? Surely human problems require human solutions, given that mice aren't human size and thus can only solve mouse problems? So they show up to investigate and for whatever reason they immediately find the missing orphan's possessions in the closet. Forget that her posessions would likely be redistributed amongst the children according to the natural pecking order that will always ensue within a scenario like this, forget that to combat that they'd have to have her posessions in a storage area or in the Director's office or in the posession of some other leader. It's just here for the precise reason that the mice are looking for it. This writing is lazy. What they would have had to do is go to the node of mouse society that surely lives within this building, ask them if they know of someone who's gone missing, presumably an orphan named Penny. They'd have to gather information from these mice to understand Penny's predicament, who she was, where she's gone, so they can follow her trail. But this would require a thing called *effort*. They would have had to put in worldbuilding effort to mold the society that lives there, how they function, who they are. That would require concept artists, character designs, set designs, all consistent with worldbuilding that they never took the time to build. It's clear this film spent 10% of its time in pre-production, and 90% of its time in production.

Because they didn't want to waste screen time on watching their paper-thin characters complete a challenge together in investigating, they had all their exposition coughed up to them by an old cat, who wears glasses for some reason. This old cat acts like he hardly knows Penny, but then in his flashback it shows that he's her Confidant, and almost behaves as a father figure to her, comforting her. So clearly the cat isn't a character either. Poorly told stories with zero internal consistency often do things like this, where a character behaves in a way that is contrary to what we're told, because the narrative itself is trying to tell us something that cannot be true. When stories force situations like this, it insults the intelligence of the audience. Penny even references the cat later, so clearly he's supposed to be an important character to her. But wouldn't that be sad that he hardly remembers her, then? Make it make sense. You don't have to make him seem old by making him forget something then immediately recall everything in a flashback. His character design and voice acting already indicate that he's old. The behavior we see in his treatment of Penny reinforces his character much more effectively. If you're going to have an unreliable narrator, do it on purpose.

So the worldbuilding and plot clearly make no mechanical sense. Does it make up to it with its characters? Well I've already described them as paper-thin. Janitor is clearly quiet, unconfident, shy, and superstitious. He cautiously notes the occurrence of the number 13 twice, and is dismissed both times. These are both in Act 1. So you'd think they're a setup, but they never get paid off. 

Hungary seems to be cheerful, pretty, hopeful, brave. She's a Mary Sue, because her naivety isn't in the story, but only in my perception. In a real world, her character would most definitely have undergone some significant changes since taking office as a ~~UN~~Society spokesperson; you generally don't get to enter them soft, but you surely won't leave geopolitical discussions with world leaders soft. In a real world, her hopeful and chipper demeanor would face challenges and prove that it was naivety. Someone who starts an optimist, eventually becomes a cynic, and then their optimism arises from those ashes with an edge to it. All young politicians, male or female, follow this arc. If she was fresh, she would not see adoration from so many of her peers just for being a pretty face. If she weren't fresh, she'd be a lot more cutthroat, or at least she'd have a spine. The world bends around her; classic artifacting of a Mary Sue. She faces zero resistance and immediately gets what she wants, with a shrug and with praise. The... Society Director...? Says that it's unprecedented, but oh well, I suppose there's a first for everything. Only a child thinks government works this way, which adds more proof to the pile that this movie was written by children. So clearly we see that bad character caused by bad worldbuilding causes more bad worldbuilding and bad plot. The triangle of storytelling is nonexistent in this story.

Hungary supposedly ends up with Janitor, but they have zero chemistry. Every decision he makes, he makes because she insists, and he steps up to the plate because he wants to protect her. This could be a point of drama, but it's a missed opportunity, of course. Hungary should have fought for the Society's aid to the messenger. The Society could have resisted until Janitor spoke up. So in response, to punish both of them, the Society could have said to Hungary, you can go only on the condition you take Janitor with you. Janitor protests, Hungary protests, but gives up and realizes she has to take him with her, despite his lack of qualifications and real-world Rescue experience. His cowardice and lack of initiative could frustrate her. This cynic-optimist could tell him, "oh quit being a baby, we have a job to do." He could respond, "Well wait, I'm just a Janitor, but I won't let you lead the way, what if something dangerous happens?" She could respond indignantly, "I just faced down the entire Society of world leaders and it wasn't the first time. I can handle a little darkness." He could be bewildered by this. He could protest, "but you're a woman, you can't defend yourself..." she would retaliate, &c. This would effectively create a drama, and thus stakes, for our dual protagonist. The overarching plot would still be "Will they be able to save Penny?" but the subplot, perhaps all the more important, would be, "Will they be able to get along for the sake of their mission? Will they understand and set aside their differences? Might they even fall in love?" But instead, there are no stakes for their relationship, because she likes him, and chose him from the very beginning, for no reason other than that the story made her. Any good man will tell you that the first time he put his arm around her, representing that he finally earned her trust, was a feat of massive proportions, perhaps more than any physical feat could ever require. Here, she just cuddles up to him as he worries about their trip. No hope or fear, no stakes, nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you want to push a Positive™ Social™ Message™, maybe you shouldn't communicate to men that you can deserve the affection of women without doing anything to earn it. Maybe you should communicate that being a good man requires something of you. Maybe you should make a story like The Iron Giant. But not everybody can be Brad Bird, can they...

Let's talk about Penny. In order to have stakes for our overarching plot, it would be nice to have more of the audience's social capital in her. Sure, she's worth saving because she's a character, a being with moral value, but the human psyche needs to know her in order to care. Does the film endear her to us enough? Overall, not very strongly. In the beginning, it's shaky. Her strife is enough to pull at the heartstrings of the empathetic. But there's not much personality on top of it, and she deserves more flesh, much like the rest of the damn film. Fundamentally, her first struggle is in getting adopted. We can assume why an orphan wants to get adopted. But we don't have much understanding of why she wants parents. Sure, parents come with love, pampering, more posessions, more freedom, and a home. But in order or us to understand why her heart aches for these things, we must first see how little she has. We could see that she doesn't get enough love, enough freedom, because perhaps the director or the older orphans treat her poorly. We could see that her posessions are redistributed according to the children's pecking order in the orphanage. We could see that she feels like she's at the very bottom of that hierarchy, perhaps that the entire world seems to bully her, so she shuts herself out to it, that the only one she can talk to is the cat, and perhaps the cat is only talking back in her imagination. We could see that all she wants is to be accepted, to be loved, and the only way she could ever get that is if only she could be adopted. What we get is weaker than my suggestion, because it's esoteric. It doesn't allow us to walk a mile in her shoes, it just gives us a platitude some of us may be able to understand. She says that she wasn't pretty enough, and this must be the case because the Redhead, who was pretty, got adopted, and she didn't. So for some reason, this was one of the last straws that caused her to run away? It's not strong enough of a motivation, and it's not in terms that can be universally understood to people who don't understand how much a little girl wants to feel pretty and feels destroyed when she thinks others proved her she's not.

But this thread is strengthened when Ex-Wife says, "why would anybody want a homely little girl like you?". Homely is an out-of-style word that means ugly, by the way. This shatters Penny. Alone, she's clearly miserable. When I see that, I think, she's going to have self-esteem issues her whole life. But other people might not see that, because we're not in her shoes, because we didn't *see* what happened to give Penny that insecurity, we just know that Penny has that insecurity. To others who haven't gone through that, or haven't empathized with someone who has, this gives them nothing. But actually, I like what happens after this scene. At first, I was looking at the scene like every other scene in the film, just trying to find a single purpose in the scene. I was thinking, okay, there's a vocalist singing a song of hope here, but what within the *story* is helping Penny regain hope? She just looked down at the swamp, then up at the stars and got there? Then, she goes to her bed and prays. She prays for help, that her bottle will make it to someone. She recieved hope from belief in something higher than herself, which admittedly doesn't make sense given it happens *after* the small musical number, but at least it's *something*. And I like that her prayers are answered moments afterward. I guess it goes to show that the writers of the film believed in *something*, but it's definitely indicative of our societal decay when they clearly didn't understand *why* they believed in it. But that's neither here nor there.

I think it could have been very interesting if Ex-Wife and her Stooge told Penny that they were her parents, and this caused her to give up on her dream of having parents. "If this is what having parents is like, maybe the only person I can depend on is myself. They were all lying when they said it would be nice." Imagine the Old Cat went with Hungary and Janitor, and found Penny had given up her hope. Imagine he had to remind her, and we could watch an emotional, dramatic scene between two characters with differing perspectives for once.

There's just no depth, no flesh. The only redeeming quality was the artstyle. I actually really loved the artifacting; sometimes you could see the pencil tests flit into view, most obviiously on the Gators, Nero and Brutus (who are cleverly named after two prominent Greek historical figures). I'm not sure if this artifacting was borne of a low budget, but I saw it as endearing, though it may have been a mistake. But it highlights the Disney corporations' worst aspect of its legacy and history: they will waste beautiful animation on the practically nonexistent foundation of a worthless story. If you want somewhere to put flesh, you need some bones. I lament this fact for the sake of every animator who works in film. As an animator, or rather, as someone who has talent who wants to work on good stories, it pains me to see that the pearl of talent is so often casted before the swine of piss-poor writing. Disney himself focused a little too much on animating "movie magic," and that is seen as a recurring issue in his company's stories. But at least he was working on *functional* mechanics. Truth be told, the animation is just what we *see*. It's important, but it does nothing but bolster a story. I would rather all Disney films have the animation budget of Dumbo, but the writing quality and internal consistency of Brad Bird. If we have no standards for storytelling, why don't we just animate pretty stuff doing random things all over the place like in Fantasia? But even those were at least short stories. I can't bring myself to see it as nothing but pure laziness; the audiences haven't realized the quality of the stories they're being sold is as low as it gets, so they end up a boiled frog to a corporation cutting pre-production costs.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: don't tolerate poorly written stories, no matter how pretty they look. This is not a "classic," because it's good. It's because you watched it when you were young. Nobody can erase the emotional connection one has with the films and events of their childhood or otherwise. But my coming to terms with some of the stories I enjoyed when I was young, are not well-crafted, has helped me appreciate well-crafted films all the more. For example, I thought Ratatouille was emotionally significant, and I still love that film. But understanding that it's not well-crafted makes me realize that those emotional highs are lesser for it. But when you craft a story better, when your characters are molded into a world that makes sense, when it's like watching true events unfold as a fly on the wall, you don't have to think about it, because somebody else actually took the care to think about it for you. A writer who cares about their story will consider every aspect of their story as their own children. So they will make them and the world in which they live, as real as they possibly can. Children won't comprehend this, but as they grow older, the realistic world you created will have taught them lessons, made them think, in ways that bungled storytelling like this, never could. Adults may not think about it, but it'll only confuse them if you cannot communicate your story well. So, to the writers: write your story well, so the animators have something worth spending hours of their time animating over. Write your story well, so the corporation that pays your bills can confidently sell a product that is high-quality enough to be worth the price of admission. Write your story well, so that the children who may see it can have a greater understanding of the real world, and a greater appreciation of joy that can be found in life. Write your story well, so that the adults can have the same, with an even greater depth of understanding. Write your story well, so that you can say at the end of your life that you did something more than hedonistically, hurriedly jot some platitudes down, so that you may say that you stood for something and left a mark on the world that created value that would not exist, had you not done so.

Some writers want to do that. But they're incentivised not to, because the industry says the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I say, let's raise our standards as both consumers *and* industry-folk, so that they may see that's not the case.