Cyber War, Familial Bonds

There are many films that add many different elements together to make something unique.

 

Just look at Captain America: Winter Soldier. Combines the superhero genre with political intrigue. Ghostbusters is probably the most famous example of combining horror with comedy, which is hard to pull off, considering how different the two genres are. The movie I’m going to be reviewing today, the 2009 Japanese animated film Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, is another one of those movies.

t combines elements of cyberpunk science fiction with slice-of-life family drama. The film handles both of these two genres extremely well, weaving two parallel plots together to make something new and really awesome.

Ok, let’s get the intro out of the way. In the near future, almost everyone in the world uses a huge virtual reality online network known as OZ. People do everything in this virtual world. Socialize and date using their crazy and weird online avatars. Conduct business meetings and auctions. Play games, go to school, even get married.

Kenji Koiso, a high school math genius who works on the OZ network as a moderator/maintenance worker in his spare time with his friend, is suddenly asked by the girl he’s secretly sweet on, Natsuki Shinohara, to come with her to attend a huge family get-together out in the country in honor of her great-grandmother Sakae Jinnouichi, who is going to be celebrating her 90th birthday in a few days.

On the way there, Natsuki fills Kenji in on a few details about her family. One, they are very large. Two, they are very proud of their heritage, being able to trace their family history back nearly 800 years. Three, they are very close-knit. So all poor Kenji can do now is just go with the flow and try to make it through the next four days.

She neglected to mention that she needs him to pose as her fiance in order to appease her meddling aunts, uncles and cousins, and to make her great-grandmother happy that she has finally found someone to bring home.

If things couldn’t get anymore complicated, Kenji accidentally lets loose a super-virus called “Love Machine” after breaking an encryption puzzle anonymously sent by email, which goes out into the cyber playground of OZ to wreck havoc  on the world, real and virtual. Even worse, he’s branded as a cyber-criminal on national TV by the police in front of the whole family. Once everything is explained, it’s up to Kenji and his newfound family to save the world from history’s biggest cyber attack.

Before I get into why I love the film so much, let me bring up one of my major nitpicks about the story. While the design and scope of the “OZ” network is visually stunning and creative, it doesn’t feel like something that would ever exist in real life. Don’t get me wrong, everything you see people do in made-up virtual world, does happen on the real Internet.

But think about this. Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, Instagram and Facebook are all extremely popular Internet services. But they’re not on the same “network” or provide every type of service to everyone that uses the internet, and they are owned by different companies, who compete in separate markets. We’re never told whether OZ is some kind of  a joint project run by every major internet company. So that means that whoever created OZ has a monopoly on the world’s online activities. Sure, we can speculate on explanations as to how OZ works, but with not much in-universe explanation, the way OZ works just bugs me a lot.

Also, other aspects of the movie are dated, even if it came out only 7 years ago. That’s not really the movie’s fault, to be fair. But it feels really weird to see something as advanced as OZ, and see everyone using flip-cell phones of all things to access it. It’s not just the fact that there are no smart phones in this world;. there’s no AR, or any futuristic technology besides OZ. Every piece of tech, like computers, phones, etc.  is what was currently available in 2008/2009. It’s sort of disconcerting to me, since I read a lot of sci-fi. But it shouldn’t be a problem for most people.

Now that that nitpick is out of the way, let’s talk about what I actually like about this thing. The movie depicts family life very realistically. When I say “realistic”, I mean that, even if you don’t have a large family or attend many family gatherings, you will see interactions, personalities and dialogue, that immediately feels familiar and natural to you over the course of this story.

The best example of what I’m talking about happens during the big family dinner, which also marks the end of the first part of the story.

The really little kids running around the table yelling excitedly, a few babies crying over the noise of conversation. High school and college age kids getting into old arguments with their parents. The aunts are swapping anecdotes while they needle the poor boyfriend for info about his background and career prospects. The dads and uncles are talking about work and joking around. A small group is clustered around the TV, because one of the other kids is participating in the Koshien baseball tournament  (which in Japan is a REALLY BIG deal). Sakae, the woman of the hour and family matriarch, is holding court at the head of the table, calm and soft-spoken.

It’s a depiction of family life that seems to be occurring less and less in TV and film. Not too sappy sweet, but not too depressingly dysfunctional either. Almost every member of the family is loving and supportive, but they also squabble and and have their differences.

Of course, every family has their black sheep. This is one of my problems with the movie.

Uncle Rinnosuke crashes the party, and things get really tense, really fast. Of course, Natsuki is completely oblivious to all this, because all she sees is that her cool, easy-going “uncle Suke” is back in her life. It’s clear that the guy has a genuine soft spot for his niece; their interaction is genuinely sweet to watch.

Ok, so what’s the problem? Well, here it is. Rinnosuke is the bastard child of Sakae’s late husband, the product of an affair. After the old man died, the kid ran off to America with his share of his father’s inheritance.That’s it, that’s the whole “scandal” with this guy. The way all the adults react the second he appears at the party, you would think he did jail time for selling crack to children, or stealing from a hospital fund. All he actually did was a) be born out of wedlock and b) he acted a bit like a selfish jerk. Yes, we do find out later that he made a main contribution to the crisis happening with “Love Machine”, but even then, it’s unclear what was the writer’s intent here. Are we supposed to side with the family from the outset, or are we supposed to side with Rinnosuke, because his family is being unfairly judgemental? Maybe this is just a part of Japanese culture that doesn’t translate well to a Western mindset like mine.

Another aspect of the movie that I will praise, with all my heart, is the animation and visuals. Everything looks great and all the movement is fluid and feels natural when the human characters move around and interact with each other. Everyone has their own unique look and way they express themselves. That amount of subtle realism takes a lot of work, and I applaud the staff for taking the effort.

The cast is great in both the original Japanese and the English dub. No matter how small the part, everyone brings their A-game to make each character come off as a real person, and all these people feel like part of a real family.

At the heart of this movie are two themes, one familiar, one more specific and much more urgent.

“Always treasure and respect the bonds you have with people, no matter if they are family or not”. By the middle point of the movie, the family is split between dealing with a big loss to the family, and focusing on stopping “Love Machine” from destroying humanity. The point the movie makes is that neither side is in the wrong for feeling or thinking the way that they do. A loss is meaningful and important, no matter how many people it affects. A crisis is a crisis, no matter if it is personal or of national importance. When something is in front of you at home, it’s hard to think of the world at large. But everyone is a part of a family, and human society is composed of families.

The second theme of the movie “Don’t adopt new technology without knowing the possible dangers involved, or get too comfortable with it.” I feel that this is a very important cautionary part of the story. You may think that “Love Machine” is a fantastical invention of the screen writers, but computer viruses in real life, like Stuxnet, can and have created that much damage and chaos in the world today. The Internet is shockingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, and it will only get worse the more people become part of the online community. It’s not that technology is itself a bad thing; it’s that our ignorance and our irresponsibility are as much to blame for what happens, and technology can help us fix the problems that it creates.

So in conclusion, what we have here is a beautifully animated, well-acted family drama with a fair bit of inventive sci-fi action. Regardless of what gets your attention first, the genuine human warmth of the movie will win you over. The actual plot points and story may have been done before, but they haven’t been done quite like this yet, as far as I know. 

 The result, is a smile on your face when the credits start rolling. You’ll keep smiling no matter how many times you watch this movie.

King of the Fourth Wall: A Tribute to Tex Avery

Animation may be younger, than say, literature and painting; ok, far far younger, yet it undeniably has an interesting history.

Now well over a century old, the medium of animation has had it’s share of high and lows, innovation and stagnation. We live in a world where Norm of the North and Foodfight! can exist on the same shelf as Toy Story and The Lion King at the entertainment section of our local Wal-Mart.

My post today is about a man who is both famous and obscure. This can occur in a niche of media like animation. There are always enthusiasts and fans in the know, especially in the Digital Age, but many people, studios, techniques etc., still lie outside of common knowledge. 

My purpose is not to correct an oversight, but to provide insight for those who are not familiar or who only have a passing interest in animation.

So, most likely, when I tell you that Fred “Tex” Avery (1908-1980) was a giant of the animation industry, most of you will simply nod your heads and say “yeah, so what?”. Then I’ll say “Well, among other things, he created Daffy Duck and gave Bugs Bunny his catchphrase.” And then you will say “oh!”, your eyes lighting up (hopefully) with interest, and I’ll then proceed to tell you more.

But you can’t sum up someone’s life with a bunch of facts. Well, ok, technically you can, but where would be the fun in that? So the rest of this post will be composed as part biography, part analysis, and, part shameless fanboy gushing. I'm sorry, can't help myself. Let’s begin.

This is probably going to sound very weird to you, but Tex Avery and Dante Alighieri have several things in common. Both did things that were innovative in their lifetime, while borrowing from other people and sources  as a launching pad. Both have been so influential, their work has been copied so much, that it doesn’t seem original anymore if you were to do any sort of reading/watching without context. Oh, and they both both made tons of pop culture references and put in material that was shocking for its time.

For Dante, it was making himself the hero The Divine Comedy and putting his political opponents (people both dead and alive when he wrote his great work, mind you) suffering in Hell.

Why am I comparing Avery with Dante of all people? Well, ok, I’ll get to the point.

For Avery, cartoons could do anything. Or rather, animators could make anything happen in a cartoon. Wile E. Coyote hangs in the air until he realizes that there is no solid ground underneath him, and he’s flat as a pancake when he hits the ground, hurt, but somehow ready for more in the next scene.

Avery knew that’s what people expected. But he took it to the next level. Whatever it took to make a gag funnier, well, it happens in an Avery cartoon. 

Characters pulling object from nowhere. Bodies contorting and stretching in impossible ways. Women with more curves than a major league pitcher. No fourth wall whatsoever. Cartoon characters knew that they were in a cartoon; what, you thought Gary K. Wolf came up with that idea? Ha! You even saw the audiences in the theatre pop up from time to time. The fourth wall was obliterated in an Avery short. 

Cartoons have always been funny; Avery just took everything to another level. Sometimes, more can be more.

He wasn’t the first to come up with the ideas, the gags or the pop culture jokes that became his signature. Like Dante, he combined old things in ways that made them fresh, and, again like Dante, he has been imitated by so many other talented people that Avery seems unoriginal now.

For lack of a better word, Tex Avery created the “wackiness” that we all associate with cartoons to this day when started working for Warner Brothers in the 1930s. Not to take away from other legends like Chuck Jones and Walter Lantz, but when it came to visual gags, when it came to the visual creativity we all associate with animation, Avery and his team were in a league unto themselves.

In fact, it was because of the fact that others had come before him that Avery’s style works so effectively. 

One of his most famous cartoons, “Red Hot Riding Hood” (1943), is one of the best examples of Avery's great visual comedic chops. It has everything that Tex Avery is associated with now, made at the height of his career, and it is also considered to be one of the greatest cartoons of all time, by the way.

The cartoon begins like your typical adaptation of Red Riding Hood. Our heroine skipping through the forest to Grandma’s house, cute woodland creatures frolicking around her, the wolf sizing her up from behind a tree. The narrator is narrating. For the first 30 seconds, everything is by-the-numbers.

Then, the little girl, and the wolf and the animals, pause, and scowling towards the narrator, start complaining to the narrator that they are doing the same thing as everyone else, and they're sick of doing the same thing. Exasperated with everyone else's constant whining, the narrator finally throws up his (invisible) hands and says “OK! We’ll do it another way!”

Fade to black, then the second title card pops up. 

“Red Hot Riding Hood” is in bright, modern neon letters. The subtitle underneath promises the audience that “Something New Has Been Added”. While it may seem like a simple tongue-in-chhek wink to the audience, it’s actually a reference to cigarette ads that were well-known at the time.

It turns out that a LOT  of new things have been added. Instead of a forest, we have the modern night club scene. The wolf is now a top hat and coat tails clad playboy, and Red Riding Hood is now a gorgeous, lounge singer. Emphasis on the gorgeous, by the way. The word vavoom comes to mind.

The voice of Katherine Hepburn and the body of Lana Turner, a combination that any man would find irresistible, captured in paint and ink. The wolf understandably is smitten with her, and wants to make her his girlfriend, (maybe for just one night) instead of simply eating her up. 

Red, in a nice twist on the damsel in distress angle, rejects the villain's advances in a loud outburst,  slamming him  into a wall with a table lamp, and quickly makes her way to Grandma’s hous-er, I mean “pad”. Yep, we’re dealing with a groovy and hip granny here. Seriously, did you think that trope started in the ‘80’s?

From then on, gags as far the eye can see. 

And things get really crazy when granny sees the wolf and decides to pursue him herself. Woof. 

Naturally, this is not what the wolf had in mind. Now he tries to scramble away. Doors lead to nowhere or are bricked up, cutting off his escape. So finally, in desperation, he jumps out of the window. This being a cartoon, he's of course hurt, but still on his feet, through the magic of slapstick. 

The short ends with the wolf at the same nightclub, bandaged up and annoyed to the breaking point. Just as he swears off beautiful women forever, the stage curtain opens to reveal Red again.

 Not willing to go through all that trouble again even for a girl that hot, he shoots himself, point blank, with a  very large gun. However, his ghost pops up out of his cooling corpse, whistling and cheering at Red's performance as if nothing had happened in the last six minutes. 

Now that is how you bookend a story!

 I could go into an analysis about it, but that would be boring and it would take up too much time. A lot of Avery’s humor is in visual gags anyway, so reading my descriptions does not do it justice. 

Red Hot Riding Hood has all of Avery’s staples in full force. The fourth-wall breaking, the pop culture references. And for the time, the humor was very risque. Hell, the original ending, with wolf marrying the grandma and having wolf-human babies with her, was cut by the censors for explicitly showing bestiality. 

How they produced this short at all with the Hays Office at the height of its poweris a miracle in itself.

I also brought up this cartoon to show you Avery’s biggest weakness. While he was very creative, he also tended to repeat himself a lot in his other cartoons. When he liked an idea, he really stuck with it. Or perhaps he was the victim of his own success, trapped by his renowned signature style. 

 There are of course, variations and differences in his filmography. But Avery style is unmistakable, but it's copied so much, it's power has been watered down with the passage of time. To sum up, Avery’s work tends to blend together after a while. What’s worse, for kid’s like me, who grew up in the 90’s, many of the references, gags and fourth-wall breaking would seem lame, or we just saw Animaniacs and Tiny Toons do it first. Trying to tell someone who has watched Family Guy or the South Park that Avery’s work was groundbreaking and shocking as these shows when they were released in the '40's, they’ll likely just shrug and say “So what?”

My answer to that response is, that Avery has inspired all those shows. Let that sin for a sec; all of them Family Guy’s cutaway gags were taken from Avery. Animaniacs whole fourth-wall breaking schtick was because of Avery. He even gave us animation’s first (deliberate) sex symbol, for good or bad. You think Hello Nurse or Jessica Rabbit, or heck, even Fujiko Mine were original and provocative? Red could just as easily stand toe to toe with them today.

There’s a reason why his work has been copied so much. He was the guy who contributed to making animation, well, animated, if you’ll excuse the pun. As for the pop culture jokes? Well, who’s to say what we will recognize in a 100 years. Maybe psychiatrists won’t all look and sound like Freud one day. Maybe the internet meme in that new episode will go over everyone’s heads in a year or two (most likely). 

Avery couldn’t help living in the times he lived in anymore than we can. He was one those artists who could be both timely and timeless. Same way many of his contemporaries like Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Walter Lantz could be

I want to pay respects to the man who helped change animation forever. He doesn’t stand alone, but he is indisputably a legend. 

Unfortunately, just like with Disney’s Nine Old Men, his legend seems to be fading with the passing of years. This post is my attempt to keep this genius from being forgotten. Maybe that is a little hyperbolic. But I fear that, as more and more copy what he pioneered, he will be crowded out of the public memory by imitators. The imitators may capture the spirit of what he did, the essence of his creativity, and that is all fine and good. Inspiration should never be frowned upon.

However, there was only one Tex Avery in the world. Hopefully, we will never forget why that matters.