Doug Walker (the Nostalgia Critic) just reviewed Tinker Bell (the 2008 direct-to-DVD CGI movie) as part of his look at the dreaded Disney Sequels, and I thought the review was a little weak, so I thought "what the heck", I'll just make my own. With words stretching on for miles, ha ha ha! I've been meaning for a while now to expand on why I like this movie. And the Western Animation |OT| seems like as good a place as any.
So in the 2000's and earlier, Tinkerbell was a major marketing juggernaut. Her face was on so much merchandise that I heard her called Disney's female Mickey Mouse, except that she moves more merch than Mickey, and she dares to be public domain (as opposed to Mickey who is the sworn enemy of public domain). Disney Consumer Products (the corporate entity responsible for the Disney Princess line) realized that aside from the terrible Disney Sequel "Return to Neverland" (a passion-project from the head of Disneytoon, the notorious sequel-factory), Disney hadn't actually
done anything with Tinkerbell in literally half a century.
Dreamworks could practically claim to have more ownership over Disney's money-making character due to Julia Roberts' performance in 1991's Hook (okay, wrong Dreamworks, but you get what I mean). So Disney's artists were tasked with creating a world for Tinkerbell, with new adventures and new characters to expand the marketing potential of their newly created "Disney Fairies" line (that's right, Tink officially isn't a "Princess", she's the lead of a different team built entirely around her, because the little lady who flies an arc over the Disney Castle at the start of almost every Disney movie is a little too overpowered to be called a Princess).
The head of Disneytoon (being a Peter Pan fangirl) took to these new orders with great excitement and agreed to produce a several-movie franchise, using the new CGI technology they picked up due to a fight Michael Eisner was having with golden-goose Pixar. Well, we all know how that battle ended, with Eisner getting the boot and Pixar taking his job. And when John Lasseter rose to power the first thing he did was put a target on Disneytoon's back, putting an immediate end to the cheap cash-in Disney Sequels. Disney Consumer Products requested that their Tinkerbell plans be exempt from that, and Lasseter said that'd be fine, so long as the movies weren't bad. So he went to visit the studio and found that they were horribly overbudget and had burned through a dozen writers/directors, and the footage they had was an unwatchable mess. He pulled the latest writer/director aside and asked what the problem was, and they said it was the head of the studio, she had gone mad trying to cram her fanfiction into the series. Lasseter had the writer/director pitch him an entirely new Tinkerbell movie on the spot, and he liked what they said, so he ordered a fresh start on this new movie. The studio head didn't take that very well, so she belayed Lasseter's orders and put everyone back to work on her fanfiction. When Lasseter found out, she was removed from her position, and a new era for Disneytoon was cemented. Lasseter brought in people from Pixar to help Disneytoon finish their movie on time.
But enough about the background intrigue, on with the movie.
The film is a prequel (if it connects to 1953's Peter Pan
at all), and it explains how Neverland is a magical place that's home to fairies, magical creatures who manually operate the change of seasons (it's a fairytale, so don't ask silly questions). And Tink is born into this world when a baby's laugh is carried to Neverland on a dandelion seed.
After a purple-wearing fairy guides the dandelion seed in for a landing, an apparently-male fairy dumps a cup of magic sparkles on her head and Tinkerbell is born, immediately self-aware and speaking, wearing a dandelion-based white robe. A Queen-fairy appears in an excess of magic sparkles to welcome her. After a quick flying lesson, a ring of objects is placed around Tink. The Queen explains that it's a magical test to determine Tink's place in the world, each one obviously representing a diferent group of pretty fairies. As Tink tries to interact with each one, a quick failure indicates that her talent lies elsewhere. She
walks past a rock-hammer to look at more interesting items (note, this is important), but her mere proximity was good enough and the hammer flies to her. As she grabs it, a flash of light indicates that she's found her purpose, and the onlookers comment that it's the brightest reaction they've ever seen, even bigger than the reaction produced by a fairy named Vidia (and Vidia, the purple fairy from before, is shown to be somewhat bothered by that comment).
Sorting concluded, the newly-named Tinkerbell is introduced to her people, the Tinker fairies. Bobble and Clank shove their way through the crowd of beautiful people, and it's clearly shocking to Tink. Not only are they loud and disruptive, but Bobble is a glasses-wearing nerd and Clank is a mentally-challenged giant. I've seen some people complain that these two characters are borderline offensive, and while that might be true in later Tinkerbell movies, in this movie that's the entire point. It's all about the look in her face when she sees them. If you haven't figured out where we're going with this yet, she doesn't want to be a Tinker. But they're not being blatant about it. She's not
objecting to anything, she's just going with the flow, but her reactions constantly reinforce that this isn't the life that she would choose for herself.
Bobble and Clank lead her to her new home, Tinker's Nook, and she looks with amazement at a mountain lake with waterfalls and colorful trees in bloom. "Oh no, not there Miss Bell, we live down here" and she looks down to see a quaint village of grass huts in the mud. "Oh."
She looks around the village with growing enthusiasm and learns that Tinkers are the industrial core of the fairy world, as they show her the beautiful house they built for her, hoping in advance that the newcomer would be one of them. Although the new clothes they prepared for her are an oversized tent. Left to her own devices, she quickly modifies them to suit her tastes, creating her iconic little green dress and tying her hair back (and the Tinkers are stunned by how pretty she looks). She's introduced to her immediate supervisor, Fairy Mary, an older woman with some meat on her bones who is let down by the dainty Tink's lack of muscle. Don't worry Tink, you can bulk up in no time. Fairy Mary is a vision of Tink's future as a Tinker, a strong not-cute working-class woman. Tink's forced smile says it all.
But Tink shows some loyalty and covers for one of Bobble and Clank's mistakes, volunteering to help them do some deliveries. Along the way she meets some of the fairies we saw in the beginning of the movie, and learns about their various talents and the preparations they're making to change over to the next season. Eventually she sees Vidia, and excitedly wants to meet her. But they get off on the wrong foot as Tink breaks Vidia's concentration, messes up her work, and unknowingly insults her. After her upstaging, the prideful Vidia makes things crystal clear to Tink, Vidia is a flying force of nature, Tink sits in the mud and fixes pots and pans. Tink stands up for herself, saying that she'll prove her talent on the mainland, revealing to Vidia that she hasn't learned yet that Tinkers are a support class which
doesn't go to the mainland, and Vidia is all too happy to give Tink the rope she needs to hang herself, so she accepts Tink's challenge.
In an emotional scene, Tink tries to show off during a royal inspection, failing with her inventions and making a fool out of herself in front of everyone, Queen included, not just through the failures but by even trying, as Vidia drinks up the schadenfreude.
Crushed, Tink admits what she knew all along, that Vidia was right, being a Tinker is lame. She realizes that instead of being great at Tinkering, she would rather be sub-par at literally anything else. So she convinces her non-Tinker friends to try and teach her
their talents (this doubles as more introduction to the expanded cast). She tries twice to brute-force her way into learning their jobs, but a Tinker fairy simply can't manipulate water with her gestures or grab onto light with her bare hands. At work she's confronted about her extracurricular activities, and blurts out her displeasure with Tinkers, hurting the friends who've been nothing but kind to her. Her next attempt at a new job causes even more trouble for Vidia. A dejected Tink randomly repairs a music box she finds broken on the beach, and her onlooking friends gush over how
this is what she was meant to do, and how this is something special and important, but Tink says that they don't understand how she feels, as her friends now refuse to continue helping her in her quest to find some other job.
For her last hope, Tink foolishly turns to Vidia for help, and Vidia predictably sets Tink up to fail. Actually, with a bit of Tinker ingenuity, Tink started to succeed, but Vidia tipped the scales to ensure Tink's failure. And in doing so, the two of them caused an avalance which ruined months worth of preparations to usher in spring. With tears in her eyes, Tink apologizes to the Queen. The Chosen One is now a full-blown failure and Tink doesn't know what's wrong with herself.
As Tink prepares to run off into self-imposed exile, she bumps into Terrence, a dust-keeper fairy who rations the supply of Pixie Dust. He empathasizes with her, because his job is lame too. Tink is aghast because Terrence's job is amazing, and Terrence agrees. He was just messing with her. He knows that his job is amazing, the question is, why can't Tink see that
her job is amazing?
With something new to think about, Tink goes back to sit in her workshop until she realizes the flaw in her previous inventions. With the aid of Tink's new tools, the fairies are equipped to repair the damage and improve productivity in the future. Vidia blows up at the idea of Tinkerbell as the big hero, and in the heat of the moment she exposes her role in Tink's downfall. The Queen hands down an appropriate punishment, and Vidia takes it like a scolded child.
Tink is rewarded with a visit to the mainland, because it doesn't really matter if she visits the mainland, although Tink initially tries to turn it down, because it doesn't really matter if she visits the mainland. Tink delivers the music box to it's previous owner, a young Wendy Darling, but that's just a bit of Peter Pan fanservice. The End.
Overall, I really like the way the movie is about characters, and how they play off each other without an unneccasary amount of dialogue. Vidia is a real piece of work, but her character makes sense and you can tell where she came from and why she's acting the way she is. Tink plays around with themes of needing to be okay with who you are even when you're not getting exactly everything you want out of life. Doug suggested that she had themes of standing up for yourself and trying to take what you want to try and make your life better, which isn't what
I saw in the movie, but that's the great thing about introducing something like a career crisis and then not beating anyone over the head with the "right answer". The scene of Tink's near-exile is given extra weight because this fairy world doesn't seem to exist in Peter Pan. It seems entirely conceivable that Tink could be headed towards a banishment, or worse (or, as becomes increasingly likely, the fairy world is simply not seen by Neverland's human visitors).
The music is great, and the CG graphics are fine. They were pretty advanced when the movie came out in the 2000's but they've become dated in hindsight, which is the curse of all CG. The real kick in the pants is that the ending has a series of images drawn in 2D, and after getting used to the CG over the course of the movie, it's shocking how good the 2D looks. Why oh why can't they just make these cartoons in 2D?
If there's any interest, I could probably review the Tinkerbell sequels too, or not, whatever.
Happy new year everybody!
