They seem getting dumber and more watered-down every year. Even the heavyweights like Pixar release universally acclaimed boredom-inducing mediocrity (don't start me on that buddy cop movie about racism, or that totally forgettable sequel to a fish movie), and everyone else just releases crap... like this one.
shareEven the heavyweights like Pixar release universally acclaimed boredom-inducing mediocrity
They seem getting dumber and more watered-down every year.
don't start me on that buddy cop movie about racism
totally forgettable sequel to a fish movie
everyone else just releases crap
On the whole I say animated movies are at least okay. Sure there are ones that don't look super great (such as this) but the good ones outweigh the bad.
shareNot seeing a decline in quality myself. I wonder if you're looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. Maybe nothing has lived up to that first sense of wonder you got when you saw...Toy Story or whatever movies really grabbed you for the first time.
It's just dumb to write off a film before you know anything about it. And you only mentioned Dory and Zootopia, which were pretty good. Kung Fu Panda 3 and Kubo and the Two Strings were also very good.
I haven't seen Kubo yet, but Kung Fu Panda 3 seemed a total disappointment.
The thing is, I'd experienced that sense of wonder multiple times. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Ice Age, Shreck, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon - almost every big animated movie released during 2000s was more or less of a marvel to me. I was never a fan of the whole Madagascar thing but HTTYD, Shreck and even Dreamworks' less remembered efforts like Megamind and Monsters Vs. Aliens were thoroughly enjoyable.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that a few years back a major studio animated film was pretty sure to deliver a great movie experience and be rewatched later. After 2010 everything went a little bit askew. I have so many problems with Inside Out I don't even know where to begin. I've waited for Zootopia like a little kid and it turned out to be a mildly entertaining kids' adaptation of every TV police drama episode ever. Brave is an abomination. Anyone remembers Wreck-It Ralph or The Good Dinosaur? Anyone even seen Home? Nope.
And the future doesn't look very bright either. 3 out of 4 upcoming Pixar films will be sequels that frankly nobody asked for. Dreamworks's sequels, on the other hand, look even somewhat decent in comparison to their upcoming original films... like the one about a creepy baby.
Huh. We're experiencing the same films very differently. You're nonplussed, and I'm delighted. I wonder what makes an animated magical or memorable for you? For me, a combination of story, emotion, character animation, effects, lighting, surfacing, and score are key elements to my enjoyment of a film.
shareTo me, it's concept + writing + plot + characters. The beauty of animation and score are more like a prerequisite (we audiences are really spoiled by everything being top-notch these days)
And here we go.
Inside Out: great concept, okay writing, VERY basic "getting from A to B" plot, unrelatable characters (the drawback of the great concept)
Zootopia: dull concept (yeah, we've never seen talking animals before), okay writing, basic cop drama plot, stereotypical cop drama characters (a wide-eyed enthusiastic novice and a disenchanted crook)
Brave: all meh
Kung Fu Panda 3: dunno, maybe I just really dislike sequels
I don't mean to be rude, it's great if you can still enjoy animated movies, I wish I could too. But I get a feeling as if they just don't put as much heart in them anymore.
You're not being rude. It's too bad you can't enjoy the films anymore. I'm finding many of them, such as Inside Out and Kung Fu Panda 1, 2, & 3 completely pull at my heartstrings. Brave did a pretty good job, too, and would have been much better if the original director had been allowed to finish her story, especially since that mother-daughter dynamic was drawn from her own life. And as much as I loved the emotional relationship between Toothless and Hiccup in the first HTTYD, I was totally bawling over the relationships within the little family in the second one.
Zootopia was about a lot more than a cop drama. It was a harsh criticism of stereotyping and racial profiling.
I wonder what you would think of Kubo? Would you see it as fresh or more of the same?
Zootopia was about a lot more than a cop drama. It was a harsh criticism of stereotyping and racial profiling.
And painfully on-the-nose.
Zootopia was actually enthralling. And it seems to be so, at least partially, by accident.
I originally had no intention to watch it.
But after discussing its box office results online and looking at the trailers, I noticed a weird chatter on youtube discussing the sexiness of the rabbit character.
I dug around some more and that thing is everywhere!
Guys being confused and kinda ashamed for feeling "weird" towards an animated animal.
Apparently, animators have hit just the right proportions of a "generic sexy human female body" and cuteness that the guys saw cute and their minds translated that as sexy.
At the same time, movie features a real life sex goddess Shakira... but there's no effect with her gazelle character.
So that whole might be accidental.
So... digging around for evidence of the phenomenon, I stumble on someone's upload of the whole movie on youtube.
And as I scan through it, looking for a scene from the trailer, I notice I'm watching it for like 20 minutes or so.
So I sit down and watch the whole thing.
And it is a VERY well paced movie. Which manages to never get too slow or stale. Someone did some fine fine-tuning there. Nothing accidental there.
It's no wonder it made a billion dollars worldwide.
Oh and... I wouldn't google "sexy judy hopps" if I were you. Things can't be unseen.
As I said, my problem with Zootopia is that it just doesn't seem very creative. I dug some info about its development and their initial idea of a darker film focusing on Nick was way more daring and appealing to me (but it would have never made so much money)
shareOf all the movies that you mentioned, I can't believe that you didn't like Wreck-It Ralph. I can re-watch that story every week and I don't get tired of it even if I know almost every single line. Another completely different thing is that they are thinking about making a sequel... And I hope that nothing works out of that. It is not necessary for me.
My list is this, btw: www.imdb.com/list/ls071432987/
{...} Mentulam caco {...} My blog: http://jsaaopinionpersonal.wordpress.com/
*sigh*
shareAnimation suffers from the same problem as other movies: lack of original ideas. This one seems too similar to Katekyo Hitman Reborn (a japanese animation series).
shareLook at the baby: it has the FACE. Priceless.
shareWhat's wrong is that American studios and distributors are reluctant to make and release anything that doesn't have the potential to be the next big franchise. And if the film doesn't make a hundred million dollars on the first day it's considered a "flop". No such thing as a "modest success" anymore.
So now almost every animated film released in the States has an insanely bloated budget and is packed to the brim with celebrity voices and expensive flashy 3D effects.
Studios like Pixar and Disney actually have people who know what they are doing running the studios so they come out with big budget films that are actually entertaining and appeal to everyone despite being franchise films.
Illuimination is the same way though their secret is that the films have lower budgets so they rake in even more cash. Say what you will about the films themselves, but the marketing is GENIUS. They know how to get butts in seats. And if one of their movies ever does less then expected, it's won't hurt as much
Lesser studios like Dreamworks and Blue Sky are hit and miss to say the least. They have the same bloated budgets as Pixar and Disney but don't market the films any where near as well.
Then you have Laika which seems to be the only exception to all the craziness. They make whatever the heck they want without worrying about franchise opportunities or closing the studio down if the movies don't make 10x their budget back.