Short Circuit Season 2, the review
Short Circuit Season 2
Short Circuit Season 2 is about to land on Disney Plus, the streaming platform from Disney. After a first season of 14 short films, on August 4th 5 new short films from the “Short Circuit” program will be available on Disney +. Where will the experimentation at Disney lead this time?You can see all Disney, Star, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic content exclusively on Disney Plus. To subscribe to the platform, click here.
Short Circuit is a Disney program running since 2016 that allows all Disney Animation employees to submit a proposal for a short film. The proposal is anonymous, so the Short Circuit committee only has to evaluate the idea and its potential. The authors of the selected proposals are then assigned a (tight) budget and a team of talents to bring a short film of (approximately) 90 seconds to the screen.
Disney therefore confirms its interest in developing new talents using short films. , in which small masterpieces are often found. In fact, Corto Circuito is not the only experimental program from Disney, but joins the SparkShorts project by Pixar, reserved for shorts made with 3D animation such as the moving Wing, and Launchpad, dedicated to live-action shorts.
The new shorts
The second season of Short Circuit contains 5 shorts.Dinosaur Barbaro: directed by Kim Hazel. For Dinosaur Barbarian, fighting evil is part of everyday work, but what happens when it comes to taking out the trash? Sometimes even a superhero needs cleaning.
Going home: directed by Jacob Frey. A story that talks about growth and the meaning of home and that sees a young adult return repeatedly to his hometown, but with each new return he must face the inevitable: change.
Pedestrian crossing: directed by Ryan Green. A law-abiding citizen must call upon his inner strength to cross the street at a traffic light that will never change color.
Songs to sing in the dark: directed by Riannon Delanoy. Two creatures that live deep inside a dark cave collide in a sonic battle. When things get more intense, they realize they are much stronger together.
# 2 for Kettering: directed by Liza Rhea. On a dreary, ordinary morning, a girl learns how the power of laughter can lift even the grumpiest of her bus mates on the journey to Kettering.
Short Circuit Season 2, the review
The premise of Pedestrian Crossing is interesting, there is almost a satirical vein, even if the story unfolds on known canons and gags already seen: funny, yes, but not surprising. The initial montage is also amusing, showing the evolution of life on earth from unicellular beings to the protagonist, a small and "average" man who carries out a small rebellion by deciding not to obey a pedestrian traffic light. As if to say: "eons spent to evolve, and then we let ourselves be commanded by a traffic light!"Dinosauro Barbaro is notable for the choice to tell the story as if it were the theme of a cartoon and not the cartoon itself, with a soundtrack modeled to stay in the lead like the theme of the 80s cartoons. However, one wonders how much the nostalgia effect weighs in the vision of this short, and whether it will not seem simply anachronistic to the new generations.
Among the most appropriate choices is the editing of Tornare a casa, which manages to convey with great technical skill the sensation of the changing world, and not in a continuous and gradual way but in great leaps, given how infrequently the protagonist can return to his hometown.
This time too, the shorts touch almost all the emotional chords, but again Going home has a different tone than all the others for the delicate sadness it manages to convey. All eyes will get moist, but for off-site and expats it will be a real punch in the stomach, lightened slightly by the short post-credits scene that hints at the traditional Disney circle of life.
The style ranges from the loud and colorful 80s graphics of Barbarian Dinosaur to 3D graphics of Pedestrian Crossing, Returning Home and The No. 2 for Kettering (the latter with claymation effect, animated plasticine). Above all, Songs to sing in the dark is a feast for the eyes. It is the most experimental short and pushes the boundaries of traditional animation with the use of sounds that become volumes and lines of neon in a completely dark world.
