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inner_v0ice) wrote2010-10-09 02:03 pm
inner_v0ice) wrote2010-10-09 02:03 pm
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[meme] Fannish Five: Retcons, Friday Five: Disney
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fannish5: Five worst retcons in your fandoms.Okay, this is more like "five retcons I personally dislike, and my rants about them."
1) Star Wars: abandoning (or technically, overly-complicated-retconning-away) the Jaster Mereel backstory given for Boba Fett in the short story "The Last One Standing" to replace it with the events of Episode II. I LOVED the KnightTemplar!BobaFett of "The Last One Standing"; it was my favorite story in Tales of the Bounty Hunters. His eternal Knight Templar antipathy for Han; his scene with slave!Leia...that story was awesome. ♥ I've never really reconciled myself to the retcon, although having watched the Clone Wars movie and snippets of the series I can now admit that the Kiwi-accented Fett-clone soldiers are cool.
2) Star Wars: Amidala dying at Luke and Leia's birth instead of surviving to go on the run with Leia for a little while. The "do you remember your mother? Your real mother?" scene is one of my favorite scenes in ROTJ, and although Leia's memory of a beautiful woman, 'kind, but sad', can be explained all sorts of ways (Force-enhanced newborn memory, false memory, whatever), it really clouds the atmosphere of the scene to have to be mentally making excuses for the discrepancy instead of just sitting back and enjoying the pure truth of the revelations going on. I understand that the "Amidala on the run" version would have been a lot harder to fit into a movie than conveniently killing her off, but come on, couldn't you have not retconned one of the most pivotal scenes in the Original Trilogy?
(also, they're gonna have to edit the ROTJ novelization if they ever re-release it, since it gets even more specific about Leia's memories: "Flashes from her infancy assaulted her--distorted visions of running...a beautiful woman...hiding in a trunk.")
3) Pirates of the Caribbean: In At World's End, the existence of the "Code of the Pirate Brethren" preserved in a "Codex Pirata," which is really truly supposed to be the code by which all pirates live by, instead of "a guideline" like in Curse of the Black Pearl. In fact, if I recall AWE correctly (which I may not), pirates were supposed to have become degenerate by taking the code as a guideline instead of as law, and the only way for them to survive was to return to following the code. Well, screw that. I prefer the freewheeling pirates of CotBP (IMDB quotes page: "First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner." / "You're pirates. Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway.") to the secret-society-ruled-by-an-international-council-of-elders pirates of AWE (IMDB quotes page: "The code is the law!"). The "they're more like guidelines anyway" was one of the themes of CotBP, so taking that all back and being all "follow the code" in AWE is kind of...urgh. Gag. Why must you now be a generic secret society, pirates?
4) Pirates of the Caribbean: the change in Norrington between the end of CotBP (last scene: gives the pirates a head start) and his appearance in Dead Man's Chest (first scene: has destroyed himself and descended into disgrace and alcoholism by pursuing them fanatically). It ruins the Crowning Moment of Heartwarming that was his softening at the end of CotBP, and it ruins (in-universe) the career of Commodore Norrington, who deserved a hell of a lot better than what he got in DMC and AWE.
5) Redwall: from The Legend of Luke, the picture of Martin the Warrior in the tapestry actually being a fragment depicting his identical-looking grandfather. (This is more of a minor quibble, but I was out of ideas.) Anyway, I've never much liked that particular detail, it always seemed a little unnecessary (also, Martin deserves a picture woven specially for him, not a recycled picture of his grandfather!). Plus I know there's a scene in one of the other books specifically describing the Redwallers making the portrait of Martin in the tapestry and quibbling over what color of thread to use for his fur. (Yeah, yeah, retcon explanation: they're repairing the fragment instead of making it...) Of course, my judgment is affected by the fact that I've always held a grudge against Legend of Luke for not being the Martin-revisits-the-north story that I always wanted, i.e. one involving an epically tragic meeting with Rose's ghost. :P
thefridayfive: 1. Have you ever dressed up as a Disney character?
In first or second grade, for the U.N. Day parade at school, my class was assigned the US. Most kids dressed up as cowboys, but I dressed up as Minnie Mouse in a Minnie Mouse dress and cardboard ears. Also, I once dressed up as Esmeralda at home just for fun. (I never get to dress up for Halloween, because my family is always on a road trip to the province on October 31. XD)
2. What was your favorite Disney movie growing up?
It's a tie between The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I also liked the two Aladdin sequels (Return of Jafar and King of Thieves); the Cave of Wonders sequence in the original scared me a bit too much.
3. Which Disney character can you relate to the most?
Right now? Peter Pan. :P
4. Have you ever been to a Disney theme park?
I've been to the one in Florida once, about 10 years ago, with my aunt and cousins.
5. When does someone become "too old" for Disney?
Never!! My dad is my usual watching-Disney-movies partner; I used to be his excuse for watching them, but I've gotten a bit too old for that to work by now. So now we just plain watch them, no excuses. :P
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