#interquel

Bruno wakes to an aroma like every family dinner he ever sat through in secret with an empty painted plate in front of him, biting his cheeks to keep himself quiet.

Saliva pools in his mouth. He swallows it down painfully. He begins to hum tunelessly to distract himself, but stops, because Dolores is bound to hear, and if she guesses he has nothing to eat, she might tell someone where he is. He needs to be strong.

He buries his face in the wing of his armchair.

“Bruno?” It sounds like Julieta. But Julieta doesn’t say his name, not in front of the whole family. It’s his mind playing tricks again.

He’s been getting worse lately, he’s pretty sure. He’s seen birds and animals that were never there. A painting on his wall that was really upstairs. His camp stove, long since out of fuel, standing up and shaking its feet. He’s heard voices talking nonsense in languages he doesn’t know. Or his family, sometimes telling him comforting things, sometimes the opposite.

Now here’s Julieta, as if the smell through the cracks could waft her through the wall. He can’t see her — he won’t look — but she feels so close that his skin prickles. She seems to bend over him, saying, “Aren’t you hungry?”

He’s hollow. He’s trembling. But he’s used to that. He squeezes his infected fingertip, to let the pain distract him.

“Bruno? I have some supper for you.”

“Go away. Let me sleep.” That’s the best thing he can do, because he won’t be getting a meal tonight.

Mind you, I don't think Pumbaa making the gathering at Simba's birth faint was... needed but I do enjoy a good interquel. Especially as it gives Timon a good character arc outside of just being one of Those Two Guys. Pumbaa finding someone who doesn't mind his sudden bowel movements was sweet.

Oh, and Timon's mother was a great addition. Wish that they brought them back for The Lion King if only for Bunga to meet his extended family.

I personally do feel like the movie theater framing device could've been replaced with Timon and Pumbaa babysitting Kiara, trying to distract her with a story. She would so get a kick out of her father's more embarrassing moment and be a good straight man to the duo.

Maybe end on a funny note where she's figured out where their Jungle home was and snuck off while they were caught up in nostalgia. She'd so try to leap off a waterfall. XD

I always felt there was room for another 1 1/2 type movie with, say, Nala where it leans more on the emotional side of the Lion King story. How did she deal with her grief over Simba's apparent death and the decay of the Pride Lands? Why did she end up in the Jungle where she found Simba?

And it should be animated! No just CGI passing for live action. Personally, I wouldn't even mind it being 3D animated if only to see how the classic design lend themselves to the new format.

For example, Pinocchio is almost always seen as a puppet still, Bambi is still a fawn, Robin Hood is still an outlaw pursued by Prince John, and many The Lion King stories show Simba as a cub.

The exception seems to be stories based on the princess movies, which almost always take place after their respective "happily ever after" endings.

Capcom learned a lot from Darkstalkers. They had gotten used to the CPS-II hardware and how to make a solid, snazzy game on it. So, taking what they learned from the first Darkstalkers game, and inspired by the Street Fighter II anime, Capcom (finally) made a brand new SF game.

This one would be an interquel, between Street Fighter I and II.

“Why?” he wonders.

Julieta is fussing with the blankets, tucking the lower one around his freezing feet. “Why what?”

Oh. This is real, and she heard. That’s bad, isn’t it? He isn’t sure, but now he has to keep talking. “The, the cart. Why are we in a cart?”

“Well, you don’t want me carrying you all the way to the Casa Ospina,” says Agustín reasonably, “and we can’t expect you to walk.”

A guffaw makes Bruno jump. A man says, “Not after you had a staircase fall on you.”

“What?”

Julieta taps him on the shin, pay attention. “You’re extremely lucky your injuries are no worse.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Might as well go with that. The truth — that he wrecked his health by hiding in the walls too long, and now can barely hobble across a room — is too complicated and personal to spread around.

“Rosita and I don’t mind, eh, muchacha?” The man gives the donkey a friendly slap. “Better than finding your body under the rubble tomorrow.”

“Osvaldo!” Agustín and Julieta protest.

“Well, it’s true! Just don’t tell me she’s gonna get mange or anything.”

After having watched nearly all of them, I can say with absolutely certainly that two of those statements are 100% untrue. And the third, that they’re “cheap cash grabs” is only partially true.

Yes, a few of them early on were definitely produced on the cheap, using low-budget TV animation studios rather than the usual. But as time went on, the animation got better and better until it was nearly indistinguishable from theatrical animation. Heck, some of them were released at a time when Disney wasn’t doing 2D animation in theaters at all.

And as far as the other claims go, I think most if not all of them are very good films in their own right. And in some cases, I’d say they were actually better than the originals (Cinderella III comes to mind). Why they made so many sequels/midquels to movies that weren’t really that popular to begin with (Brother Bear, The Fox and the Hound, etc.) I’m not sure, but it never did any harm.

It’s sad that John Lasseter seemed to agree with the criticism when he pulled the plug on direct-to-video movies. And now that Disney’s been pumping out live-action remakes, the controversy seems so silly and pointless now. The remakes may not be cheaply-made, but they’re definitely cash grabs, and without a doubt disrespectful. (Just watch any of the direct-to-video films, and you’ll see a special thanks to the original artists in the end credits! The remakes give them diddly-squat.) But what makes things different now is that, unlike before, it feels like only a small number of people seem to think so. The box office numbers show that everyone else doesn’t seem to give a darn, and are more than willing to give the bigwigs at Disney more money to pump out more remakes.

I’ve heard the argument “it’s not made for you” and “the originals still exist, they’re not getting replaced” repeated ad nauseum, as if that really disproves the real issues these remakes have.

What happened between then and now that brought about these kind of apologists anyway? It seems like it’s been happening all over pop culture discourse in general- people who can’t see the problems with a piece of media, and will bend over backwards defending it. Sometimes it feels like you can’t criticize anything without somebody jumping on you and telling you that the people who made it can do no wrong and should be practically worshipped. (Of course, there's also the opposite type of person, who seems to think that they can do no good and that everything they make is terrible. I can’t decide which is more annoying.)