Tank

How can there be a Superman Returns sequel AND a Justice League movie both in the works? Would Routh be playing Superman in both films? Will SRII be cancelled in favor of JLA? So many questions and a lot of uncertainty.

I just read a report on Darkhorizons that basically says that both Routh and Bale are contracted to 3 films as their respective characters.

The JLA film that is being rushed to completed script before the writer's strike is primarily a launching point for Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Laantern and Martian Manhunter. If it does well, then they can finally justify the spin off to movies for all those characters.

The likelihood is that Bale and Routh will appear in the film as Batman and Superman since they are already contracted.

Ecven though those events weren't on film, I think they've already touched on the impact of it. The movie began as a "world without Superman," and the 3rd act began with Superman dying in the hospital.

Those things removed from The Death of Superman just leaves the Doomsday fight.

It's funny-- in comics I always tired of yet more and more villains who had the physical capacity to fight Superman-- which of course culminated in Doomsday, which I always thought was a stupid gimmick. I always preferred those villains that could out-wit superman, which Luthor was the best of.

And yet in a movie, I actually find myself agreeing in that that special effects and action might be served with Supes in a toe to toe brawl with somebody.. hence my repeated suggestion of having Braniac or Luthor hatching a scheme, and contriving Bizzarro to physically deal with Superman.

For the "Returns" haters, why did you hate it so much? I don't understand what was so terrible about the movie.

I liked it, I just felt it went in a great new direction with the whole idea of the world losing Superman-- there was more to be mined there. Instead it was all put on the Lois / Superman relationship.

Super-son is kind meh, cause it's not something you can forgot, and it is also something that feels off if it is a spot-light.

i was also put off by relying on the Donner films so much.

I'm okay without a ton of action, there was enough impressive super-action to satisfy me, but the third act was kind anti-climactic. Luthor's plot was kinda banal.

Again though-- these are problems I kinda have with Superman mythos in general, so I wasn't pre-disposed to loving the film.

I didn't HATE it, but there could have been more. A sequel might do it. Let's let Luthor hook up with Braniac and clone Bizzaro and just up the stakes.

I liked Superman Returns alright. It was pretty cool but I'm with Jason in thinking that it drew too much on the Donner films and didn't have it's own voice. I'd also have just preferred a new retelling of the origin story. Imagine a Superman version of how Batman Begins handled the origin story. That would have been awesome, but now the chance for that is blown.

I agree thaat it needed its own voice, but I don't agree it should have been an origin story. EVERYONE knows Superman's origins. He is the best know superhero, there isn't a person alive that knows who he is that doesn't know his origin.

Plus, with Smallville on TV, we try and compete.

RETURNS was a decent approach, I just wanted MORE. Plus, now thaat it has established itself, in can go in its own direction.

A true JLA movie won't happenb until they can milke at least 3 movies each out of Batman and superman, and at least 1 movie outof the Flash, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern.

yeah.

the point I forgot to make, is that this is a CG film not targeted to kids. In America, eleased theatrically i think Spirits Within may have been the only one thus far, and only gamers went to see it.

This movie is being done by the Amblin/Zemekis (and Gaiman) crews which ight bring in a lot of people., This COULD be the start of animation for grown ups in America.

Or it could bomb.

Apple.com has a trailer, and aicn a review o 20 minutes of BEOWULF, the Zemekis cgi film based on the epic. It's supposedly rated pg13, and targets late teens and adults.

Well you're wrong. but that's okay.

There's a handfull of movies, both animated and live action where I will admit that they looked pretty, and that was all that captured my attention-- but i certainly wouldn't vote for them in a poll.

The CG Appleseed is following ion a few animated features and a long running Manga, so it's not like it covered any major new ground.

I loved the original animated Appleseed movie, but the CG one seemed to showcase the CG over the story.

See-- this is why no one likes you.

And yes-- a two year old's opinion counts. Everyone has an opinion, and like it or not, it won't fit into one of your narrow minded polls.

Disney and Pixar are the giants of their respective fields in terms of pure animation quality.

 

Not to say that other efforts with inferior animation can't be better (Looney Tunes being better than the Silly Symphonies to take an ancient rivalry), but there is a huge gap between them and their nearest competitors. Yes, including the Japanese efforts.

 

I would agree that there is a huge gap between them & the Japanese in terms of name recognition,box office, budgets(the main reason why the CG animation is mainly kidcrap), etc. but not in terms of animation quality(& yes Tank, I mean ALL AROUND quality, not just visually, oh righteous hair splitter). Can you honestly tell me that you think Cars is better than Howl's Moving Castle? It doesn't even compare.

your opinion.

My son who is two, happens to think Cars is great, and he walked away from Howl's after about 2 minutes.

here's more to favorite than animation quality.

If you think that is the sole criteria, then make a poll that asks people what movie the think has the best quality animation.

you said best in general which brings into account a lot more than just animation.

While it's not my personal favorite, Finding Nemo should be on there as it is mostly considered second only to Toy Story for films in the Disney/Pixar arsenal

I cry at the end of The Iron Giant every time.

 

sol, I don't get what you mean by Lasseter killing the art form he loves by reviving the traditional animation department; do you mean he's killing computer animation by reviving traditional? I do agree when you say it's the single most adaptable storytelling form out there. I completely agree with that.

I think he just means that Lassatar is a hardcore pro-animation guy, and credits all forms of animation for inspiring him. After the successof Toy Story, Disney ( and most others) closed shop on traditional animation thinking that CG was faster and cheaper to producer, and had a broader appeal.

So by making Toy Story, Lasseter inadvertantly buried what inspired him.

But like we said, now that he is president of Disney animation, he has put traditional animated features back into production.

That's the truth right there-- for both the CGI trend, as well as traditional animation. In America, it's always been geared towards younger audiences because that has been where the hits are starting with Snow White.

In other countries, Japan especially, cartoons are often made for adults as well. The very few examples of "adult" animation produced in America has bombed. In adddition tot he examples SOL listed, I think of the Spawn animated series on HBO.

If we could get a pg-13, or dare I say it, R rated hit in animation, it might change the landscape of things. I had hoped that the Animatrix would have done it, but it didn't appear to.

By the way, have any of you seen ????/Earthsea yet? I didn't get a chance to see it while it was in theaters over here, and though my Japanese is decent, his films are the sort where I'd prefer English subtitles, to make sure I get everything.

 

No I haven't, and sadly won't for a couple years because of the lousy Sci-Fi Channel mini-series (they own the American rights) unless I catch a bootleg somewhere.

 

BTW, Hayao Miyazaki didn't do that movie. It was his son.

 

I almost wish Disney would just stay out of the traditional animation market & leave it to the Japanese. There may be less traditional animation, but people over here might take it more seriously if the main culprit in dumbing it down was completely removed from the equation.

 

Disney is not responsible for that. Little history lesson:

 

In the 30s Disney singlehandedly turned animation into a respectable artform. This led to the Golden Age of American animation which spawned not only Disney's classics, but the Warner Bros., MGM, and UPA.

 

Following Walt's death, the animation studio went on life support and Hanna Barbara and company destroyed the reputation of American animation by flooding television with cheap repetitive crap.

 

When Disney resurrected the artform (and itself) in the late-80s, all of American animation significantly improved. Even the wasteland that was television.

 

Now that Disney is again out of the picture, lo and behold animation is in another downturn.

 

Disney being out of action good for animation? Never has been before.

 

You're right, but to Pixar's credit, I don't think they intended to change the face of animation when they set out. I mean they wanted to offer something new, but they didn't expect to kill the traditional animation world.

 

In fact, as soon as Pixar merged with Disney, Pixar head John Lassiter was put in charge of all of Disney animation, and the first thing he did was reverse Eisner's edict, and put tradtional animated movies back on their slate.

 

It's got to kill a guy like Lassiter to realize that he's done so much damage to what he loves.

Probably... but at the same time I bet his paycheck more than makes up for it!

As the de facto leader of animation, yeah it is. Under their stewardship, American animation has fallen into a terrible rut.

 

I'd blame their competitors for that rather than Pixar themselves. Dreamworks and other studios took a look at the nature of the movies Pixar has been making and threw out cheap'n'quick imitations. They should have followed their example rather than just playing a game of monkey see and monkey do. You refer to Pixar's role in the marketplace as stewardship but I just see the sad fact that Hollywood approaches these things with the wrong mindset.

 

Really, both our positions are a little unreasonable. You (and to be fair, others) think a creative and well-run studio should have more variety in their product rather than sticking to what they do best. I (and, scant evidence aside, others too hopefully) would like the entire dynamic of how movies are made to be changed. Both of us are wishing for things that are unlikely. Pixar is probably never going to decide that it has the job of presenting the entire plethora of styles and genres to the American public and their competition isn't about to spontaneously focus on a specialty rather than just tossing out more and cheaper versions of Pixar's style.

 

Sorry, I just look at Disney's golden age (when they went from crude Mickey Mouse cartoons to Snow White, Pinochio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi in a little over a decade), and see the incredible leaps a studio can make when it refuses to settle.

 

Pixar is the closest thing we'll ever have to those years again. They perfected an artform straight out of the box. What did they do with that artistic energy? Nothing much.

You're right, but to Pixar's credit, I don't think they intended to change the face of animation when they set out. I mean they wanted to offer something new, but they didn't expect to kill the traditional animation world.

In fact, as soon as Pixar merged with Disney, Pixar head John Lassiter was put in charge of all of Disney animation, and the first thing he did was reverse Eisner's edict, and put tradtional animated movies back on their slate.

I loved Firefly and Serenity, and while it would have been cool to have more, the tale has ended and I prefer for it not to get watered down by un-needed sequels. It's a good complete story. Leave it be!

You know, I wonder why you want to know our opinion then tell us that we are wrong for liking what we do.

 

You know, I wonder why you want to even be alive since you can't stand the fact that someone else disagreed w/ you.

Pot. kettle. Black.

This is why you were eventually banned before. You're doing it in TWO threads at the moment.

You ask people for their opinions on something, then berate them when their answers aren't the same as yours.

Never mind the fact that this poll is completel biased, if you want to poll the "best CG animated movie" you can't decide to relegate all the ones you don't like to "other" and expect people to vote the way you want.

Danger, what you say is true but you're still losing 10-9 so far with only 29 hours of voting time left. MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!! (I'm not rooting for either one of you, I'm just reveling in your misery. MWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!)

you're only saying that because you're terrified of me.

Specifically, which STDs you might give him.

Mandard is stalking Ericka. He must know that over on subverse she admitted to writing Ericka mandard all over her trapper keeper.

I have to conceed Tommy trounced me with doing an Aristocrats joke.. I went too subtle i think...

I'd say none to both TV and films.

Story has been told.