Fresh Question May 2001 - Cartoons & Movies

[James Harvey]

Hey everyone,

What a great way to start off our boards, hunh? Well, a new thing I'd like to do with the FQ's is get suggestions (via email) from our regular posters about which questions they'd like to see. I hope to mix these in with the ones that myself and the mods come up with. The first Fresh Question for the new boards is:

With past films like 'The Flintstones' and 'Josie & The Pussycats', is it smart to make a movie based on a cartoons?

Enjoy the question, and the new boards!!

--DG

[joker]

i never saw the flint stones but i heard it was no good. josie and the pussy cats could have been good but it was taken over by crap pop wanna be culture crap i hate pop it sucks pop crap. sorry. but that movie sucked. i think cartoon to movies can be could. but thats a big can.

[Inque]

Movies based on cartoons have the potential but that potential is never really met.

[Psycho Fox]

Well it seems that they spend so much time counting how much money they think they are going to make that minor stuff like content is thrown in as an after thought. Of course that is just my opinon.

[Nightwing]

Wow these boards are amazing! I'm sorry I've had a bit of trouble keeping up, but I'm rollin along.

No, it's true. That's the problem. Mostly it's about the money, but when you have a true deep hero like Batman, or Spiderman, the transition will go well. I'm not saying it's JUST about the character of course though. There are other factors too.

[Bubba]

Cartoons that amass the pop appeal to get the attention of movie producers are usually able to do so because they're great U]cartoons[/U]. Trying to adapt them into movie form is almost always going to ruin them.

--BR

[Domino]

Movies based on cartoons could do well in the hands of those who love the cartoons. Unfortunately that so seldom happens that the end result is tainted. For example, let's say I would choose to make a Jonny Quest movie. With reverence for the original source material, I would set it in the mid-60s, and use retro-future technology, and include how Jonny met Hadji, as well as a cameo by Jezebel Jade. The bad guy would be Dr. Tzin (sp?)and he would be foiled by the end of the film. By the time I got this movie produced it would be set in the present, the technology would be futuristic by today's standards, it would look so much like the Matrix that no one would recognize it. Hadji would be wearing a black leather trenchcoat and shades. The sad fact is that in order to gain the backing of the studios, you have to sell out most ideas to the lowest common denominator, which seems to be to follow whatever trend the last successful risk-taking movie started. I hope I'm not as cynical as I sound, but I think I'm right at least in this case.

[The Mad Hatter]

I think the main question that needs to be asked, when considering to make a cartoon into a live-action movie, is WHY? Why bother to do that at all? Too often, it's just for the sake of making cartoons-live action. If that's all your doing, the results can be embarassing. Witness the somewhat-clever but boring Flintstones. Or the annoyingly kinetic Inspector Gadget. Or the "speak out against pop culture while being pop culture yourself" failed irony of Josie. Get the picture? Why would we want to see a live-action Rocky and Bullwinkle when they aren't also doing something interesting? It just seems to be an overused gimmick to me. Mike Judge knew that... he fought for years against his Beavis and Butt-head being a live action movie, and when he made his animated B&B movie, it was darn good.

Where live-action translations have worked, the directors have treated the characters with respect AND given them entertaining plots. The first Batman (and arguably the second) worked extremely well that way. And Who Framed Roger Rabbit... the fact that the entire movie is a mix of live-action and animated sounds as gimmicky as hell, but remember how wonderfully done the flick was? The great humor, the fleshed-out characters, the darn good mystery... man, I'm making myself want to watch it again.

My current thoughts are, superheroes aside, DON'T do a live-action version of funny cartoons unless you've got the marvelous ideas and script to back it up. And considering the current state of Hollywood, I'll amend that to simply: DON'T do any more live-action cartoons. Please. Scooby-Doo will be painful enough, even though I've never been a fan of that show.

[NewMaxFranklin]

I also think that movies based on cartoons/comics (and even videogames) can be good in the hands of someone who cares about the material and/or has an interesting (original ) spin o it.
EX.
One of my favorite adaptations is "the Phantom." I like the fact that they stayed true to the character and let the movie do it's own thing. There are shades of Batman, James Bond and Indiana Jones, but the tone/ color and overall appeal give the film a freshness. I like Zane's take on the character. And the relationship between the Swanson character and Catherine Zeta Jones is cool too. They shift out of catfight mode and Swanson speaks to her logically as a person, rather than a plot tool, and actually gets Jones to switch to the good guys side, by simply reasoning with her. I also like the uneastness of the gangster goons during the globe hopping. They look, act and speak like they miss the old neighborhood. When Zane's character arrives in New York, from the Jungle, he has no currency, so he pays the cabbie with a handful of small precious stones. The cabbie has them appraised and in appreciation becomes Zane's temporary driver/sidekick. I think a lot of action films today are missing the human element, which lets us relate to and care about the film.
The, splashy, 40's, pulp comic style, with fisticuffs and swachbuckling action, is also a nice depatrure from the modern action film style.
However, I if recall correctly, The Phantom was no blockbuster, while the underwhelming "The Mummy" made a ton of money.
Now days, studios are making fewer films and poring more and more money into them, hoping for a blockbuster, while the notions of art and originality take a back seat. Meanwhile we get low risk entertainment. Big star casts, in sequel after sequel.
The fact that films like the Matrix are considered groundbreaking says something about the state of the film industry. Sure it's "visionary," but we've seen the peices before, in anime, horror films, and old-hollywood sci-fi. What's "groundbreaking" is the use of special effects. But, special effects do not a movie make. Compair "Star Wars" (Ep 4) to "The Phantom Menace." Much of TPM is rehash from Ep 4. Jedi master get's X-ed, young Jedi wanna-be blows up space station, etc. But Star Wars had heart. It was a real epic. TPM has a lot of flash, but it's more hollow. It's spectical. We don't care about the film. It's Star Wars for the MTV generation.

[Inque]

speaking of movies based on games........i wonder how the final fantasy movie is going to turn out........

[LadyEboshiGozen]

Why bother risking $70M or more on an untried original concept when you could just blow it all on a pre-sold idea?

[The Mad Hatter]

speaking of movies based on games........i wonder how the final fantasy movie is going to turn out........

Ah, a movie I'm looking foward to. I predict that the animation will be absolutely amazing (Square does some great stuff), but that there will be more than its fair share of navel-gazing that'll turn the mainstream audiences off. Now, navel-gazing is nice in the games because it makes for a neat break in the action, but navel-gazing by itself is going to get a bit heavy-handed.

[NewMaxFranklin]

Originally posted by Inque
speaking of movies based on games........i wonder how the final fantasy movie is going to turn out........

The FFM screenshots and character models, I've seen, look awsome. I don't know if the story'll be anything to E-mail home about (I don't like to know about the plot before I see the movie anyway.) Still I think it'll at least pass the 100,ooo,ooo$ mark, because it's an all CGI film, thereby having the same type of novel quality Snow White had. After all. Jurassic Park had little to offer other than CGI and it was one of the highest grossing films of all time.

I doubt this film will be another Titanic though, no matter how good the plot is, or how amazing the effects. The dismal performance of Titan A.E. is evidence enough (did "Iron Giant" make money?), that mainstream audiences are not yet keen on animated movies without musical #'s and fluffy animals. I also expect that there will be a lot of "fanboys"(the guys who go to conventions) will be waiting for the DVD (ala X-men) which could also hurt the box office take state-side.

Still, there's no way it won't make a killing in Asia. So if it turns out to be a quality film, that only does sleeper business in the West, we stll might get sequels to slide inour DVD collections.

[Daughterof_Evil]

I remember when I heard that 20th Century Fox was doing a live-action version of the manga Battle Angel. I nearly went psychotic. I absolutely hate it when good animated things are converted to live action to make them more "sophisticated", or otherwise, to market them to the neurotic masses.

[RockItShipper]

Disney and Geena Davis have been trying for some time to get a Sailor Moon movie with Ms. Davis as Queen Beryl. And Ranma 1/2 was going around at one point as a potential live action flick in the States as well.

[DR. BELCH]

--I'm waiting for some studio to sprout a pair of cojones and do an animated version of Dante's Inferno. Good literature can be faithfully adaped into animation without Disneyfying it...I've seen very faithfully executed animated adaptations of Othello and Beowulf. It's high time the Mouse stopped rehashing old territory with lame sequels and blazed new trails.

[Crazy8s]

Personally, I don't care for live action versions of toons. Part of the entire appeal of toons is that they are TOONS! I think it works better the opposite way--many good cartoons have come from live action--look at Real Ghostbusters and Godzilla:TS.

Oh, I would love to see a live action version of GTS, btw! Much better than the original live action movie!

[James]

On the subject of Final Fantasy to movie - when anime to movie success is so limited and with the recent crash of Titan AE, why did they decide to make a movie which has NO connection to the games?

In such a dicey medium why not base it a film around one of the games, or at the very least through character cameos in from the games? Then you automatically have a fan base from the gaming community!

I'm not saying making it a sequel - make it an interpretation of one of the popular stories. Like Batman 1989 is a broad interpretation of the comic book.

I know that sounds very capitalist, but it seems to me that it would be what both the audience and the producers would benefit from. Instead, we have a film not yet released which is already showing very lukewarm interest. Is this an example of when originality does not score over the tie-in?

I see another nail in the anime movie coffin heading our way....

[I.R Joey]

When people try to cash in on the fanbase of the comic, game, cartoon, or whatever, yet go so out of the way. You know, completly isolate the fanbase, thus eliminating what would have been a big source of cash.