where it really "takes itself seriously" are the genuinely emotional parts like the panic attacks
Like people constantly talk about death as a character, they talk about the panic attack, they talk about the insert violence, they talk about the cancerous animation ripped from spiderverse as if its an indication of "mature storytelling" shit like that, I can understand if most of it is drummed up nonsense by soyjacks and adult infants. However here's my problems with setting it as a precedent for adult animation. (I'm gonna be a bit autistic, bear with me)
When you talk about the actual maturity of the disney renaissance or anime or whatever, they always include a level of drama, shock value and downright dark subject matter. Most of the disney renaissance movies and animated movies of the time are either rehashed classical literature or inspired by classical literature. That contributes to the actually mature concepts like war, suffering, jealousy, hate things like that which combined with the skilled animation made them almost timeless.
The little Mermaid is adapted from Hans Christian Andersen
Beauty and the beast is an adaptation of the french fairy tale and partially inspired by the french movie from the 50s
Aladdin is the 5th remake of the thief of baghdad
The lion king is inspired by Hamlet
Hunchback is an adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel
Hercules is from greek mythology
Pocahontas is a fictionalized account of a real story
Tarzan is from Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp
Mulan is from Chinese myth
Atlantis The Lost Empire was an attempt to combine Indiana Jones and Jules verne
The Emperors New Groove is from Aztec and Meso American myth
Treasure planet is from Treasure Island
Brother bear is inspired by King Lear
Prince of Egypt is a Ten Commandments Remake
Sinbad is from the Arabian Nights and inspired by Classic adventure stories
Anastasia is from Russian myth
So on and so forth, there are outliers like Lilo and Stitch but theyre almost non existent. There are plenty of myth and classical literature which will still work in animation, which I want to see personally, things like Faust, the myth of Siegfried and Journey to the west. The point is mature concepts like regicide, death, destruction, genocide, guilt, loss, hate etc come from drama and drama comes from recycling aspects of myth and literature, its literally impossible to invent on spot from a post modernist standpoint.
The problem with modern adult animation and animation in general is theres no heart, theres no understanding of actual maturity and mature concepts, all of it is just surface level snark snark edge. That said how does this contribute to Puss in boots being "mature"? It does not, theres none of those dark concepts, theres no regicide, no genocide, no threat to life, no redemption, no actual dramatic elements. The closest the movie comes to that is the fact that puss is being taught to value his life instead of wasting it, thats it. Its a good message but its not a mature concept being explored or even if it was a mature concept, its done much better with depictions of death, depression and nihilism in things like A Christmas Carol (Im 200% sure this movie is very much inspired cause they literally inserted a character called death). The filmmakers wont go that distance cause theyre scared of it being too risky and unsafe to do, being cucked basically. People praise death as a character but hes very surface level when it comes to his actions. Theres an inherent meta understanding from an audience POV that Death wont kill puss or wont harm him significantly except probably kill his ego, which just kills the mood and kills the anticipation for drama. So no matter puss being scared, the red eyes, whistling, fights and blood or whatever, you know nothing will actually change, nothing will contribute to actual dramatic impact. That sucks and makes the whole experience, just another kids movie albeit one with some extra punch. Its not on the level of something like Klaus or an old disney movie cause of lack of risk, drama and impact.
And the movie's hardly "legitimizing" mental illness by showing it- it's just using a symptom of illnesses like anxiety as a plot device because it fits (and the writers likely have experience with it). If it was one of like 5 recent movies with an explicitly positive or "normalizing" slant when regarding this kind of stuff I'd agree, but as far as I can tell it's an outlier in a sea of many movies without this kind of stuff and that's why it's getting attention in the first place.
Movies and fiction in general have been pushing intrinsic relatability instead of behavioral relatability for a while now. The reason idealistic characters work in fiction is cause people want an escape from real life. But in that escapism they want characters who behave like them, characters who see the world like them, not characters who look or feel like them. One aspect of pushing intrinsic relatability other than the skin color, gender and fucking preferences is mental illness. This is something which originated back in 2014-15 with people trying to seem relatable and cool by making their minor character flaws into mental illnesses, self diagnosing and creating hugboxes, all that nonsense. All that is mainstream now and relatability is attributed to things like that, not character. Now Puss as a character can be scared shitless of a character like Death, thats perfectly fine but turning that fear into a physical intrinsically medical manifestation like a panic attack is an explicit attempt to push intrinsic relatability and court people with said intrinsic relatability instead of relatability through character or values. Its classic hugbox bait and hugbox behavior, as actual people at least 10 years ago wouldnt talk about their mental illnesses publicly, wouldnt even try to force convert their character flaws into mental illnesses for relatability. I can definitely say the writers are trying to normalize mental illness as good writers usually make characters idealized with less intrinsic relatability, cause they realize people look upto ideal characters. But with the current crop of writing and artistic talent, we are more likely to get characters with tons of chronic illnesses instead of character flaws.
