“We” is me. I forgot to post our initial thoughts about Hoppers. You’re welcome forthe honesty. I love you too much to lie to you. Here are our first reactions from the conversation Julian, Kwesi, and I had in the car right after we saw Pixar‘s latest. We’re including the transcript (unedited) with the video so you can watch it or read it. Okay, love you. Bye-bye.
This is Sherin and Julian, Kwesi. And we just came from the theater in Silver Spring at the Majestic seeing a new animated film from Pixar called Hoppers. And no, it’s not about grasshoppers, although I really did think it was. I’m not embarrassed. I’m not ashamed. The setup for the movie is about a young woman named Mabel Tanaka who has learned to love nature. Well, she loved nature from the very beginning. She’s participating in classroom jailbreaks.
00:29
But her grandmother taught her how to really commune with nature. And that’s been something that’s helped her with her anger management until the very place that she loves comes under attack. And she got the body swap with a beaver and go into the wild to help the animals and the humans find a way to live together. Did I do that right? I believe so. Okay. It was a robot beaver.
00:55
Yeah, I mean, it’s a robot beaver. Yeah, I mean, it’s a college experiment beaver. One of those in-university funded programs that is creating robo-animals to go out into the wild and study. And they’re supposed to, or they’re not supposed to break the prom directive. But Mabel is not about that. So anyway, you guys, first thoughts, Julian.
01:22
I thought it was an amazing animated film that pulls from a lot of the film references. So many. Has a great environmentalist message. Also, comments pretty well on current political ideas. And yeah, it was a fun time. Got good jokes. Very good jokes. And you, Kwesi? It was much better than I thought it was going to be. The advertised, the commercials don’t sell it as well if they need to.
01:52
Yeah, I went into this not expecting it to be as funny as it was. It was much funnier than I thought it was going to be. And I was fully engaged with it through the whole thing. There wasn’t a lot of lulls within the action or the narrative. They did a really good job of building up Mabel as a kid that has issues with…
02:17
One, doing the right thing, but two, doing anything to do the right thing and causing havoc in the process. Yeah, she’s an impulsive girl. Very impulsive, very strong-willed. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s not. It’s the fact that she would just do anything to make a point.
02:36
Well, yeah, she loves animals that much, and that makes her a little bit lawless. She’s kind of feral, and I think that that’s a great kind of lineup between her and the animals themselves. They actually have more forbearance, I’ll say, than she does. Like, they know how to control themselves a lot better than she does, and they understand the rules of nature, which is something that she has to understand throughout the course of this movie.
03:01
I thought it was really well written, as you both have said, a surprise at how layered it is. I mean, it’s Pixar. So, but, you know, there’s been some real misses in recent years, not just with Pixar, but with animated films, not quite.
3:18
having the storytelling together and i think that this movie is multi-layered storytelling like julian said lots of great messages but also just really warm accessible cuddly characters who make you fall for them and make you want to follow their story and you believe in their friendships and that
03:41
really made me have fun but also as Julian said you get references to things like The Birds to The Warriors, you’ve got references to Men in Black. You get it’s references so much, I even saw a Charlie Brown Peanuts reference in there so many things that will make older people of various ages happy the kids might miss it but all in all the jokes land really well like there were no jokes that
04:10
astray. Everything works. There’s great character design happening here, especially with Mabel. There’s moments where the animals look all glass-eyed to us, but when they’re fully embodied in their world, they’ve got, you know, more expressive eyes. That was really great. I just enjoyed Hoppers. Did not expect it to be what it is. And I like the science of it, too. And Julian said that Gavin Newsom of it all. Yep, yep.
04:39
The mayor, voiced by Jon Hamm, Mayor Jerry, is very, very, very Gavin Newsom coded. Very, very much Gavin Newsom coded. There’ll be some interesting dialogue from this movie in regards to its politics and people’s feelings about it, especially after people see it. I want to ask, can I ask you guys, do you think they tried to do, like, do you think they tried to smash “the both sides” type of mindset where, you know? Both sides are just as bad. I’ll let Julian answer that because he caught a line that will answer that question for you. I personally think this movie is about the liberal and centrist versus the progressive left. And that, yes, I do think to the animals, which might represent the actual population, that…
05:35
You can say that both, there’s a little bit of both sides are screwing up. Right. This is not helping anybody. Right. And your fight over who’s right and what is the right way to do things is not helping. It’s got us caught in the middle. And making things worse, and now we’re all suffering. Yeah, it’s in there. It’s in there. It’s nice. I think it’s, it’s bleak.
05:58
Like, it’s not even trying to hide it. And there’s a line at the end that was a nice little joke that was like, okay, I see what you guys are doing. And that might make the Fox News crowd, they all going to pick up on it. They might say something. I would say they start, I don’t know, I think in the early script revision, there was definitely a both sides ending. Yeah. But then they’re like, nah, we’re going to make Dan Taggart as the homeless side of Maniac.
06:25
And we’re going to be like, she figures her malfunction out. It actually helps everybody. And I genuinely think they were like, oh, yeah, if we do that, we’re just going to muddy the waters. Whereas one side wants to, you know, create, basically do a mass killing. And Mabel’s just trying to save.
06:49
save this piece of nature that’s about to be this. But she has a classic meme, am I the problem? Does she figure it out? She absolutely figures it out. And I think that that’s a really nice thing because there’s also some divide and conquer in there. And they work through those issues and really start to talk about how [to win] this tug of war.
07:14
puts everybody, as Julian was saying, the population in the middle and causes destruction. And that message came through very clearly as well. Like I said, I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but I do disagree when, like I said, when you confront it with somebody who’s a bit over, is very overzealous in doing a little bit more harm than good in her attempts to…
07:43
Pursue justice and a homicidal maniac. There is greater and lesser evil. You know, a lot of people tried to make that argument. There is no lesser of two evils.
08:00
Oh, yeah, there is. Yeah. There absolutely is. It is not comfortable and it is not a choice that you want to make, but there definitely is. So, yeah, this whole false equivalency, this movie does not agree with any of those things. Yeah, that’s why I kind of think it’s really focused on, like, not an everybody thing, but really, like… Right. I do think it’s focused on the left-leaning side of our politics. Right. Yeah. The inter…
08:29
the inter-battles of that side. It’s a stronger together movie. And or episode one, two, three. You gotta compromise a little bit. Right. Absolutely. And what is most important? That’s what the movie is really asking. You have your hopes, you have your dreams, but what is most important? And I think that…
08:50
Yeah, Mayor Jerry and Mabel and the animals themselves all learn that lesson. Right. There’s only one character who doesn’t learn that lesson. Right. So, yeah, I think that people are going to like Hoppers. I really hope that they do. It’s the kind of movie that everybody can watch together, but you’re all going to get different things out of it. And I feel like that’s a good thing, you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, yeah. Ultimately, I felt better about this.
09:20
than some of the conclusions that they come to in both the Zootopia movies. Oh. You know? Okay. So, and I enjoy, that’s the thing, I enjoy the Zootopia movies, but the Zootopia movies skew centrist liberal very hard. The other thing is that Hoppers is very clear. Animals…
09:41
eat each other, bro. Let’s not pretend like this is not happening. Everybody’s snuggling and licking on each other. It’s got little beast stars in there. Yeah, pun law, what was that? Pun law number two? You know? But yeah.
10:08
That was a lot of fun. It’s a funny movie. Beautifully designed. The water, you guys, the animation on this water, the fur, where the fur got wet versus when the fur was dry. If it’s an animal that has that repels water naturally, you see all of these textures in these creatures, especially the beavers, of course, because they’re the main focus. And also how old.
10:30
The hopper animals are artificial and they look that way. They look like a toy. Right. And with comparison to the actual animals. Very. There’s subtle differences. Mabel as a beaver looks like something you could pick up and play with versus the beaver she’s around. And I thought that was, it’s a very, it’s a very detail movie. Yeah. It’s very subtle, but it’s very smart.
10:56
It’s not in regards to, let’s say, GOAT is out, which is very impressionistic in his design. This is more like incremental improvement. Like, Pixar movies, they get better subtly at what they do versus, you know, let’s say Sony is very blatant. It’s like we’re doing something new every time. So for some animation people, they might have liked that. But for those who do this, I don’t know, it’s just overall good movie. It’s a good time to go see.
11:25
CG animated movies i also love the fact that when you can understand the the animal you’re talking to that there you begin to see their personality because you’re now communicating with them so you’re seeing them for who they are and they made sure that
11:41
We see that in the design of those animals, which I thought was really smart. There’s like Julian said, there’s a lot of little things that they do with the visuals that communicate story. But there’s nothing extra here. Everything is about the story and the themes and the character development. And I feel like a lot of films have lost that when they go for really big ideas. I don’t mean to harp on In Your Dreams, but I really do not think In Your Dreams is a good movie.
12:11
And I know that it was nominated for awards and things like that. But everything that Hoppers had is what In Your Dreams was missing. I mean, I’m not even going to mess with the current queen KPop Demon Hunters because that’s that’s just too much for anybody to handle right now. But I really did leave with a very warm connection to Hoppers. It’s got a lot of those classic Pixar moments. So you recognize it as a Pixar film. There is a chalkboard that y’all are going to want to take a strong look at.
12:39
It’s got some hints on it. But all in all, a very satisfying Pixar movie. Great messages that don’t hit you over the head, instead, you can kind of snuggle into it like a big old blanket. And that’s how I feel. Any final thoughts? Julian. Yeah, that’s a good movie. You should go see it. Queasy. It’s continuing the trend of doing a lot more caricature and exaggerated expressions in 3D animation.
13:09
uh and 3d animated characters and i’m enjoying that a lot it’s something i saw in spider-verse and KPop Demon Hunters and it seems like this movie seems like Pixar getting back to its old form that you had with something like up
13:25
Yeah, we had some super deformed moments. Yeah. I really love the eye movements. The eyes were moving and speaking. And sometimes even when a character wasn’t moving, the eyes were roving around telling you what they were thinking. So, yeah, a really good movie. You can definitely take the family to see Hoppers, but even.
13:46
Yeah, this is connected to the guy who created We Bare Bears. You can see. Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s definitely him. You can see that. But you can also see Domi Shi, one of the producers. You can see her in here, too. Yeah. With the eyes. Yeah. You can see his We Bare Bears. Yeah. No, I wasn’t arguing. I was adding. Yeah. I mean, all of that stuff. You can see those influences of the creatives. But go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.
14:10
We Bare Bears fans. We should go see it. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. All right. This has been Sherin, Julian, and Kwesi. For Geek Girl Riot and RIOTUS and see Hoppers. And we’ll be back. Bye-bye. No, I mean, we’ll be back to see it again. Oh, okay.
HOPPERS from PIXAR is in theaters now
