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Originally Posted by Martoto
Saw the trailer in the cinema at the weekend and had mixed feelings. Looked well made I had a sense of "here we go again". But trailers can do that to you.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frothing Nutjob
The first teaser left me cold, thinking that it looked like a mash-up of Iron Giant and any random "humans bad, nature good" film. I thought the recent trailer looked more interesting, which got me curious enough to monitor the reviews and look up some more info. I hadn't known that its screenwriter / director is Christoper Sanders, who had the same roles on two of my favorite animated films (Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon). That pedigree and positive reviews convinced me to see it yesterday afternoon. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm definitely down for the 4K. The animation was excellent and there was more detail and subtlety to the story than the teaser (and maybe trailer) suggested. I don't currently think it's as extraordinary as L&S or HtTYD, but that may change -- it was good enough that I'll probably see it again before it leaves theaters.
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There is nothing wrong with "here we go again", as long as the tropes are done in a sincere and organic manner, instead of just following a check-list of what to do. The richness is in the mixture and detail, rather than the broad strokes of the story beats. Tropes are tools (and they are popular for a reason), cliche storms aren't inherently good or bad. Olson Welles said later in his life that he was watching less movies because he wanted to make them in a more innocent way: neither consciously following tropes or trying to avoid them. I think we should approach watching them in the same way, try to watch them on their own terms rather than expectations that might come from the culture surrounding it. I can't help but think about a common joke in live theater, a joke: a woman goes to see Shakespeare's Hamlet and afterwards complains by saying "I don't see what's the big deal, it's just a bunch of famous quotations strung together by a hammy old plot". To call such statement unfair to Hamlet is an understatement.
To talk about The Wild Robot: I really liked it, especially its commentary on motherhood. I really felt for Roz, it made almost teary-eyed. But I wish it had been more of a vibes-movie, more episodic, like the source material is said to be. I would have cut out all of the action-climax, which felt shoehorned just to add "conflict" at the end, so that we could have a lot more gradual development of Roz developing feelings and becoming a mother. I want to read the book, it's very acclaimed and it very likely does that development far better. Ultimately, I understand that it's very unlikely, if not impossible, for a big-budget Hollywood animated to be willing to do something like My Neighbour Totoro all the way. There are commercial pressures, fear of boring the kids and the adults with short-attention spans. I get that. As a kid, stuff like Bambi really didn't interest me much, and I was far more excited about the aliens in Lilo & Stick than the grounded drama of Lilo and Nani's struggles. But my perspectives have truly shifted since my early 20s, and I'm now in my mid-20s.
The Wild Robot in UHD is an amazing release, looking forward to it! It really goes for a very painterly and impressionistic look, clearly building upon the style of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. It looks stunning, and there are so many shots I would love to hang on the wall, like the image in the first post of this thread, amazing colors! Beautiful stuff. Chris Sanders said that the look of the forests was inspired by Tyrus Wong's backgrounds for Bambi. Sanders called Bambi has the most gorgeous forests ever in animation, and I agree.