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The Sea Beast
I watched this movie on Netflix tonight, as people who follow me on Tumblr will have noticed by the sudden, brief gif flurry. I could tell from the previews that this movie was going to absolutely nail one of my rather specific character relationship tropes, which is reluctant parent figure + plucky orphan girl, and it does indeed do that, along with very pretty scenery and some cute/fun/sweet scenes with the monsters.
I liked most of it, on the whole it's a really entertaining Power of Friendship animated movie, but I am unfortunately way too cynical for the ending of this movie.
The thing about the ending is that in the previous hour and a half, the movie sets up a fairly compelling conflict, and surprisingly complex for a Disney/Pixar Power Of Friendship type movie, in which the characters all have legitimate (if not always equally sympathetic) reasons for being on opposite sides, *and* valid reasons to be conflicted about which side they're on/switch sides occasionally. In the last 20 minutes or so prior to the end, they had set this up so well that I was genuinely not sure how they were going to pull the inevitable happy ending out of it.
... yeah, the way they did it was by, basically, cheating. Or I guess I should say, by having the entire population at large see the error of their ways and decide to do the right thing after generations of conflict, on the basis of a brief speech from the kid protagonist about how Your Entire Life Is A Lie, and I ... am not there. I totally believed that the main characters changed their minds about generations of warfare after an entire life-changing arc in mid-movie that led them to that point. I even believe that individual people might have a mind-changing moment in the final conflict, like the first mate lady taking the monsters' side, while other people in the crew didn't; that was set up pretty well. I do *not* believe that the entire population is going to rise up in revolution and stop hunting monsters just because of someone they don't know telling them that their leaders are lying to them about it, and that it'll stick and everyone leaves the monsters alone forever. That's not how things work. (On the other hand, anything even approaching a realistic ending would've been pretty depressing even if the individual monsters and people who were characters got a happy ending, and I get what they were trying to do, it's just ... I felt like the level of emotional realism for the ending didn't work with the level of emotional realism in the rest of the movie.)
I did really like the central character arcs as long as I try hard not to think too much about the rest of it. And it was pretty?
I liked most of it, on the whole it's a really entertaining Power of Friendship animated movie, but I am unfortunately way too cynical for the ending of this movie.
The thing about the ending is that in the previous hour and a half, the movie sets up a fairly compelling conflict, and surprisingly complex for a Disney/Pixar Power Of Friendship type movie, in which the characters all have legitimate (if not always equally sympathetic) reasons for being on opposite sides, *and* valid reasons to be conflicted about which side they're on/switch sides occasionally. In the last 20 minutes or so prior to the end, they had set this up so well that I was genuinely not sure how they were going to pull the inevitable happy ending out of it.
... yeah, the way they did it was by, basically, cheating. Or I guess I should say, by having the entire population at large see the error of their ways and decide to do the right thing after generations of conflict, on the basis of a brief speech from the kid protagonist about how Your Entire Life Is A Lie, and I ... am not there. I totally believed that the main characters changed their minds about generations of warfare after an entire life-changing arc in mid-movie that led them to that point. I even believe that individual people might have a mind-changing moment in the final conflict, like the first mate lady taking the monsters' side, while other people in the crew didn't; that was set up pretty well. I do *not* believe that the entire population is going to rise up in revolution and stop hunting monsters just because of someone they don't know telling them that their leaders are lying to them about it, and that it'll stick and everyone leaves the monsters alone forever. That's not how things work. (On the other hand, anything even approaching a realistic ending would've been pretty depressing even if the individual monsters and people who were characters got a happy ending, and I get what they were trying to do, it's just ... I felt like the level of emotional realism for the ending didn't work with the level of emotional realism in the rest of the movie.)
I did really like the central character arcs as long as I try hard not to think too much about the rest of it. And it was pretty?
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That's a really interesting problem for otherwise well-written children's fiction to have.
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This looks cute, I'm adding to the to-watch list.
[ETA: I didn't read the spoiler section]
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What really wasn't set up by the rest of the movie AT ALL was ending it with sweeping, lasting society-wide change on the basis of really nothing except an inspirational speech. I think doubly so because up to that point the movie had done a pretty good job with the characters fearing and hating sea monsters for valid reasons - they think they're animals, and sea monsters are extremely destructive when attacked. Both the protagonists had lost their entire families in monster fights and only slowly come around to realizing that the sea monsters are fighting a defensive fight, due to half a movie's exposure to one that's helping them.
And also critically, *the monster doesn't do anything helpful at the end.* What actually happens is this - extensive spoilers for the movie's ending follow:
The monster hunting ship whose crew were/are the protagonists' adopted family (prior to the main characters having their monsters-aren't-evil epiphany) poison the tritagonist sea monster into unconsciousness and float it back home to show it off to their home city and monarchy. It wakes up in the middle of this, breaks loose, and destroys part of the city, knocking over buildings, etc - almost entirely by accident, due to being drugged and held in a confined space - and then goes after the guy who captured it with the clear intent to kill him, until the little girl stops it from attacking and then gives everyone a lecture about how sea monsters never started the fight and the entire monster war and its rationale was invented by their monarchy for profit. The townspeople all turn on the monarchs, the sea monster sails off to sea, and a voiceover tells us that ships never again bothered the sea monsters or sailed to explore the unknown parts of the sea where the monsters live, and they were left alone forever.
This ...? Is not how people work?!! On many levels! Like, I guess that I get what they were going for, which is that this is an answer to the criticism that a lot of fantasy gets, that it fixes the immediate problem but not the whole system. But that's because systems aren't anywhere near that easy to fix! You can plausibly rescue one sea monster, and set out to rescue more in the future; but you can't end the entire system of sea monster oppression with one inspirational speech. At least not in a movie where the entire *rest* of the movie is set up along the lines of a basic "kid and her sea monster" story and doesn't really have much to do with the political situation beyond how it impacts the characters. All of that was so completely far off from how reality works, and how people work, that it blew up my entire enjoyment of the movie at that point.
I also semi-joked to Orion - but not really - that the part we clearly saw *start* to happen right before the protagonists sailed off to sea on a sea monster was the entire town rising up in revolution, so the part that was conveniently skipped over was the factions slaughtering each other in bloody civil war for months or years. Happy ending! I guess!!
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It's totally not the way the whaling industry went.
You can plausibly rescue one sea monster, and set out to rescue more in the future; but you can't end the entire system of sea monster oppression with one inspirational speech.
It really sounds like the movie zooms out way too fast. Because I agree with you that the cultural sea-change makes more sense if one of your characters is a princess or a politician, but the smash cut from torches and pitchforks to environmental harmony leaves a lot to be glossed over. It's not like Greta Thunberg can just bend governments to her will.
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I agree with your criticisms about the end, and I think with just a couple of changes, the movie could have had a more plausible ending (still not a totally satisfying one and believable one, but more plausible). In the orphanage, they could have had one of the kids say something like, my grandma always said the monsters helped the fisherman fish when she was a girl and then have the main girl get mad about it: you take that back, they're evil, they killed my parents. Then they could have a guy in the bar say something like, "And it hauled my boat to shore. Saved my life, it did." And everybody could say, "Old Ben's been barmy since he was lost at sea for a week." That plus the first mate's admission that she's seen things establishes that other people have had positive experiences and that the main two protagonists aren't the only ones.
Then, they need a couple more incidents that establish that the royals are shady and their people are just following them because they're royal. The only bad thing we see them do before the revelation at the end that they manufactured the war is them turning on the crew of the Inevitable. We need a couple of scenes that establish their greed or that people don't like or trust them (especially the military).
Of course, the movie doesn't want to do that because it wants the surprise; the point is the revelation--the monsters aren't really bad. If the movie wants to stick with the big reveal, then thei smoking gun has to be bigger and more smoking. If she'd somehow had genuine evidence that they'd manufactured the conflict or elicited a public confession, then the ending would also be more plausible without any other changes.
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Ah well, I'm glad it's not just me having issues with the unsatisfying ending, but the rest of the movie was really sweet and enjoyable!
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(… did YOU spot any reason for the royals to persecute the sea beasts? Because as far as I could tell, it looked like the king and queen were out laying serious investment/reward money in return for nothing more than some neat museum exhibits. I felt like I must have missed some line about the sea beast bones being used for medicine or trade or SOMETHING. It doesn’t even make sense for the monarchy to be using the sea beasts as a convenient “only we can protect you from this terrible foe so do what we say!” excuse to subjugate the populace, because it was the hunters doing the actual hunting and they seemed fairly disassociated from the crown. And why only find the giant navy ship now? And WTF was up with the whole witch subplot, where we never even found out what she “took” from the captain? SO MANY QUESTIONS)
My 7 year old mostly found it a bit scary, though both she and my older one LOVED the sequence with the fighting-while-tied-together when they first get to the island (my kids were literally laughing out loud at the slapstick), and also the little blue baby creature.
I, uh, got rather distracted throughout by the grizzled, one-eyed, and very, VERY hot sea captain. I… am not certain the artists and animators INTENDED to make him sex on a stick, but daaaaaaaamn.
(I may have a type)
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I agree on the sea captain dude, and also, I think part of my dissatisfaction with the end (other than it being one big plot hole) is how hard he gets narratively screwed over. After setting him up as the secondary protagonist's surrogate father figure for the whole movie, I got the feeling that we were supposed to be cheering his vanquishment at the end - except, no?? He didn't deserve that! They're both stuck in a messed-up system, but the main difference between them at this point is that he didn't get a life-changing road trip with a sea monster like his protégé did - and he's left with his life in shambles and his livelihood gone. He's not abusive or cruel in a way that would justify the Disney-villain ending that he gets, and most of the movie didn't even treat him that way.
It did feel as if aspects of the ending were changed at the last minute, or as if different people wrote it than wrote the rest of the movie. It was very strange! But at least I'm not alone in my complaining. XD