Quick Fix for Detective Pikachu
May. 20th, 2019 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I went and saw it on Friday and generally had a good time. Still, I feel like there's a really simple fix to a huge issue with the plot.
access_fandom linked to a post that helped me go in prepared, at least, but I gotta say: It could have been avoided.
All we gotta switch is one little thing:
Instead of the company dad being the one who ends up using a wheelchair due to a mysterious illness that we're never told anything about, including whether he's actually over it? It's his son who ends up a wheelchair user.
Suddenly, Bad Dad is doing all of this not so he isn't "trapped" in a wheelchair, but so his son isn't. He never asks his son what he thinks, and he can even keep the creepy Ditto as a personal bodyguard.
At the end of the movie, when everything's fixed, the son can even explicitly tell Bad Dad, "I never felt trapped by my wheelchair. You're the only one who thought I was."
BOOM. BS Ablist Plot fixed.
An even better fix would be to make Tim, the main character, also disabled (possibly an amputee?), but the above fix is more in line with things Hollywood might actually consider. *eyeroll*
(Side note, I occasionally daydream about making a Pokémon hack where the main character is a wheelchair user, and a good percentage of the "You can't progress out of this area until [thing] is taken care of" would be, like, stairs and really narrow walkways and shit. Like how in the current games we're usually blocked by trees you need to cut down or rocks to smash or bodies of water to cross. Suddenly, elevator keys and passwords and teleportation tiles are vital, rather than annoying.)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
All we gotta switch is one little thing:
Instead of the company dad being the one who ends up using a wheelchair due to a mysterious illness that we're never told anything about, including whether he's actually over it? It's his son who ends up a wheelchair user.
Suddenly, Bad Dad is doing all of this not so he isn't "trapped" in a wheelchair, but so his son isn't. He never asks his son what he thinks, and he can even keep the creepy Ditto as a personal bodyguard.
At the end of the movie, when everything's fixed, the son can even explicitly tell Bad Dad, "I never felt trapped by my wheelchair. You're the only one who thought I was."
BOOM. BS Ablist Plot fixed.
An even better fix would be to make Tim, the main character, also disabled (possibly an amputee?), but the above fix is more in line with things Hollywood might actually consider. *eyeroll*
(Side note, I occasionally daydream about making a Pokémon hack where the main character is a wheelchair user, and a good percentage of the "You can't progress out of this area until [thing] is taken care of" would be, like, stairs and really narrow walkways and shit. Like how in the current games we're usually blocked by trees you need to cut down or rocks to smash or bodies of water to cross. Suddenly, elevator keys and passwords and teleportation tiles are vital, rather than annoying.)
no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 04:37 am (UTC)better phrasing for son, though, because lots people do still think "wheelchair-bound" is legit: "The wheelchair doesn't trap me. It frees me."
no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 11:23 am (UTC)I've never been a Pokemon player (though I've seen some of the cartoons, so I'm vaguely familiar with the world), but your game hack reminds me of the King's Quest adventure games I did play, years ago.
When you're a wheelchair user, your entire life is an inventory puzzle games (and ablists' logic is often moon logic).
no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 03:41 pm (UTC)Those are the games where, in the early ones, you have to go down the stairs just right or you fall to your death, right? I remember watching my mom play some of those. Anyway, a lot of Pokémon "dungeons" have a bunch of elevators and stuff you need keys to, especially in the first generation. Er, IIRC.
That sounds about right :/
no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 06:14 pm (UTC)Basically, the moon logic reminds me of some of the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through to get assistance as a disabled person that a normate type can get for the same kind of thing, no questions asked.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 11:09 am (UTC)That fix sounds good, and it would point to those insane parents out there for being insane. We used to have 'helicopter' parents, now there are 'snowplough' parents. This fix would totally put the dad in the catagory of a snowplough-er