"Big Hero 6" is Walt Disney Animation Studios' first dive into Marvel's superhero universe after their parent company, The Walt Disney Company, acquired Marvel Entertainment. Despite being based on a Marvel superhero comic, it has nothing to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is a standalone picture, not even Marvel Animation's films have anything to do with this.
"Big Hero 6" mainly follows the 14 year old boy genius Hiro and his older brother's robot nurse Baymax. Hiro spends a lot of his time building bots that he uses to hustle big-time bot-fighters around the city. His brother, Tadashi, feels he is wasting his talent and tries to convince him to join San Fransokyo Institute of Technology where he himself is part of a team of tech developers. Hiro goes to present an invention of his own in hopes of being accepted into class, but a lot goes wrong. The rest of the film we follow Hiro trying to fix his mistakes, and Baymax aiding him however he is asked.
"Big Hero 6" has all what you have come to expect from Walt Disney Animation Studios over the last couple of years. If you enjoyed "Bolt", "Tangled", "Wreck-It Ralph", and "Frozen" chances are you will enjoy this as well. If you happen to also enjoy superhero films in general, you are in for a treat. This isn't just a good animation film, this is a good superhero film period. No, it doesn't have the same tones as most live-action superhero films these days, but that shouldn't matter. It has traded the more serious and intense drama for delightful and wonderful adventure. It reminds me of the best parts of both "Astroboy" (2009) and "The Incredibles", and is yet more proof that Walt Disney Animation Studios have reclaimed their throne from Pixar whose success has been their own slightlydownfall.
This is the first film in a while where I was left wanting more, not because I felt that there were things left untold, but because there was so much amazing happening that I just wanted to see more of it. It is packed full from start to end, never wasting too much time with exposition. Why does it appear that we are in a weird blend of Japan and the USA? We don't know, we just are, and we don't really care because that's the way it is. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this film gets mentioned again on this blog next January first.
"The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" finally get their television crossover. Two of the biggest animated shows on TV put together in the same hour-long event, what could go wrong? A lot. A lot is what could go wrong.
For as long as "Family Guy" has been around people have been comparing it to "The Simpsons", mostly through the accusations of it being a blatant rip-off of the latter. It's still grown to have its own major audience, and in later years they've been more or less equal, with the new animated sitcoms like "Bob's Burgers" now being cast as the new rip-offs. But there's never been a major crossover between the two shows, although they've both lived through some of the biggest crossover eras in recent television history. That all changed this past weekend, when the Griffins finally visited Springfield in the season premiere of the 13th season premiere of "Family Guy".
The premise for the episode is simple enough. The Griffins are fleeing Quahog after Peter's latest job as a comic strip creator renders him the most hated man in town. When they stop at a semi-isolated gas station their car is stolen and they're left stranded on the outskirts of Springfield. The remainder of the hour-long special takes place all across town, making sure to feature as many "The Simpsons" characters and running gags as they possible can, all leading up to a show-off between all the similar characters from both shows.
The best, and arguably only good, part of this episode is the art. Despite "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" both having their own distinct art styles this episode manages to blend them convincingly. Making it actually seem like they're all part of the same world, and not just two different shows thrown in a blender. Of course there are some moments when the "Family Guy" aspect shines through more brightly than "The Simpsons", but considering it is actually an episode of "Family Guy" that is to be expected.
The narrative of the episode is however just mindless dribble. The empty-headed self-references get old fast, and when there's a whole forty six minutes of them you end up just waiting for it all to blow over. It is in the nature of crossover shows, of course, to compare the two shows and be nothing more than fan service, but that doesn't mean they're good. There's a reason most people don't like crossover shows, they end up feeling like neither show. Instead they're end up as a weird mix of ideas and characters that end up being remembered as nothing more than "that one time that guy from that one show was on that other show". It's a neat idea to want to see your favourite characters together, but it's not a good one.
The last half hour or so of the show is probably some of the worst scenes in the history of either show. It's more or less just Homer and Peter fighting across Springfield, making sure to stop by any iconic set and get one-liners from the characters that have the time to say anything earlier on. Despite there being constant action you end up looking at the clock, wondering how much time there is left until the credits finally start to roll. It's just not fun anymore. It never was.
Overall this just wasn't good. Although you'll get a few cheap laughs here and there at the expense of one show or the other, there's nothing more meaningful to it, nothing that really keeps you interested. This is a crossover that's been in people's heads for so long that is just can't live up to what they've already imagined. This is an idea that Fox should've killed the moment it showed its head, but instead we're left with an episode that will scar both shows for as long as they remain relevant.
Cars might be the most profitable franchise Pixar has when it comes to merchandising, but it's also the one least liked by its more adult audiences, holding primarily the attention of the younger viewers who would love a Lightning McQueen bedspread or Tow Mater toothbrush. Last year Disney decided to expand it even further, giving DisneyToon Studios the go-ahead to produce a direct-to-video film set in the same universe. It would end up being called "Planes".
It was a kind of laughingstock from early on. Especially the title "Planes" became a joke, leading some to wonder whether the next film would be "Boats", "Trains", or "Submarines". Disney, however, had faith. "Planes" was always meant to get a theatrical release in Europe, but some of the first completed sequences from the film impressed them enough to push for it to be released in theatres in North America as well. It went on to gross nearly $220 million on a budget of "just" $50 million, needless to say a sequel was soon announced, released not even a year after the first film.
"Planes" was in my opinion a completely okay film. In some aspects I liked it better than both "Cars" and "Cars 2", and in other parts it was less good. Overall I enjoyed it more, I felt they had learned what Pixar had done right and what they had done wrong with their own films, and DisneyToon managed to cherry pick to the best of their ability while still making the film not feel completely the same. The film was about racing as "Cars" and most of "Cars 2" were about, but it wasn't the tale of a superstar car who'd already won his fair share of prices, this was a just a simple crop duster who dreamed bigger. Not a revolutionary concept, but still a tad more interesting and exciting than watching McQueen learn about the simple life in "Cars".
"Planes: Fire & Rescue" takes the concept even further, even further than Pixar managed with their installments of the franchise. "Planes 2" starts of kind of like the first "Cars" did. You have the superstar hotshot who's participated in several races, but he's still the same plane as he was before. He never abandoned his friends, or moved away. Instead what he does is try to help them even more. He finds out that he can no longer race because of a faulty gearbox that there haven't been produced in years. He then decides to help out the town the only way he thinks he can, he goes to get a fire fighting certificate so that he can join the town's local fire station, keeping the town open and safe for the upcoming corn festival. Again, this isn't something revolutionary, but it's not bad either. The execution is great. You like the characters, you believe what they're going through, they're funny, they're emotional, it's a much more solid sequel than "Cars 2" was to "Cars". "Cars 2" tried too hard, but yet too little, to be completely different from "Cars". Changing the main character and the main concept of the film. "Planes 2" just elevates and brings forth better quality to "Planes". It's the same basic theme, a struggling plane wants to be something he's not, but it works.
It helps that the supporting characters are fun and interesting as well. I was worried we'd get too much of the "look at how outrageously hilarious this character is" like we get with many lower-budget animated films. Hell, with all animated films. But they managed to keep it just right throughout the picture. "Planes 2" might not deserve any awards, but it just might deserve a watch. At least if you've found yourself only somewhat entertained by the previous installments of the "Cars" franchise.
It took a while before I first heard about BoJack Horseman, and after I did it took a while for me to hear about it again. The trailer never really got to me, it seemed like just another wacky and absurd cartoon centred around adult themes. But when Netflix first tweeted they had released it, I gave it a go. And I'm glad I did.
It took a couple of episodes before it really took off, but when it did it was kind of amazing. The absurdity of the universe in which the series takes place gets more and more normal as you go on, like a good series would make you feel. You don't get surprised at the uncommon situations that takes place anymore, it just feels like they belong in the world. The show is actually funny, on the surface it doesn't seem like the kind of show I'd normally like, but the dry and matter-of-fact humour mixed in with the obscurity and an everyday life makes it a little bit special.
Though, to be fair, this isn't some unique snowflake of a show. It still follows a lot of the basic tropes of its genres, and some of the plot lines gets kind of annoying and repetitive. Not because they've done them before in the show, but because they've been done so often in other shows similar to it. There's the classic deadline episode, where the characters have to finish a task in far too little time, resulting in "hilarious" consequences. Don't get me wrong, the show doesn't do the tropes badly, they do them just fine, but you've seen it before and it end up taking away from the experience as a whole.
The thing that's perhaps the most interesting and fun about the show is how serial it is. There's a a central theme and plot to the entire season as a whole, but they still manage to make a lot of the episodes somewhat episodic. I think it's become more required these days to set up shows like this, but that's generally reserved for live action television. Animated shows are usually a bit more careful, and tend to stay with their episodic episodes that rather reference past events than set up future ones. But BoJack Horseman does a great job at keeping you interested throughout the season without letting you forget what it's all supposed to lead to.
I'm not a huge fan of the animation style, however. But that's more because of the large trend to have a "lazier" style than before than to do with BoJack Horseman in particular. You can see the different mouth shapes without any real morphing going on, and characters often just glide around on the screen rather than actually move. It's simpler and cheaper to generate that kind of animation, but it's also not as exciting to watch as more vivid frame-to-frame animation that for example early The Simpsons had a lot of. The style doesn't necessarily distract from what's happening, and I like the design/look of the characters. How they dress, how they behave, and how they generally appear, but I think utilising a different animation style would've benefited it more.
Overall it's a rather fun and good show. The characters and fun to watch, the situations are interesting to see unfold, the voices are good, and you actually care about a lot of what's going on. Sure, it might seem like a lot of other current animated shows, but it's still fun and entertaining. If you like shows like Bob's Burgers, Archer, The Simpsons, Futurama, or South Park, you will probably like this. It's worth it to give it a try at the very least, you won't regret it.
"How to Train Your Dragon" was one of the first animated films in a long while to surprise and impress me when I first watched it. When it first was released all I associated with Dreamworks Animation were some mediocre Shrek sequels, some animals in Africa, and a kung fu fighting panda people had told me was actually pretty good. "How to Train Your Dragon" was the first Dreamworks film that made me go "okay, maybe they really can get to Pixar's level" (this, of course, was before Cars 2).
Even though I fell in love with "How to Train Your Dragon", or perhaps because I fell in love with it, I wasn't very pleased when I first heard words of a sequel. Not only a sequel, but a television series as well. I can't speak much for the series (I've seen but one episode, and it was completely okay), but that told me that this was just another cash cow for Dreamworks to milk dry like Shrek and Madagascar before it. Even after I learned that the film was in fact based on a book series which had eight installments at the time (twelve now), so clearly it was never intended to be a one-off to begin with. But that's just how it goes for me with animation, if I hear news of a sequel, I prepare for the worst.
Because of this I didn't really pay any attention to the building of the franchise as the years past by. The TV series came and went without me even noticing it, and all of a sudden the first teasers and trailer dropped for the film's sequel. I watched a few of them, but nothing really sparked within me, they were just reminders that made me go "oh yeah, this is a thing that's happening". The film premiered, and I didn't go. Normally when I want to go watch a film I watch it in the opening weekend, but I didn't feel the slightest urge to do so for this. It wasn't until a week later, when I was itching to just see something at the cinema, that I decided that this would have to do. As I'd already watched all the ones I really wanted to watch. It was animation after all, and I like to keep up with animation, and I had at some point really liked the first film. Maybe this would at least be decent? Boy am I glad I decided to go.
This is one of the better sequels I have watched, at least in relation to the first film. Empire Strikes Back, Toy Story 3, Back to the Future Part II, it's in that kind of league. The core of this film is both familiar from the first film, and totally new. Instead of watching Hiccup deal with being the shame of his father and town, not being able to do any good, we see him deal with being the pride of his father and town, not being able to do any wrong. Five years have passed since the original installment, and in that time Hiccup has proven himself as one of the best dragon riders there is, and capable of great leadership and courage. The main drive of the plot this time 'round is much the same as for the last one as well. Exploring the unknown. In the first film Hiccup catches and studies Toothless, a dragon never really seen before, and learns more about dragon kind than anyone ever has before him. In this sequel he keeps up that exploration, only a tad more literal. He spends his days flying in all directions from his home island, looking for more land, dragons, and people. It's in this search that he suddenly finds himself at the centre of the plot.
Just in general the world expansion is some of the better I've seen. They are careful not to add too much at once. They ease us in, letting us remember the world, let us recognise it, and then they add the new stuff they've learned since last time. Nothing of it seems particularly weird, or unexpected, but it isn't completely predictable either. It just convincingly sells us a bigger world, and that Berk (the town) fits perfectly well within it. It feels like the first film set up the shot, and this film sent it on its way.
If I had to come up with a complaint it is that the film may be a bit on the short side. Some things feel like they go a bit fast, and it can feel bumpy and uneasy. As if your sat on the back of some kind of flying, wild beast. But it wasn't something that put me off in the middle of the experience. It was more of an afterthought while trying to string together my thoughts for the film. Pauses were few and far between, there was never a dull moment, and maybe it would have benefited from one.
All in all I have to say, as you expect, that I really liked this film. It makes me excited for the third one which I'm hoping will show you just how well "How to Train Your Dragon 2" actually hit that shot.
Animated films gets a bad rep in the film world. They're generally considered for children alone and thus uninteresting to older viewers and "film buffs". Myself I have been studying the art of making animated short films for the last three years, and I get a lot of humourous comments and questions in regards to its legitimacy. Often is the phrase "it's just a cartoon" uttered, and under that term they umbrella everything from feature-length animated films about barbarians trying to get laid to short animated GIFs featuring dancing babies. People believe that animation is something to just be silly and mindlessly entertaining, and won't give them the the benefit of the doubt. They won't let animated films captivate them in the same way as "proper films". This has lead to the big dogs of animation giving in, they start creating what the audiences want.
The biggest thing you can notice for yourself is the way that most films these days feature several different age themes, at different times of the films they're aimed at different ages and people. Pixar's UP is the best example of this. If you ask any adult about the film they'll immediately start talking about how great the montage between Carl and Ellie is, they'll talk to length about how that film really is for adults as well as the children they went with. But if you listen closely, they won't tell you much about what's happening after that. At the point when dogs start talking and flying planes the adults are lost and the children starts enjoying themselves. You could argue that UP on its own didn't get an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, but the montage did.
This sort of deal is happening in most of the animated films being made today, with some exceptions amongst the smaller studios trying to break through. And as a person who tries to watch as many animated films as he can I'm starting to get a bit sick of it. The films starts dividing in my head, and I start thinking I've seen a multiple of the films I actually have seen.
Today I watched the film inappropriately titled "Epic".
Walking into this I did have certain expectations, the marketing of the film was pretty clear on what they wanted me to think of this film. They wanted me to think that it's an animated tale about a war of epic proportion, a love story between people who could never be together, a fantasy story about a fantastic world in the midst of our own. Then for some reason a snail showed up and delivered some kind of joke about being a snail.
The film didn't deliver on any of these promises, except for the part of the snail jokes. The film is more of a buddy road-trip film set on a background of an epic war and a fantastical secret world. Now, this is actually a good thing, because for me it meant that everything I had seen in the trailers were wrong and I got to be surprised a lot more than I normally do during films. It could of course have gone horribly wrong, they could've had a much worse film than the trailers lead to believe, but I always found the trailers to be rather mediocre. They were pretty to look at, but didn't seem like anything beyond that. The fact is that this film was pretty marvellous, I don't I'd be stretching reality too far if I said it's the most I've ever laughed out loud during a film.
That's the thing, though, the film is much more of a comedy than an epic romance-fantasy. Those snail/slug jokes are actually some of the best parts of the film.
In a standard, more general, animated film characters like Mub and Grub would just be the comical relief. The characters that keeps the children entertained during darker hours of the film, but in Epic they are merely the more funny characters. Most every character crack a joke at some point, and most of them are pretty darn good.
Aside from the above-average comedic part of the film, there are some pretty good dramatic moments as well. The villian, Mandrake, is one of the better animated villains I've seen in a long time. He's funny, he's scary, and he doesn't seem to mind killing people. You really get the vibe that if he had the option, he would kill you straight away. The few times he doesn't go all out and attack characters is if there's a genuine need for them. Other films might overplay this and have him need every character, but Mandrake is pretty clear on who he needs for what. Another thing that's perhaps a bit unusual for an animated villain these days is that he's motivation isn't purely "I have to take over the world because I need to rule it", he's a bit like that at the start, but the film does evolve his reasons and without spoiling the film I can say that his son is killed by the good guys. This both make you look at the good guys as actual killers, murderers even, and gives the bad guy a good reason to fight back even harder.
When it comes to the problems I addressed at the beginning of this post, of how animated films often are divided into sections for different age groups, this managed to do so very slightly. There was few parts were I thought "oh, this is for children" or "this is for adults", they all blended nicely and turned into one pretty fun film. There are some out of place moments, especially in the beginning, where the overall feeling is in question and it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. That's mostly due to exposition, there are some parts where they just seem to push a bit too much all at once onto the audience.
(There is however one piece of exposition that is beautifully done, click the show button to read my thoughts on that. It is however a bit more spoilerific than the average piece of information in this post, so only click if you're sure)
Nod, the main male character of the film, is a young Leaf-man, who's not yet ready for the adult responsibilities of his world. It's not something you notice at first, but he doesn't have any family in the film, we don't get to meet anyone he cares about, unlike most of the other main characters. Ronin is the closest he's got, he wants to help him get ready for the world, but comes of a bit tough as the army man he is. Their whole relationship is a tad generic, but the evolution is wonderful. As the film goes on and we learn more about Nod we learn that he did have a father. We don't really learn too much, other than he's apparently not around any more. The film goes on, and then it's mentioned almost in passing that he was dead and that Nod greatly misses him. He had fond memories of him. The entire scene is actually more pointed towards getting the main character Mary Katherine (MK) to reveal her feelings for her father who she'd previously brushed off and left behind.
Then, when our heroes are about to embark into the ultimate bad guy lair, Ronin mentions that himself and Nod's father had been there once before. When Nod comments that his father never told him, Ronin simply states that he never got the chance to. This is absolutely brilliant, we learn to easily and unintrusively that Nod's father was killed in action, trying to save his world. It's a last push to Nod to get him to live up to his father's name, and it gives Ronin even more reason to go to the lair. He wants to get revenge for what happened last time he was there.
There's nothing really special about the story about Ronin, Nod and Nod's father, but the way it's told is something I don't see often anymore. It doesn't feel like we're being told something, we're experiencing it along the characters. If all exposition in the film was done this way, it would've been an even better film.
Overall the film is everything from boring and unnecessary to magnificent and magical. I almost didn't go watch this film, and I'm really glad I did choose to go. If you do have the chance, do go watch it when it's out. But do not expect an epic film, except a wonderful one.
Epilogue:
Oh, and there was a really neat little detail in the end credits. MK's father has collected a lot of stuff, and it's revealed that he has pictures and notes of all of them in the film. In the credits the very first picture is dated May 24th 2013. This is obviously the release date of the film in the USA, but they apparently didn't think of changing it for the UK where it premièred the May 22nd.
