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Soul


The Choc
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Anyone watch this yet? Definitely really good with some great ideas. The animation is beautiful and makes NYC really look amazing. I can't put it on the upper tier of Pixar movies though simply because it doesn;t feel like a kids movie that is so so good and works on multiple levels so adults love it too. It feels like its' made for adults. Pixar has gone through a bit of being too sequel happy and in alot of respects moved out of it's golden age a bit ago. Coco and Inside Out both though are as good as any Pixar movie and obviously are not sequels. I really hoped that Soul would continue that and although it's definitely an improvement over some of the recent sequels and some of the post golden age originals like The Good Dinosaur or Brave it can't quite measure up to the incredibly high standards Pixar has set for itself. Still very good though. 

And just because I simply cannot help myself:

1-Toy Story 3

2-Inside Out

3-Up

4-Toy Story 2

5-The Incredibles

6-Toy Story

7-Coco

8-Ratatouille

9-Wall-E

10-Monsters Inc

11-Finding Nemo

12-Soul

13-Toy Story 4

14-Incredibles 2

15-Onward

16-A Bugs Life

17-Finding Dory

18-Brave

19-Monsters University

20-Cars

21-The Good Dinosaur

22-Cars 3

23-Cars 2

 

 

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We watched it with the family. My 12 year-old liked it, but none of the other kids (ages almost 5, almost 5, almost 3, and 15 months) stuck around. The adults all loved the music and animation as well. The story was thought-provoking. 

I don't think I've ever identified with a character more than I do with 22. Just...how did they get my soul on the teevee?

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Can't really deliver a verdict on this one because I peaced out pretty early on. I gather that eventually Soul from Soul (2020) became a cat!!!!???? This is the first one of the Pixars that I didn't finish (excepting the ones I've never bothered to watch; haven't seen any of the series where they're all cars - sorry, I've forgotten the title of those movies about cars starring the cars) and it's kind of rare in general for me to drop a movie mid-movie.

Here's what happened in the movie up until I stopped watching :

A human man from contemporary times dies and discovers there is no God. Our universe is an automaton, maintained by friendly but efficient identical archangels. The natural machinations of the afterlife are capable of error. He introduces the prelapsarian souls of the unborn to the concept of damnation (oh, the nature of our very selves are fixed not by the circumstances of our material existence but partially by the tutelage of the recently deceased!?) and steals the identity of a recently dead acclaimed humanitarian so he can return himself to life. He plans to do so by taking the essence from a recalcitrant soul, one who is older than human history itself, and who has refused to be a consenting party to these celestial processes since her own inception. This is a movie for children.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/30/2020 at 4:12 PM, R.CAllen said:

This is a movie for children.

Yeeeeeah. I like my philosophical opinions shoved down my throat, not slipped into my candy.

Seems to me like the people at Pixar collectively lost hope and gave up on life halfway through animating this one. Thanks 2020.

They started by building up this nice story which I suspected would be the "A Man's Search For Meaning" punchline reimagined as a children's tale, but ended up with the fucking Nihilists telling me that "nothing matters so just enjoy the ride while you're here! That's all that really matters, right?!" 

If I wanted to be reminded of the futility of my contributions to society, I'd turn on the news.

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Oh boy, that reminds me of some more complaints I had about the <half of the movie I saw :

 

Why are all the mentors extremely accomplished and credentialed people? The movie is saying to its audience, "Hey, you, who you are was determined prior to your birth by a person. No, not an ancestor! Darwin was wrong, bitch! It was some guy who won an award! Some guy who passed a few tests! That's what determines the nature of your very being! You might think for a moment that awards are just dumb dumb kaffeeklatsch nonsense, mostly a matter of who's 'in' and who's 'out', Orson Welles never got an Oscar, etcetera. BUT YOU'RE WRONG. You might think professional accreditation is mostly a matter of gatekeeping and bare minimum ass-covering but, guess what, Andrew Abbot's an idiot! If your life sucks it's because some guy carrying a trophy didn't spark your passion!"

 

Why is a person's job or hobby a determining factor of who they are as people!? Is our moral worth determined by what we're paid to do in life or what we ourselves pay to do? Is that the measure of a man? Is that what's fixed in us down to our very core? Whether or not we love birdwatching? Whether or not we love what we do to keep the wolf from the door?

 

WHY DO THE ARCHANGELS ARBITRARILY MAKE SOME PEOPLE INNATELY GOOD AND SOME PEOPLE INNATELY BAD? There's literally a scene where one of them counts off individual souls and sends them into buildings that determine their character traits! What? Why? There's a scene where a little innocent soul looks out at us and calmly states that it's, like, a megalomaniacal psychopath with dark tetrad features. What? What? What? Someone save that poor kid! Someone save its victims! Soul, you gotta stop what you're doing, this is bigger than whether or not you get to entertain some people for an hour or two, this is bigger than whether or not you get to live out the rest of your days on Earth or are forced to decorporealize along with PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE WHO EVER DIES, that kid is in trouble! That kid is an accident waiting to happen! You gotta go save that kid! You gotta save all those kids! Forget about 22, she's had millennia to make her own choices, she's a lost cause, a gomer, those are newly instantiated consciousnesses that need your help!

 

why hat and glasses stay on Soul's head when he become ghost but nearly everyone else in line for The Great Beyond was nakked

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That information just discomfits me further — are the archangels lying about the inner workings of the human spirit to the mentors? Or were they unaware of this truth up until Soul from Soul (2020) gets to the end of the movie? Either possibility is existentially terrifying!!!!!1! — but thanks for letting me know nonetheless.

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