The Movie Thread (Discussion of Movies Recently in Theaters)

[deaddmwalking]

Over the past month I took the kids (16, 12, 8) to two movies: Kung Fu Panda 4 (72% on Rotten Tomatoes) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (45% on Rotten Tomatoes). Since they're both sequels I wanted to talk about both of them. The following may have some spoilers.

Ghostbusters
I like Ghostbusters (1984) - while there are a lot of things that I think are creepy about Dr. Venkman (Bill Murray) that are played for laughs that I don't think are funny, the movie itself holds together decently well and there are a lot of fans. My problem with the new movie(s) is that the people in the movies are also fans - not of the movie (which doesn't exist in universe) but of the 'adventures' of the Ghostbusters that happened on the newsreels. In the new movie both Paul Rudd's character (potential step-father to Spangler's grandkids) and Patton Oswalt (librarian and H.P. Lovecraft fanboy) are constantly geeking out over how cool it is to be involved with ghostbusting. From my perspective, these winks at the camera and saying 'isn't what we're doing COOL!' seem strangely out of place. In the original movie, proving that their theories were true did get the scientists (especially Ray) very excited, but that was in part because they didn't have legitimacy. Once you establish that ghosts are real and dangerous and the Ghostbusters are recklessly capturing ghosts in rush-hour traffic in downtown New York it feels like moving from 'this is so cool' to a more 'this is important work' makes sense. And not that they can't have fun or make the movie funny - too much severity wouldn't serve the material very well, either. It just seemed to me that all the comedic elements were really just winks and nods to fans of the original, even though this movie had some elements that could have been really interesting and cool.

The movie's villain (who wasn't used to as good effect as I might have hoped) was interesting, and the historical elements they connected to implied an interesting cosmology/fantasy elements that could have been really awesome. By the end I wished I was watching a movie about ghostbusters from 2000 BC fighting against their evil hordes.

Kung-Fu Panda
I'm a fan of the whole series. Like Rudd and Oswalt, Po (the titular Panda) is a huge fan ready to geek out about how awesome kung-fu is, but that makes sense in universe. In the first movie he had to reconcile that he could be an important kung-fu legend himself; at the start of this movie he's still in awe of how awesome it is to be a kung-fu legend. BUT, Po actually ends up being the more mature character. He learns that part of what his role is involves choosing a successor and letting someone else get to be cool and awesome, even though he likes what he is and what's he doing.

Just a life-lesson in the business world that I appreciate - giving subordinates jobs that you don't want to do is called dumping; giving them jobs that you WANT to do is delegating. That's something I've always tried to keep in mind and something that I think this movie is aware of, even if it isn't explicit. Growing, changing, developing - doesn't mean giving up who he is but it does mean that Po will have new responsibilities and some of the things that he enjoyed won't be as much a part of his life.

It's probably the weakest of the Kung-Fu Panda movies, but that doesn't say much because the first three are really pretty stellar whether considered individually or collectively as a series. It's also not a bad basis for a shared kung-fu TTRPG

[RoosterBarrel]

I watched Kung Fu Panda 4 with an 8-year old. Neither of us had watched the 3. She commented that it sure had a lot of fighting.

Theme-wise, it was a movie about mentors and adoptive parents. Some excellent, some inconvenient, some horrible, some so-so. It was an okay entertainment movie, but as a parent, I found it lacking as a conversation starter and example. 3/5

[deaddmwalking]

Expanding from the nature of an adoptive relationship, I think that it opens up some possible dialog about what it means to be in a 'toxic relationship'. One of the things that I put a lot of store in is evaluating criticism. If someone is invested in your success and wants good things for you, their constructive criticism is worth consideration. If someone wishes to see you fail (or at the least, not to exceed whatever level of mediocrity they've achieved) it's probably not worth considering their advice.

So while hopefully most people won't have a basis to understand being used by a parental figure, they should have a sense that some people will try to form a relationship based only on using people. Exploring the relationships in the context of helping your friends versus being used by your friends seems possible.