"Enchanted", a stupid, irrelevant Disney feminist apology for the classic "Snow White"

Squinty has written a few too many posts lately, so need to get up to speed here.

I've been thinking lately of the excruciatingly-bad Disney film "Enchanted" lately, which can be thought of as less of a movie to waste time watching with the kids, but rather as a pathetic and humiliating insult to the tradition of the classic Disney Snow White film, which to me remains to this day the finest, incomparably animated film ever.  Of course this film is offensive, and has rabid feminists and others up in arms.  Snow White is a princess who wants nothing more than to marry a prince.  I love it!  No complex, frustrating, impossibly-intelligent, unlikable, proto-feminist, indestructible Reese Witherspoon-types, but rather just a princess who wants nothing more than to wed a prince.  Brilliant.  Perfect.  

With Enchanted, it's like the screen-writer was an angry young woman, trained in the Sith arts of rabid feminism in college, with a fresh social studies BA, who sat down and typed out how the classic Snow White "should" have actually ended, with the princess coming to New York and realizing she doesn't need a prince to be happy, but rather, she needs to be single and successful running her own business.  This was appalling writing and perhaps the stupidest distortion of a classic movie theme I've ever had the misfortune of watching.  Absolutely awful.

I will give Disney credit, though.  They have never stupidly attempted to make a "Snow White 2" (that I know of) and they have left the original alone, as the one film that cannot be ruined with stupid and shallow remakes involving SW trained as a warrior with a huntsman while she has a fling with the film director, or something like that.  

But if Disney did ever decide to make a "Snow White 2", rest assured it would be stupid, and that it would rot in the Disney vault along with "Enchanted."

The original Snow White is a marvel:  wonderful story, staggeringly-good animation (without any lazy Disney computer-animated shortcuts) and a charming soundtrack of both orchestral and vocal numbers.  It's unquestionably a classic, and you can tell by the duration of this film even today: they continue to make rides at the Disney theme park based on this film (haven't seen any films made based on "Enchanted".... maybe they could make Mr. Toad's Commode Ride", in which you ride through a sewage pipe lined with discarded copies of Enchanted...?)

Snow White Ride at WDW

This one is so dated, and corny, but I love it. No doubt they'll replace it someday with a newer, stupid ride based on another film. RIP Mister Toad.

Frustrations with Avengers Alliance

Blasted Facebook has me hooked on the awful Avengers Alliance game. It's quite entertaining, if not perfect. Here are a few frustrating details of the game I've observed so far, that I'm going to vent about to myself:

The lousy gift-giving
Why can you only give one gift at a time per person? This used to be considerably higher, and now you can only give one gift at a time? Bah, me no like.

Freebie gold earning that doesn't work
Most of the things I try to sign up for, like surveys or email distributions, that supposedly offer free gold, either don't work, or they tell me I'm ineligible in my area. Bah!

The ridiculously-overpriced characters
I suppose this is part of the "sales and marketing" department, but making Captain America and Spiderman the most ridiculously overpriced characters is frustrating, when if you play as a freeloader like me and you don't waste the money buying gold, then you're left with cheapie characters are "Sue Storm." Bah.

Pointless prizes when visiting other friend's maps
You can add friends in the game and visit their cities, but when you click on various buildings for prizes, many of them are completely lame like "30 silver coins", which, when you're near level 30 in the game, is mostly worthless when most of your expenses are in the tens of thousands of silver coins. Suggestion: upgrade the prizes when visiting friend's screens when your character has leveled up.

Language and Innuendo
Come on Marvel, you're owned by Disney now. Keep the language clean in the between-battle dialog. Nick Fury is a grizzled old vet, I know, but you can mind his language a little.

It's also telling to me that Marvel has to capitalize on the more virtuous of the heroes for a game like this. For instance, where are the 'X-Statix' characters? Oh yeah, that book was awful, and all of the characters morally debase, so they get left out in place of more lovably characters like "Nightcrawler" who, although he sounds like an earth worm, at least was a character with more virtue than the Punisher (another Marvel character left out of this game.)

If you are looking for a good time-wasting avenue that requires wasting time that should be used for more productive endeavors, then check out Avengers Alliance. Yeah, it can be played well as a free-loader, but you will only be able to play for limited windows of time at once (limited energy) which is probably better, or I'd waste the whole day playing...

Haunted Mansion Counter-Strike map

The knife/gun in hand notwithstanding, this is pretty impressive. It's the type of pointless thing I would have wasted time building years ago with Doom. It falls a little flat around the dining room, but if you've been on the ride, this isn't a half-bad recreation (with the lights on, though.)

George Lucas NEEDS Money!

I wonder how many times you can re-package the same film, with more special effects and enhancements, before you completely eliminate the original? I think Lucas is bound and determined to do this with his franchise.



As I've stated earlier, I'm not giving Lucas one more penny. Of course, this task seems to be impossible, as his brand is everywhere. Even my stock in Disney (which WHY I hold DIS in my portfolio is another mystery) I'm sure somehow, indirectly, gives Lucas funds indirectly from the theme park SW ride and gift shop and other merchandising vehicles. The guy has his tendrils everywhere!

Here's a thought I was kicking around: if a Jedi is a blood-donor, would the person they donate blood to then gain the midichlorians and then have the ability to do force-tricks, until the body replenished the normal blood again? And what was Lucas thinking, making the force little more than a blood condition? Alright, I'm not going to dwell on my simmering hatred of the prequels. Or on anything from Lucas anymore. I'm washing my hands of Star Wars. I loved the original, pre-special edition trilogy, but the days of those films is long gone...