r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 3d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) False advertising

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  1. The marketing makes it seem like the movie is about Austin (the unbreakable boy) who is autistic, but rather it's about his prick of a father who caused a drunk driving accident
  2. The talking kangaroo was included in all of the trailers and the main poster but was only a hallucination and was seen for like 30 seconds (Kangaroo Jack)
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750

u/Motor-Travel-7560 3d ago edited 3d ago

Back in the days of video stores, 8 year old me picked up this DVD because the back of the box described it as a film where animals build their own farm. It said the movie would "leave the whole family squealing with delight."

I ended up learning that they used to make glue out of horses.

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u/Motor-Travel-7560 3d ago edited 3d ago

PS: I found it. The back of the box makes Animal Farm sound like a feel-good family comedy, but the actual movie follows the gruesome events of the book fairly closely, including the part where they display Old Major's rotted skull on a pike.

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u/DMercenary 3d ago

"leave the whole family squealing with delight" Its like whoever wrote the blurb didnt actually watch the movie.

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u/Cup_Otter 3d ago

Well the squealing is probably accurate to the pigs

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u/AngelicaSpain 3d ago

That sounds more like a description of Walter Brooks' Freddy the Pig books. These are about talking animals who live in harmony with the human farmer. There's no mention of what usually happens to domesticated pigs on farms. But since the intelligent, resourceful Freddy keeps getting involved in various interesting and potentially lucrative activities like learning magic tricks and becoming a detective, it's easy enough to see why Farmer Bean is willing to keep him around, if only for entertainment purposes, even without prompting from unusually literate spiders.

Unfortunately no movies seem to have been made based on this series, which was published starting in the late 1920's.

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u/ComedyOfARock 3d ago

Now I know Hallmark made the live action

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

To think Hallmark of all studios would make a mostly faithful and appropriately dark adaptation of Animal Farm

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u/One_Smoke 2d ago

Man, they say nothing about the actual plot.

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u/Snoo_72851 3d ago

I remember I mentioned reading this book in high school and the class asshole started laughing at me for reading kids' books about little animals who are friends and shit.

I chose not to correct him, of course.

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u/Saphl 3d ago

Should have mentioned it's a book that English Teachers assign lol

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u/nintendo_shill 3d ago

I just came back from wikipedia and just learned that the older Animal Farm movie was funded by the CIA wtf

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u/HarrisonTheBarbarian 3d ago

I mean...an anti Stalinism book being made into a film during the start of the Cold War...yeah, I'm sure it was CIA backed and probably did more damage to communism than the Bay of Pigs ever did.

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u/DontTellMyOtherAccts 3d ago

You're gonna have a fair few rabbit holes to fall down if you think that's the only culture war they fueled.

If you're looking for the next hole, try their funding of the Abstract Expressionism movement (as a direct opponent of Russian Realism)!

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u/Hestiathena 3d ago

If any rabbit-chasers really wanna get mad at the CIA, look into how they weaponized religion for the sake of Capitalism and American Colonialism.

Their operation continued the exploitation and destabilization of much of the global south, increased the power and influence of Evangelicalism abroad and at home, added fuel to the rise of the Religious Right and the Reagan era, and I will despise the CIA forever for it.

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u/cheesiemelon 3d ago

sorry as an art history lover who has never heard of this, WHAT

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u/DontTellMyOtherAccts 3d ago

Lol, you should look into the events for all the details, but the short version is that at that time wasn't just about military and diplomatic hegemony, it was also about cultural hegemony as well.

Russian Realism was looking like the next favorite to take that crown, and the CIA was not about to just lie down and let that happen.

So they developed an operation that involved, amongst other things, reading Rockefeller in to (use his effectively infinite money and social influence to) play the role of an ardent patron of artists in the US's new movement: Abstract Expressionism™.

Everything from major US gallery shows to works going on international tours through major global centers of intellectual thought really was funded and facilitated by Rockefeller's bankroll and connections, but it was the CIA's clandestine Fine Art Academia psyop orchestrations he was funding and CIA agents/assets his connections were opening doors for.

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u/cheeseburgerandfrie 3d ago

Party in the CIA

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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 3d ago

Ah, there's my childhood movie.

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u/Big-Investigator8501 3d ago

Wait till you hear about whale oil.

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u/cosmicomical23 3d ago

Wait till you hear about shark fins.

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u/Big-Investigator8501 3d ago

Shark fins doesn't really count cause it's just cartilage, and is mainly used in traditional Chinese medicine. Whale oil and horse glue were genuinely useful. If we're talking about useless animal torture, I could cite foie gras, ortolan, and eating live monkey brains.

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u/amaya-aurora 3d ago

I’m sorry, eating what?

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u/Big-Investigator8501 3d ago

It's as horrifying as the time they found a orangutan that was shaved and forced into prostitution.

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u/amaya-aurora 3d ago

HELLO?

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u/Big-Investigator8501 3d ago

Darkness my old friend.

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u/cosmicomical23 3d ago edited 3d ago

The catch the shark, cut their fins and throw it back in the sea, sometimes still alive, to sink to the bottom unable to swim, to slowly  die.

So you can have shark fin soup.

It's as horrifying as it sounds, and they try to pretend it doesn't happen anymore but it still does.

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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 3d ago

What gets me about that is... apparently glass noodles are a pretty much perfect substitute for them. Indistinguishable.

I used to go to a Chinese Restaurant (a very nice one, although the prices did not reflect their high quality. It was cheap enough for me to go to often despite being broke from birth) and the owner had been a high society chef when she was young. Her husband I believe was as well, but I know she was.

One day she offered to bring me some shark fin soup and I declined due to the whole cutting fins off live sharks. She was horrified and told me "Oh no, no. I do not use real shark fishy! Noodles are just as good. You know, even the fanciest in China cannot tell difference?"

I did try it with the noodles. It was kinda meh? I mean, it tasted nice. But it didn't taste "leave a shark to suffer and die in the ocean" nice...

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u/Big-Investigator8501 3d ago

These foods are rarely about taste. Instead, they're consumed more for their supposed medicinal and aphrodisiac properties.

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u/cross_the_threshold 3d ago

No, shark fin is consumed because of its texture. Chinese cuisine places more emphasis on variety of texture than most Western cuisines. Shark fin is considered one of four seafood delicacies which are all acclaimed for their unique texture and lack of taste, meaning the flavor comes from whatever you’re cooking it with.

This is also the appeal of bird’s nest soup, the texture.

There’s certainly some random folk beliefs about it helping qi or whatever, but those folk beliefs extend to every food humans have ever eaten because people make up bullshit to justify eating one food over another all the time. It’s not what’s driving the practice.

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u/Big-Investigator8501 3d ago

My bad, I ain't Chinese so I can't argue. however, the alternative medicine aspect is always present in the articles I read. I distinctly remember the virgin boy egg, and baby mice wine being used for medicinal purposes.

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u/wolfguardian72 3d ago

Oh god! Not the dolphins!!

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u/Kicktoria1989 3d ago

I remember renting this at my local grocery store and thought it was a sequel to Babe. It's on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5JgD8AhRjs&t=24s if you ever want to open those old wounds lol Also the intro soundtrack is still so good.

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u/Motor-Travel-7560 3d ago edited 3d ago

I did actually open those old wounds a couple years ago, since I'm a middle/high school English teacher now and I teach Animal Farm. I wanted to know which adaptation to show my students, so I rewatched it along with the 1950's animated one.

The voice cast and music are excellent, and the visuals once Napoleon has taken over are extremely creepy. It's a decent adaptation imo, just not one that's appropriate to market like it's a Muppet movie.

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u/twinairsigns 3d ago

I remember my dad renting this for me when I was a kid. I particularly remember the scene where two humans are going at it while I’m awkwardly watching this with my dad’s roommate. 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️Good times lol

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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 3d ago

Huh. I had no idea there was a live action Animal Farm.

The one I grew up with was animated. And absolutely horrifying too. My mom bought it at a yard sale and would put it on before she made me have a nap when I had my first bout of whooping cough. I assumed being feverish made it more upsetting, so watched it again as a teenager.

Nope, turns out the fever was protecting me.

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u/97GeoPrizm 3d ago

I know I watched this, but the only bit I can recall is my annoyance at the tacked on happy ending. I grew up with 50s animated version that pulls no punches.

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u/Motor-Travel-7560 3d ago

Tbf, neither is as bleak as the original book. 1950's version has the animals stand up to the pigs and 1999 has the pigs' regime crumble over time, only to be replaced by a happy new family. 1950's version was probably changed because they couldn't let the communists win, while the 1999 version was changed because it was a Hallmark film.

Original novel just has the animals look into the house, and realize that they can't tell the pigs apart from the humans anymore. Pigs win. Game over.

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u/sonicparadigm 2d ago

I always thought the 1999 version was an update that added the fall of the Soviet Union

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u/Motor-Travel-7560 2d ago

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I just assumed Hallmark wanted to shoehorn in a happy ending.

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u/backcloset 2d ago

that "squealing with delight" line is such a hilariously cruel way to describe an adaptation of Animal Farm of all things lmao

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u/WeirdStarWarsRacer 3d ago

Similar thing happened to little me

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u/Punk_Boi4737 3d ago

ahh yes I remember watching this. I knew the plot but that horse scene was so sad and jarring :( poor Bruiser

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u/lostinmirrormere 2d ago

My mother put on that movie for me and my sister (ages around 4 and 6) bc "talking animals = kids movie". I'm 30 now and still have an irrational fear of hogs.