Sunday, November 06, 2005

Chicken Little

Question: what does Chicken Little have in common with The Passion of the Christ?

Update (Sunday, 23.13): Jim West gets the prize for the most entertaining answer in Biblical Theology; I also liked anonymous commenter's "The title character announces the coming of the end, suffers mockery and condemnation, and ends up saving the world through his actions?", which was in fact better than the real answer, correctly guessed by David, that the music for each was composed by John Debney. Like all the most serious film-goers, I'm a credit watcher. One of the big puzzles to an English viewer about this film, though, is why all the other characters retain their repetitive surnames, Foxy Loxy, Goosey Lucy, etc., but there is a failure of the imagination on Chicken Little, who in the UK is Chicken Licken.

Meanwhile, Crystal asks what The Passion of the Christ has in common with The Matrix Reloaded. Monica Bellucci?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a b in both and an n in neither? No? How about: The title character announces the coming of the end, suffers mockery and condemnation, and ends up saving the world through his actions?

crystal said...

Since I don't know the answer, I'll ask another question ... what does The Passion of the Christ have in common with The Matrix Reloaded?

Anonymous said...

You know that whole Chicken Licken/Little thing has been bothering me since I first heard about the film. Is the standard story over there told of Chicken LIttle then rather than Chicken Licken, or is it just a disneyfication?

Stephen C. Carlson said...

I've always heard the story here in America as "Chicken Little."

The name "Chicken Licken" conjures up the old motto of Kentucky Fried Chicken: "Finger-Lickin' Good!" If I saw a movie with a "Chicken Licken" as the main character, I'd get hungry in a hurry for some extra crispy fried chicken.

crystal said...

Yep - Monica Bellucci. Then there's all that stuff about her character's husband, the Merovingian, and the Da Vinci Code ... :-)

Peter T Chattaway said...

I've always heard "Chicken Little", too. This new film is the second Disney production to bear this title; the other was a wartime propaganda cartoon produced in 1943, and recently released on the DVD set Walt Disney on the Front Lines.

Debney also does the music for Zathura, but instead of ripping off Peter Gabriel, he rips off John Williams.

The fact that Monica Bellucci played the consort to an alleged descendant of Mary Magdalene in the Matrix sequels and then played Mary Magdalene herself in The Passion of the Christ, just a few months later, is one of the all-time best cinema in-jokes, however unintended it may have been.