#from the horrible cgi

[clockwise-works]

Watched Aqua Man 2. The verdict? In the five hours since I've watched it I've had a headache that just. Won't. Go. Away.

4/10 I guess

[throes-of-warm-tornadoes]

the 2001 planet of the apes is so good to me. like, the 1968 version will always have a special place in my heart because the makeup magic was... dare i say... very magical, but i liked how the 2001 one leaned into a more biologically accurate angle. like, those are straight up apes. no wonder humans aren’t speaking as a survival tactic, those things could hurt you without even trying. again, the 1968 one was so good and impressive but the fact that taylor could overpower the actors that were playing gorillas was a little jarring lol. which makes sense, cos so much of his escape plan relied on him being strong enough to push people out of the way.

this isn't a complaint btw! they're just people in costumes---they are still very much giving ape, but there wasn't much they could do about that on a physical level. so, when the 2001 had these big hulking gorillas and more accurate looking chimpanzee faces on the screen, i appreciated that detail about the humans exploiting their fear of the water. it leveled the playing field without making the fight against the apes look like a losing battle

[auntiesoka]

i've oficially created a tumblr account bc twitter is dying. same @ and all. i'll be here annoyed at dave filoni for bringing ahsoka tano and the ghost crew to live action and making them look horrible.

[rmayuscula]

queer was sooooooo bad but like i guess not in the way people expected it to be at least..........

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

i thought i was going to work on the mark winters torment nexus fic but i think i need 2 go to bed after terrible terrible vampire movie

[gazemaizeisdead]

there’s a scene in fat albert 2004 where live action kenan thompson fat albert, who has accidentally escaped the fictional television world of his cartoon series and become real à la barbie, meets his creator, bill cosby.

it’s a unique film. i’ve seen it about thirty times. the opening credits are in comic sans.

it’s the worst film in the tiny but horrible microgenre of films in which an established, questionably marketable character with diminished cultural relevance is mysteriously transported to our reality. rocky and bullwinkle, harold and the purple crayon, garfield, enchanted (it’s disney, which at the time was only beginning to toy with the cloyingly affectionate self-awareness that has since swallowed it whole, so an expy blend of all stock princesses is used in the place of any particular ip). if you loosen up the parameters of that definition a smidge you can easily come up with another fifty or so awful, bizarre live-action adaptations of various properties with similar narrative structures and plot beats, but i’m curious about this very specific type of hyper-meta fish out of water isekai movie, stories that are less interested in the characters they are ostensibly about and more about the modern world’s current reactions to those characters, and choose to discuss that in the most convoluted, literal way possible.

this type of story is simultaneously extremely high-concept postmodernist analysis and the laziest paint by the numbers shit it’s possible to create. live-action adaptations even at their best betray an inherent disrespect for animation, implying it to be a secondary medium that exists as a temporary placeholder or poor man’s substitute for reality, that characters are only worth caring about if they look as real as we do or exist in a world like ours. there’s no genuine artistic reason to make a woody woodpecker movie, an avatar movie, a death note movie, a live-action pinocchio, they’re all cynical soulless cashgrabs but they at least do attempt to adapt and actually BE what they purport to be. dan aykroyd yogi bear and light turner and matthew lillard william afton for the five minutes they wanted to pay him to be in the fnaf movie are simply poor facsimiles of themselves and they suck because of that bad mimicry, we see and hear the contrast and know immediately it’s not the same. the project of live-actionization is misguided because even before awful executive-driven creative decisions (which all these movies have in spades) very often whatever is being adapted simply can’t be translated properly to its new medium. you could give a film a 500m budget and airbending will still not look as good as it does in 2d, where one can easily and stylistically show the movement of invisible wind and have a character float and defy gravity in a way that is instantly believable in a way that a real human being moved by CGI is not. neil patrick harris and hank azaria as hard as they try, as talented as they are cannot legitimately sell me on the idea that they’re actually being hardcore smurfed in the way that an animated gargamel can. these movies reach for a perceived authenticity and fail to reach it, not understanding that the mediums they are stealing from almost always allow for a greater seeming realness than live-action can, especially when portraying the fantastical.

the isekai movies go one step beyond this disrespect because they refuse to even play the part. yes we’ll make a rocky and bullwinkle movie but we cannot simply DO rocky and bullwinkle, we can’t do a scooby doo and just make a bigger irl version of the formula, we must have this elaborate meta routine so we can continually point to the audience and share a laugh together about how dogshit and unimportant rocky and bullwinkle are. the people who make these movies are so embarrassed by the concept of taking these ideas seriously that they must even in-universe create further removal from the realness of this to insulate us from the possibility of caring. rocky and bullwinkle must be a fake tv show even in the movie, even in pretend land they must be from a deeper pretend land. it’s fine if you want to do commentary on the property (preferable, in fact, that makes it more interesting!) but this commentary is almost never allowed to extend beyond the singular joke of every gamer webcomic ever made: wouldn’t it be fucked up if fictional thing were REAL?

wouldn’t it be fucked up if rocky and bullwinkle were in a REAL car? you bet it fucking would be. (robert de niro produced this movie and plays the main villain)

obviously we’re in a post-barbenheimer world and the only movie of this kind worth comparing fat albert to is barbie, which is notable for being the only good execution of this premise (i would call enchanted competent; it’s funny but a mess). the barbie comparison is especially interesting because fat albert is a cracked mirror to barbie.

like barbie, fat albert and the cosby kids exist in a cartoon world where characters are simultaneously performers and platonic forms of themselves, and where they operate with an unspecified degree of awareness of their own fakeness; a background character in fat albert’s philadelphia mentions having done guest spots on the jetsons. like barbie, al is snapped out of his usual routine by the personal crisis of one of his fans, when her single live-action tear falls on the remote as she watches his show and magically falls into his fictionalized philadelphia. the magic tear allows him to hear her crying and a portal is rended between the two worlds; he enters reality, naively tries to solve her social and emotional problems with platitudes, and is forced to grapple with the tenuous nature of his existence and mortality and the complexity of the real world. 

i’m just ken is replaced with fat albert performing an extended rap cover of his own theme song. fat albert spends as much of this movie trying to help the main character make friends as he does trying to fuck her adoptive older sister (“my big al”, she calls him).

without getting into “barbie politics” barbie works because it wants to be a movie about barbie, the thing it’s named after. it takes “barbie lore” seriously. at least half of barbie actually takes place in barbieland, a world that the movie cares about making authentically fake and different and weird. the mechanics and nature of barbie’s existence and barbieland are the most important part of the movie. all of these bad adaptations have the obligatory familial infighting/accidentally thwarting a jewel heist/stopping the evil CEO from demolishing the neighborhood to build a megamall/helping larry bird get his basketball talent back from the aliens plot and so does barbie but it’s an excuse to talk about more interesting abstractions. there is a subplot dedicated to barbie helping to reignite a mother and daughter’s bond but this isn’t the core of the movie, it really is about barbie, literally and metaphysically. fat albert too isn't "about" helping a girl make friends and find herself, it's about fat albert, but it resents that about itself.

fat albert 2004 has about six minutes of actual animation, it rushes to get kenan thompson on screen as quickly as possible and stays there as long as it can (presumably a factor of cost more than anything else, as with all of these films). in barbie the ideas and philosophies of barbieland and real life both naturally affect each other, are reflections of each other, which is an obvious worldbuilding choice that makes intuitive sense; the media we consume is a reflection of the real world and vice versa. there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about the link between the two worlds, says barbie, though it is often the conduit for harmful ideas.

fat albert’s philadelphia and our philadelphia do not share this connection, albert’s intrusion in the real world is a perversion of the natural order and, we later learn, a physical impossibility in the long term. halfway through the movie, the cosby kids begin to be influenced by the real world: mushmouth gains the ability to speak coherently (“don’t call me mushmouth anymore! just call me… mouth!”) and dumb donald removes his ski cap, learns to read, and goes to the library and speeds through 22 volumes of african-american history. this is portrayed as profane; as dumb donald says before jumping back into the TV halfway through the movie: “"i've become smart enough to understand that... we've entered into a world where we do not belong. if you try to become something that you're not, you lose the essence of who you really are."

albert, still on his love quest, at first refuses to rejoin them; he goes off on a date with protagonist’s older sister, which goes well until a child recognizes him and shames him for not being in the tv where he belongs. “we need you! what would mr. cosby think if you don’t go back?” al’s stunned by this; he has no response, but it inspires him to seek answers. in the next scene he decides to find out. he walks up to bill cosby’s house and knocks on the door.

in barbie the discussion barbie has with her creator, ruth handler, is the emotional climax of the film. when barbie tells her she wants to stay in southern california, ruth warns her of the dangers of being human, but does not ultimately stop barbie from doing so; she points out that she is incapable of doing so even if she wanted to.

fat albert mirrors this discussion; albert is told of his conceptual origins. as barbie is based on ruth’s daughter, he is based on a deceased childhood friend of cosby’s, the grandfather of the girl he is trying to help (which is why the movie is careful to repeatedly stress the point that the older sister he’s fallen in love with is only his granddaughter by adoption). there isn’t a parallel moment to the one in barbie where handler winks to the audience about her criminal conviction but that’s probably in the film’s best interest.

albert pleads with cosby in the same way as barbie. more than anything, he wants to stay in the real world. cosby, like handler, encourages him to recognize his own power as an icon, but informs him that his fate is inescapable. if he stays in the real world, his colors will begin to fade and he will soon “turn into celluloid dust” and die. how cosby knows this is not explained; presumably little bill also visited him in the past and suffered a similar fate.

even when done cynically (as it always is) to adapt or remake anything to reject the source material in some way. it’s a paradoxical relationship, because to do it you have to both like (or at least be interested) in what you are recreating but find some aspect of it unnecessary or outdated or lacking or worthy of change. the animation to live-action adaptation often must navigate the additional paradox of wanting to make the unreal real, and the end result, formed by people who don’t care and are only in it for a paycheck, is usually bad art.

in the end fat albert acknowledges his own unreality and crawls back in the tv. the final scene is a saving private ryan style ending where all of the real life elderly inspirations for the cosby kids leave flowers on the real fat albert’s grave. here it hits you: the only moral of the live action fat albert movie is that a live action fat albert movie is a really shitty idea that would kill fat albert.

i agree.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Five Famous Book Monsters Drawn: EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED BY AUTHORS!

Many movie adaptations of famous novels change the character and creature designs, some very drastically. Here are five famous monsters or villains that I've rendered with great care toward their original descriptions in their first books. Some aren't what you might expect from the movie versions! Enjoy!

#1- The Exorcist

The Exorcist by Ira Levin features a demon named Pazuzu. In the book, we see a few glimpses of a wicked face and a horribly injured Linda Blair, but in the original novel, Pazuzu is described as a skeletal ghost with a snakelike spinal column that ends in a devil tail. His hands float separately, and his many horns are topped by a hat with a pigeon feather, much like the biblical description of the demon.

#2- Jaws

Jaws by Peter Benchley was much more of a sci-fi novel than the movie based on it. In the original story, the shark had a human-like mind and arms and legs. It was well armed and killed not with its teeth, but its two AK-47s. It is only defeated when the sheriff ties its loose shoelaces together.

#3- The Lord of the Rings

Sauron is described by J.J.R. Tolkien not as the fiery eyeball or armored mammoth seen in Peter Jackson's movies, but rather as a beautiful long haired man in a white robe with chubby cheeks and enormous, pendulous bosoms. Over 30 pages are spent describing the Mounds of Doom, or in Elvish "Orodroobies" and in Sindarin, "Amon Amammaries."

#4- Frankenstein

Mary Shelly's masterpiece is considered the dawn of sci-fi and horror alike, but it's iconic monster looked nothing like Boris Karloff in the text. Rather it was a tentacled half-octopus, half-man, half-dragon that caused madness in anyone who saw it emerge from its home, the lost island of R'lyeh. Note that the name "Frankenstein" is not that of the monster itself, but is the closest a human can come to pronouncing its true name, as recorded by Igor Alhazrad.

#5- The Lorax

It's hard to guess what Roald Dahl pictured just from the descriptions in his novel, but the title monster from his 15-Volume Norwegian language epic "The Lorax" is nothing like you may have seen in the popular CGI erotic film. In the novel, it has orange hair and big eyebrows but is more like a spectral demon with crystal eyes and jagged fangs that bounds through the Norwegian desert on its two massive feet, each of which has one claw. A similar fate met Agent Smith from his novel "The Matrix" who was a big green robot in the book, but is clearly a Hugo Weaving in the movies.

[lilybug-02]

PURE UNADULTERATED HATRED and CONFUSION for JURASSIC WORLD 4

Like you guys do not understand the traumatic experience I had watching Jurassic World 3.  That movie is genuinely the worst movie I have ever watched.

Let me just set the scene on which I watched JW3.

This was back in 2022. I had already seen Jurassic World 2 (2018) and realized it sucked BAD (extremely). So I told my dad this and he didn’t believe me. He said it was going to have the original cast, and it was going to be good because it’s Jurassic Park 👹

I only agreed because he had already bought the tickets. So now my entire family, including some extended family came to the theater altogether.

It was bad.

It was more than just bad.

This movie was 2.5 hours…long and not good.

And we had to sit through horrible CGI “dinosaurs”, human cloning, 2ft Grasshoppers, a Star Wars Bar scene, cowboys lassoing dinosaurs, awful sound design screaming in my ears, a plot you can see a mile away, and really shitty acting.

When we all walked out of that theater, everyone was speechless. Except me, who was laughing hysterically because my dad had the saddest face I had ever seen. This movie BROKE him.

And now they are making a Jurassic World 4.

I am crying from the GALL of these people to make another movie.

And the new mutant “dinosaur” had me QUIVERING with laughter, because a friend of mine asked ‘does it look like anything you’ve ever seen?’ and it DID.

It looks like Ogra, the kaiju villain from Godzilla 2000 and I’m crying on the floor 😭😭😭

[riathedreamer]

Finally something official, and while I do understand the disappointment of getting a movie instead of a series, we were close to not getting anything at all.

So I will take that movie. And I hope and know you guys will continue to be supportive of GO, so the people who love this project and worked hard to make sure we get something will see we are still supportive, relieved and happy to see our fave demon and angel get a conclusion. NG had be removed from project, rightfully so, and that has happened. Good.

Some positive things I've kept in mind when worrying about a potential movie:

Hey, less editing means we will maybe get it sooner than expected!

Perhaps better effects now when budget goes to less screentime (I do lowkey love the bad CGI, but consider - more time for wings!)

Kill your darling is the toughest but often the greatest advice. While I did love s2, there are many scenes I could easily do without. Less time means they have to keep it plot-focused and on the pair.

Think of how many great movies that are out there. A lot can be achieved in 90 minutes.

We are not left on that horrible cliffhanger 🙏

(Fanfic writers can do a lot with those 90 minutes)

Weeks ago, we were scared of forever being left with that cliffhanger. So please, find some great comfort and relief that we are getting an ending. Despite what it might feel like right now, this is, at its core, still good news.

[mama-qwerty]

So.

Watched that brother song from Mufasa.

Um. Hmm.

It was very . . . brown.

Uh.

I couldn't tell the cubs apart. Didn't know which one was singing.

The whole presentation of the song had no energy, no showmanship, no excitement. And seeing all these other prey animals dancing with these photorealistic representations of their predators was . . . weird.

I couldn't imagine myself willingly sitting through an entire movie of cgi animals that look so hyper realistic and actually, y'know, caring about anything that's going on.

You can't have a musical with realistic looking animals and expect your audience to get emotionally invested in their story or feelings. You just can't. Animals can't emote.

The cinematography is horrible, because they don't treat the musical numbers as musical numbers. There are big panoramic flyovers and circling around and all that, but there's no real energy to them.

I just . . . don't get what the obsession with live action movies is these days, and especially don't get Disney's obsession with hyper realistic animal versions of one of their biggest grossing animated movies. What's the point? Was there some failing that the animated version had that needed 'corrected' in the live action one?

And yes, I realize that this is nothing but a quest for more money on the part of Disney. (Don't even get me started on the live action LILO AND STITCH!!!!!! THAT MOVIE IS PERFECTION LEAVE IT ALONE!!!) Disney's become quite overtly money grubby.

I guess I just don't understand why people watch these things. The animated versions are better. They convey the themes and ideas and emotions better than any live action one could, especially if the characters are animals or otherwise non-human. I would rather watch an animated clock or genie than someone in make up and cgi'd six ways to Sunday.

Grumble grumble. Old lady yells at clouds.

[xxtc-96xx]

As someone who once was into Lion King stuff, do you think the Mufasa movie will/can/should be considered canon, or not? Since it's CGI and never existed as classic animation? I mean, Mufasa and Scar have always been brothers by blood, and now, Mufasa is adopted!? (At least, that's what i gleaned from others talking about it, never seen it.) And what tf is that about the white lions? Is that a jab at the old debate about if Lion King is a Kimba copy?

Do you even care? Doesn't matter if not. I personally only care for the first two of the original movies. I think, Disney lost it, with all those horrible/cringey real life/CGI remakes. Some might work, but a lot definitely does not.

Sorry, got a little carried away.

I absolutely do not consider the mufasa movie canon, the storytelling is so muddled and slapped in without any thought to continuity its not worth considering lol the lion guard was worked in better

[rootspiral]

I was rewatching the end of WandaVision recently and I was struck by the parallels between Wanda and Vision's last kiss and Agatha and Rio's, with how both Wanda and Rio are left standing frozen, hands outstretched as if they're still holding their lover's face even as Vision dematerializes/Agatha slowly falls. I just think it's kind of interesting how the two shows echo each other in so many ways. This isn't really a question lol I just remembered while reading your posts and thought I'd share.

There is a lot of intentional rhyming between WandaVision and AAA, you're absolutely right. Even down to the structure of the episodes and overall arc, we start with hilarious little episodes and then the comedy gives way more and more to big scale tragedy. (And I suspect the two last WV episodes would have been much angstier if not for the stupid CGI battles they were forced to add.)

Wanda/Vision and Agatha/Rio exist on the same narrative wavelengths, they are doomed from the start and yet you root for them because they are so so deeply in love - despite the happy ending being so completely unlikely (Vision is a figment of Wanda's imagination, Rio is literally Death) we leave them at the end of the show with a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe they'll meet again and things will work out. Like I said, it is rhyming and it's intentional, there are some very specific themes that Jac and Co. set out to explore.

I find it funny though that despite the parallels between Agatha/Wanda and Rio/Vision, one couple works so well together while the other is such an egregious dysfunctional mess. The endings are complementary, but on one hand we have Vision and Wanda being so sweet and reassuring and helping each other through this horrible ordeal. Like, Vision is so suave and wise, "stands to reason we'll say hello again" etc. Meanwhile Agatha who cannot talk about 1 (one) feeling without screaming in terror kinda just... sticks her tongue down Rio's troath and dies. The icon, the legend, the clown she is.

[steleart]

i think that in the haze surrounding veilguard's release, when everyone was scrambling trying to fend off blatant misogyny and transphobia in an increasingly hostile environment, and feeling the frustration of having to be happy with an admittedly underwhelming game (in comparison to the previous ones), so as to not give these horrible people fodder, we misplaced our anger a lot.

people who liked the veilguard are not the enemy. it's perfectly okay to have liked the game, there is still enough content there for it to be a fun story - or even a tragic story. I sobbed like a baby my entire way through the epilogue. I had a great time romancing Emmrich, loved going to the Necropolis and to Treviso. but i don't know, even though there were some scenes I really really loved, it all just felt... hollow.

and that's the issue. I like my art saturated in meaning, the least thing I want is for my art to be hollow.

you remember back in the day when youtubers were worried about censorship, because the sponsors demanded 'family friendly' content only? that hasn't ended. ads are the new currency. everyone wants to be the new blockbuster, but there are three huge movies in the theatre at the same time. three new big games about to be released. these things are expensive, because they insist on doing all the cgi crap possible and paying their artists next to nothing. people aren't killed, they're unalived.

so I don't think people are dumb or 'lack media literacy' just because they liked a game they invested time and love into; there are bad takes, of course, but there are bad takes in any group, even the ones you're part of. the community has made incredible art, as it should. as it always has.

and since we're being honest, I don't think the writers, who were constrained by corporate red tape, are at fault either. they have their issues, of course, but dragon age has always had issues - they're still good games, trying to tackle big themes.

there is an odd polish to big company projects nowadays that feels... ai generated. most of it isn't, of course, but everything has been sanded down so it won't bother the bigots too much. during Pride Month™, we're allowed to buy as many rainbows as we like, as long as it's branded, then it's back to beige. in communist Romania, most of the clothes people wore were grey.

corporations don't understand art, mr beast doesn't understand art, you cannot divorce art from politics, because art has always been and will always be a mirror. if you think you're a centrist, you are the status quo. you come pre-sanded.

all that to say, we need to demand more from the people we give power to. don't fucking settle for the lesser evil, and be loud about it. just, you know, make sure that the people in the line of fire actually deserve to be there yk

[felixcloud6288]

Live-action movie adaptation for Puella Magi Madoka Magica using horribly ugly CGI for the Witches and Kyubey and its an obvious cash-grab where no one directing the movie understands or cares about the source material.

Except everything in the trailer is actually inside a Witch's Labyrinth. The movie is fully animated aside from 4 minutes where the cast are wandering through said labyrinth.

The CGI Kyubey is the Witch that created the labyrinth.

[cheateddeath]

JUST SAW FINAL DESTINATION BLOODLINES

amazing movie! the acting felt good, and the characters were ones i could actually care about

the deaths looked really good! the cgi wasn't too bad, not to me

i cried when tony todd said his final lines, it was so sad :(

spoilers under cut ! please don't click if you haven't seen and are excited for the movie

when i tell you every death was CRAZY they were.

iris' death got me everytime it showed up. i jumped so hard!

howard's lawnmower death was HORRIBLE but i couldn't look away. i just knew it'd be bad the moment i saw the lawnmower

erik's near death experience was cool too, the piercing on the chain made me squeamish even though it's pretty obvious a real piercing would be gone immediately. it was an entertaining and stressful watch

julia's death was just. wow. her head getting crushed then the arm coming off? absolute cinema

erik being revealed to not be blood related but dying anyway later confused me, but i'll understand it later. i think it's because he tried interfering in the design?

bloodworth's final scene made me so sad once again, i cried. i'm happy i got to see tony todd's last film appearance

i liked bobby so seeing them have to force an allergic reaction really sucked, especially considering that the mri machine completely demolished erik's body while bobby, if he was aware enough, had to sit and watch while CHOKING. that was the first scene i had to really look away from, the moment his stomach started to show i already knew. once again i'm not sure why he died but it's cool. bobby's death made me sad cause after the nurse came in i was like "oh maybe she can help" then the spring of impending doom and suffering blends his forehead into chunks. like gee thanks

the lamp post falling onto darlene was diabolical, right after i thought she'd survive for just a bit longer. her saving charlie though right before was good :)

the log scene at the end was interesting. a fun call back to fd2 and thomas burke's infamous death in the premonition, but i feel it could've been better. the whole train coming through the neighborhood was sick though!

i liked all the little references to the other movies in this film!

i feel like the trailers showed a bit too much but that's okay

that mri death stuck with me and was HORRID not only cause i liked bobby and i felt bad for what happened but it was just so scary

[interstellar-superdrive]

Snow White is the only Disney remake that has managed to offend EVERYONE

It offends the anti-woke crowd because of Rachel Zegler’s ethnicity and political opinions

It offends progressive people because of Gal Gadot’s political opinions and participation in the IDF

It offends animation enjoyers because of its very existence and Zegler seemingly bashing the original Snow White

It offends fashion/hair/makeup enjoyers because of the ugly dress and Farquaad-esque haircut

It offends little people because roles were taken away from them in favor of CGI dwarves

It offends kids because said CGI dwarves are horrifying and will probably give them nightmares

It offends adults because it’s just another shameless cash grab from Hollywood and Gadot’s horrible acting (and the CGI dwarves are horrifying even as an adult)

Hopefully this will be Disney’s wake up call to stop doing remakes, but we all know that Lilo and Stitch is gonna make a billion dollars. Anyways go watch the day the earth blew up or something