⓵ Historical Similarities: Rick and Morty vs. Full Metal Jacket
If the film is compared to a purely visual business, then for the senses, people will undoubtedly love the grand scene, or the carefully carved scene.
Therefore, the director often uses a wonderful title to open up the situation; because once the atmosphere is successfully created, people will enter a state, even if the subsequent plot is not satisfactory, it will not hurt.
But some directors with unique artistic temperament do the opposite. They are more willing to put aside skills and renderings and start with a more restrained and modest scene.
However, it turns out that such directors often have a more stalwart pattern. The seemingly bland prelude is exactly what they did deliberately, just like pushing the boat down the river, first prepare a layer of cushion, because the ups and downs will be more severe later.
The director did not outline a flashy blueprint at the beginning, but let the impact of the plot continue to rise, creating a strong gap. It was like a snowflake that gradually expanded on the way down, and finally brought a roar and collapse.
This is the " gradient " and " snowball " effect.
Usually, the more simplified the method, the more solid foundation is needed. The creator must have a good grasp of the work before he dares to eliminate the atmosphere.
This has also become an independent aesthetic opinion, and there are many people who hold this creative attitude in the film art. Historically, films of this type are Twelve Angry Men, The Exorcist , or Hitchcock 's work. All of them regard deliberate rendering as a contemptible thing, and are keen to create dramatic effects with simple tools. The first of these creations is "Full Metal Shell" .
After a casual opening, a slightly witty shot, the film gradually extends into a grand context, and finally becomes an unparalleled war epic.
However, gradients are not common. First, the business will not favor and encourage Kubrick's approach. Second, a more important factor is that it is rare for a subject, or a director, to successfully create an ascending gradient. This gradient can even be downward and dull if not careful enough.
However, from generation to generation, there are talents and outstanding talents, and art will never truly be silent. There's another amazing director since Kubrick, bringing a wonderful gradient with the same unpretentious approach: Pickle Rick in Season 3, Episode 3 of "Rick and Morty . "
⓶ The flesh and blood battlefield of the sewer
The beginning of an amazing achievement is usually unremarkable, and it can come from household belongings, everyday talk, or frivolous trivia.
As a scientist, being in the lab is Rick's daily routine. But a trivial accident happened that day: Rick turned himself into a pickle on a test bed, and it happened to be a day for family counseling.
As a result of this wayward experiment, Rick lost his limbs and mobility, and he couldn't even turn his body. The family had no choice but to leave him at home alone.
When life gets weaker, accidents follow: it seems that every miniature human encounters a sensitive cat.
Rick was fiddled outside, and after some sun exposure, he was flushed into the sewer by a sudden torrential rain.
The environment here is not as safe as home, full of unexpected factors. As a pickle, Rick's only mouth is movable, which means he can kill a cockroach, probe its neural responses with his tongue, and control its limbs.
Creation is an instinct of genius, and with the help of insect bodies, Rick begins to build a sewer laboratory. He began trapping living creatures in the sewers, assembling their limbs and brains into new bodies of his own.
Slowly, a body of metal, stump, and neural net was born. At this time, the swarms of rats that prey on the sewer swarmed, and the pickled cucumber stretched his new body to start a fight with rodents in this dark underground world.
It was a bloody baptism, splattered with scraps, rust, filth, stumps and entrails, all over Rick's green body.
The pickled cucumber finally had hope of returning to the ground, and he rushed out of the sewers, only to stumble into a heavily guarded building. There are armed men in black and an imprisoned beast. - Pickled cucumbers are about to face a new challenge.
⓷ Like a wild horse
Pickle Rick is the most radical episode in the Rick and Morty series, set in a pickle-ugly world. There are no rules and order here, only primitive turbidity and chaos.
The sewers are the underground jungle world, where filth and violence are concentrated. - It's pipes, gutters, rusted metal, dead cockroaches, rat stumps, mace attached to the body and liver and brain under the sharp blade.
At the same time it is the man in black, the ruthless power and slavery, and the resistance of Jaguar , a fighter like the machete .
What Pickle has experienced is an environment full of predation, traps, and all kinds of unforeseen circumstances; it is the evolution of cold weapons to hot weapons; it is a story of interests and deception, loyalty and betrayal; it is from the underground world to the surface world struggle for survival.
The episode's plot is reminiscent of "The Incredible Shrink Man 1957 ," with the protagonist facing the same existential dilemma. The sewers blocked the sun, and there was a crisis in the obscurity. If the macroscopic world is an orderly universe, the microscopic world can see the undercurrent of life.
In such a situation, Rick burst into his adversity instinct. He is a double genius, with both scientific creativity and raw wildness.
When he used his tongue to open the cockroach's brain and pieced together the body from mouse bones and metal scraps, no one would have expected that the pickled cucumber was being turned into a biochemical monster.
He is also a hero of the sewer. Unlike the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , Rick never uses justice in the name of justice. He is a ruthless executioner.
When the revamped pickled cucumber confronts a horde of wrinkled and wart-covered rodents and slaughtered them, there is an unquenchable frenzy of catharsis.
This is the burst of Wang Yang's unbridled imagination, like a roller coaster rising into the sky, people don't know where to go, and then swooping down in a frantic circling, bringing a heartbeat and vertigo experience. Until the end of the journey, the audience is still lingering in the aftertaste it brings.
⓸ The essence of the text of "Rick and Morty"
Pickle is undoubtedly the most brutal and non-mainstream hero, he cuts all enemies, be it rats or humans. This contains the inheritance of American animation-style violent aesthetics, which is a visual art with strong colors and strong gaps.
However, the artistic value of Rick and Morty is that it is not merely a visual entertainment, its story is built on the three-dimensionality of the idea. The story of "Pickle Rick" obviously does not belong to the humorous desire for destruction expressed by animations such as "Southern Industrial Park" , nor does it shape death and blood into symbols like "Friends of Happy Tree" . The story of the pickled cucumber has its own concept system, and the theme of violence is survival and understanding.
This is reflected in Pickle Rick's side story - family counseling, and this part is also the most outstanding part of the text in "Rick and Morty". From this, we can see the academic rigor of the creative team in this animation. They show the expression of the concept of self-survival through the stories of Rick and Morty, especially in the two scenes of helicopter and psychological consultation:
Scene 1 (helicopter):
When he was about to part with Rick, Jaguar knew that his daughter was dead, and he told Rick that it was too late to tell her that he loved her, but that Rick still had a chance to do it.
Rick replied that they didn't accept that, and if love was a certain level of emotional expression, then the myriad of timelines kept him out of it.
Scenario 2 (psychological consultation):
At the counseling office, the doctor told Rick that his family cared about him.
Rick retorted that he didn't care about counseling, as a scientist he could create everything for himself. And social solutions like psychological counseling appear to be so poor and weak, like giving comfort to livestock.
The psychiatrist acknowledges Rick's undeniable intelligence, but tells Rick that he and his family are used to intellectually justifying the sickness of their family relationship.
Rick's intelligence is both a power and a curse. He is the master of his own universe, but has never really mastered his own mind.
Psychological counseling is a necessary maintenance and clean-up work in a sense; of course, there are more radical paths in this world, such as risk-taking and death, and people will involuntarily make their own choices.
About Rick's family:
The above two paragraphs of dialogue have made an overview of the Rick family, making it the most subtle expression of personality psychology shaped by this animation. It reveals the longing for understanding among people who cling to their own stereotypes:
In a hostile situation, Rick and Jaguar come to an understanding, because they share a common hope of freedom and survival dilemma, and they have a mutual sympathy between fighters.
During the psychological consultation, the doctor pointed out the crux of the Rick family. Although this didn't seem to change the family, they felt each other further, and the doctor spoke out what they couldn't say.
It is naturally difficult for Rick to reach an understanding of society and convention, and he never compromises on his views. He believes that even if society has a reason to exist, it is difficult to change the basic mediocrity, just as psychological counseling has no significant effect. And this has also become an excuse for Rick to avoid emotion.
Beth, however, adored her father, and his independent spirit imprinted on her the brilliance of an idol, so much so that she regarded her father's standards as unquestionable, and stubbornly and blindly defended them.
Rick is ignorant of emotional displays that Beth craves. She is not sure how much positive image she can give her family, so she seeks more recognition from her father, and even thinks that her similar nature to him is also a kind of intimacy.
Conclusion:
"Pickle Rick" is a well-deserved masterpiece in the Rick Morty series besides " Ricklandis S 3-7 ", it shows a complete speculative structure, in which personality psychology and ethical observations are enough to constitute a real world.
This episode is a rendition of a talented duo of textual art and visual entertainment. If the dialogue in the show were organized into an anthology, then "Rick and Morty" should not only get an Emmy, but even a Nobel Prize for it.
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