Mavis X Johnny: Why I HATE the Everyman Trope

the fact that mavis marry johnny is the type of wish fulfillment nerds don't need in their lives mavis is a 10 out of 10 goth wife and that energy is honestly wasted on this franchise and there is a reason that she got a tv show without the socal deadweight holding her down look i like the first hotel transylvania it was a solid six maybe seven out of ten experience with four decent moments a great animation style and being directed by the guy that made samurai jack i am obligated to like this film the sequels though have that direct-to-dvd energy and re-watching them really put a bad taste in my mouth as nearly every decision they made seems designed to annoy me with the biggest annoyance of all being mavis boo johnny just to me johnny is one of the most boring of all tropes who by some miracle isn't voiced by chris pratt johnny is the audience insert aka the every man who gets to go not because they have chemistry but because hollywood wants to lie that an average joe can land a dime without trying it's about time someone took this trip to task and while this isn't the worst example in the world anime it does hit all the hallmarks of it and if we're being honest mavis definitely deserved better than the first hostile workers she met i'm sarcastic course and this is why i hate the everyman trope aka johnny from hotel transylvania now before i go too negative i should at least give you my honest thoughts on mavis and johnny that aren't fueled by whiskey with my astute sober thoughts being that they're fine johnny is a bargain-bin australian who is american for some reason and having actually backpacked through europe i can honestly say i've met this guy like eight different times and smelled him at least 20. he's a world traveling cliff jumping hostile sleeping backpacker who always starts his stories with oh this one time he's not the worst comedic relief you've ever met when your personality is based on being a slacker or stupid you're basically living on borrowed time till everyone hates you johnny has some wise moments but there's nothing there that will stick with you like jake from adventure time and the fact that the main character of the series is adam sandler really keeps him from being anything other than the comedic man child this works in the first film but after they get married and have a kid he enters stupid dad territory which is just the point of no return for me character-wise in contrast we have mavis the 118 year old daughter of dracula and the best thing to happen to party city since scream now in the personality department mavis isn't doing any real heavy lifting she's cute she's caring and still figuring out the world having spent her whole life in disney princess house arrest mavis's biggest desire is to see the world and escape from her smother of a father then she meets johnny who introduces her to pop culture references that aren't old enough to drink making the hipster seem interesting as she has nothing else to compare him to she has some possessive issues she seems to be nice not gonna lie though it's mainly the design for me selena gomez is being herself and the script is just all right but the animators really need to get their hands out of their pants and just pat themselves on the back because they nailed it mavis is just that perfect combination of teen goth that's cute without being forced into trying to be sexy from the haircut to the lipstick it really is just the right amount of everything the fact that she is trapped in the hotel with her lying ass dad gives us all the sympathy we need to like her and the fact that she's surrounded by idiots makes her seem like the level-headed one it's a combination that leads a good impression long after you're done with the film though it does make you misremember how interesting she actually was all i'm gonna say is she's no wednesday adams but mavis is still able to stand out unlike johnny which is by design because johnny is meant to be like everybody fucking else the everyman trope is one of those ideas that is fine in a vacuum it's been used well in stories before and it does have a proper function but has become so overused nowadays that it honestly needs to just lay low for a decade or two the every man is defined as a character who is ordinary enough to be relatable to the average audience member they're not the geniuses or the gods of the story whose smallest problems have world shattering consequences they're the lazy pricks who stare at ubereats for an hour pretending that they'll go pick up dinner when we all know they're just going to pay the extra eight dollars and have it delivered this is the character who is supposed to be as close to the audience as possible they may have something special or unique about them in their background but overall they should be someone you actually meet in real life having that relatability is something you obviously want but pretty quickly the stories feel less like we're following a normal person in a strange new world and more like we're in a world built around the talking piece of mayo making the most bland person in the room the most important being in the universe cause this is what real pandering looks like and people say yes to it every time with the story glorifying them for being an average joke whose modern ways of thinking will save the day because of course it does and in spite of not having a personality they'll somehow be irresistible to every beating heart in a public school sized radius they could build up this character into something interesting by applying culture shock or have them deal with the fact that everything they know is now in question but nah they're going to make pop culture references from 30 years ago so the little league dads feel included in today's films in general this trope is used to give an excuse for exposition provide an audience insert and to keep james marsden's career alive on an average day this trope isn't used well yes it feels like a studio mandate 99 of the time and i am sick of it because it really does give us some of the most unearned romances in history as not only does it have to justify why a badass would date a guy with the charisma of cardboard but it does it in the most scummy and manufactured ways possible from just saying screw it they're in love no explanation to pretending to put an effort by making every man exactly what the other person needs if the romantic interest has a fear of fires he'll be a fireman if they have a fear of drowning he'll be a lifeguard so on and so forth it's a lazy problem meat solution with little care being put into their actual chemistry it's repetitive as all hell and leads to very strong in-cell entitlement on the internet which leads us to exhibit 9000 of this trope johnny what's his face johnny fulfills the role of the everyman in that he's the first real human that the monsters in the hotel have seen humans try to hunt monsters to extinction and now they're just doing it unintentionally the monsters though still assume humanity is out to kill them not realizing that people just got lazy and moved all their rage to twitter dracula built a hotel for monsters to hang out in and wish that they were home free from the worries of humans then johnny shows up and it's dracula's worst nightmare as his daughter is finally legal and he just traumatized her into never leaving the house again in this movie's pg so he can't just kill him so through an increasingly convoluted set of circumstances he keeps joining around pretending to be a monster at which point the hitchhiker's hit modern ways win over the monsters his idiot charm wins over drak and he talks mavis into watching the sun rise he's in a hundred and eighteen years of life a girl who wants to see the world never stood up passed on snazzy they're in love now because the story needs track to be jealous and johnny is just a stand-in to make that happen yeah let's talk about that sunrise because it's pretty much my biggest complaint wrapped up in one seemingly good moment because i actually really like it i think the direction is super good but the more i think about it the more it annoys me as it is kind of ridiculous as it pretty much tells the audience that mavis has spent the last 100 years on standby waiting for a manic pixie dream male to peer pressure into it you can take the scene as symbolic for the new experiences that johnny can lead mavis into showing why she would like him so much that is more of that problem-meat solution romantic storytelling johnny is cute and a goof which is definitely some people's type by directly tying mavis's interest in him to her own personal desire to explore the world makes us feel less like they're in love and more like she's getting something out of this and i'm not disney i'm not gonna complain that maeve is banging the first boy she ever met at least with those stories the goal that they want allowed them to get closer to the guy who happened to have the ride aladdin may have shown jasmine a whole new world but she had a way more complicated dynamic with him as she was aware of the lie reveal from minute one aladdin isn't an every man because he's born to be poor as we're invested in his struggle as he's trying to find his self-worth and how his worth isn't determined by his bank account mavis and johnny don't have any of that complications they just meet she falls in love because he's done all the things she wants to do they imprint on each other because if they're going to mock twilight they might as well borrow its worst plot point ever johnny is your average socal slacker while mavis is the character with the actual wants and desires but because this movie is really about drac all of them turn out to be very shallow and in the sequels where they basically end up retreading the same ideas over and over again it leaves them feeling paper thin and retroactively kind of made me dislike these two together johnny is vampire daughter kryptonite and you just have to not question it it feels manufactured where the story really has to just force these points so that they can get to next beat that they want to like johnny and mavis get married and they end up having a kid together making mavis the mother of two children as johnny is an idiot and they never really add anything to make him more than that even in the fourth newest film that just came out on amazon he's just whatever the plot needs him to be being this super ridiculous man child who's just like losing his mind over getting the hotel so that drak can be whatever the writers want to be when he says hell no to giving him the hotel by pretending that the laws are racist everyone here just exists to serve the plot and that just makes everything worse as johnny goes from this carefree spirit to willing to lie to his wife so his father-in-law can abuse his grandson into having vampire puberty he's gonna fall to his death he's taking his time the everyman can be anything the plot wants it to be with the story rarely taking the extra steps needed to make them interesting or develop them into something that isn't quote unquote relatable dooming them to be a prop for the story and in romans it really has a question why the least interesting man in the room always gets the girl because they want that audience insert and they want to sell you on this idea rather than tell a good story this trope has been used well in the past you have the lego movie you have atlantis in the lost city okay that one's a little bit still white saviorish but the intrigue of the lost city and the bond that forms between milo and keita is really cute and the first film on its own if you like the idea of the vampire wife with her goofy boyfriend go for it totally to have that just for me i got tired of it i'm tired because i see what they're trying to do it makes me tune on every time i watch them i've never been andy sandberg fan so johnny quickly grates on me they don't do anything great with him in any of the films with this just becoming a generic family film time i'll probably never like it still not as bad as anime though i'll make that video one day but i'm not ready to die just yet alright guys that was the video thank you for watching like share and subscribe which by the way the everyman isn't always a guy it just is 9 times out of 10.

Channel: Sarcastic Chorus

Views: 3,144,682

Keywords: hotel transylvania, mavis, Hotel transylvania 4

Id: Lqalwjcc-rQ

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022