Jump to content

El Squibbonator

Free Account+
  • Posts

    396
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by El Squibbonator

  1. Apparently Coyote V. Acme was picked to be cancelled for the same reason Batgirl was-- as an HBO Max movie, it didn't fit with Zaslav's vision of prioritizing theatrical movies.
  2. Monster Farm Director: Henry Midas Based on: The Fox Kids TV series of the same name Studio: Fossil Record Animation (under its The Workshop children's film label) Genre: Comedy / Animation Release date: 10/09/Y10 Rating: G Production Budget: $30 million Runtime: 95 minutes Theater count: 3,337 theaters Tagline: They've Bought The Farm. Now They've Got To Save It. Cast: David Walker* as Jack Haylee Bruce Mahler as Count Cluckula and Dr. Woolly/Mr. Ewe Rodger Bumpass as Frankenswine and Goatzilla Tifanie Christun as Zombeef Kevin Killebrew as Cowapatra Stanley Mason* (doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression) as The Turkeynator Nathan Lane as Pa Earl Albert Bachman* as Joe the Gas Station Man Summary: The movie opens with a rusty, decrepit-looking pickup truck driving down a dirt road into a small farming town. It passes a faded wooden sign which reads "WELCOME TO NORMALTON, THE MOST NORMAL TOWN IN AMERICA", before pulling to a stop in the driveway of an equally dilapidated-looking farmhouse. Protagonist Jack Haylee (Walker) emerges from the truck and looks at the house skeptically, only to be greeted by his neighbor Joe (Bachman), who owns a gas station across the street. Joe explains that it has been a long time since anyone has moved into that house, and he has heard a number of bizarre stories about it. Jack thinks Joe is just making things up, and asks what could possibly be abnormal about it, given that the town's name is Normalton. Joe admits he doesn't know, but he isn't going to be able to help much if anything bad happens. That night, after unpacking his suitcases, Jack tries to sleep, but is woken up by voices. He thinks they're just the neighbors playing tricks, and goes outside to investigate. All he finds, however, is that the his refrigerator is open and all the food inside it is missing. Jack is frustrated, but goes back to sleep. The next morning, he finds a letter pinned to his door, welcoming him to his new home. There's no signature, but he takes the letter to Joe to see if he knows anything about it. Joe says he's heard nothing about it. The following night, Jack heads into the cornfield, following some peculiar footprints he discovered, and is shocked to discover that it's inhabited by a group of monstrous farm animals-- Count Cluckula, Dr. Woolly, Frankenswine, Goatzilla, Cowapatra, and Zombeef. Jack is, understandably, astonished and horrified at the sight of them, but Count Cluckula explains that they are the reason no one has ever come to this house in years. Jack asks how they even got to be like this in the first place, and Dr. Woolly proceeds to give an elaborate-sounding, complicated answer, only to be cut off by Count Cluckula, who shows him a picture of a man named Pa Earl, an agriculture magnate and mad scientist who created them at his laboratory. This, in turn, encourages Jack to ask why he was making monster farm animals in the first place, and Goatzilla says that he was never quite clear about that part. The monster animals ask Jack to promise not to tell anyone about them. Jack agrees, and gradually befriends the monster animals. However, the following day he is visited by Pa Earl, who asks him if he has seen the monster animals. Jack lies and says he has not, and Earl tells him to keep an eye out for them. When Jack explains to the animals what happened, they become frightened, and Jack asks why they're so nervous about him. Cowapatra tells him that if he took them back to his lab, he would have them destroyed, and Jack has to protect them from that. Jack suggests that instead, he could help Normalton see the good side of the monster animals. He decides to introduce them to the town during that weekend's Harvest Festival, which unfortunately goes awry when Dr. Woolly shapeshifts into his monstrous Mr. Ewe form, setting off a chain of events that involves Goatzilla taking a bite out of a large novelty ice cream stand sign, Frankenswine entering a movie theater and clearing it out with one of his farts, and Count Cluckula trying to bite a normal chicken being judged at the fair. The people at the festival panic, and soon the police and the fire department are called in, forcing Jack and the monsters to flee. In his office, Pa Earl realizes Jack lied to him about not knowing where the monster animals were, and returns to Normalton. Jack tells the animals to hide, but Earl tells him that, since he technically owns the land where the farmhouse is located, he's the one Jack is paying his rent to. And because of this, he's going to make Jack's rent so unreasonably high that the only way he can hope to pay it off is by accepting a reward to turn in the monster animals. Jack refuses, and Earl threatens to have him evicted. Jack and the animals go back to the old gas station to ask Joe for some advice. Joe explains that Jack owns all the land surrounding Normalton, and that no farmer has ever been able to "get one over on him" because he has the biggest attraction in town, a giant animatronic turkey in front of his home that people pay to come see. This gives Dr. Woolly an idea. With Jack's help, the monster animals rebrand themselves as tourist attractions, earning enough money to pay off the rent. Gradually, the people of Normalton come to see the monster farm animals as allies rather than as enemies. However, before Jack and his friends can pay off the money, Earl arrives, accompanied by his newest creation-- a 50-foot tall robotic turkey called the Turkenynator, made out of his animatronic attraction, which he intends to use to subdue and capture the monsters. As he prepares to demonstrate it, however, the Turkeynator short-circuits. The Turkeynator proceeds to wreak havoc in Normalton, using its "Gravy Cannons" and "Stuffing Shooters" to try to subdue both the townsfolk and the monster animals. Earl tries desperately to wrangle the Turkeynator back under control, but ends up being splattered under a giant blob of stuffing and gravy. Jack rallies the animals together to fight it. The fight drags out through Main Street, and ultimately ends when the giant mechanical turkey is stunned by one of Frankenswine's farts (which, it must be said, are extremely noxious), knocked over by Goatzilla, and wrapped up in cloth by Cowapatra. The Turkeynator falls to the ground, defeated, and Earl begs Jack to free him from the stuffing. Frankenswine asks what would be in it for them if they did, and Earl pauses, not sure how to answer. Zombeef says Earl should go to jail for what he did, but Jack has a better idea. We cut to a week later, with the monster animals now beloved heroes in Normalton. Jack's run-down farmhouse has been upgraded to something much more livable, and Earl, much to his humiliation, now makes a living cleaning up after the monster animals. The movie ends with him walking into the animals' bathroom after Frankenswine leaves and complaining about the smell. *fictional
  3. Regarding the Looney Tunes movie, they said it would be "delivered" in early 2024, which I presume means that's when production will finish. If that's the case, and assuming it doesn't get pushed back further due to the strikes, 2025 is probably when it's coming out. Which begs the question, how well will it do? The last Looney Tunes movie was Space Jam 2. That one made $163 million, but it could easily have made more if it weren't for the fact that it was given a day-and-date release on HBO Max, and released in the midst of the COVID pandemic. It also cost $150 million, most likely due to being a live-action/2D/CGI hybrid. This movie is going to be entirely 2D, so its budget will probably be quite a bit lower than Space Jam 2. If that's the case, I'm cautiously optimistic for the moment. But then again, I was optimistic about Lightyear and Strange World too.
  4. Yes, but they also preceded Strange World, which seemed like it was it was being set up as their next "non-musical adventure movie" but was a massive flop. So I have a sneaking suspicion that might have scared them away from movies that don't follow their standard musical formula for the time being. Yes, because that's how Disney has operated in the past. They try something, and if it works, they keep doing it until it stops being successful. It's been that way with animated movies, the MCU, Star Wars, the live-action remakes, you name it.
  5. I guess another reason I'm not as excited about Wish as I might otherwise be is because I worry about what its success will signal for Disney in the long run. When The Little Mermaid came out in 1989, Disney proceeded to make nothing but movies based off that same template for the next decade until people were sick of them. And when you're doing the same thing often enough for a parody like this to work, you know you're overdue for a change. And if Wish is as successful as The Little Mermaid, chances are it's going to set off a similar trend, and cause the studio to be similarly reluctant to branch out. In other words, enjoy Wreck-it Ralph, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia while you can, because it's probably going to be a while before we get more movies like them.
  6. I'm probably going end up watching this movie, and I'm probably going to end up liking it fine for what it is. But ultimately the whole thing kind of reminds me of a faberge egg-- beautiful on the outside, but with a hollow center. But my feelings about Wish are more complicated than that alone can express. It was Walt Disney himself, after all, who said "You can't top pigs with pigs" after his follow-ups to his short The Three Little Pigs weren't well-received. Walt was a risk-taker, and while a lot of the things he did have since become standard and formulaic, they were pretty daring at the time, and they didn't always work out. Not many people would have spent so much money on an idea like Fantasia, for example. I bring that up because this movie is meant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Disney as a company. And much as I rag on modern-day Disney for being uncreative, I deeply respect old-school Disney for the risks it took. The issue I have is that if they really wanted to do something significant for the company's hundredth anniversary, I feel like they should have gone back to their roots and done something utterly unprecedented and creative. Something as astonishing in this day and age as Snow White was in 1937. But from what I'm seeing in the trailers, that's not what Wish is.
  7. Fishergirls Director: Chris Wayan Based on: The online story of the same name Studio: Fossil Record Animation Genre: Fantasy / Animation Release date: 09/18/Y10 Rating: R for brief nudity and sexual content Production Budget: $15 million Runtime: 92 minutes Theater count: 3,207 theaters Cast: Irene Brown* as Grey Felicia McAllister* as Leaf Sarah Waterstone* as Atoll James Pearson* as Whitecap Stanley Blackwood* as High Elder John Slater* as The Serpent *fictional Summary: The film begins with a shot of the blue ocean-covered planet floating in space. The narrator (Irene Brown) begins to speak, saying how "for as long as I can remember, Lyr was the center of the universe for my people. Everything revolved around it, and everything on Lyr revolved around us." Zoom into a small tropical island, where three humanoid fox-like creatures are relaxing on the shore. One of them is hiding in a palm tree with their tail curled over their face, another is playing a musical instrument made out of a nautilus shell, and a third is dancing. Zoom in further on the one dancing. The narrator introduces herself as Grey, and explains how for a long time, she and her friends Leaf (the one in the tree) and Atoll (the one playing the shell) thought that nothing could possibly be wrong with their society, only to discover that they were disastrously, dangerously wrong. The narration stops, and Grey's older brother, Whitecap, calls to her. Whitecap has just returned from his Survival of the Fit Test, a rite of passage where young males in their society construct a ship and sail off into unknown waters to prove themselves to their elders. If they find anything interesting or unusual, their names become enshrined in an official hall of records. Whitecap is excited to see his sister again, but Grey is jealous of him, especially when, at his acceptance speech, he plays up how dangerous the uncharted seas he sailed were. Privately, Grey confides to Leaf and Atoll that she wishes she could take the Survival of the Fit Test. Encouraged by Leaf, she speaks to the village's High Elder, who flatly rejects her request. Grey decides to take matters into her own hands, and explains her plan to Leaf and Atoll. The three of them decide to build a boat of their own. Whitecap taunts them, telling them that if they tried to take a Survival of the Fit Test, the only thing they would accomplish would be removing themselves from the gene pool. Grey is incensed, and promises that she will not only survive, but will make a discovery that will change what everyone knows about life on Lyr. Atoll manages to bargain with Whitecap, making him agree not to tell the High Elder what they are doing in exchange for playing her shell-harp at his upcoming ceremony. Reluctantly, Whitecap agrees, though he privately has no intention of honoring it. On the day when they are to set off on their voyage, Grey, Leaf, and Atoll find themselves greeted not by well-wishers and friends, but by the entire village coming out to taunt and harass them. And leading the group is none other than Whitecap, who has clearly betrayed his promise to keep their efforts a secret. The High Elder declares the three of them to be traitors and outcasts, and they are met with a barrage of rotten fruit, nuts, and even rocks as they sail off into the bay. During their first night at sea, Grey narrates again as she and her friends sleep on the deck of the boat. She describes her uncertainty over he own motives for going on this quest-- boys do it because it makes them eligible for marriage, but she has never wanted to marry, and indeed the very idea of it seems backwards and restrictive to her. She simply wants to be seen as an equal member of her society. As she narrates, the background shows days turning to nights and days again, as the tiny wooden boat sails across the horizon and finally arrives at the hulking outline of a massive, ruined, city emerging from the sea. Grey and her friends disembark from the boat and investigate the ancient city, knowing that if they bring back news of this discovery, it could validate all of their claims. While Atoll collects a sample of the peculiar, sweet-smelling algae growing in the surrounding lagoon, Grey and Leaf are drawn to a weathered stone tablet jutting above the water. The tablet depicts what appears to be a flying vessel of some kind descending from the heavens, and a serpent-like creature emerging from it. Underneath it more of the snakelike creatures are shown in some sort of prayer ritual. Grey and Leaf look at each other nervously, not sure what this could possibly entail, and Leaf wonders if it represents whoever destroyed this ancient city. Grey doesn't think that's likely. Returning to the boat, the trio circle around the sunken city until they reach a small tropical island, similar to the one they lived on but much smaller, with a sandy shore on which large colorful birds stride. A low crumbled wall from the ruined city is nearby, so Leaf-- the most agile of the three friends-- decides to climb it. Whatever she sees at the top, she doesn't say right away, and gestures for Grey and Atoll to follow. Atoll is nervous, fearful of meeting some dangerous creature, but Grey grabs her by the wrist and urges her to follow Leaf to the top of the wall. We finally get a good look at what is on the other side. There is a lush, green garden filled with all manner of exotic plants and flowers, with bizarre-looking birds and insects flying through it. The three friends are awestruck by the sight of it, and especially by the sight of what sits at the center-- a gigantic silver clamshell, easily as large as their boat. Despite Leaf and Atoll's protests, Grey scrambles down the far side of the wall and approaches the silver shell. She reaches out with one paw, and touches it, then just as quickly pulls her paw back, noting that it feels somehow soft against her skin, like a living creature rather than a sculpture. Suddenly the object begins to shudder, and slowly opens vertically like a gigantic clam. The inside looks half-mechanical and half-organic; it is fleshy and clearly alive, but at the same time it has what seems to be a cockpit and controls formed out of living tissue. And sitting at those controls is a coiled, green, snakelike creature, identical to the ones in the carvings on the sunken city. The creature emerges from the shell, and while Leaf and Atoll look on nervously, Grey asks him what he is doing, and if his people built this ancient city. He begins to speak, in a language that Grey cannot understand, but somehow hears as her own language in her head. He explains that he did not create these ruins, but rather that he is simply a visitor, just as they are, trying to escape the confines of his conservative society. He is intrigued when Grey explains that this is her motive as well, and expresses her frustration that she is not even sure whether she actually wants to pass the Survival of the Fit Test. Grey laments that for her, the only way to defy her society's expectations is to fit right into them. You have to either do what's expected of a man, or do what's expected of a woman. There is no place, it seems, for those who do not fit in this scheme. She explains how she always wished she could take the Survival of the Fit Test, but up until now she never dwelled very much on what that test actually entailed, and why she feels like passing it-- being declared fit for marriage-- is just another form of oppression. Touched by her story, the serpent offers her a small glass vial of water. Grey questions what is in it, and the serpent reveals that it contains a microbe that allows anyone who consumes it to control her own fertility-- in other words, giving females the true power in a sexual relationship. This explanation is accompanies by a surreal animation of how it works, representing the microbe as a serpent that "devours" smaller invading monsters inside an abstraction of a female body. Grey is fascinated, and the serpent offers to let her come with him as he continues on his voyage across the universe. She strongly considers it, but at Leaf and Atoll's insistence, she declines. Grey turns around to rejoin her friends, and when she looks back, the serpent and his vessel have disappeared. Again, Grey narrates as the boat sails over the horizon back to the island where she lives. She describes how she was a fool when she thought she would be respected for wanting to go on this quest, and she was a fool again for thinking they would respect her any more when she came back. The scene switches to Grey and her friends disembarking from the boat on the shore, with their entire village, including Whitecap and the High Elder, looking on. At first, everyone is pleasantly surprised. But once the contraceptive virus is introduced, things quickly turn sour. The High Elder declares Grey and her friends to be traitors, bringers of a plague that destroys the ability to have children, and casts them out. Grey and her friends are pushed out of the exhibition hall in disgrace, and Grey narrates again, lamenting that her people simply did not appreciate the good that her discovery could bring them, and that she wishes she had gone off with the serpent when she had the chance. She stays in Leaf's house that night, as her father is one of the few in the village who defies the ban, and looks out the window at the stars as she discusses with Atoll and Leaf what is going to happen next. Leaf suggests that this will only last until the High Elder finds something else to complain about, but Atoll isn't so sure. She's convinced that this is the beginning of a rift that could tear their society apart-- a rift between the old generations, set in their regressive ways, and the new ones, who wish to explore and try out new ideas. Grey remarks that for the sake of her people, she hopes the new generations win. Note: This film is made using a watercolor technique, similar to the 2017 movie Loving Vincent. Each frame is hand-painted using watercolors. In real life this is a very slow and laborious process-- Loving Vincent took six years-- but for the sake of CAYOM I am using some artistic license with the process.
  8. Same. It's especially odd that they'd do this when we already had a Mario movie with a similar-designed star earlier this year.
  9. The issue I have with this movie is that it just looks so. . . generic. Like, if you took a random frame from it, and asked someone to guess, they probably wouldn't be able to figure out if it was from Wish, Tangled, or Frozen (I'd mention Moana too, but that movie has a much more distinctive environment than the others). Even the design of the lead character just looks like a tweaked version of the same CGI model used for Anna, Elsa, Moana, and Rapunzel. The whole thing just feels like a parody of a Disney Princess movie played completely straight, in terms of both art style and, if the trailer is any indication, storyline. Do I think this will matter to kids? No. But I also don't expect this movie is going to break out the way Frozen did. In 2013, Frozen was an unknown quantity. Everyone, not just kids, was curious about it, and that allowed word of mouth to spread in an astonishing way. It became the must-see movie of the holiday season, and even people who ordinarily weren't into Disney movies went to see it. In a lot of ways, Frozen was a trendsetter, for trends that Disney animated movies have been following ever since. That's where Wish is different. Unlike Frozen, it can't claim to be the first of something new, an unknown, a black box. Wish is simply a continuation of the trend that Frozen started, and therefore seems much more familiar going in. The specific circumstances that caused Frozen to be (at the time) the highest-grossing animated movie ever are unlikely to be re-created with Wish.
  10. I'm kind of worried that this is going to be a permanent thing for Disney's animated movies if they're not careful. The pandemic and easy availability on Disney+ didn't do them any favors.
  11. OK, let's see what it looks like if I make a chart like the one I did before, but for Wish and Moana, as per your mention of "their others from the last decade". Notice that with Moana, interest in the film experienced a small but very significant uptick in June, when the first full trailer dropped, and remained consistently high until October, when it suddenly shot up. It reached its peak at the movie's November release date. Wish hasn't seen that, at least not yet.
  12. Maybe "marketing" isn't quite the right word, but I'm not sure exactly what is. I'll try to explain it better. See, in the months leading up to the releases of the Frozen movies, Moana, and Encanto, there was a very real sense, at least from the discourse I saw both in person and on the internet, that people were talking about these movies. They saw them as big events they were looking forward to, and there was a lot of speculation, even outside their target audience, about what they'd be like. We saw a lot less of that with Strange World, and unfortunately we're seeing a similarly low amount of it with Wish.
  13. I was going to mention that, too, as a possible reason we haven't seen much buzz for it. In all honesty, this movie looks like something we've seen plenty of times before. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be bad, or even that it's going to be anything like how the trailers make it look-- again, refer to Elemental, which was a much more creative and interesting movie than its marketing let on. But it does mean that people who have grown more cynical and jaded about Disney's animated movies since 2010 or so might not be convinced that Wish is a must-see. In a way, I'm reminded of what happened to Disney at the end of the 1990s. What was once new and revolutionary was done over and over again until it became predictable and formulaic, and people were less and less willing to give the studio a chance.
  14. I took that into account. Google Trends actually does distinguish between "Wish" as a search term and "Wish" as the title of the movie. I made sure to always use the latter when I was constructing those charts. If Elemental was able to leg it out to $450M worldwide, then I think Pixar's upcoming Elio might have potential. You'd think that would be the case, but then again that's why I included other movies for the sake of comparison. It turns out that there's a recurring pattern of when interest in these movies is at its height. It normally first starts to flare up when the first teaser is released, then rises again after the first full trailer, and then gets a huge spike during the theatrical release. This is consistent for most of the movies on the chart I made-- Frozen II, Encanto, and to a much lesser extent, Strange World. Wish was the only exception. Strange World didn't fail because of its genre; it failed because Disney put very little effort into marketing it. With a good marketing push I imagine it could have done about as well as Wreck-it Ralph or even Big Hero 6. That's why I'm concerned for Wish. Like Strange World, the marketing for Wish seems oddly sparse, especially for what's supposedly their "100th-anniversary movie". I'm not just going off internet data when I say this, either. I work in a supermarket, and normally if a new Disney animated movie is coming out in November, I see merchandise lining the shelves starting right around this time of year. But not this time.
  15. I disagree. I mean, the situation isn't as bad as it was with Strange World, but I'm still seeing far fewer internet ads and TV commercials that I did for comparable movies in the pre-pandemic era like Tangled, Moana and the Frozen movies. And if you still think I'm imagining things, here's a Google search of how much people searched for Frozen II, Encanto, and Wish in the lead-up to their respective releases. I also included Strange World, to act as an "outgroup". But what I found is that the search interest for Wish is trending closer to that of Strange World than to Frozen II or even Encanto. That's not a good sign. Heck, I'll even throw in Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie to see what other upcoming animated movies this year look like in comparison. Wish still comes up short. Now, those charts were only for the past 30 days. What happens if I make a chart for the past five years? Well, we still see that interest levels for Wish looks closer to those of Strange World than anything else. And even that might be an overstatement. See that tiny little micro-bump in June 2022? That was when the first teaser for Strange World came out. Encanto's teaser didn't generate much interest by pre-pandemic standards either, but it still generated twice the search interest that Strange World did. But with Wish? We get nothing. No matter which way you slice it, Wish isn't generating the kind of interest that comparable pre-pandemic movies did. That's concerning. I could think of any number of reasons for this-- maybe the WGA strikes are affecting Disney's ability to promote the movie, or maybe audiences are just jaded and apathetic towards Disney Animation after Strange World. I don't know.
  16. @SLAM! The summary of Flesh is now complete. I had to attach it as a link to a Google document because I wasn't able to paste it into the post.
  17. Even so, I strongly doubt it's going to break even. Given its production budget and its likely-huge marketing budget, it'll need to cross the $600 million mark to do that, and that just doesn't seem likely at this rate.
  18. FLESH Studio: Fossil Record Animation Based On: The comic of the same name by Pat Mills Director: Harold Kingsley Genre: Science-fiction, Action Release Date: June 12, Y10 Theater Count: 3260 Rating: R Format: 2D animation Budget: $25 million Runtime: 108 minutes Cast: Barry Williams* as Earl Reagan Don Clarence* as Joe Brontowski Peter Alan Stone* as Claw Carver Fred Goldberg* as Base Three Commander Frank Welker as Old One-Eye *fictional Plot Summary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MLMBG3lLtUr1nSKMbZ4tcAAY7hud1EibcWgGaU4M5Lc/edit
  19. Honestly I think that's what's going to happen. The movie is going to earn back its budget by the skin of its teeth, Warner Bros. will give a huge sigh of relief, and learn absolutely nothing from the experience.
  20. I'm optimistic for this one. The teaser alone was more interesting that all the promotion I've seen so far for Elemental, and that's a good thing. It looks like it's trying to be a 2000s-style Pixar movie (think Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. or The Incredibles), with the same sort of organic storytelling, and I hope that's enough to boost its chances at the box office.
  21. In light of Elemental's expected poor performance, is it premature to say we might not see another successful original Pixar movie for a very long time?
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Guidelines. Feel free to read our Privacy Policy as well.