Hello everyone, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Having largely munched through the Ghibli catalog at this point, this week my house wandered through a different animation legacy, as we checked out the first and last feature films of a certain Don Bluth. Many of Bluth’s films have a profound nostalgic pull for me; his weird, frequently dark films resonated with me more strongly than Disney’s offerings, and thus I still have fond memories of The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and even A Troll in Central Park. This week I at last checked out his masterful Secret of NIMH, along with the unfortunate Titan A.E., as well as a host of other films and shows. We’ve got plenty to get through, so let’s dive right into the Week in Review!

First up this week, we watched Army of the Dead, Zack Snyder’s combination zombie/casino heist movie. I didn’t really have any expectations for this one, as Snyder’s work has all seemed pretty terrible since 300, but Army of the Dead still ended up disappointing me. Snyder managed to take two of the most inherently fun, popcorn-friendly genres and poison both of them, with his relentlessly dour tone sapping almost any possible enjoyment out of the experience.

Rather than the tongue-in-cheek spectacle you might expect from such an inherently ludicrous splice of genres, Army of the Dead takes itself deathly seriously at all times, and replaces all the lightness of a heist film with scenes of brutal, tragic violence. This violence doesn’t really serve any dramatic purpose; though Dave Bautista’s story is defined by grief, the script lacks the nuance of emotional insight to really dig into his experience, and there’s no real sense of redemption. The film feels angry and violent in the insecure manner of many post-Watchmen comic books, which embraced the grim, realistic tone Watchmen evoked, but lacked its thematic richness, or curiosity regarding its very human characters. In their place, Army of the Dead stuffs nihilism and ultraviolence, reaffirming Snyder’s place as the Mark Millar of cinema.

None of that was particularly surprising; Snyder makes superficially self-serious stories that substitute violence for depth, and always has. What was genuinely disappointing was how ugly this movie was, with a thick haze of blur destroying the majority of its compositions. The reviews for Snyder’s Justice League tended to emphasize that it was at least visually impressive, so I was hoping to see some of that vision here. Instead, I was treated to a montage of too-close shot-countershot compositions smudged with vaseline, presumably designed to hide how much of this film was created in post. Army of the Dead takes an incredibly joyful premise and drains all the fun out of it, offering nothing but a few solid performances stranded in a picture that can’t make use of them.

Next up, we hosted another of our acclaimed double features, tackling a pair of Don Bluth films. The first up was The Secret of NIMH, which I’d never seen before, and now am not sure I could live without. As Bluth’s first post-Disney feature film, NIMH feels like a defiant statement of purpose, offering a fantastical tale as beautiful as anything Disney could create, but with shades of darkness too deep for the mouse to touch. Exciting, endearing, and absolutely gorgeous, it’s an unqualified animation classic.

NIMH’s strengths begin with its unusually world-weary narrative. The film opens by announcing the death of a great man (or mouse, in this case) named Jonathan, and its drama mostly concerns his widow Mrs. Frisby attempting to protect her very sick son. Her trials take her over hill and dale, as she meets with ominous sages and eventually contacts the rats of NIMH, who are dealing with a desperate power struggle of their own. Her journey feels both iconic and distinctive, a classic hero’s tale embellished by the unique scale of her story, and the almost Watership Down-esque frankness of its dangers.

But though NIMH’s story is great, its real triumph is its visual design. NIMH is absolutely overflowing with gorgeous background art, and its character animation is so generous that it frequently feels like the characters are over-acting, emoting more than their circumstances imply. Bluth’s characters all tend to possess a certain Fleischer-esque buoyancy in their movements, and NIMH takes that style to a jubilant extreme. Additionally, the film is a marvel of effects animation, exulting in shimmering dew drops, shining baubles, and sparkling flashes of electric or magical power. Amidst all the painted and animated beauty, that effects animation feels almost like NIMH’s guiding principle – Bluth’s team mastered these effects, and created a film where they could be put to best possible use.

On the whole, NIMH is simply a fantastic family drama, and a must-see for any fans of animation. Bluth is one of the great voices of animation, and NIMH is a genuine masterpiece.

After that, we surged two decades forward, to watch Bluth’s last feature film: the tragic Titan A.E. I actually had seen Titan before, in theaters in fact, and remembered quite enjoying it when it came out. The film really captured the sensation of being twelve years old at the turn of the millennium; a punchy scifi adventure, some vaguely anime-derivative aesthetics, and a scattering of pop-punk songs, all elevated by Bluth’s sumptuous character animation.

Titan doesn’t hold up, and didn’t really hold together all that well at the time of its release, but it was still an interesting watch. Its story and characters are generic, showing the telltale signs of a production that was shipped between too many hands, and which lost most of its personality in the transfer. The traditional animation is still impressive, but largely rotoscoped, and thus lacking in the sort of expressive exaggeration that makes Bluth’s best works special. And the CG setpieces largely fail to hold up, presenting awkward visual lulls where peaks are supposed to go.

Though Titan isn’t a good film, it does demonstrate Bluth making the most of what CG backgrounds allow in animation. The film is full of panning and swooping camerawork, often following its cast as they move about their ship, and thus creating a strong sense of tension and momentum. And ultimately, the climactic sequence in a crystalline ice field actually holds up quite well, and offers some genuinely awesome visuals. Though it’s mostly reflective of a studio in crisis and a new visual form in its infancy, Titan still has some treasures to share.

After that, we checked out a recent creature feature, Crawl. Crawl centers on a young woman searching for her father in the leadup to a hurricane, who ultimately gets trapped alongside him in a flooding house full of vicious alligators. The film is a study in dramatic economy; the evolving threat of the rising water offers a steady stream of conflicts, their house is a perfectly sized puzzle box, and even the relationship between father and daughter is precisely calibrated to evolve and reconcile over eighty-five minutes. Toss in a few unfortunate side characters to provide the requisite monster fodder, and you end up with a concise yet highly satisfying monster movie, with a convincing emotional core. Workmanly excellence!

And of course, there was… well, actually, we took a bit of a break from One Piece this week, and instead munched through the first third of Jujutsu Kaisen. I did try out Jujutsu Kaisen back in the fall, but ended up dropping off after the third team member was introduced. Nobara introduced herself with a series of “how dare you not think I’m pretty” gags that embodied the usual pitfalls of shonen authors writing women, and I just lost what remaining enthusiasm I had for viewing. Even up until that point, the show’s writing had never impressed me – so when it started to actively grate on me, I decided I had better things to do.

Well, the unfortunate news is that Jujutsu Kaisen’s writing has not improved. The show is a grab bag of largely Naruto- and Bleach-derivative shonen staples, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – I like being surprised, but execution is what’s most important. More of an issue for Kaisen is its lousy dialogue and characters. Most of the show’s cast have a personality composed of one or two gimmicks, and when they interact, they mostly just yell their gimmicks at each other. Additionally, the issues that first frustrated me with Nobara extends to the show’s writing more generally – the show recently introduced a character who announced his arrival with “I like tall women with huge butts,” and the first time two women fought, they ending up doing that familiar “argue over which girl is prettier” routine that you often see from writers who don’t know any women. On top of all that, the show’s comedy sticks to the simplistic/shrill shonen standards, generally feeling more like a punishment to endure than a gag to enjoy.

All of that said, boy howdy does this show look nice. Jujutsu Kaisen’s battle sequences represent the cutting edge of digital native animation, as animators who’ve spent their whole lives integrating traditional and digital art now take the helm of major projects. The results are regularly dazzling, occasionally messy, and uniformly ambitious, integrating whole environments into battle, embracing ludicrously active camerawork, and often combining several styles of animation all in the same frame. The show is a visual feast, and I’m looking forward to seeing its all-stars continue to make their mark in animation. I just wish more of these shows had writing to match their visuals!