Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Dreamworks Animation Has Struck Out

Given all the hype for Inside Out (Bing Bong, you may be the most noble character in any Disney film) deservedly cropping up every which way, it makes me think of what Pixar's rivals are doing to catch up. What's Dreamworks, the biggest rival to Pixar doing?...


HOME. 

Dreamworks goes back to their most popularized period of the mid-to-late 2000s with their recent non-sequel work, Turbo and Home. While prior films, like The Croods and Rise of the Guardians, showed a more dramatic, heartfelt, and touching side to their plots, feeling more "family" than "children only", Turbo and Home (along with The Penguins of Madagascar) step right back into kiddie crap. I luckily never saw Turbo, but I did go out to Home because I had nothing else to do. The movie was... kiddish.

Slapstick violence, goofy jokes, and little substance make sure this film feel like it was made in 2005. The worst moment was Oh's "sacrifice" at the end. We had seen Oh being flattened before and surviving, and I think even the girl saw Oh get crushed and live. So why the sad music and the weepy faces when he gets crushed under the treads? Was the implication that he was going to be trapped forever? There was no dramatic gravitas to this sudden scene from a silly movie that breaks the film's logic (It didn't stop that one death in Jurassic World).

The humor was similarly simple and juvenile. Even the plot began dumbly, with Oh, a weird, party-loving Boov, sending a message to everyone possible. This lures in the Gorg, the thing the cowardly Boov are terrified of. This Gorg is searching for his eggs, which were stolen by the Boov captain. He inhabits a large suit of armor ala Krang to hide his lonesome shame as he hunts the Boov. Oh meets a displaced human girl and helps her build a vehicle to try to track down the Boov base and get the memo and the whereabouts of her mother. They find she's in Australia and go there. Then the Gorg arrive and Oh steals and delivers the eggs. Capatin Smek is then overthrown for cowardice.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Sing... "Zootoing"

This year will likely be another 2013 for animated film. We opened with "Norm of the North", a horrible film that wouldn't be out of place as a weird Netflix movie. Though "Zootopia" rocked our world and "Kung Fu Panda 3" had me wanting more, the rest of the year's films seem like a lowly bunch. While both "Moana" and "Sausage Party" merit individual posts down the line, the rest are utterly rancid and can be covered nicely here.

Sing! and The Secret Life of Pets


"Sing" is what this post was made for. The first thing I noticed is that it is strikingly similar to Zootopia but blatantly inferior. For one thing, there's the character design. The mouse and the koala look like they are either modified bobble-heads or have a severe case of hydrocephaly. Derp Iguana is Derp Iguana. And minor characters seem to be even worse, especially those tweaking rabbits and the fat sheep with huge jaws. 

Most characters look really bland, as if they came out of "Over the Hedge". While not as grotesque as "Norm of the North", the characters are not interesting. There does not seem to be internal logic to the film's universe, unlike Zootopia. Why are there anthropomorphic snails in this movie? Zootopia's world seems to be limited to terrestrial vertebrates as intelligent beings, with Zootopia alone only having mammals. A strong emphasis on predator-prey relationships is what gives the film its message. This is just designed to sell albums of old music. Rapping Buffalo is still best CGI crap.

Meanwhile, the Secret Life of Pets looks like a horrible "Toy Story" ripoff with no potential whatsoever. The first trailer already showcased the funniest jokes, and the second killed what little potential it may have had. The pets just make normal animal sounds when heard by humans and this is used mainly for translation barrier gags, just like in Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Open Season, Space Chimps (just Chimps and the aliens), Bolt, Rio, Free Birds, and likely a bunch of others, as opposed to having them hide the ability to speak. Tired jokes, tired plot, lackluster character design, random celebrity voices, yards yadda yadda. At least this doesn't look "Lorax"-caliber awful. (Edit: the film was average)

The Lorax was a killer turd because it was based on a book that was great. It served as a grand finale for the NC (his later crap might as well come before it). This? It's just a theatrical Ratatoing.

Trolls

Go and eat a grenade, Dreamworks Animation. Your only good works now are sequels. "Rise of the Guardians" was your apex, admit it. Please, return to the adult tone of "The Prince of Egypt" and "Antz/Ant Z" after this shit. 

Trolls looks as utterly stupid as "Home" and "Turbo", if not more so. They bought the Trolls from Dam to make this. We see that Trolls are eaten by much larger, ghastlier trolls, and there is a princess.  You can make a good Trolls movie, as the TV shows give some great ideas.

I for one, would use this as a jumping-off point


All I can tell from the trailer is that it is typical mid-2010s Dreamworks slop, a gutless, childish production. Dreamworks animation said they made films for adults when they were making their infamous pop-culture reference driven movies. Damn! Dreamworks should have continued their way up after Rise of the Guardians (I'd accept Croods as a breather movie) until they were their old 90s self, rather than alternating between kid-pandering and sequels. Now you have Illumination to compete with. If you don't go back to edgy, Comcast will kill you. 

That's right, Comcast. Maybe they'll now not be able to make anything of worth. Comcast is an evil company that will leave nought but bones of the unprofitable. Bland trashy designs are worse than the deliberately ugly edgy design you were founded on. Contrast the unique, iconic, gnarly, repugnant old Digimon to the overdesigned, cluttered, bland new ones:






Fanmade "Bouncymon" Digimon by AwkwardKlutz

in contrast to

Yes, this is a real Digimon

The Wild Life

How does one fuck up Gulliver's Travels?

Simple.

Rachet and Clank

Too kiddy for fans, too odd for mainstream audiences.  


In summary, what a shitty bunch this year has!
 

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Dreamworks...

FUCK. OFF. AND. DIE! 

Die a firey death!

From the latest movies to those slightly before them, it is clear you guys are fucking toast and have yet to fucking admit it. The only good films from them anymore are from their big franchises, such as Kung Fu Panda. You had such a good fucking head with Rise of the Guardians, but you had to take several dumps on yourselves with Turbo. From there, you slid down with shit like Home. Now look at this shit dumpster of films you've made.


As rancid as the 2000s films were, at least they were distinctive. They were edgy in every sense of the word. Pop-culture jokes, toilet humor, deliberately ugly design, adult themes, subversiveness... But these lumps of shit? Gormless, identical total fucking copies of what every other fucking animation studio is doing. Fuck these films!

Unless you make a mature animated film and go back to your old ways, I AM DONE!

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Action Henk Boom

I bet that if Sticks had some ugly design, people would realize how annoying she was and they would hate her.

-Dracold

True words. Without Sticks's design (and Perci's) (making her a "blank slate Mobian" instead of an "NPC"), Boom would be an unsalvageable wreck of a show. Action Henk goes on the same principle. Henk is... okay, I guess, but the other characters are TERRIFYING. Every player on YouTube knows Betsy is SCARY AS FUCK. Maybe this is the reason why RageSquid's game is now dying.

But, RageSquid are trying to keep the game alive with professional events. This does not matter, as RageSquid is a bad company. They have no focus, no devotion. Action Henk is little different from their browser games, and the bad luck of the release of GalaxyTrail's hit Freedom Planet was the final nail. But RageSquid is only an indie developer, who have only done game jams before for the most part. SEGA are a corporation. Hence, they have more ammo to support Sonic Boom, a miserable, wretched franchise with a miserable, wretched fanbase.

The creator's own vanity does not help. Above, we see Bill Freiberger. Mike Pollock and Roger Craig Smith also appear. It's a creator sounding board. Action Henk? Nothing. Nothing at all. Black noise.






aka BonziBuddy
The Disturbing, Evil Monkey!








Action Henk is bullshit.