Rango is an animated movie that gives a respectful nod to
the western genre. It is a heavily
motion-captured 3D animated movie following the thespian Chameleon who ends up
lost on the highway with no name to himself.
After he escapes death from a hawk, he enters a western styled town and
uses his acting talents to weave a false story for himself and a name: Rango. A lot of the realistic animations are motion
captured by the actors themselves, but they make use of cartoony animation to
push the scenes in the story. The
animation directors paid close attention to these extremes in animation by
executing well enough to not break the suspension of disbelief. Some of the things that are pushed includes
things like stretching, and exaggerating effects. Rango plays along with realism
and cartoon-like moments to create a humor driven movie, and to keep the
suspense of disbelief
The animators plays with cartoony physics for comedic
effects and to increase tensions in certain scenes. One of the scenes where this is employed is
the very beginning when Rango gets pushed out the door, literally. He gets flung out of the car after his owners
get in an accident and lands with the broken glass of his tank on road. If that wasn’t enough, the scenes ramps up to
where he latches onto a truck shortly afterwards. He ends up getting flung from that truck into
a car antenna from the counterbalance and gets flung again into a car
windshield. The directors uses slapstick
to really sell the resiliency of Rango and to ramp up action. Scenes like this are reminiscent of stuff
like the Looney Tunes that also used fast paced slapstick comedy. Another scene where the physics is pushed is
when Rango is dropped inside the bottle from a high height and that impact
didn’t outright squish the frog, or break the glass. When the talons cleaved the Peptobismol
bottle, it cleanly falls over to the side instead of lopping over or fling over
to the direction of the force. The only
possible outcome would be if the bottle had the drag effect, where the motion
was fast enough that the pieces wouldn’t fling away. Another ridiculous scene is when Rango doesn’t
get ripped in two when the hawk was tugging on the rope on his waste with full strength.
Scenes worked in the movie as well as they did because
some characters were given unnatural powers at that time. One scene in particular, the hawk was blinded
by diving into a can and rampages across the wooden settlements in the
chase. The hawk easily bulldozes through
the whole town, despite that hawks are rather light. The hawk carried a ridiculous amount of
momentum for just running around the city, since all the smaller forces of the
buildings should have stopped it earlier.
Another ridiculous feature the hawk sported in the movie was the power
of its claws. When Rango hid in the
bathroom, the hawk swiped away the Peptobismol port-a-potty with one slash of
with its talons. This wouldn’t work in
real life since a hawk’s talons are tailored by evolution to give it grip rather
than swiping power like a feline does.
It would be able to poke holes through it, but slicing isn’t a feature
birds are known for. The armadillo
survives being ran over and walk over to talk to Rango in the movie. This is absurd since it would die in reality,
although one could argue that the armadillo might be a hallucination. Rango had the strength to somehow latch onto
the water tower, despite the much more powerful hawk tugging on the rope attached
to his body. The animal townspeople in
the movie seem to have a ludicrous amount of strength for their size, since
they seem to be able to spin the wheels to turn on the water.
To contrast the cartoony nature of animated films, motion
capture and feasibly possible moments gives audience a visual break. Early in the movie, Rango is dropped by the
hawk when he was inside the bottle. If
he were to fall from that height, he would survive since the speed of his
terminal velocity won’t be fast enough to kill him. Rango is too small to reach a faster terminal
velocity, even with the bottle adding some weight. When Rattlesnake Jake finally meets Rango,
Jake milks his venom into a shot glass to intimidate him. Snakes can be milked of their venom for
research rolling in shattered in half upon hitting sharp rock. The bottle still kept moving because of the
laws of inertia and it also was moving in a constant motion until it hit the
rock. Some of the more unlikely
scenarios include any of the ricochet moments with bullets. Calculating ricochets would involve precise
measurements of the angles and the texture of the objects the bullet is
hitting. Rattlesnake Jake unloads the
bullets from Rango’s gun by hanging the revolver in his tail-gun and shaking
off the bullets. When a revolver’s
cylinder is exposed like that, removing bullets become rather easy.
From the use of motion capture to the use of traditional
animation effects, the directors use these effects to entertain the
audience. The audience won’t really pay
attention to all of these stretches of reality as long as the action remains
tense and the slapstick moments funny.
All of these breaks of reality is what makes animation works to this
day, because why follow all the rules?
Breaking of these laws allow more creative liberties to be taken. This
movie is a criminally underrated gem in my book, since so much of this movie is
well executed. The designs of the
characters are interesting and they employ classic western tropes with almost
surgical precision. The action is well
paced and there never seems to be any unnecessary moments in the movie. Thus, Rango cleverly plays with reality and
fiction to keep the audience entertained without breaking the suspense of disbelief.
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