Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Green Gibbon! »

Judging others for liking things perceived as feminine (and therefore categorized as weak and negative)
This is still a stretch to assume that men avoid those kinds of movies because of deliberate malicious (or even passive malicious) negative feelings towards women or feminine things. I think it's less due to negavite outward feeling and more to a lesser ability (than women) to empathize. Everyone wants a character they can relate to, women included, but it is a fact that women empathize better with those around them, and so are probably more likely to be able to relate to a male character than a man is to be able to relate to a female character.

I'm not going to argue semantics if you want to call that sexism, but I call it laziness. A problem, sure, but an altogether different one, and one I don't think is likely to change.
The protagonist then journeys to an exotic island to confront a villain who turns out to be a figure from the prologue, now old and evil.
Syndrome is not old and the tepuis are not an island.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Rob-Bert »

Popcorn wrote:Obviously when I say the plots are identical I don't mean they're identical, you fish-fondling fruitcake!!!!!! I just mean they're identical.
You really need to choose your words better.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Crowbar »

How is it a stretch, GG? Because you think it is? You seem to have this definition of sexism that different from the rest of the world. You also state that women are innately better at empathising as if you have any authority on the matter. Did you even stop to think that even if that's true it's only because, culturally, men are expected to be relatively strong, stoic and uncaring and women are expected to be emotional and sensitive (which, by the way, is increasingly becoming understood to be the case).

I wonder if you're going, again, to tell me I only believe these things becuase I'm some sort of fanatic, as if having strong views about an important political issue is somehow an insult to be levelled at somebody, or as if anybody who thinks something different to you can only do so because they're crazy and brainwashed.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Green Gibbon! »

You also state that women are innately better at empathising as if you have any authority on the matter.
Well, if you must know, here's a Wikipedia quote:
Wikipedia wrote:Females on average score higher on measures of empathy and males on average score higher on measures of systemizing. This has been found using the child and adolescent versions of the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and the Systemizing Quotient (SQ), which are completed by parents about their child/adolescent, and on the self-report version of the EQ and SQ in adults.
My theory about moviegoing tendencies of course is just another possibility, and one I think is more likely than assuming that every man, or even the majority of men, are sexist. The fact of the matter is that neither you or I can know the exact cause without diving into the head of every man who's deciding what movie to watch, but your raving insistence on placing the blame on a completely unverifiable evil with a convenient political face is telling.

Sexism exists and there is work to be done, but nothing is going to be accomplished by pointing fingers where there is no guilt.

Think about this: how many male models do you see on magazines and in ads? Go to your local bookstore and tell me the ratio of female models to male models on the covers of those magazines. Why do you think that is? Women are more appealing to look at - to other women as well. Is this sexism? Is this a problem? I don't think so.


This is just out of curiosity, and I don't have these numbers, but what about the music industry? Is there an obtuse ratio of one or the other?

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Crowbar »

Aaagh it looks like I was actually off the mark with that, it seems there is actually research showing that men and women respond differently to emotional stimuli, and in particular men respond cognitively (i.e. they understand what other people are feeling) whereas women respond emotionally (they feel what other people are feeling). So yeah, woops and apologies from me on that point.

I will still say, however, that the degree to which this is true is probably exaggerated in terms of what the media portrays.

[EDIT] GG replied while I was posting. I don't have time to respond properly right now, so hopefully later.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Crisis »

This is the sort of thing that psychologists investigate all the time. For what it's worth, in most studies women usually do better at reading emotions than men.

This does not mean that women are innately more empathetic or that the effect is particularly powerful. For instance, the effect disappears if participants are strongly motivated to do well. Possible explanations for men underperforming include demand characteristics and stereotype threat.

In general, if you cannot directly tie a gender difference to a facet of sexual biology, the effect is usually very small once you control for experimenter bias and cultural factors.

It's also worth noting that psychology as a field is dominated by male researchers. Therefore a systematic male bias is somewhat inevitable.

You could even go a step further and say that psychology as a science is the product of a male-dominated, Western society. This is usually pointed out to explain why many psychological findings don't carry over across cultures, but it applies across gender as well. We have to be very careful that we are asking objective questions and not basing our investigation around politics or culture.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Crisis »

I think I got a little carried away there! But my point is basically just that these findings are still controversial within the field, and for scientific reasons rather than political ones. What Wikipedia is reporting is accurate, but it's by no means the end of the story.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Radrappy »

So I saw Brave at a pre screening yesterday and it was okay. The first 30 minutes or so are borderline perfect but the minute mom gets transformed into a bear the movie goes to crap. There's a lot of shoe horned expositional dialogue that doesn't give any credit to the audience, something that definitely feels out of place for a Pixar flick. Also alarming is the absence of a second act; it felt like we dove into the climax without having even earned it. Ultimate, it's way better than Cars 2, a little better than Cars and not even close to anything else.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Delphine »

Is it better or worse than Tangled?

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Zeta »

Brave was much better than Tangled.

I'd say it was better than Monsters Inc, too. Mostly since I think Monsters Inc was a twee and watered down version of Aaah! Real Monsters that was glopped in tons of eye-burning pastels. Like if Aaah! Real Monsters had been invaded by Furbies. It looked like a kindergarten fingerpain project gone awry. It's about on the same level as A Bug's Life. Maybe slightly better because the characters were more relatable than circus-performing insects.

The biggest problem of Brave was that it was marketed as a female gwar action woman Joan of Arc cum Lord of the Rings movie, when it's really not.

But seriously, never got why Monsters Inc got a free pass. It was terrible.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

Zeta wrote:But seriously, never got why Monsters Inc got a free pass. It was terrible.
"Free pass"? I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on this forum who even likes it. (I know GG! sure doesn't.)

Monsters Inc. was made in the time period, in my opinion, that Pixar was at their more creative; when they were doing the hidden world gimmick, along the lines of Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and even Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. It was (to me) an awesome gimmick for films, and when they switched from that to more conventional stories (Cars, WALL-E, Ratatouille), I was a little sad that they were doing the same thing every CG studio was. They were still doing much better than their rivals 90% of the time, but yeah. I also happen to like buddy comedies. (Monsters University, though, looks pretty dumb for now.)

If any Pixar movie gets a "free pass", it's The Incredibles, which Delphine already hit on the nail for me why I didn't care much for it.

I saw Brave myself, and the film is just a retread of both The Emperor's New Groove and Brother Bear, but with more accents. It's better than the Cars films, but it's light years away from Pixar's last original film Up, much less anything else the studio has done. The triplets were pointless, the heroine is forgettable, most of the character designs are Dreamworks ugly, and the soundtrack is blah.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Zeta wrote: The biggest problem of Brave was that it was marketed as a female gwar action woman Joan of Arc cum Lord of the Rings movie, when it's really not.
I wanted the movie to go that way but it never did. They hinted at this huge world but it was actually much smaller. It's the opposite of Toy Story, which hinted at a very limited world that ended up being much bigger. It was a little disappointing but still enjoyable.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Esrever »

I didn't realize Monster's Inc was widley hated at all! It's not one of their best, but I certainly liked it. It's too saccharine for me, and the colours are garrish, but I'd level those criticisms at some of their other films, too.

I liked how cartoony and almost Muppet-y the monsters were. It was one of the few times Pixar let themselves get really wild with their character design, which is generally pretty safe, especially lately. I also liked how it was first and foremost a cute movie for children without a "layer for adults", if you know what I mean. It was just kind of fun and goofy.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by G.Silver »

I would say that Wall-E and Ratatouille were still very much in the flavor of Pixar's "hidden world" movies, both were still about secret or underdog-type characters working behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly.

Something I really liked in Brave (I actually liked it a lot) was the perspective of the story from inside the castle. I'm sure it's some sort of well-worn trope, that you have a gathering of characters in a kind of tense political situation all locked in a medieval castle and then there's a possible murder or a bear or something and then you've got people charging all over the place waving axes around. That felt incredibly "right" to me for reasons I don't quite grasp, beyond just that it was funny.

I too really liked Monsters Inc. Not too saccharine either--just jam that Pixar needle right into my heart and tug on any strings you find, it works every time.

Oh, but what did we think of the short? I was completely unmoved, and usually that's the opening jab that gets the waterworks ready. "Partly Cloudy" just about did me in.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

La Luna is easily the worst theatrical short Pixar's ever done.

I also quite liked the designs in Monsters Inc. They had life, energy, and imagination, moreso than any character designs in any Pixar film since (with a few exceptions here and there). It was a little garish, but I'll take its color design any day over the drab Brave environment.

I don't see how WALL-E is a "secret world", though. Yeah the robots are doing stuff in the background )as are the humans_, but it's mostly up there and center for the most part the majority of the film.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by G.Silver »

Well, it's like this, if the premise of Toy Story is what are your toys doing when you aren't playing with them, then also, Wall-E is still kind of like, what are your robots doing when you aren't watching them very closely? Turns out they're discovering music, falling in love, and instigating rebellion. It isn't entirely in secret, but it's still this detailed world that's largely neglected by the human characters in the movie. It isn't as overt as in their other movies, there aren't arbitrary "rules" that the characters have to stay hidden, but at the core of it I think it's pretty similar.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

Ah, that makes more sense. Yeah I'll agree with you on that.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

I liked La Luna. It didn't pull emotional strings to hard, but it was a nice little story.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Yami CJMErl »

SO HEY, Sonic's cameo--complete with Roger Craig Smith voice-over--has been confirmed (at the same time that Ralph was announced to show up in the new All-Stars Racing game).

He performs a "Sonic Sez" style PSA about how dying in a game that isn't your own means you can't regenerate; a la "permanent Game Over".

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Radrappy »

new trailer and it is lovely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QsZcZ2ygHQ

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Ritz »

SHHH NO POSTING

Felix's prison gag was pretty great.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by FlashTHD »

Ritz wrote:SHHH NO POSTING
Shouting in the library! Thirty lashes!

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Esrever »

The character animation in this is pretty nice! It's nice to see them continuing to strive towards a more "cartoony" kind of movement out of their CG characters, much like they did with the horse character in Tangled. It probably leans a little to heavily on jumpy pose shifts, but it's still pretty charming-looking.

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Locit »

Hey, there's Sonic in a movie.

Weeeeeirrrrd.

Also I guess the forum isn't dead?

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Re: Dinsey's Wreck-It Ralph: A love-letter to videogames

Post by Brazillian Cara »

If there's nothing to be said, there's nothing to be said.

And yeah, still looking forward to see how good the end product will be.

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