Still my (Park’s) turn to answer questions from Barb! Today, Barb mostly asks about Disney and Marvel stuff.
Barb: What’s your favorite old-school live action Disney film?
Park: Oh dang… Tron counts, right?
Barb: I think that my favorite might be Pollyanna, because it’s a problem-solving film. One perky kid can change the world.
Barb: Damned right, Tron counts!!!!
Barb: So, Tron? Back when I met you, you were the only other person I knew who understood what a great film Tron was.
Park: Well I’d certainly watched it enough times. Remember, a family friend gave a VHS tape with three films on it: TIME BANDITS, TRON, and Disney’s original animated ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Tron got watched the most.
Barb: Well, of course. Wait, Time Bandits must have been your first David Warner film!
Park: Actually, yes. I hadn’t thought about it that way before.
Barb: Man, I love David Warner. Just hearing the voice work he did on Batman: TAS still gives me shivers.
Barb: I’m not sure if I’ve seen Alice in Wonderland. My experience with the old Disney animated features of a certain era is limited. I’ve never seen Cinderella, although I can sing bits of the soundtrack. I’ve never seen Lady and The Tramp. You were the one who showed me The Sword in the Stone, which I loved. You also were the one that showed me The Jungle Book, as you know how much I love Phil Harris’s voice work.
Park: (Looks up cast) Oh, and [Time Bandits was] technically my first Ralph Richardson film.
Park: Oh, and John Cleese as Robin Hood, I’d forgotten that.
Park: It might be worth sitting through Alice in Wonderland some time with half an eye/ear.
Barb: You know who he plays? Ralph Richardson, I mean? The butler in The Fallen Idol, about the kid who sees the butler’s wife die under suspicious circumstances.
Park: Of course! “Baines!!!”
Park: Except here [in Time Bandits] he’s the All Mighty!
Barb: Phil Harris plays Little John and O’Malley, the Alley Cat. The Aristocats is criminally underrated. I mean, more people talk about The Rescuers than they talk about O’Malley and company. One of the reasons I love that film is because it reminds me of Emil and the Detectives. Remember when we watched Emil together? That was so much fun!
Park: Of course!
Barb: Oh, it was such a pretty film, seeing France in color. And it was suspenseful, too.
Park: Do you remember that Rescue Rangers was basically a team-revamp of The Rescuers? Mice (and things) banding together to help those in need? It’s a fact I thought of at the start and then I constantly forget it and then re-remember and then forget again.
Barb: Oh, yeah, that’s right! I didn’t watch Rescue Rangers that much. I was too obsessed with the original Duck Tales and Darkwing Duck.
Barb: I loved the early Duck Tales and felt skeptical about Darkwing until I saw that Launchpad was going to be a character on it, then I gave it a chance… and I was HOOKED.
Park: Darkwing is objectively better. Rescue Rangers had its moments, but I don’t ever need to revisit it.
Barb: During that era, Disney was doing great things with their animated TV shows, taking risks, like Gargoyles, DC gave us Bat: TAS and Superman. And what did Marvel bring us? A badly animated X-Men cartoon. Oh, the stories were good, but would it have killed Marvel to have put the effort that Disney and DC and other kids’ shows did during the era? I mean, come on, even the Men in Black cartoon had better animation!
Barb: But, I’ve given you that lecture before, many, many times.
Barb: I love you, Marvel Man, and I like a lot of Marvel because you got me into all of it, but I’m still cynical about portions of the “Merry Marvel Marching Society”, let us say.
Park: You can lecture all you want, baby. Besides, the audience hasn’t heard it.
Barb: LOL. Well, now they have.
Park: My problem with X-Men: The Animated Series was it had all of X-History to choose from, and they started early on with the Genosha stuff, after Claremont was spreading himself WAY WAY too thin. All their plot thefts (and all their costume-design thefts) looked good to them from their ’90s perspective, which means they were BAD.
Barb: All the Marvel shows of that era looked like crap. Remember the Spider-Man cartoon? Aunt May looked like a real estate agent and Mary Jane had one ugly outfit with a turtleneck that the animators made her wear ALL OF THE FREAKING TIME!
Park: What made the X-Men animated series work– not that it always worked– was the pre-1990 stuff that slipped in anyway.
Barb: Yeah, but at least I learned who the X Men were, which helped me understand what you were talking about.
Park [quoting the television show Brooklyn 9-9]: THAT OUTFIT WAS ERA-APPROPRIATE.
Barb: No, it was NOT!!! It was an eye-sore!
Park [referencing the television show Will and Grace]: Which is to say that the piggy people thought piggies were pretty.
Barb: Oh, yeah. I see. Ha ha ha.
Barb: Remember how the way they drew Peter Parker on that show made him look a lot like you did when I met you?
Park: Peter’s hair never looks bad even though he wears a spandex mask that covers his whole head like at least 7 hours a day. Must be a spider-power.
Barb: And so did Frank Miller’s Daredevil, come to think of it. Frankly, I think his work on Daredevil is the best thing Miller has ever done.
Park: Daredevil’s hair usually looks at least as good as Pete’s even though he wears a mask that covers his hair like at least 7 hours a day. Must be the ninja training Stick gave him.
Barb: Your hair is exactly the same way, handsome. Were you bitten by a radioactive spider before I met you?
Park: No, but my heart is pure.
Barb: Oh, like Longshot in the X-Men comics!
Barb: Now, I think that’s enough for another column/newsletter or whatever. I’m proud of you getting the news that your at-risk students are learning to read, comprehend, and write on a college level. You make the world a better place, baby, and I love you for it!
Barb: Your heart is, indeed, pure. No purple laser-saber for you, baby! The Dark Side of the Force gave up when it met you.