Double-Feature Movie Review: Wildfire: The Arabian Heart and Green Snake

 ...these two movies are just frankly too weird to try to mesh all the stuff combined so I'll do it separately. Let's start with Wildfire since that's by far the shortest (though both of these will be fairly short, hence why I'm combining them)

What is it? ...honestly a good question. No I'm not really kidding. But I guess the straightforward answer is a 90 minute "film"

Where did it air? ...that's really another great question, too. No, seriously. I've done research and I can't quite figure it out, and that's coming from someone who has actually seen the film. But more on that later; I found it in a double-pack from the library bundled with a movie I actually wanted to watch.

Who stars in it? Literally no one of note. Actually the most interesting part of the cast and crew is...we'll get to that later, too.

Why are we reviewing this? ....

...to just jump right into the review here, because it's phenominally...I don't want to say bad, but....

Ok infamous Ray's Rambly Prologue moment here. Obviously this review is inspired from having seen the film in question (no duh), but I regard that as mostly being coincidental or incidental. I'm a very regular viewer of Pushing Up Roses on YouTube (and indeed when she was still with...well, especially considering what she's been very public and open about it seems kinda icky to bring that up) and as of the time of this writing her most recent review is this, which she makes a big deal of being the movie equivalent of wet cardboard.

And there we go, we get into the meat of this review right here, because I'm challenging her that I have indeed found an even greater example of a movie as wet cardboard. No seriously, I'm very strongly thinking of joining her Patreon and sending her a copy of this movie specifically for the sake of her reviewing it on her own show.

First, the acting. I've been in literally middle school plays that have better acting than this, including, I'm being completely serious here, from myself. In a good movie people have a perceptible energy when engaging in dialogue, even if it's not always tangible (which, literally speaking, it never is anyway but....). This energy is very much dependent on mood or scene and is indeed a big part of the whole setup for that mood or scene. And this isn't just a movie thing either - good novels are able to replicate this, and indeed this is something that occurs in natural human conversation which is why it's a big part of the whole realism/verisimilitude element. But here we have...how the hell do I even describe it? The actors act (forgive the pun) like it's an utter chore to talk to each other. Or in another way, like they're so bored out of their minds to even be in this movie (which I submit to you is probably the actual case). The directing is...practically non-existent. 

Actually, the director himself is pretty interesting. See, he's not only the director, but also the sole credited screenwriter, either co-wrote or is solely credited for writing the entire soundtrack, really, and oh yeah he's also the sole performer for the entire soundtrack. Other than true amateur efforts (i.e. YouTube, etc), I've only ever previously encountered such a level of multi-tasking once in a film, and you can probably take a very good guess as to what film that is (if not this hyperlink is a pretty big hint). And neither of these films (or for that matter, earnest attempts to create a "film" on YouTube) do much to suggest anything other than this being a huge red flag.

As for plot...well...the film is clearly inspired by Black Beauty and Margareute Henry's Misty (the 1965 film version, incidentally, being the one bundled with this one and the movie I actually wanted to see); girl is sent by her mom to make her estranged uncle be back with the family again, estranged uncle turns out to have a ranch, girl races snotty local girl in a horse race, yadda yadda. Maybe a total of 8 minutes out of 90 feel like actually plot development with the rest being big time filler. We see people walking..and talking...and walking...and talking....

I'm not kidding when I say this movie beats Dear Christmas for being the one film that most resembles chewed up cardboard.

...there's really nothing else to talk about.

Really.

Movie Grade: ...how do you review slightly damp cardboard, anyway? In my handy-dandy ratings guide I have this to say about an F score: You pretty much get this already, folks. It's just awful. Not truly worth watching. You feel like you've seen the entire episode just a few minutes after the front credits.

Yeah, I'd say that's an apt description.

It's an F, Folks

Movie MVP/LVP: ...I'm putting both MVP and LVP up because...I'm not sure this film has either. In common practical usage, either one implies someone did something, either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, and nobody does anything in this film. But going by the literal definitions of those acronyms, most valuable player and least valuable player (I keep thinking it as loser valuable player for the purposes of these reviews, BTW, which mentally helps make it hard to single anyone out), and considering this is one of the "most" "least" movies I've ever seen in my life, I guess I have to give the LVP award to literally everyone even remotely associated with the making of this movie.

Wow. I think that might be a first. That really surprises me considering how for a bad film I use the MVP Award as an opportunity to express sarcasm, including giving it to people not even remotely associated with the production, inanimate objects and even myself.

Extra Thoughts: ...like the movie itself, I got nothing here.

Oh, wait. Happy New Year and all.

Green Snake:

What is it?: A Chinese CGI-animated film with a run time of Over. Two. Hours. Yeah we'll talk about that.

Where did it air?: It's a Netflix exclusive, folks (yes we'll even talk about that too, in a dedicated post even)

Who stars in it?: Well, it's a foreign animated film with a bunch of dub-over artists, which is to say, a bunch of people who definitely didn't get a living wage voicing over this one.

Why are we reviewing it?: ...ok you kinda got me on that one.

But, as I just alluded to, I've been thinking about Netflix for a while now, as a platform and distributor. In fact I've got two posts lined up just talking about Netflix, and I figure this is a good way to start: with an animated film more or less in that demographic this blog is mostly focused with.

So anyway, the plot of Green Snake is...ummmm...it's about...uhhhhh...so what happens is...

...ok, the plot is just all over the place. I literally can't even describe it, if it even has a proper "plot" at all. I don't mean in the sense of Wildfire: Arabian Heart literally reviewed right above, with people walking around aimlessly vaguely in front of a camera effectively doing completely nothing, I mean that in the first ten minutes it establishes a very clear plot...and then effectively completely changes movies altogether.

I mean it.

Now this is hardly the first film to do that. In fact it has a specific trope name attached to it, "fish out of water." But I'm noticing a distinct trend in animated Chinese films and TV shows (and South Korean animated films and TV shows; in fact mostly in South Korean ones) where it's not so much a "fish out of water" as it is an outright "bait and switch." There is such a tonal and narrative whiplash that it whips right into a completely different plot altogether and practically severs all ties with the old one, and it does this multiple times.

The characters...well, with a few exceptions the characters also frequently change motivation without real sense or explanation. The main character is obsessed (literally, to the point where the film calls out her obsession by name as the focal point of the entire plot...or rather, the closest thing to a narrative focal point for anything) with finding her sister; the only problem is that the movie wants to throw that plotline out after the first ten minutes, only to reintroduce it here and there sporadically. Everybody else might as well be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

Really, these feel like symptoms of the movie being just thrown together on the fly. There's this writing concept called "pantsing" where you just "write by the seat of your pants" i.e. just making it up as you go along. It's actually a valid and potentially very effective writing style - I should know since it's pretty much my writing style for my fiction (two novels baby! Please someone publish them :( ). The only thing is, most "pantsers" are still working off some sort of framework or outline - it's just that it's mostly in their head rather than taking the time to write it down (as I like to say, there's no such thing as "pantsing", just people who like to write an incredibly detailed, 70,000 word outline that suspiciously closely resembles a finished first draft). Also, most good writers still give their drafts several "polishing" passes. What we have here isn't "pantsing" or by-seat-of-pants writing; it's seat-of-pants throwing in elements that the people involved think will look cool at that moment. To me, it feels like a student film where it's less an actual film and more a tech demo of the type of animation and character design the people involved can do, and then someone gets the spark of an idea of a scene that might look cool, so they have the animators spontaneously cook something up and then throw it in with the rest of the film on iMovie. There's actually a big push to call this style of narrative-crafting "J.J. Abrams'ing", and I'm like, yeah I can get behind that. No where is this more evident than in key action scenes where they do an extreeeeeeeeme close-up of an object being thrown to the point where it's blocking out the entire screen and you can't even tell if it's in mid-air anymore.

And continuing with the J.J. Abrams comparison, the "plot" likes to bring up more questions than it answers - in fact goes out of its way to avoid giving answers, instead filling the run time up with questions as if that's what passes for a plot. It starts off with an evil monk casting off the main character and her sister (who has a child) into some alternate dimension portal and she lands in a dimension apparently called Asuraville (yes really) and then it's suddenly a post-apoc survival plot, then suddenly an Escape from New York-style get-the-hell-outta-the-apocalypse plot, then suddenly we're interested in the sister and her child again, then suddenly interested in the Escape from New York thing again, then suddenly a big battle fight with the evil monk (that's about in the middle of the run time), and with large sections of filler including what should be the climax of the film. And by "filler" I mean, again, go back to the above where I talk about it in Wildfire. Going back to motivations - the evil monk goes from casting them off into an alternate dimension for...reasons (he's basically going all Dimsdale on his lover i.e. the sister and her child, if you're familiar with The Scarlet Letter i.e. legit one of the most boringly-written books in history, I mean it, #SorryNotSorry just read a graphic novel adaptation or even just watch Easy A, yes the movie that launched Emma Stone's entire acting career) but when the main character meets the evil monk again, his motivations change to wanting to ensure the reincarnation cycle is maintained and the film seems like it wants to make a big statement here, which seems to be "permanence is worth fighting for, even if it's something not possible" (which is an odd choice for a theme of a film, but sure whatever) and then...stuff. And we also meet this male character which the MC is convinced is literally her sister, yes, and you might be lead into thinking that this movie wants to make a statement about familial bonds and transgenderism and identity but...nope, not from a film officially endorsed by a government that also endorses severe crackdowns on transgender activism and LGBTQIA+ rights and activism period! The film also suggests that he might be the reincarnation of her sister, but is very vague and coy about even having the characters even suggest that (he even states that one day he was just minding his own business and then effectively got abducted UFO-style into Asuraville, although he doesn't have any memory prior to that including who he actually is). Oh wait, I know! He's the child the sister had! Nope, the film effectively forgot all about that, even though that would be an extremely logical conclusion that would tie up a ton of loose ends!

In fact I really have to sit down and think about all the questions the film ends up asking. I want to say, about a dozen or so. As for answers the film really only provides four: a very vague answer on what Asuraville even is, a very concrete answer on how to get the hell out, a somewhat vague and out-of-nowhere answer for the monk's motivations, and the whole mess about the true fate of the sister as described above. That's one effective answer to all the questions raised, and it's effectively a McGuffin device. 

Like I said, it really feels thrown together on-the-fly with people thinking up cool scenes and then having the animators render it all up on-the-spot and just toss it into the iMovie track.

On another note, Saberspark (another YouTuber I frequently watch) did a review on a film called White Snake that looks like it suspiciously uses the exact same character models in an unrecognizable setting. Turns out according to IMDB Green Snake is the sequel (and there is indeed a post-credits sequel hook plus trailer at the end of Green Snake) but there's no indication from its Netflix presentation to indicate that being the case. In fact no where in the narrative at all does it indicate it's connected with any story whatsoever (including, well, it's own). If anything watching his review just makes me feel even more discombobulated about what the hell Green Snake actually is.

And that run time...oof. The 130 minute total is a lot to get through on its own, but it feels even longer than that watching it through. I say, the average movie really should be 105 minutes max (which incidentally is about the max run time of a DCOM, see Teen Beach Movie for example which pretty much hits this on the dot - in fact I'm really deriving this otherwise completely arbitrary number from DCOM and Nick Originals run times). Any longer than that and you risk really just dragging it out and putting filler all over the place just because you think longer run time = better. Of course you can go the other extreme (a couple of DCOMs do this too) but at least it might help with cutting out the filler. 

Movie Grade: D This is even harder to grade than Wildfire for even harder reasons. In Wildfire's case, it was just a question of, ok, how do I grade what feels like a colossal waste of time for everyone involved including the actors themselves? That's definitely going to be limited to a D max, if not a D- (and as you can see the film couldn't even do that). In this case, I first have to figure out...what the hell did I watch, even? It's a confusing, muddled, discombobulated mess of a trainwreck and I think a flat D reflects that.

Extra Thoughts:

 - bet you thought I forgot all about that post, didn't you? I still stand by it and everything still applies, BTW. That is, assuming you yourself even remember it (or at least clicked the hyperlink).

 - the questions raised about even grading these movies is why I was hesitant to adopt the school system A through F scale in the first place, or even any rating scale, period (the only reason why we even adopted it is because what we regard as our "sister blog," the now long-defunct Girl Meets World Reviewed, used it - bee tee dubs, their most recent post is three and a half years old. And you thought this blog was bad at updating). I've mentioned Lorerunner a couple of times, and I really like the grading system he invented: give one positive (+) for a good point, and one negative (-) for a bad one, and add up the positives and negatives together to get an aggregate score, with a (mostly theoretical) perfect 0 representing perfectly "meh". You can also only get up to three positives or negatives per category - one is it's above average good/bad, two means it's really good/bad, and three is "it's simply the best/worst I've seen" (of that particular category/example). Going through some really quick mental math, I think Wildfire would earn probably a -4 (one point off overall narrative, one point off acting, one point off directing, one point off enjoyment factor) and Green Snake a -3 (one point off directing, one point off overall narrative/story construction, one point off overall enjoyment factor), which kinda pans out with the rating system we are currently using. I've been thinking of doing a complete switchover to that system - this is the part where I would do my best Lorerunner impression and ask, what do you guys think?, but really who am I kidding literally no one reads this blog in the first place.

 - speaking of futile efforts, there's really no point in grading a Netflix or any streaming film in the first place...but I'll get to that in its own dedicated blog post....