UselessPieceOfShit
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2021
The problem with Wogglebug is that he is not a fun character. He doesn't really have a kid appeal and is quite boring for adults.Early on she listened to what we said... kinda. Like in the first movie where we meet the Wogglebug, Sylvie is kneeling down and because of the wonky physics of the app she's using her dress spazzes out for a moment. Cynthia didn't see that and needed us to point it out. Same as the tits on the Mermaid, the elf looking like Link or one shot where the elf's face just twists into some grotesque mask. She changed all those things because we told her. But when it comes to her vision namely on how the Wogglebug should be portrayed she adamantly refuses. And so Woggie comes off as an unpleasant individual.
Of course part of the issue is Cynthia doesn't understand people so she doesn't understand how normal people react to certain things. As a result what she sees as being something positive about the Wogglebug comes off as being obstinate and know-it-all to everybody else.
I'd figure kids would like a kid hero in a movie. Well, we have Sylvia as audience's surrogate, but her companion Wogglebug is fucking boring. Adults in kid's media should be cool and adventurous. And be hip in "how do you do, fellow kids" way. Kinda how we have teen turteles in TMNT but also we have old mentor Splinter. Except he is not some boring ass granda, he is badass mutated warrior who happens to be old. Who wants an adult in a kid movie who acts like a boring jerkass and teaches you good manners? Bleh. Kids watch cartoons because they show other kids going on adventures and having fun WITHOUT adults watching over them.
You don't even need to make smart characters act smart. Like how Reed Richards is the smartest man in Marvel comics, but he acts as a spastic idiot around people. Still readers think that he is smart, it's his trademark really. Same thing can be done with Wogglebug. I think it would be an interesting thing to make him autistic actually. This way Cherie can handwave him acting stupid as a sign of autism. But make him a savant, so he can show his intelligence as a scientist or some sort of inventor. She doesn't even need to do reaserch, as she can just explain all his inventions as magic or some novel Genoma science. Actually making him autistic would give her some cred, as Woggie can be marketed as a represantation of autistic people. It can be taken further, like how Sylvia is autistic too, and doesn't go along with her peers well, but older spastic Wogglebug who learned how to deal with people shares his experience with Sylvia. Idk, that sort of thing.And that's one of the biggest issues with it namely she can't write the Wogglebug in a believable way. She's trying to write for a character who is supposed to be smart but she's not smart enough to do so.
I'm actually reminded of a movie called "The Genius Club" which was written and directed by Tim Chey who's a born again Christian. Basic plot is you have a dozen people all with IQs over 200 and are the smartest people in the world... and just so happen to all be not only living in the United States but close enough to where the action takes place. They're recruited by the government to help solve all the world's problems because they're all so smart. The scene where Stephen Baldwin is introduced he's playing chess in the park with some guy who we find out afterwards was something like the chess champion at MIT or some big name University. He gets into a fool's mate. For those that don't know how to play chess this is checkmate within the first five moves or so. The chess champion is astounded by this and can't figure out how it was possible. Everybody who has learned chess has, at one point in their lives, been on the receiving end of one. And a chess champion would have seen it coming from a mile away. That's what we can expect from that movie. The "geniuses" talk like normal people think geniuses talk. They use a lot of big words. Or they demonstrate their genius by solving grade school riddles. You need an actual genius, or one that understands them, if you want to write for them otherwise it comes off as stupid.
That's Cynthia's biggest stumbling block. She's not clever enough to come up with something original. She's not good enough to write Woggie as being so super smart and amazing. Instead she just has people, and Woggie, say how great he is when he really hasn't done anything extraordinary.
P.S. I actually mentioned Reed Richards from Fantastic Four and he is an interesting character to compare to Wogglebug. In 90s and early 2000s he was written as rude turbo-autist with loose morals and kinda off-puting personality, pretty similar to Wogglebug. But more modern comics show him as a more positive guy who loves his family and always tries to do the right thing, even if it's not a morally good thing to do. Kinda how you take a jerkass character (like Wogglebug), but make him somewhat nicer (which can be done with Wogglebug).