After seeing Rango today, I can say with much certainty that all major studios better watch out for ILM. They’ve set the gold standard for the year. And this is their first feature too.
Lover_of_Fiction: Two ideas that your posts evoke are a viewer’s desire for escapism and reaction to anthropomorphism. Sometimes when anthropomorphised characters (ants, fish, whatever) are either entirely in their own world or clearly segregated from “our” world (in Pixar films, usually by a language barrier–in other words, humans can’t discern the speech of ants/fish), then it can enhance a viewer’s immersion (or escape) into the fantastic world. The Incredibles and Up are more like heightened or hyperbolic versions of “our” world. “Impossible” things happen, but the impossibility is not so substantial that the whole concept needs to be addressed in terms of fantasy or the kind of escapism that makes one forget “our” world for a time. It’s kind of like the James Bond movies–yeah, a lot of that stuff would never happen, but most of it is still grounded in “our” reality. In all cases, as long as the Rules of the World are established and maintained in a way that treats the viewer fairly, most viewers comfortably accept and respond to the ideas presented, no matter how zany they might otherwise be.
Given all that, it’s clear how you might see Up as being out of the “normal” Pixar fantasy-world zone…although I would agree with others here that there probably is no “normal” for Pixar as it’s always looking for the next out-of-the-box concept.
But…and moving to the topic at hand…there’s a good example of poor results (and another personal example of things in animation I simply can’t stand) in DreamWorks’ film Madagascar. There is either a failure to establish consistent Rules of the World, or the Rules are ridiculously contrived. Animals understand human language and speak in pop references. For goodness sakes, the giraffe knows how to navigate in Manhattan by train or by foot (or is that hoof?)! But the humans can’t understand the animals’ speech. But the dolphins do dolphin-y chirps and whistles instead of speaking. But a spider speaks. Somewhere, the Dolphin Political Action Committee (DPAC) is outraged! In any event, the Rules are all over the place in Madagascar, to its great detriment, IMO.
So maybe it all comes down to what individual viewers will tolerate in regards to presentation of a fantastic world.
aerostarmonk: I’m looking forward to Rango. The snake speaks! But what of the hawk? What are the Rules of that World?
The Rules are really fuzzy in Rango. But it all works out because it’s supposed to be both surreal and more than a little absurd. Like the titular hero, I accepted things as they were because they came so quickly and charmed me so well that I couldn’t help but be won over despite some of the odd lapses in logic.
Oho, then there must be four years between 2008 and 2011 then, since that is the time span between Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2’s release. And as crazy as Dreamworks are, I highly doubt they begin planning a sequel to an unreleased film before it has even earned one dollar in the box office.
So you’re complaining that it took a little less time than normal, its a sequel so they probably were able to just jump right into making it after the first one. And Dreamworks does plan its sequels before the movie comes out, they have plans for up to 6 total KFP movies right now.
I’m not even sure why I’m defending this movie, as I’m really wasn’t into Kung Fu Panda, though I do have some hope that the second will be better than the first.
So Kung Fu Panda is supposed to have more movies than Shrek? I want to make a video about a panda stabbing an ogre now…
That would explain why people are opposed to my idea of a Cars 6 and a Cars 7, ultimately.
Not gonna lie, I didn’t understand any of what you meant in that post. Does that mean you liked Shrek? What does Cars have anything to do with this?
No, it means that Dreamworks’ foundation was built on Shrek, and now they are placing more importance on a movie that mixes Japanese and Chinese cultures as if they are the same thing. (Yes, I am aware that Dreamworks made movies before Shrek but Shrek was what got them a name.)
Cars has to do with this because I think it is a world that seven movies could be made from. But other people on this forum seem to think that two is bad enough. However, if Pixar did decide to make so many Cars films, people would say that they are just like Dreamworks…which would be ridiculous.
So you’re saying that you want more Shrek sequels? I’m done with this conversation. Its not worth it.
Dancing, flatulence, those annoying dance sequences, ripped off stories, overhyping…
Completely agreeing. I’m especially tired of the dance party ending. Sometimes it’s okay, but it’s a very silly, non-resonating way to end a movie.
Dance party endings only work in:
- Musicals
- Comedies, if poking fun at other movies for doing it
Some movies it doesn’t bother me with, like Despicable Me and Labyrinth. Everything else…please no… 
I totally agree, except that I have yet to see Labyrinth. 
I liked it in Despicable Me. Other movies? Forget it.
Yeah, it worked well in DM. I don’t know how else they could of ended that movie really.
Me neither…
I’ve had quite a few things.
- The cheap looking Flash stuff with flat, boxy, stiffly animated characters that kids get for cartoons on TV now. I’ve have a hard time wanting to sit through a whole show with characters that look like this:
Not only do some of these shows look unappealing, but the characters are sometimes so stiff they move around like they’re robots. Yeah, I guess you could say that Hanna-Barbera helped introduce limited animation to TV, but at least I always got an appealing quality and a sense of craftsmanship out of them. Shows like in the picture above however never gave me that same impression.
- The way that digital coloring in a cartoon can look so distracting in comparison to when all the characters and backgrounds were still hand painted in cel animation. I don’t expect this to be something that everyone would notice about a digitally colored show, but I when I put it side-by-side with a cel animated one I just see a world of difference (it’s especially noticeable if a show had been made both ways at some point) that I don’t even consider it an opinion. Best example I can really give right now is this:
[url]- YouTube
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Too many pop-culture jokes (blame Family Guy for that one).
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The popular belief that the genre of “adult cartoons” automatically means mean-spirited, foul mouthed characters that are somehow supposed to be likable, along with excessive toilet humor and shock value, as if this is the sort of stuff that every adult wants to watch.
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One thing I’ve brought up here before was how I felt that some US cartoons had been taking after anime way too much, but after everything that happened over in Japan I’ve kind of backed off on that since then. Japanese artists have always been very talented, but I guess to me I just felt that it could easily be a stereotypical art style over here if it’s seen or used too much.
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Another one I used to have for animated films was “too much 3D, not enough 2D” but I can see that changing a bit now, especially with Disney. Plus it never really stopped me from liking every Pixar film that came out regardless of that.
That’s about all I can think of right now.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. To me, most Flash cartoons are lazy animation with little movement and ugly character designs. Another annoying thing I notice is that these Flash cartoon almost always involve American teenagers in a high-school setting. Refer to Fish Hooks, My Gym Partner is a Monkey, Class of 3000, etc.
There are exceptions like My Little Ponies, Chowder, and Phineas & Ferb, and most of these exceptions happen to be excellent shows.
I’m okay with this, because I like how digital colouring looks brighter and has more ‘pop’ to it (again, My LIttle Ponies is a great example). So I think this is more of your personal opinion, but yeah, it does look different from traditional colouring like Duck Tales or Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. If anything, the classic ones look more ‘real’, I guess (just like how ‘The Little Mermaid’ seems to have that ‘human touch’ compared to ‘Princess and the Frog’), but it’s not such a huge problem for me.
I agree with the other points, except the fifth one. I’m not really pertubed by the prevalence of anime because I believe that with globalisation comes a mixing and adoption of other art styles. Animes, in turn, have been inspired by Western themes and animation like Trigun, or Cowboy Bebop, so the use of anime styles in America, if only superficially or temporarily, is an interesting trend. And like the prevalence of 3D movies over 2D, we have to learn accept these changes, and that it is not the looks that matter, but the stories they tell. I will take an anime-styled cartoon with a good story (Avatar: The Last Airbender) anyday over a Western-Disney-styled cartoon with a bad story (Cool World).
One of my favourite episodes from Family Guy is the ‘Disney episode’. It shows how much different a show will look like simply by changing its art direction, but ultimately, the offensive jokes and plots are the same as any Family Guy episode.
Again, I don’t care if anime is the next art-‘fad’ style in America, or if Japan is adopting CGI technology from America. As long as the story is good, it isn’t such a big deal for me.
I’m not the biggest fan of flash either. I enjoy it for online videos, but not so keen to it for TV shows. However, I just point out it depends on the story and characters and artistic style. Take Secret of Kells for instance.
I agree on Phineas & Ferb. It has appealing looking characters that are much more fluid and lively to me for current cartoons. You could say it also has the “digital coloring” thing going, but when I was watching it I was too caught up in how much the show impressed me to care, so I guess it was an exception in that case.
Don’t worry about those two. I was only saying that those were things I had problems with in the past, but not so much now.
I actually hated that Family Guy clip the first time I saw it. Know why? Because it was one time where the show’s characters were done in what I felt was real “quality” animation (not two characters standing next to each other going “Hey, remember the time…” cut to random pop-culture thing cut back), and it was only done as a joke! I just saw it as a careless disregard to such a valuable and timeless art form as animation, where you would expect artists to put their all into it because of how much it means to them, but obviously Family Guy was just never designed to be one of those shows since that clip is not what they’re really choosing to make their reputation with.
What I always thought was kind of a waste was learning that Seth MacFarlane made this wonderfully animated, Looney Tunes-ish short for Cartoon Network called Larry & Steve (I used to see it back in the day), and then I remember hearing him say in some interview that he chose to make Family Guy instead because Larry & Steve “wasn’t his kind of thing” or something like that. And my natural response was “Are you crazy?”.
[url]- YouTube
I guess it goes to show though that if Seth was someone who really wanted to be a talented cartoonist, he never had to be like one of the great Disney animators or anything. The whole time he probably could have made characters that were animated as good as that, but instead he wants to be known for, well…
[url]Two ducks watch 'Meet the Parents' -- HIGH QUALITY - YouTube