Maxie Zeus
09-19-2001, 02:51 PM
This is pretty dang trivial, so I guess I'm posting just to see how crazy you guys will think I am for caring.
I've noticed over the past few years that when releasing or rebroadcasting their movies and TV shows a lot of movie companies are dropping the logos that were originally attached and replacing them with their contemporary logos. Warners and United Artists, I've noticed, are the worst offenders. You never see the "Warner Bros-Seven Arts" logo except when attached to a Looney Tunes short, and forget seeing the stylized "W" from the 70s. United Artists has stripped their films of "Transamerica" logo they used during the late 60s, and I think even their films from the 80s are using the current UA design. The only time these studio will not make a change is if it alters too drastically the film's opening titles and/or theme music. And on TV, "Columbia Tri Star" appears where it once "Columbia" or even "Screen Gems."
Yeah, the logo is rarely part of the director's "artistic vision" (unless the director is Tim Burton, letting a flying saucer hover around the "WB" shield or drifting snow accumulate on the Fox logo). But it irritates me to see a contemporary work trifled with like that; I'd prefer to see the film as the audiences at the time saw it, including the contemporary logo.
In some cases it also smacks of claiming a special relationship where there isn't one. The Salkinds' "The Three Musketeers" was financed independently but released through Fox; ownership of the film eventually passed to Warners, and it is now Warner's logo that appears before the opening credits, and Fox's has vanished. ("Willie Wonka" is another example, being released theatrically by Paramount, I believe.) Studios are basically banks, of course, but to change the logo gives the impression that one studio was the backer of a film when it was really another.
Am I the only person bugged by this? Am I just really crazy or really anal?
I've noticed over the past few years that when releasing or rebroadcasting their movies and TV shows a lot of movie companies are dropping the logos that were originally attached and replacing them with their contemporary logos. Warners and United Artists, I've noticed, are the worst offenders. You never see the "Warner Bros-Seven Arts" logo except when attached to a Looney Tunes short, and forget seeing the stylized "W" from the 70s. United Artists has stripped their films of "Transamerica" logo they used during the late 60s, and I think even their films from the 80s are using the current UA design. The only time these studio will not make a change is if it alters too drastically the film's opening titles and/or theme music. And on TV, "Columbia Tri Star" appears where it once "Columbia" or even "Screen Gems."
Yeah, the logo is rarely part of the director's "artistic vision" (unless the director is Tim Burton, letting a flying saucer hover around the "WB" shield or drifting snow accumulate on the Fox logo). But it irritates me to see a contemporary work trifled with like that; I'd prefer to see the film as the audiences at the time saw it, including the contemporary logo.
In some cases it also smacks of claiming a special relationship where there isn't one. The Salkinds' "The Three Musketeers" was financed independently but released through Fox; ownership of the film eventually passed to Warners, and it is now Warner's logo that appears before the opening credits, and Fox's has vanished. ("Willie Wonka" is another example, being released theatrically by Paramount, I believe.) Studios are basically banks, of course, but to change the logo gives the impression that one studio was the backer of a film when it was really another.
Am I the only person bugged by this? Am I just really crazy or really anal?