Age of Innocence: True Grit vs Seed of Chucky

Two movies featuring complicated relationships with dysfunctional mentors and familial duty that propels our heroes forward — it's True Grit vs Seed of Chucky.

Episode Transcript & Breakdown

Every episode of Tasteless, I take a critically acclaimed film and compare it to one that shares the same themes but didn't get the attention it deserves — and explain why that second movie is my pick. This week: two movies that feature complicated relationships with dysfunctional mentors and a familial duty that propels our heroes forward. It's True Grit versus Seed of Chucky.

True Grit

A stubborn teenager enlists the help of a tough U.S. Marshal to track down her father's murderer.

This movie came out in 2010 and has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and didn't win any of them — one of the most nominated films to not win an Oscar. They were nominated for everything, like every category, but this was the year that The King's Speech won a bunch of the awards. There was Black Swan, The Fighter, The Social Network, Inception. Poor True Grit. This was a tough year at the Oscars.

Over the course of this podcast, I have had to rewatch some movies that I've truly despised, but I've also really enjoyed some movies on a rewatch more than the first time I saw them, and this was one of them. I really did like rewatching True Grit. I think it's a fun movie.

Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross. Look, am I mad at her for coming in on Pitch Perfect 2 and sucking up all the screen time? Yes, okay? I'm sorry. I do think she's very talented. She was great in Edge of Seventeen, and I'm starting Dickinson soon because of my deep undying love for Ella Hunt. There's a groundedness in Hailee. She's obviously gorgeous and talented, but the way she has played teenager roles has always felt more authentic to me than some other actors. There's something about her that really does sink into the role where I'm not like, it's a kid actor.

She's starring in the upcoming Hawkeye Marvel show where she takes the mantle from Jeremy Renner. I'm excited about that. Basically, she's incredibly talented. So her Oscar category was baffling and honestly insulting. Despite her character having the most screen time and being the hero, the protagonist, Hailee Steinfeld was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in many award shows, including the Academy Awards. That's insane. She was the lead actress. She carried this movie alongside Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon.

At the age of 13 when cast, playing a 14-year-old, she carried this movie. 15,000 girls applied for the role. This was her theatrical film debut and she was absolutely meant to be there. This role is hers.

I love the old-timey bathroom humor when she is looking to find Jeff Bridges and she stakes him out — he's in an outhouse, and she's like, you've been at it quite some time. And he says, there is no clock on my business! Because he's in there pooping. She does say the title of the movie to him. She says, they tell me you're a man with true grit. Which is okay, but she's never cloying. She has such determination but still seems like she could be 14 years old. She doesn't seem too old for the part and she also doesn't rely on cutesy kid stuff. She just walks the line so perfectly.

But where she really won me over is when she's getting a horse — a horse named Little Blackie — and she says to the person taking care of the horses, what does he like for a treat? That's so sweet. She's like, what kind of treats should I give him? I love that.

There is a really rude piece of IMDB trivia that says Hailee Steinfeld got raves at the time largely because she was 16, closer in age to the book character aged at 14, than Kim Darby, who was 21 when she played the part — but really, while Steinfeld's performance is fine, it's really no different from Darby's original. This is why you can't trust the IMDB trivia that much. You always have to double-check it because some angry freak submitted that. Actually the other one is good too? They're the same? That's not trivia. That's your opinion, you weirdo.

Also in this movie we have Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, the US Marshal that Hailee hires to help her track down Tom Chaney, her father's killer. That's the heart of this movie — she's trying to find her father's murderer with Jeff Bridges. The cutest thing Jeff Bridges says in this movie is, you're no bigger than a corn nubbin. A corn nubbin! Did you guys ever see that movie The Vanishing, where Jeff Bridges is a serial killer and Kiefer Sutherland is trying to hunt him down and Sandra Bullock is killed by him? Great movie.

I like Jeff Bridges. I find him calming. His best role is obviously as the coach in Stick It. But this is pretty good too. I need someone like Rooster Cogburn in my life because while Hailee and I are spitting mad about everything, he's just like, ugh, look, it'll be fine. Of course I can shoot with only one eye. Let's just be chill. Although he also never stops talking, which I thought was a really funny beat — when they are traveling and he just keeps talking. It's like in a Real Housewives show when they keep putting a little clock down in the bottom corner and fast-forwarding to show that someone has not stopped talking for 40 minutes. I found it funny in this movie. Would hate it in real life, so maybe I actually couldn't travel with Rooster Cogburn.

Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger. Matt Damon does well as kind of cheeky characters — a little saucy, like in The Martian, a little attitude. His first interaction with Hailee is both very funny and very upsetting. He just shows up in her bedroom, and when she wakes up and he's just there, she's like, what are you doing? And he's like, I could have had my way with you while you were sleeping. And she's like, oh no you gross. And he's like, you're very young and sick and unattractive to boot. What is happening here?

LaBoeuf is a little more straight-laced. He wants to bring Tom Chaney back to Texas to be hanged for killing a Texas senator. And Hailee is like, no way, he's going to hang here, for killing my dad. I want him to know that's why he's dying, not because of some dumb senator. Matt and Jeff strike up an unlikely friendship and both care for Hailee's well-being and do what they can to keep her safe.

Josh Brolin plays Tom Chaney. He is such a non-entity here. The name of Tom Chaney and what he represents is so much more important than the Tom Chaney we meet. Although Josh Brolin is a hunk and, more importantly, stepson to Barbra Streisand.

Maybe the most exciting part of this movie is when Hailee gets a letter from her family's lawyer and we hear it in voiceover and I immediately was like, oh my God, that's J.K. Simmons. And it was. He plays the voice of J. Noble Daggett, Mattie's lawyer. He has one line. Loved it for him. Love hearing that voice, those dulcet tones. J.K. Simmons is hot, by the way. When he got super buff, that weirded me out, but otherwise he's hot. He may still be super buff, actually. I haven't looked at J.K. Simmons' body in a little while.

Seed Of Chucky

Chucky and Tiffany are resurrected by their innocent gender-confused child, Glen/Glenda, and hit Hollywood, where a movie depicting the killer dolls' murder spree is underway.

Came out in 2004. Has a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes. This plot description to me is not totally accurate to what the movie actually is, but we'll get into it.

Let's talk the Chucky series. I didn't love the original — the killer doll possessed by the murderer Charles Lee Ray, serial killer. It was fine. I got it. I got why it spawned a series. But my favorite Chucky is I think Bride of Chucky, which introduces Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany, Chucky's love interest, and also has the insane Katherine Heigl subplot where they're trying to take her body. But Seed of Chucky is a close second. And I love that the later Chuckys had Fiona Dourif, who is Brad Dourif's daughter.

Brad Dourif is of course Chucky himself. He was also Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings. He was in Deadwood. He was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson. And as Chucky in this movie, he has a very "here's Johnny" moment with actually what I thought was a clever play on it. He axes his way through a door, peeks his little doll face through, pauses, gives the full Jack Nicholson Shining, pauses — and says, I can't think of a thing to say.

Chucky's snarky sense of humor, his glee in violence — it all works because of Brad Dourif. Look, Chucky is a possessed doll, possessed by a serial killer who's into voodoo, and that's how he winds up in a doll. It's all such a weird jumping-off point that I love when the movies get crazier and crazier, much like the Fast and Furious series. Each movie is crazier than the last one, and that's why they can make nine of them, ten of them. It works.

Charles Lee Ray had been dating Tiffany, played by Jennifer Tilly, and through various events Tiffany's soul is also transferred into a gross little doll in the fourth Chucky movie, Bride of Chucky. Which brings us to the fifth movie, Seed of Chucky, where Jennifer Tilly is playing Jennifer Tilly the actress, in films about the Chucky and Tiffany dolls killing people as depicted in the last film. Very meta, which I love when a movie pulls off a meta, it's like Ocean's Thirteen, where Julia Roberts plays George Clooney's ex as well as playing Julia Roberts and everyone's like, you look just like Julia Roberts. I love that stuff.

Jennifer Tilly plays an incredibly heightened version of herself — basically known for being slutty — and she has a rivalry with Julia Roberts in this movie, which I think is so funny. She's so game to be crazy that it makes the movie fun. She jokes around about the film Bound and her friendship with Gina Gershon. She jokes about how people perceive her. She brags to Redman — rapper, DJ, producer, who also plays himself — that she could get Gina Gershon to come hang out with them. She is desperately trying to seduce Redman so that she will be cast as the Virgin Mary in his upcoming Mel Gibson-esque Jesus movie. It's amazing.

What she doesn't know is that Tiffany in doll form — voiced by Jennifer Tilly — is obsessed with the real Jennifer Tilly and wants to inhabit her body so she can be famous. Tiffany is working on a plot to take Jennifer Tilly's body and put Chucky in Redman's body. And while all this is going on, they learn that they have a kid. And the kid learns that he has parents.

I'm calling him "he," even though the plot calls him "she." Let me get into it. Billy Boyd does the voice — Billy Boyd, aka Pippin from Lord of the Rings. This character is a kid — a doll kid, not a human kid — who has been used as a ventriloquist dummy. He sees Chucky and Tiffany on TV on an entertainment talk show, talking about the movie Jennifer Tilly is in. He realizes those are his parents. So he goes to find them.

They aren't sure if he is a boy or a girl. Chucky really wants a son, Tiffany wants a daughter, and the kid feels like he's not sure. So Chucky calls him Glen and Tiffany calls him Glenda. I'm calling him "him" because his dominant personality — the nicer version — is Glen. Glen is a little sweetie, and then Glenda, the other side of him, is a maniac killer.

Glen does not have multiple personalities, but is instead fractured by the burden of expectation put on him by his parents in this heightened world of doll madness where magic is possible, talking dolls are possible. Because he is incarnated later as real children — one evil Glenda and one sweet Glen — I think that gives my belief weight that it's not two sides of one person but in fact fully different characters struggling to survive and take dominance of this vessel, which is a doll, in the same way that Tiffany and Charles Lee Ray took over a doll vessel.

The gender thing is interesting. I'm sure there are a million ways it's insensitive when you go back and watch Seed of Chucky that I'm not picking up on. But as far as in the Chucky series, I liked that Chucky and Tiffany both had their own agendas but realized they needed to set them aside for the good of their kid. At one point Chucky says he doesn't need to take over Redman's body or have Tiffany take Jennifer Tilly's — that he's fine being a doll. He says, I have everything I could want. A beautiful wife, a multi-talented kid. They learn to accept Glen/Glenda for whatever they are.

Glen/Glenda is not gender dysphoria, but I love that Chucky and Tiffany learn to love Glen for who he or she is at the time.

John Waters has a role in this movie as Pete Peters, written specifically for him because he was a fan of the Child's Play movies. And as a personal assistant myself, I had an affinity for Joan, Jennifer Tilly's assistant in the movie, played by Hannah Spearritt. Hannah is of course an original member of S Club 7.

And yes, in this movie, a puppet masturbates into a cup. God, yes, it's not the classiest movie. But it's fun. That part's not fun. That part's so upsetting. John Waters watches. It's awful.

Shared Themes

Hailee in True Grit and Glen in Seed of Chucky have complicated relationships with their mentor figures. Both feel a certain amount of obligation to their parents. Hailee is dead set on avenging her father's death while Glen has been seeking his parents to find his origins. Both characters are on these missions to gain some sense of peace in a complicated world, and both discover mentors who are not quite what they expected, but exactly what they needed. Mentors who are tough, are dysfunctional, who are strange, but who allow them to explore different parts of themselves.

Hailee is a go-getter. She's a problem solver. She doesn't wait around for anyone else, instead deciding to take matters into her own hands. But upon meeting Jeff Bridges, she has to chill a little bit. Jeff Bridges' approach is much more lackadaisical. Matt Damon's is very law-focused — on what is legally right and on the task he has been assigned, rather than the emotional ties. While Hailee's goal is vengeance and making herself feel whole. She learns from the two men, although she'd never admit it to them.

Glen in Seed of Chucky has been abused from a young age with no hope for a better future and no idea of anyone even remotely like himself being out there. He only knows what his stamp tells him — on his wrist, "Made in Japan." And then he sees on the TV that there are people that look like him, people who can tell him his origins. But meeting them isn't quite what he expected.

His mom and dad love him, but they both have their issues. His father is a serial killer who doesn't want to stop, while his mother really wants to steal Jennifer Tilly's body. Glen has time with each of them. He explores what it means to be a killer like Charles Lee Ray, and he explores being the perfect daughter that Tiffany wants to raise to assuage her guilt over not being in her child's life.

Let's face it: the adults in the lives of Hailee and Glen are not the most reliable or the most normal, so the younger protagonists are forced to take on more than most people their age would be responsible for.

In True Grit, Hailee takes over the entirety of her father's last wishes — his burial, transporting his body, and the punishment of his killer. She brushes off her mother's concerns, ignoring pleas for her to return home. She thinks if she doesn't do this, no one will, and sees herself as the only person who can mete out the just punishment Tom Chaney deserves. Everyone else was ready to wash their hands of it, but Hailee — at least partially because she's young — is very focused on what is fair, what is right.

I think when you're younger you worry a lot about fairness. You learn about it in school, in kindergarten, and you find yourself angry when you begin to realize the world doesn't align with what is just. Hailee is holding on to that somewhat childish notion, but enacting it in a very grown-up way. She's responsible for herself and her family and their legacy in a way no child should have to be. She sets out to tail a bandit as a tween in the company of gruff adult men.

She winds up spending her time with two men who live outside the regular boundaries of life and she has to keep her composure, also showing them who's boss. She needs to be tough enough to gain the respect of these grown men — men who shoot and fight and spit and lose body parts, an eye and a tongue. Hailee doesn't get to play with other kids and she bristles at the notion that she would be treated as a child. She wants to be treated as Jeff Bridges' employer — not just as an equal, but as the boss of what's going on.

In Seed of Chucky, Glen is roped into the murderous schemes of his father and the stalkerish schemes of his mother. He never had the chance to be a child. He was forced into being a weird little ventriloquist dummy for much of his life. And then when he finally finds the two people he thinks will take care of him, they use him to work out their own issues.

Tiffany wants to stop murdering. She never loved it like Chucky does and doesn't like the guilt and stress that comes with it. While Chucky feels like who he is will be compromised, taken from him, if he doesn't continue his path of carnage and terror. So Glen must try to keep up with each of them, wanting to earn their love, and he becomes two different people — fractured in his quest to meet their expectations.

With his father, Glen explores masculinity. But instead of aping his father's cruelty, he becomes much gentler, only killing with Chucky when it's by mistake. With his mother, he explores a feminine side, but this becomes where he unleashes his mania, where he gives in to the murderous tendencies his father encourages. Glen doesn't fit into a neat little box, and he can't quite match the expectations set for him by either parent. He has to come to terms with who he is and who he can be without their influence.

What Seed Of Chucky Does Better

Because this is Tasteless, while I did really enjoy True Grit on a rewatch, we're going to talk about a few things that I think Seed of Chucky did better.

In True Grit, Hailee hides herself for the entirety of the film. She stays resolutely the same, closed off, with the same facade. While Glen changes because of what happens to him and explores other ways to live. I think Hailee is an incredible actress and I enjoy her character in True Grit, but we never — not for a moment — see her as a child, as a tween. That's totally True Grit's prerogative, not to show us that side of her. But because she has her walls up for the entirety of the film, from when she first is negotiating about her father's dead body to when she is an adult who learns Jeff Bridges has died just days before she arrived to visit with him — we don't see her. We don't see her crack. We don't see any sort of break in her armor.

I got more growth from Jeff Bridges, who starts off as a bit of an unreliable drunk but when the film crescendos he is hell-bent on saving Hailee at all costs. He has loyalty. He has true grit. We see Matt Damon go from wanting to be solo to appreciating the companionship of Jeff and Hailee and respecting them for their tenacity, despite having very different methods. I didn't get a moment like that from Hailee. I didn't need her crying over a doll or something, but the toughness makes it hard to empathize when we never see a crack in the armor.

In Seed of Chucky, Glen has been forced into speaking the words his owner chooses, used as a prop for someone else's act, for someone else's life. He doesn't know where he came from or who he is. He only knows a life of servitude. He's meek and sad and unsure of himself. He flees to find his parents when he sees them on TV, unsure of what he'll discover when he reaches them.

When he does, he's horrified at some of their choices, at their brutal slaying of the props guy. He lets it be known he questions them while also quivering in fear — he wets himself, the doll. Again, this isn't the classiest movie. As the film goes on, we see him continue to use his voice and to get stronger with it. He wears his heart on his sleeve and tries to be fully himself with his parents while also being open to trying new things.

Glenda is the ultimate id — the instinctual, consequence-free, primitive part of personality, exploring everything Glen himself thinks he's against.

We see these two figures war with one another as Glen tries to combine the parts of himself into a stronger whole. Eventually the two pieces are transferred to two real kids. Instead of one side winning out, each side is allowed to be explored fully on its own and to stand alone.

There is a revenge element in both films. People who have been wronged are looking to make themselves whole in whatever way they can. But the revenge of True Grit is just not as satisfying as the revenge that Glen must enact in Seed of Chucky.

We learn over the course of True Grit that Tom Chaney's death is less important than Hailee coming to terms with her father's fate. She wants to feel like there is justice in the world. When she finally does meet Tom Chaney — Josh Brolin — it's so anticlimactic. She is captured and he isn't even in charge of the capture; he's just there. There is something to be said for her finally meeting the man she has made in her mind to be this huge figure, this evil, and he's just a sad random dude. But man, it does not make for the most thrilling revenge tale.

Glen's revenge in Seed of Chucky is much more heat of the moment, but is an important step for him to take as he becomes his own person. Chucky tries to kill Tiffany, and Glen is devastated, so he kills Chucky himself out of anger and to protect Tiffany in her last moments. Chucky thinks at first that it is the bloodthirsty Glenda that kills him, but Glen reveals that it was him — that the mild-mannered Glen that Chucky didn't have a lot of respect for had the fortitude to kill his own father.

Chucky and Tiffany have a complicated and volatile relationship, and she supports him time and time again, but Glen won't allow Chucky to get away with killing her. Tiffany has been so supportive of Glen being who he is. She doesn't need him to do what she likes. She just wants him to be healthy and happy. Killing Chucky won't bring back Tiffany and in fact leaves Glen with no parents — so we think at first. But he acts on instinct, trying to keep Tiffany safe in her last moment. There's satisfaction in that.

They're as dumb as these movies are — they're fun. And there's an arc, and there is growth. Look, if you haven't watched the Chucky movies, I get it. I do. But they are fun. I don't think the first three are fun. I like four onward.

True Grit is on HBO Max. Seed of Chucky is on Free Peacock as well as Showtime. If you want to talk about these movies, hit me up at @tastelesspod on social media. We can talk about Jennifer Tilly being such a fun delight. We can talk about how gross these dolls look — truly. But the visual effects in these movies are stellar. These dolls are so gross.