A/N: I originally planned this to set within RWBY's dreams, but I changed my mind.
In this fifty-sixth review episode, team RWBY review and watch the animated Illumination Entertainment adaptation of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, as they soon ponder the question: how can you dumb-down a story intended for 3 year olds and audiences?
In Loving Memory of Betty White (January 17, 1922- December 31, 2021)
Team RWBY's Commentary of The Lorax (2012) (Part 1)
BEACON ACADEMY
APRIL 20, 2022
One fine day, team RWBY had recently watched the Illumination Entertainment film of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, and unfortunately the four of them were not very pleased by how the movie's faithfulness to the book was treated.
Ruby soon started off by rhyming, "We are Team RWBY. We speak for the Seuss. Observing how all of this BULLSHIT got loose!"
"The Lorax, a book that's read by a ton, has been ripped into shreds, and can't be undone.", Yang contemplated and rhymed.
Blake then rhymed next, "The timelessly written book for all ages, succumbs to the dumb of the focus-group cases!", thinking of going to their Professor Ozpin's office in the academy.
"Well, we're standing up for the small hairy orange, we're going on up there and... You know, we're done rhyming.", decidedly rhymed Weiss, the four heading off to the professor's office.
When the four girls finally reached Ozpin's office, the four of them saw professor Ozpin and general James Ironwood having a chat until the four of them arrived.
"Didn't expect you four to come.", Ironwood said.
Ruby argued, "You think Universal can get away with dumbing-down Dr. Seuss like they did with The Cat and the Hat and The Grinch?! Don't you see the harm they're doing to the wonderful world Dr. Seuss created?"
"I am fully aware of it, but the box office earnings doesn't seem to agree and audiences love it...", theorized Ironwood sternly.
Yang continued, "But that's what's making it worse! Do we really have to show you the obvious problems they're causing?"
"I presume you're going to review The Lorax movie?", asked Ozpin.
Blake and Weiss look at each other and answer, "Yes, we are.", sitting down on office chairs and introducing, "This is The Lorax."
The Lorax
"We open in Thneedville as the credits roll, a town made completely out of plastic and where no trees exist at all.", Ruby starts off and watching the film's opening song Thneedville before sighing, "I'd like to thank this film for making me realize how sick I am of over-the-top upbeat musical intros. Nothing wrong with the opening to The Muppets movie in 2011.", and soon introduces after, "So we see a Gap Kids commercial named Ted Wiggins meet up with an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial named Audrey voiced by timeless acting giants Zac Efron and Taylor Swift.", soon heaing Audrey and Ted's voices during the next excerpt of the film when they meet up.
Yang then remarked, "Wow, that is not the voice I expected to come out of that kid. You know, because, a twelve-year-old boy should always be voiced by a TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD MAN, right? We're pretty sure they didn't do that in The Iron Giant, right? It'd be very funny, but we're sure as hell that it wouldn't quite fit...", soon revealing, "It turns out this girl is an artist who paints pictures of trees, and dreams one day being able to see a real one.", with Ted asking Audrey what would happen if some guy were to give her one tree as she answered she would marry him on the spot.
"Well, that depends. Does she mean it literally, or does she have a good sense of humor, or- Nothing else is going to be revealed about her in this movie, is it?", guessed Blake, overhearing Audrey say the touch of the trees' tufts were softer than anything, "Well, any other cliche'd characters or, as I like to call them, cliche-acers you'd like to get out early in the movie?", thinking, "The hip rockin' granny? Okay. What else? ...The embarrassing parent! Painful. And- Oh, of course! The corporate bad guy who owns the town with no redeeming elements whatsoever. You could call him the missing Captain Planet villain, Shempy!"
Weiss presumes, "Why, he's so evil, he actually wants to sell fresh air to people because their pollution is already destroying the air that they have.", questioning, "Um... Spaceballs did it?", before she lectures, "First of all, if they're gonna use Edna Mode's design sheet from The Incredibles, they should pick a voice that matches. Those vocals match about as well as Ted's voice actor. Isn't the idea of The Lorax that there is no real bad guy? It's just a cautionary tale of when someone, anyone, takes too much without realizing it."
"I assume the original story has characters feel bad about themselves after bad deeds. That is why there are right-and-wrong messages that people remember nowadays...", Ironwood assumes.
The leader of team RWBY reasons, "But maybe people should be confused about it. Hell, maybe what they're doing is confusing them in a different way. When they make their characters less human, they suck out the humanity, meaning people are less likely to see what they could become. Just like a delicate seed can grow a great oak, so can a faulty message grow a big problem."
"Clearly, they show it in a satirical sense, so people think that makes it alright.", Ozpin theorized.
Ruby clarified, "In what way? How does laughing at the bad things they do make it any less bad?", understanding, "But we do understand that is a difficult question, so... Let's just continue.", as they continued the movie, "So Mini-Trump watches the boy leave the town to find a tree, leading him, of course, to the home of the Once-ler.", watching Ted pass by the stone with the engraved carved word Unless.
"Well, there went the surprise of the powerful line that closed out the original- Oh, fuck it! We're just gonna assume nothing in this film is gonna move me at all.", the elder sister of Ruby disappointed.
Ironwood said, "I refuse to believe that...", as the film showed the unseen Once-ler asking Ted why he is here.
"My God, they finally found Bill Watterson!", commented Yang while the Once-ler assumes Ted wants to know what happened to the trees, "So the Once-ler, of course, tells the story about what happened to all the trees, naturally keeping his face hidden throughout the story so, like we said before, he can represent how this can happen to anyone. Anyone watching right no-", before the next snippet showed the movie flashing back to when the Once-Ler was young just as her lilac eyes turned blood red, "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!"
"Are you fucking kidding me!? We don't want to be over-exaggerating.", the female Faunus apologizes, "After all, it is an hour and a half long movie. An hour and a half is a long time to go without seeing your... main character. I mean, it's an adaptation. I got it. There's gonna have to be changes from an adaptation. Fair enough. At the very least, they're making him timeless. Somebody that everyone can look back on years later, and not laugh at for being so incredibly dated and dumb-", as the four suddenly watch the Once-Ler sing and play his guitar, causing them to try not losing their temper as they were about to say something, but couldn't.
The Schnee heiress calmed, "We don't care about that.", taking a deep breath and sighing, "This Once-ler is a super-young, electric-guitar-playing, tight-clothes-wearing, fedora-hat-toting, pop-cultural-referencing, Zach Braff...ing, completely dated product of the times! Bull. Fucking. Shit!"
The six of them then heard the elevator ding as the door opens to reveal Winter Schnee again.
"I've come to talk with Ozpin and Ironwood-", Winter said before seeing her sister Weiss along with her teammates, "Weiss. Girls. What's going on?"
Weiss said, "We were just reviewing the Illumination Entertainment version of The Lorax. Just now, we just evaluated of The OncelLer's character... What would you think of him?"
"The one played by Ed Helms? Well, he is alright... Maybe charming, at least. A misunderstood former villain but he's mostly alright.", verdicted Winter.
Ruby joked, "The Once-ler. More like The Hipster."
"He is clearly not a hipster. Hipsters act like they don't care how they look and then they take seven hours to put their outfits together. He only took six hours.", corrected Winter.
The red-black-haired huntress denied, "We're not sure if even we are considered hipsters by the way we dress, but we could accept it.", shrugging it off.
"You know, you four really are a bit of hipsters.", Ironwood claimed.
Ruby said, "Maybe we are.", continuing, "So the Once-ler comes across a land filled with trees and...painfully obvious Minion backwash...", hearing the Humming Fishes' singing in comparison with the Minions, "...as he starts to chop them all down for his new business.", describing when the Once-ler narrated he had summoned a creature when chopping down one of the trees, "The Danny DeVito cameo!", also noting, "Of course, the Lorax is in one of the trees as all the characters circle around the chopped-down life to mourn its loss."
"Now that's actually a very touching moment that fits the spirit of the book. It's new, it's different, but it keeps to the message, love, and even kinda subtlety of what Seuss was going for.", heartwarmingly said the blonde huntress and then asked, "...How do they fuck it up? Well, CLEARLY we can make the message much more powerful by adding in Mission: Impossible homages!", proving her point as they saw the Humming Fishes sing the Mission: Impossible theme, "...a dozen more of those Minion moments...and the non-violent pacifist Lorax of the original now tried to DROWN our hero in the hopes that that will lead him away! Oh, and don't forget a few more lame-ass pop cultural references!"
The black-haired huntress asked when the present Once-ler asked Ted why weren't they kids breakdancing or playing Donkey Kong, "So Donkey Kong is now officially part of the Dr. Seuss canon? ...I don't know how to feel about that. They are making Seth Rogen play him in the upcoming Illumination Super Mario movie, so why not?"
"So retro...", remarked Winter.
Blake then said, "So the Wilford Brimley Oompa-Loompa feels bad for almost drowning the Once-ler. So he makes it up to him by tearing the shit out of his new home.", seeing the part where the Lorax and the animals in the Once-ler's place as they use his belongings.
"Yes, teaching lessons about staying out of other's environments is made much stronger by invading YOUR environment.", the white-haired huntress says and then abstracts, "So the Once-ler makes a deal with The Lorax that he won't cut down any more trees and that the one he got is enough to sell his product called the Thneed.", watching the clip of the Thneed landing on a girl's hair as it got a cool teen boy's attention as well as two teenage girls who want to have one, "Ah. How advertisers thought marketing for the Lorax would work...and sadly did work."
Ruby imagined, "That reminds me of the upbeat and enjoyable Lego Movie song Everything is Awesome. It has a cool vibe right there.", outlining, "I should point out that it does sometimes cut back to our main leads still suffering from bland-Millennial-itis, but they're so rushed and so generic that you forget about them just as soon as you watch them. I think the most that happens is The Man paints over Flower Girl's artwork.", questioning upon seeing said moment in the movie, "Why? What's that even supposed to accomplish? Is that really gonna make such a big difference?"
"Yeah, it's kinda like saying, 'Oh! You want to see Elsa and Jack Frost together? Well, what if we just put a giant "X" over your fan art?! NOW YOU'LL NEVER EVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN AS LONG AS YOU LIVE! WILL YOU?! WILL YOU?!'", Yang imitated.
Winter sarcastically told, "That would make fans very angry if that happened."
Team RWBY said, "We know."
To be continued...
