Disney, presently

This next one is a real doozy. One of us had seen it before, but forgot it almost immediately after and the other one was less than enthusiastic to watch the animation. It could be said that Disney's offerings for most of the 2000's tried to copy Pixar, which itself copied anime and especially Miayazaki. Atlantis: The Lost Empire is no exception. 

 

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

 

Painfully directionless and the paper thin characters didn't help. But we'll delve more into those aspects down below.

 

 

 

Characters

It is nigh impossible to make this, because none of the characters differ from each other significantly. They try to establish the base line for the characters but you come out of this movie remembering absolutely nothing of the people in the film. So this'll be very "bare bones" character outlines.

Milo: He's an explorer. They hired Michael J. Fox as his voioce, so that we'd automatically connect the character with sense of adventure, naivety and youthful curiosity. The problem is, the voice alone does not a character make - you actually have to write one. The dude also has no character arc to speak of, so for once Disney did to a male main character what they've always done to their female characters. Progress?

Kida: She's even worse than the main character, so we guess the progress is thus nullified. Kida is there to be the dark-skinned excotic object of romance. Her role as the saviour of her people is also basically anime's "magical girl" powers, except it isn't even her but a blob of power she has morphed into that does all the saving. There is no evidence that she was ever concious while the blob did the whole saviour stuff. Also, Kida is probably the most egregious example of Disney sexualizing their women, she doesn't even get pants like Jasmine, a long skirt like Esmeralda or a one-piece like Pocahontas. All she gets is shreds of clothes to show as much skin as possible.

The crew: They're pretty forgettable but also they're the only ones with any kind of character arc and purpose when they turn against their villainous leader. Other than that, they're basically indistinguishable and they've clearly been modeled after Miyazaki's pirates but without their humour and hearts of gold. And the villain is a ridiculously bland "surprise baddie", he doesn't even get Clayton's obvious villain vibes that make him somewhat entertaining. This film basically started Disney's villainous characters' downfall  - as in they become bland as fuck, there is no pizzazz, charisma, entertainment or humour in any of them.

 

 

Story

Atlantis: The Lost Empire has somewhat similar themes to Pocahontas - discovering a new world, greedy mercenary wants to take advantage of the culture's technology and the main character is fascinated by the new culture and it's female member. Except this movie manages to be even more offensive than Pochahontas - it's the white main character who teaches Atlantis' natives how to read their own language and use their technology. You couldn't be more white saviour if you tried. We suppose that's why the filmmakers had Kida save the city in the end, but as said previously, it wasn't really her who saved the people, it was an unconcious mass of power. Since we do not care one iota of the characters, the plot feels incredibly draggy and the finale's deus ex machina does not make the story any better - at least anime's magical girl's usually use their powers of their own will and are concious when doing it and if not, that usually means something is terribly wrong which the story then explores. None of that here, Kida is just a vessel and nothing more. Also, the fact that the main character has more chemistry with a damn teenager tells how half-assed the romance really is.

 

Miscellanous

The CGI is incredibly distracting. A lot of the designs are cool and quite unique but the horrible hamfisted CGI either distracts you from them or outright blots them out. Music is also rather forgettable. There is a reason Disney movies are remembered for their music - it is a way to tell a story without dialogue and memorable songs that are used in the background as themes was the longest time Disney's bread and butter. Once you take the songs away there is only a skeleton left. The colours still look great and yes, we prefer 2D animation infinitely more than CGI, even when it is an abject failure like this one.   

                                                                                                       

 

 

 

Losing our religion

This is a list for all the atheists and agnostics (and maybe even for nuanced belivers as well) out there to celebrate the Easter holidays. Leaving religion behind can be painful, hard and scary, especially so for high-demand religion. These films and tv-shows have helped us process some of the trauma we have from religious dogma, even if some of these movies might not have anything to do with organized religion at first glance.

 

1. Dogtooth (2009). This film is a perfect example of the infantilization many high-demand religions inflict on their followers. It's got everything one might face in a cult- childhood indoctrination, patriarchal figure you must obey, boys are valued more than girls, women exist for the sexual gratification of men, gaslighting and straight up lying and distortion of reality. Is it any wonder it made the top of our list? Also, it is Lanthismos, so the whole movie is just weirdness incarnate.  

 

 

2. Spotlight (2015). Our righteous fury movie. This is the one you watch when you wanna have some catharsis over the fact how many religious organizations simply just allow child sexual abuse to happen and even go so far as to cover it up, and do absolutely nothing to bring the culprits to justice. The scene with Mark Ruffalo's character exploding over the church hiding the abuse is the definitive point for us in the film - what happens when a religion that you have always thought was a force for good is actually commiting atrocities and trying to actively hide them from not just their members but the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Holy Spider (2022). Women's oppression by fundamentalist religious doctrine is something that many religious organizations take part in - we come from one as well. This film depicts the violence that women face in high-demand religions - how strict rules of dress, behaviour and women's role in the religion (mainly only allowing women to have certain jobs or staying at home) are forced on women and girls. Neither do women have any kind of power in these kinds of religions - their only status is to be a wife and a mother.

 

 

3. Silence (2016). Scorsese has some real philosophical ponderings about God, faith and doubt. He wonders what does it mean to have faith, how does one cope when it seems God is not answering in your greatest hour of need, are you still a believer if you are forced to renounce your faith publicly but still believe in your heart? This is a movie that would still allow those, who have left religion, to have some belief in higher power and also makes the case that there can be no faith without doubt.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Through a Glass Darkly (1961). One cannot have a list about films to do with religion without Ingmar Bergman. The man has always been interested studying religious philosophy through the medium of cinema. We truly appreciate the way Bergman looks at religion - not as something sacred but neither something evil. He sees religions more as philosophy, something that tries to give answers to the meaning and purpose of human life and death. He can also be critical of especially Christian ideas of knowing God is real and how God allowing suffering is good - Bergman himself is very conflicted about these things. In this film particularly one could argue Bergman connects the main character's religious fervour to worsening her mental illness that prevents the main character from healing. 

 

 

6. Malcolm X (1992). His relationship with Nation of Islam in the movie is the most relevant part for this list. The fact that Malcolm X actually believed the women and his wife about the abuse his religious leader was perpetrating and that started his journey out of the cult, is something that many ex-religious people can relate to. Because if you close your eyes from the wrongdoings your religious organization is commiting, how religious can you really claim to be? The film also expertly portrays the hero worship that exists in cults in general.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

7. The Handmaiden (2016). Leaving a cult can be such a freeing experience and here especially throwing away restricting gender norms bring actual freedom - you don't have to hide who you are or who you love (true for every queer person ever). This has another rage catharsis moment of the two women destroying the porn library of the perverted owner dude. Seeing yourself as a human being who has worth purely just as a human instead of a sex object for men is one of the major themes we love about this story. Since religions so often see women as lesser than men and heavily repress any kind of different expressions of sexuality, that leads to women being turned into "guardians of virtue" for men - women are culpabale of men's sexual desire and must always be available for men sexually. Something that this movie completely rejects and is one of the reasons we adore it.

 

 

8. Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). The only series on this list. We've got an emotionally abusive father who only cares what his son can give him, children being indoctrinated into soldiers, adults constantly demanding emotional labour from children they're not equipped with, massive depression from the pressure to be perfect, identity crisis and crashing of your worldview. Quite accurate summary of plethora of high-demand religions. This is almost like a companion to Dogtooth, where the adult children are infantalized, whereas in Evangelion the actual children are forced into an adult world. There's plenty of religious imagery to boot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Jojo Rabbit (2019). Extreme political ideology and extreme religious dogma are not that far from each other. In fact, they often merge. In this film the whole idea is that you are confronted with a person from a group your leaders have demonised and you start to realise that maybe they not only lied about this but also other things. Thus, the questioning of your own beliefs starts - the process of starting to think about things on your own instead of following what somebody else is telling you.

 

 

10. Music Box (1989). This film is here for the realization that your religious leaders weren't the actual saints they were painted as. Nay, not even saints, but truly human monsters in some sense. And the religion we come from, we were taught from a small age that the leaders of the church are like family - they're your fathers and grandfathers. So yeah, a movie that shows how your own father that you have loved and respected your whole life, turns out to be a war criminal, is something that really hit us hard. In a lot of high-demand religions it is quite often taught that your family is everything - so what does one do when it is one's own family that is the abuser, the criminal, the oppressor? Religions also teach the principle of forgiveness, but this can unfortunately lead to toxic family members or perpetrators thinking that they can just continue their abuse.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honourable mentions: Any Ingmar Bergman (The Sevent Seal and The Virgin Spring, for example), Under the Banner of Heaven (for its obvious Mormon connections), The Truman Show (for the American ex-religious especially), Hinterland (corruption of leaders and thus the entire organization), Barbie (you wake up and realise you're not the same as everyone else) and Thirst (religion and the suppression of sexuality).