#working with Jim Henson's creature shop

[lediz-watches]

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

To quote or paraphrase Andy Farrant (I watched the stream a few days ago, the wording's not in my head) "It was better than it had any right to be."

This was such a fun movie, though. It was silly popcorn fun with legitimate heart, which is exactly what action adventure movies should be.

I loved the overarching narrative and the way it showed a legitimate found family long before it verbally addressed it. I loved the relationship between Holga, Edgin, and Kira, and that beautiful repeated phrase "I'm gonna bring back your mom".

As someone who loves the idea of DnD but has never had much success with it (I think it's very telling that my favourite DnD stream is Oxventure and I couldn't sit through more than ten episodes of Critical Role), it was so curious how they played this. They didn't (although they very easily could have) show you the rolls, but you could definitely feel them sometimes. I'm not just talking about the Nat20s and NatOnes, but like Simon's player in general is a very good player with such cursed dice. He failed so many saves and had to adjust around them.

I actually wonder how someone who has never played the game would react to some of them, actually. Like, there's a point where Simon gets his foot caught in some cobblestones. To a DnD player, what happened is that it's clearly a failed stealth check followed by several failed saves from everyone to free him. But I wonder if to a non-player whether that seemed like a bit of an arbitrary complication to the story for DRAMA.

But there are, I should point out, very few points where I actually noticed those points that would likely end up as a divide. Mostly, I think, the movie was incredibly accessible.

Like, even painfully DnD tropes. Everyone points out that Xenk is either a DMPC or a player who barely ever gets to play and so is always overpowered so they can be a fun addition. But the actual painfully DnD trope about him is that he's just SO Lawful Good. So lawful that he can only walk in straight lines. But rather than it being specifically a DnD joke, he's a parody of The Perfect Hero. Everyone knows that trope. Everyone can follow that trope.

So the only problem I have with it from an adaption perspective is how twisted and messy the story felt. As a DnD player, it was fine - the players were scrambling to find solutions to a problem and were going on multiple quests to figure out what they would do. But I can definitely see how an outsider might find it all... incohesive.

They're gathering party members > oh, that wasn't good enough.

They're going to search for a helmet > oh, that isn't available.

They're going in search of a hero > oh, he's going to give them a different quest for the helmet.

They've got the helmet but more importantly they have this hero > oh, he's leaving, okay.

They've got the helmet > oh, that won't work.

They're doing a heist > oh, that's not going to work either...

Like, I get it. I FELT it. But I can also see how an outsider might react to it in the same way I originally felt watching The Dark Knight. After a point, plot twists get tedious. And some of these plot threads could have been entire stories on their own rather than quick asides. Everything was a little too shallow in order to fit a lot of story into a twisted adventure.

But that said, I enjoyed it. And I loved the complications in this a lot more than I do in heist movies where it all turns out that it actually went exactly as the grandmaster thief intended all along.

And more than anything, I loved the main arc. I am always a sucker for Found Family, but this was beautiful.

From the very start, the film goes out of its way to SHOW us that Holga and Kira are an unconventional but very real mother and daughter. Holga has a closer relationship with Kira than Edgin does. BUT the story is told from Edgin's perspective, so it repeatedly TELLS us that Holga is Edgin's partner, Kira is Edgin's daughter, and the quest is to bring back Edgin's dead wife so she can be a mother to Kira.

I love that dichotomy SO MUCH. I adore it when stories not only use show and tell cohesively, but make the difference between them a POINT. It was amazing, and something that I think couldn't have been done nearly as well in a written medium, I'm so in awe of how effortless it felt.

That one line was... mmph! Nice job, Mr Pine, nice job making that line hit your character so hard.

AND while I probably can't get into it without going on a whole essay about western ethics re: resurrection, there was something I really appreciated about how the film didn't linger over Edgin's wish and decisions about his wife. This was a DnD campaign. Resurrection is expensive and a pain, but it's a thing that happens, the only issue is Faerun lore about other planes, let's move on.

Last thing I'll talk about is the characters themselves. This was such good casting, and I love the characters and how they're embodied.

I love Holga's unapologetic dumb muscle and how much heart she had. (Side note, Bradley Cooper's cameo was wonderful and heartwrenching and that whole mini-arc is going to quietly stay in my heart for a long while)(Side-side note, I love Bradley Cooper so much more as a supporting character actor than a lead. He's SO GOOD at what he does but lead characters make his arcs overwrought)

I love Simon and Doric's blunt, awkward style and how you can tell they'll work well together but would be hopeless without Edgin's charm and energy to guide them.

I love Edgin, and I LOVE Edgin played by Chris Pine, who balances that charm and quiet desperation and arrogance into one perfect BARD. He was SUCH a BARD, even though he was missing the magic and lore (yeah... Simon fails saves, Edgin fails knowledge checks all. the. time. His dice hate the lore and it's absolutely a running joke at the table). His personality was just embodied Harper bard and it was perfect.

I love Hugh Grant's villain era because I actually find it a very natural evolution of his typecasting. But more than anything, I love that Forge isn't and never was actually evil. He's Neutral. He's selfish and willing to do either good or bad to achieve his goals. He didn't really want his friends to die, and you know, the overall outcome of the scheme was regrettable, but he would get away with money, love, and his life, so... -shrug- And Hugh Grant plays that so well. He's so dry and deadpan and you're never sure whether he's making fun of you or not, and it just works. So it's Nice. I like it. Nice.

But yeah! I could ramble about the things I loved for days, and there are certainly things I would have preferred, but this was actually a really good, really fun movie using DnD rules and tropes.

Good game, Paramount. Well done.

[celestialgloaming]

Okay so like tbh the fnaf movie looking like it'll actually be really good is honestly a good thing because if it's a genuinely good horror movie it'll make news for being too scary/mature for kids and then finally parents will pay attention to Scrimbly or whatever being probably not appropriate for their 5 year olds.

[fnaf-news]

Jim Henson's Creature Shop is working on a miniature version of Mangle for the 2nd FNaF Movie! You can also see a bit of Toy Bonnie on the left.

Only makes you wonder how the real thing is gonna look like!!

[muppet-facts]

Muppet Fact #883

Jim Henson's Creature Shop worked on the animatronic characters for the Five Nights at Freddy's film.

Source:

Jason Blum on Twitter. August 9, 2022.

Five Nights at Freddy's. 2023.

[quasi-normalcy]

Thinking about this 1998 TV movie called "Merlin" with Sam Neill in the title role and monsters created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. It was a retelling of Arthurian legend, but with Merlin fighting all the while against the Fairy Queen Maab, who bitterly resents the spread of Christianity into the British Isles; but anyways, what I remember about it is that the big, climactic final battle against Maab is a sort of anticlimax, because Merlin just gets everyone to stop believing in the Fae and...that's it. There's not even a fight after that. They all just walk out of the room while Maab screams at them, but it doesn't even matter anymore because she's just become completely irrelevant; not even worth fighting.

And of course, nerds at the time were making fun of this ending (and maybe it wasn't particularly well-written; I don't remember, I was 10 when I saw it). But I actually think that it's kind of brilliant. Because that's sort of how political power actually works; it seems completely invincible right up until enough people stop believing in it, and then suddenly...it's gone.

Anyways, that sticks with me.

[fnaf-movie-countdown]

Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the life-sized puppet figure is actually our first look at the puppet in the sequel film as RegularSauce, who does most of the prop making for these kinds of events, is working with Jim Henson’s creature shop to make the animatronics for fnaf 2

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[misteria247]

THROWS EVERYTHING

THEY GOT JIM HENSON'S CREATURES SHOP WORKING ON THE FNAF MOVIE???? LIKE THE INFAMOUS JIM HENSON'S CREATURES SHOP?????? AS IN THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR MOVIES LIKE THE MUPPETS AND SESAME STREET AND THE 90s TMNT MOVIE????????? THAT STUDIO????????

HOLY SHIT NO WONDER THE ANIMATRONICS LOOK SO DAMN GOOD.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

I know it's literally not even remotely how it works, but since Jim Henson's Creature Shop supplied the animatronics, I will be referring to them as Muppets

WHERE is our five nights at muppets

[kandiyaki]

the fnaf movie was great but i think the best part is that jim hensons creature shop worked on it meaning its not impossible that we get a muppets fnaf movie

[atopvisenyashill]

i do think some of my criticism of the dragons in particular is because i grew up absolutely spoiled by farscape, which made me cry over a puppet and a spaceship multiple times. i think puppetry work in general is really under appreciated in adult media but i honestly think jim henson’s creature shop would have had a fucking BLAST doing these dragons and i do think most of the henson creature work (both dark crystals, labyrinth, farscape, where the wild things are, etc) fits the aesthetic george goes for. i just think more fantasy and sci-fi should go for the unexpected like animation or puppets IT ALWAYS LOOKS MORE WHIMSICAL AND CREEPY

[hispieceofcake]

FNAF MOVIE AND MATTHEW LILLARD MASTERLIST — Interviews, Behind the scenes, unnoticed information, things about our beloved Matthew Lillard.

Hello hello Five Nights At Freddy's fans, It's good to be back, I've been having some problems with excessive tiredness, maybe a bit of a bornout, but I'm improving and trying to make the most of it whenever I feel interested in making a post (which I admit, is difficult). But well, today I came to bring you some content that I found online about the FNAF film and things that I think should be more valued, like interviews and things like that, so stick with the post, I hope you like it, enjoy reading. 💛

Warning: This post is not yet 100% complete, as I find more and more things I will add them to the post.

To start off, I want to say that I really loved this film and I can't wait to find out if they make a sequel, I could barely contain my joy when I watched it and boy, when I saw Steve Raglan/William Afton played by Matthew Lillard I could only scream (seriously, I fell even more in love with a character I already liked before, I love you Matthew Lillard). Like, it was really exciting to see this movie after years and years of waiting, I remember still being a little 11 year old girl and playing pirated FNAF games with the risk of viruses, like, seriously, I even watched videos on YouTube of cosplays and gameplays. So much so that the ones I watched most were "Pirate Cove", "Huestation" and "Core" (all are Brazilian YouTubers).

But well, moving on from my little (big) childhood obsession, let's go to the links I got.

Five Nights At Freddy's Interview: Matthew Lillard On Staying True To The Game And Returning To Horror

Matthew Lillard discusses which Five Nights At Freddy's games are the inspiration for the movie, the Scream homage, and working with Jason Blum.

Interview with FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S actor Matthew Lillard!

FANGORIA talks to actor Matthew Lillard to discuss his new movie FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S, getting the role, wearing the suit, fans and more.

Josh Hutcherson Addresses Viral Whistle Meme, Talks The Beekeeper and FNAF (Extended )

Josh Hutcherson talks about starring in Five Nights at Freddy's, the whistle edit memes of him from 2014 blowing up the internet and his role in The Beekeeper.

INTERVIEWING THE ANIMATRONIC ACTORS FROM THE FNAF MOVIE!

Making Of FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S (2023) - The best behind-the-scenes and creation of the world | Peacock

"Five Nights At Freddy's (2023)" Making Of FNAF Movie | Behind The Scenes | Set Design | Creating The World Of The Animatronics | Sound Design | Set Visit | On Set Bloopers | On Set Stunt Rehearsal | Funny Cast Moments | Featurette | On Set Interview With Josh Hutcherson & Director Emma Tammi | Peacock | Universal Pictures

Bonus DVD of the movie Five Nights at Freddy's, behind the scenes, making of and much more!!!

ALL FOOTAGE IN THIS VIDEO WAS RECORDED BY @katsterlingfan ON TWITTER I

'Five Nights at Freddy's' Director Talks Incorporating the Game, Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and More!

Director Emma Tammi dishes on her upcoming movie 'Five Nights at Freddy's'. She shares how they incorporated the game into the movie, spills that the animatronics were built at Jim Henson's Creature Shop, touches on the comedic timing of horror, and so much more. See 'Five Nights at Freddy's' in theaters October 27

Five Nights at Freddy's | BEHIND THE SCENES - 'MAKING OF' Documentary | Peacock

Dive deep into the enigmatic world of "Five Nights at Freddy's" with our exclusive "BEHIND THE SCENES - 'MAKING OF' Documentary." Uncover the untold stories of FNaF's creation, from Scott Cawthon's initial inspirations to the game's groundbreaking impact on the horror genre. Witness firsthand interviews, never-before-seen footage, deleted scenesand in-depth explorations of your favorite animatronics. Discover the intricate lore, fan theories, and the incredible community that has risen around this iconic game series. Whether you're a die-hard FNaF fan or new to the franchise, this documentary is a must-watch!

'Five Nights at Freddy's' Director Shares Which Game Elements She Brought to the Film

5 favorites from 'Five Nights at Freddy's'

Director and writer, Emma Tammi, and producer, Jason Blum, play Fandango's Five Favorites for their new movie 'Five Nights at Freddy's'!

Five Nights at Freddy's | Jason Blum Emma Tammi INTERVIEW

Based on the viral hit video game, Five Nights at Freddy’s is produced by Hollywood heavyweight horror producer Jason Blum, who took on the challenge of turning the game created by Scott Cawthon into a movie. Director Emma Tammi reveals how the game hit a nostalgic nerve evoking memories of her own childhood, making it the perfect project to turn into a film adaptation. For Tammi the world of animatronics was incredibly unique and captivating and they’re treated like a whole other cast in the film. Jim Henson’s workshop brings the creatures to life, which are cuddly, weird, scary and unique all at once. The film features Hungers Games star Josh Hutchinson as central character Mike, who brings the audience through the pizzeria and five nights of nightmare-inducing terror.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Practical Animatronics Were Crucial... and Flammable

Director Emma Tammi explains how useful having real animatronics on the set of Five Nights at Freddy's was for giving her cast some nightmare fuel... especially after one of them spontaneously combusted during filming.

Chica is happy to see Mr. Cupcake! 🐤🧁 [Clip from @Dawko 's FNaF vlog !]

Matthew Lillard reveals deal for FNAF movie TRILOGY!

Matthew Lillard (William Afton Actor) Reveals 3-Picture Deal for FNaF Movie!

Five Nights at Freddy's Movie Making of - Behind the Scenes | FNAF Movie Facts

Exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie (FNAF). The making process behind the camera with Matthew Lillard, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, and the animatronics actors Kevin Foster (Freddy), Jade Kindar-Martin (Bonnie), and Jess Weiss (Chica). The secrets of the making of animatronics.

Matthew Lillard voices Shaggy for Sarah

This was at Texas Frightmare Weekend 2016. Matthew Lillard's booth was the last one we were attending for the evening, and he was extra special nice to Sarah!

Matthew Lillard teaches us how to do the voice of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo

Matthew Lillard has been in Hollywood for over 25 years, with roles in Twin Peaks: The Return, The Descendants, and Halt And Catch Fire. But one of his most recognizable roles is Shaggy Rogers from Scooby-Doo, as Lillard has portrayed the live-action version and contributed his voice to the animated franchise. In the video above, he teaches us how to do the voice of Shaggy.

Five Nights at Freddy's - Official Behind-the-Scenes Clip (2023) Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard

Join members of the cast and crew of Five Nights at Freddy's as they give a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming horror movie. Five Nights at Freddy's stars Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Kat Conner Sterling, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Matthew Lillard. The film follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he performs the night shift at Freddy's won't be so easy to make it through. The movie Five Nights at Freddy's is written by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi, Seth Cuddeback, and is based on the video game series created by Scott Cawthon. It is produced by Jason Blum and Scott Cawthon. Bea Sequeira, Russell Binder, Marc Mostman, and Christopher H. Warner serve as executive producers. Universal Pictures presents a Blumhouse production, in association with Striker Entertainment.

SCREAM Panel – Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich – Steel City Con June 2021

Matthew Lillard was Stuart in Scream, but is also well known as Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo films, plus had roles in the Wing Commander film, Thirteen Ghosts, The Bridge, Bosch, Twin Peaks and Good Girls, plus voice roles in Scooby-Doo, American Dad and Beware the Batman.

Matthew Lillard "Senseless" 1997 - Bobbie Wygant Archive

Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard Relive 'Scream' 25 Years Later | Entertainment Weekly

Stars of 'Scream' Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard look back on the film at its 25th anniversary.

Scooby-Doo and Shaggy get mad at Matthew Lillard

Well, guys, that's what I have for now, but I'll be adding more things to the blog as I find them, and if you want to share something I'd be very happy 💗

That's it, bunny kisses 🐰💗

[ultrakeencollectionbreadfan]

Meet the Wombles

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, a variety of shows were produced that focused on the adventures of a group of little creatures that lived just out of reach of human society. The Smurfs was the big hit, but there was also The Snorks, The Monchhichis, and many more. However, there was one TV show of this nature that completely passed us by, at least in the United States.

The Wombles was a TV series from the United Kingdom focusing on a group of short, furry creatures living in Wimbledon Common, a park in southwest London. It was based on a book series created by Elisabeth Beresford. The most important thing about them was their environmental cred, as they picked up the trash that humans left behind and turned it into all sorts of Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions. It was quite popular in the UK, so much so, in fact, that the Wombles ended up getting their own movie:

The most bizarre turn the Wombles took, however, was when they actually became a bubblegum band, complete with this little novelty hit:

Sadly, the Wombles were never really noticed much in too many places outside of the UK. It's sort of a shame, because the US has been sleeping on such a great thing.

Recently, there's been news that a remake is in the works, along with a potential movie. I do hope that another movie gets made, and it's by the guys who did the Paddington movies. I also hope they get Jim Henson's Creature Shop to work on it. All in all, it's a fascinating thing that should be known to the world.

[1moreoffkeyanthem]

Can we get the Star Seven's favorite TV shows or Movies if you haven't yet? <3

AYYYY that’s what’s up!!! I did OrangeJuiceVerse Stan and Kyle’s favorite media here (shoutout to the wife for askin) but here’s the rest of the seven!

KENNY!!! Ok I cannot stress enough how much of a Muppets enthusiast this man is. Kenny absolutely wanted to work for Jim Henson Creature Shop at some point (same) and he fucking LOVES anything remotely related!!! He’s also a big horror fan due to the fact that he’s seen a lot of gnarly shit in his (consistently interrupted by deaths) life, and OH. MY. GOD. he fucking loves Troma Entertainment. Lloyd Kaufman and his gross ass vulgar comedy is Kenny’s lifeblood. He introduced the m5 to Toxic Avenger and Shakespeare’s Shitstorm (idk if that one’s actually out yet my partner’s just friends with Lloyd so we got an early copy) and literally every single one of his movies are so gross but Kenny very much enjoys them, out here casually enjoying the Tromaville High trilogy without flinching once. And he LOVES watching buddy comedies with Stan!!! The two of them will be up to all hours just watching Superbad and Clerks and any movie where two guys are in silly situations smh. And this guy ADORES the marvel netflix shows, especially Daredevil omg and he went feral for The Punisher. Kenny has also seen every Barbie movie ever

Tweek! He is a CHRONIC rewatcher!!! He’s seen Sherlock more times than he can count. Any show that’s formulaic, he likes it bc it isn’t unpredictable, so think kids shows. BUT!!! He also very much enjoys the most obscure gory art pieces, loves early film like A Trip To The Moon and Stagecoach, and adores Buster Keaton. At some point Stan got him into Supernatural and Tweek was TERRIFIED at points, but he loves the lore and the attention to detail. And he laughs his ASS OFF at Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia but it stresses him out lmao

Craig watched The Orville and absolutely lost his mind getting obsessed with it, he may be an astronomy professor and generally into space, but he can take or leave Star Wars. And Star Trek. His biggest guilty pleasure with movies that only Tweek knows about? This stoic mf fucking LOVES musicals. Like if Stan knew, OH BOY he’d be over at apt 2 constantly hanging out just because Craig is watching The Greatest Showman. Craig doesn’t discriminate against objectively bad cgi either, so he genuinely enjoyed the 2019 Cats and rewatches it frequently. He loves Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and introduced it to the rest of the star sev (Cartman loved it, Kyle was repulsed by “Bless Your Beautiful Hide”). One of his favorite shows is How It’s Made lmfao and he ADORES Mythbusters.

Marj omg she’s such a romantic, movies based on Jane Austen novels? She’s there. Bridgerton? Yep. But ALSO!!! Any movie that’s very race against time or like a movie where someone is falsely accused of a crime, she’s watchin it, and DUDE she LOVES CARTOONS!!! Her parents only ever let her watch pbs kids and she was SUCH an Arthur Girlie!!! Omg Fetch was a fave too!!! Also shes showed the group some DARK movies, like it was her turn to pick on movie night in the Survivor House and she put on The Black Phone and everyone was like JESUS CHRIST MARJ WHAT bc they were expecting her to pick Fern Gully or something again but nope she was like “fellas it’s really cerebral and dynamic” and literally Stan got so freaked he had to leave the room

Cartman is a HUGE reality show guy!!! He and Marj are sittin there watching the bachelor with popcorn and a love of drama!!! LITERALLY he lives for the arguments in Dance Moms and the pettiness like “oh you guys Jill bought a bench for Abby this is about to be freakin sweet” lmfao messy king. He’s definitely more of a show guy than a movie guy, but as long as there’s significant arguments he’s clocked in! Also when he was watching Hannibal 24/7 Kyle was VERY concerned lmao. Cartman’s favorite movie is ‘Alive’ (I think that’s what it’s called?) JUST because it scared kenny so bad when the characters had to eat each other. His favorite show is Lost and he was out here chomping his popcorn and that scene in the episode where Kate has her shirt off bc they ran into a swarm of bees and Charlie goes “I think it was full of C’s” and Cartman is like “hell no those are A cups at best” (this is a very specific hc I’m sorry) but lmfaoooo Cartman absolutely sends me into orbit bc he absolutely doesn’t shut up when he’s watching ANYTHING!!! His favorite musical is Phantom of The Opera.

There ya go my dude! Thank you again for asking I LOVE getting asks especially abt OJV and I deadass had so much fun thinking on this!

[browniefox]

Actor au. Reeve’s actor is actually a like Jim Henson’s creature shop puppeteer guy who they let play Reeve and voice Cait. He works on most of the ‘main character’ puppets for the (movie? Show?) like Cait Sith and his big moogle, the chocobos, and Nanaki!