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Post by windfisch on May 3, 2022 5:17:38 GMT -5
It's probably the closest the live action films have gotten to capturing the feel of BTAS. I'm really curious about what you mean by that.
Personally I don't see too many similarities between them. The Animated Series could be dark and moody, sure, but it had bright colours to contrast that. It was also over the top, fantastical, uplifting and even silly - cartoony, if you will. Even Mask of the Phantasm had those elements. So to me the closest movie to the show in terms of feel would arguably be Batman Forever (questionable quality aside) or maybe Batman '89, probably somewhere in between. The Batman, on the other hand, is hyperviolent and miserable all the time. It's deliberately depressing. TAS admittedly had its downer-episodes (and Phantasm), but never like this.
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Post by Snake on May 3, 2022 17:24:03 GMT -5
I'm trying to watch The Batman, but I give up after 10 minutes. Maybe I'm Nolanised; I just don't have it in me to watch that reboot. Should I? I'd give it a chance. Interesting take on Batman, albeit the darkest mood of all the movies thus far. The way Pattinson Batman fights and thrust into a situation, it feels very video-gamey a la the Arkham games. Zoe Kravitz makes for a more impetuous, young, gritty Catwoman, compared to Halle Berry and Michelle Pfeiffer. Riddler... is really off his rocker in this one. I'm used to seeing a Riddler that's in it for the money, rather than Joker-style chaotic mayhem. Collin Farrell has such a transformation for this iterations' Penguin, I didn't even know it was him. The movie drags in length a bit, but I found it entertaining overall. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 delivers in pure fun. It carries the silly momentum of the first film, but throws in so much fan-service! Especially by the time all the characters gather for the last half hour. They even kind of manage to make the human subplots entertaining.
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Post by Woody Alien on May 4, 2022 8:36:43 GMT -5
Anyway, I finally got around to watching the last two movies in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Again something where everything that can be said has been, but it was overwhelmingly clear that Disney did not go into the venture with any kind of plan. The whole thing is so muddled and confusing. There's plot details that should have been mentioned in the movies that are still coming out! I feel nothing but deep lament at nearly everything in the prequels, but at least Lucas had a concept that makes sense at a high level. (...) The quality of the EU is all over the place, and the sequels are the same way from moment to moment to moment. Rise of Skywalker is the worst though. If Abrams hadn't done The Force Awakens, I'd have wondered if he'd even seen a Star Wars. The Last Jedi is okay, but it felt like it should have been the last movie of the trilogy setting up a second sequel set although TFA sort of put it in a bad place to start. Maybe the mistake was hiring JJ Abrams at all really. The Force Awakens has some pretty stupid stuff in it that I had completely forgotten. I agree with you on pretty much everything. I saw Rise of Skywalker in the theater and not only it was a mediocre movie, as the end of the second trilogy and the epic 9-movie saga as a whole it was especially dumb and underwhelming, full of useless characters, cringy fanservice and stupid shit that made no sense. It was going to be centered on Leia (since TFA was centered on Han Solo and TLJ on Luke) but I doubt that even without Carrie Fisher's unfortunate passing it could have been good (and it also ruined Kelly Tran's on-screen presence and career). I somewhat enjoyed The Last Jedi and don't really understand all the hatred, or better I kind of do but I think it's really dumb and exaggerated. I'm honestly getting tired of Star Wars, Alien, Evil Dead and all the sagas that I enjoyed but clearly don't know when to quit (not Terminator though, since I stopped caring after the 3rd one already).
spanky Tubi sound interesting but unfortunately it's not available here in Europe (as it is HBO Max). We do have the similarly-named MUBI though! Which is something of a streaming service/distributor/social community.
While we're talking about Netflix, here's another film of theirs I randomly watched to spend an evening: Deep, a Thai production made by a group of newcomer directors as part of an expanded film school project or something like that. It's not terrible like Choose Or Die, just kinda bland and drama-ish, though to be fair it was sold as a teen movie of sorts even if a suspense/mystery one. The plot: four college students accept to become part of an experiment, they get injected with a microchip that stimulates the production of a hormone or something like that, and they will get paid to stay awake and do whatever until enough hormone has been harvested. The catch? If you fall asleep at all (since this hormone is the opposite of melatonin) before the time of the experiment is over, the chip malfunctions and could kill you. Of course it starts easy but each subsequent stage lasts longer and staying awake causes hallucinations and other problems... The plot is fairly interesting even if not novel, the direction is good enough, but it quickly becomes something of a teen drama and the characters are really stereotyped: the goody-two-shoes studious lower-class girl that needs the money to help grandma and little sister, the wild party animal that drinks to forget his mother's suicide, the vapid fame-hungry influencer/beauty vlogger and the dweeby recluse online gamer nerd. Not too bad but not good either. Good thing: the "evil Westerner" is luckily just a front and kind of reminds of the practise of some countries like China that used to hire foreign actors to give more classiness/legitimacy to certain products and services. Bad thing: the gamer nerd is also revealed as the influencer girl's stalker but, after a brief scuffle, everything is forgotten and this plot point is not mentioned again because their friendship became stronger after what they all had to go through. I don't think it really works that way in reality!
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Post by Colonel Kurtz on May 6, 2022 9:04:58 GMT -5
I finally watched The Batman. So Much red! In the end it wasn’t my jam. I feel I will have forgotten it in a week. I MUCH prefer Reeves’ Apes trilogy. I may be getting too old for Batman… but thanks anyway for the advice. Thank you guise!
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Post by windfisch on May 12, 2022 16:29:51 GMT -5
The strangest thing happened to me: I watched the Batman vs TMNT animated movie and I laughed out. Loud! At least two, maybe three times. It's also slightly more violent than your usual TMNT animated material and thus somewhat closer to the original comic books. So despite being rather standard crossover material - forgettable story and all - one could certainly do worse.
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Post by excelsior on May 13, 2022 2:53:35 GMT -5
Watched Wonder Woman 84. What a dumb movie. Lot's of errors with many appearances of items not from the correct time - arcade games of Gauntlet, Rampage and Operation Wolf were all included for instance but it wasn't limited to video games. Continuity errors and poorly conveyed messaging throughout. The storyline was based around a wishing stone which at some point in the film they mentioned you had to touch it to make a wish, a rule they then had to break for the film's own climax.... so why make the rule then?
Then there's the contrivances. There's a large segment which is written just to include the famous invisible plane that makes no sense on multiple levels. Wonder Woman wished that Steve Trevor came back, which he did - inside someone else's body. At some point they have to travel by plane to fly to Egypt but because Steve Trevor doesn't have a passport they have to steal a fighter plane (no thought of using the passport for the guy who's body he's wearing) which is found fully fuelled on a runway in the Smithsonian museum. Steve, who is from the 40's, has no trouble flying the plane of course. Then they are chased by cops because Diana forgot radar existed but she remembers 'hey, I can turn things invisible'. Can you? Kind of convenient, but that's what she does. Then they see fireworks and Diana remembers 'oh, it must be the fourth of July', but for whatever reason Steve has no idea what they are and so they decide to fly the plane through them for funsies. Nothing could go wrong there; nope.
The entire film is this kind of poorly written, badly researched nonsense. I was really feeling my brain seep from my ears whilst watching it.
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Post by Woody Alien on May 16, 2022 5:55:23 GMT -5
Watched yesterday Earwig and the Witch/Aya to Majo, AKA the infamous 3D CG Studio Ghibli movie. Yes, it's as terrible as everyone says it is. It's boring, shallow, bad to look at (the human characters at least), too many things left unsaid despite the shallowness of the plot, characters are unlikable, especially the heroine, an obnoxious manipulative brat with no real redeeming qualities. The soundtrack is nice but still not memorable at all. In short it's an almost complete failure. I don't know what did Miyazaki Sr. smoke when he said it was as good as any Pixar film... Also they missed the opportunity of naming it in the West "Earwig and the Angry Witch"! (like in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", geddit?)
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Post by Snake on May 16, 2022 11:22:32 GMT -5
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - Entertaining enough, though the mood is quite dark. It kinda of reminded me of X-Men:The Last Stand --- female lead is all-powerful and flies off the deep end. They get pretty callous with the lives of characters here. Almost as if Sam Raimi longed to make a Wes Craven-type film, in a thriller-horror sense. Do I love the film? Not quite, but it was interesting to see.
Everything Everywhere All at Once - I can see how the film rated so highly. One of the more original movies in a while, though maybe some might find the recent trend with 2 Spiderman films and Dr Strange may lead to multiverse fatigue. Part art-house, part Hollywood, part Hong Kong action with some John Woo levels of character emotion. There's an interesting balance of "order" or predictable archetypes, mixed in with chaotic humor. And for a big-budget film, it covers the Asian immigrant experience of 3 generations so well - even when intertwining multiverse timelines. The dialogue moves pretty well between English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. And for all its superbly choreographed action of contemporary-anything-goes-martial-arts, the theme touches upon a very real sense of what it means to live, love, and appreciate life despite the inevitable toil. There's no absolute good, nor absolute evil like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Merely whether we allow ego to dictate the terms of our suffering, and whether we let our pains, scars, and past sufferings determine how we react to one another. It's a very beautiful story, if one that touches on themes of Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Yoga, etc, and the spiritual thread that connects all that is.
It is nice to see how much breadth Michelle Yeoh has come, from her earlier films like Yes Madam, Tai Chi Master, The Executioners, etc. And an pretty cool comeback for Ke Huy Quan, who pulls a Josh Brolin and gets a cool leading part form their days of The Goonies. Great acting on multiple personalities, great costumes, make-up, sets, and so forth.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on May 19, 2022 16:59:27 GMT -5
I watched a animated film today, since I had loads of free time.
Wonderful Days/Sky Blue (2003, dir. Kim Moon-saeng) is a South Korean movie that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future smothered in dark clouds, where the only city left runs off the backs of an abused underclass that's starting to fight back. Amidst this struggle, an officer of the city encounters someone working for the underclass: a childhood friend who she thought was dead. In her attempt to apprehend him, she discovers that his dream of showing her a blue sky might tie into the fate of the city and each other.
I bought this film about five years ago when I was starting to get into the animation fandom, but I only ended up watching it for half an hour before giving up (though I can't remember why). Finally getting round to it, it's a pretty decent film. It's quite cool on a technical level, with the characters being traditionally animated over miniature sets enhanced with CGI. This creates a unique look, even among that small litany of early 00s films that mixed 2D characters with 3D backgrounds and elements, which I find quite compelling.
There's plenty of cool effects animation and some decent character stuff throughout, which is quite refreshing when South Korean animation is normally seen in American cartoons where it's restricted by the usual production pipeline guff. Scenes often push towards a sense of atmosphere, using long shots that let either the ambience or the soundtrack to speak for themselves. On that note, the soundtrack is alright but has a handful of cues that are excellently used - particularly the climax which is scored with a goddamn aria! I think I'm not particularly keen on the narrative, in which the characters' struggles and the plot more or less become the same thing. There's nothing wrong with that, only that it didn't do anything for me in this instance.
Still, I'd say it's worth giving a look if you're into that strain of animated post-apocalyptic sci-fi class struggle films which largely belongs to 80s Japan, but with a different set of priorities.
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Post by Snake on Jun 1, 2022 12:22:27 GMT -5
I watched a animated film today, since I had loads of free time. Wonderful Days/Sky Blue (2003, dir. Kim Moon-saeng) is a South Korean movie that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future smothered in dark clouds, where the only city left runs off the backs of an abused underclass. Still, I'd say it's worth giving a look if you're into that strain of animated post-apocalyptic sci-fi class struggle films which largely belongs to 80s Japan, but with a different set of priorities. Wow, it's been awhile since we've had that kind of motif in anime, I'm willing to check it out. It's always interesting to see how different decades tend to trend on certain topics. The only post-apocalyptic anime I can recall from the 90's is "X - 1999" by Clamp, and Evangelion. There were really buff, manly type characters in the 1980's and early 1990's, and now it's all been moe-moe, harem, and isekai/alternate universe stuff like there's no tomorrow. Caught Top Gun:Maverick over the weekend. Quite entertaining... and I think overall, it's a more complete film than the first movie. While fairly predictable as a plot, it still manages to be entertaining with pleny of fan-service, great jet-fighting sequences, tense moments, and the like. Even the build up to the mission briefing really vibes like something Ace Combat has been preaching for the last 2 decades. So if a game could come out of it, they really could do worst than to get Namco on a Top Gun-licensed game.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Jun 5, 2022 12:26:47 GMT -5
This was nearly two weeks ago (man, how time flies quickly), but I actually popped down to the cinema for the first time since early 2020 to watch this. The Bad Guys (2022, dir. Pierre Perifel) is that new Dreamworks animated film doing the rounds at the moment, mainly because it's the most interesting thing the studio's done in years with its animation leaning way more into illustrative goofiness than the vast majority of their previous work. A lot of people on the World Animation Discord (basically my online home away from home) were quite excited about it and most of them came out saying it was pretty good, so I decided to give it a look myself. I actually had a lot of thoughts on it, to the point where I even ended up writing a review of the film for an animation blog I regularly write for called Cartoon Milk. The article can be read here, but I'll also put it under this spoiler tag since I DO SPOIL THE FILM IN SAID REVIEW.TL;DR - It's a very good film with a lot of confidence and style to back it up, but I think it's constrained by narrative conventions for both mainstream cartoon films and heist films. (Warning: This film contains spoilers for The Bad Guys. The film’s only been out in the world for a little over two months as of writing this, so there’s a good chance you haven’t seen it. If you have any interest in watching The Bad Guys, please click away from this article and do something else. Pet a cat. They’re lovely this time of year.)
I haven’t watched a Dreamworks film in a long time. I know the studio’s got a storied and impactful history in the world of modern American animation, but nothing from their filmography since 2011’s Kung Fu Panda 2 has gotten more out of me than bewilderment or boredom. They exist, make films that sometimes get popular or well-liked for reasons I can’t really grasp, and I’m more than happy to have all that happen on the furthest peripheries of my existence.
Not so with The Bad Guys. Although I ignored the publicity following the announcement trailer that seeked to give too much of the game away, I was fascinated to see a DW film that was trying something which appealed to me for the first time in years. A heist movie featuring a cast of funny animals, all of it rendered in an more illustrative style that seeks to avoid the usual realistic or Disneyfied aesthetical trappings of mainstream American CGI films. For the first time in a good few years, I actually wanted to watch a modern US cartoon movie.
Luckily, I got my chance the other day when I decided to pop into town and see it in the cinema (more on this aspect at the very bottom of the article). Apart from pictures posted on the World Animation Discord and discussions that I glossed over, I didn’t really know what to expect beyond the hope that it might be good. And it was. Very good, even.
I was quite pleasantly surprised to find it’s just a heist film in the Ocean’s film trilogy vein. Extensive heists with the gang’s plans playing out as they’re discussing it – complete with various split-screen shots showing off everyone’s role. A mix of boisterous jazz-funk music and fitting licensed tunes play off the scenes, with camera cuts and actions happening in time to the music. Wolf’s full-charm assault on Diane is even referred to as “the Clooney”, referring to that particular breed of confident schmoozing George Clooney exuded as Danny Ocean.
What’s more, the whole thing is played very straight. Instead of presenting a degree of self-awareness of the genre or some metatextual commentary, The Bad Guys just gives you a heist movie that fell right out of the 2000s. This allows the comedy to come from the elements featured within the film – the slapstick, the character dynamics, and the ridiculousness of what goes on – and the same goes for the more sincere and emotional moments.
It’s presented with such confidence in pretty much every way, from the more obvious elements such as the exuberant animation and the tightly delivered dialogue to subtler aspects like the on-point scoring or the use of colour in suggesting moods. This film knows what it is, thinks that it’s cool and then makes sure that you know why it’s cool. I gotta agree with it there, as I found it deeply charming and compelling.
As a case of pure spectacle, there’s a lot to enjoy here. But as a narrative, I must admit that the more I think about it, the more I find myself becoming apathetic towards it.
On its own, it’s a perfectly solid heist film with crazy schemes and a core cast of likeable rogues bouncing off each other. There’s a sense of relatability to their friendships, even a degree of physical intimacy that made me smile. (Platonic as it was probably intended, I was rather caught off-guard by Snake plainly telling Wolf “I love you too” at the end.)
The throughline the movie establishes to tie everything together works fine when taken as an individual work. But there are elements which pulled me out of it. The third act kicks off with the “lowest point after a high” moment where everything goes wrong due to an unresolved tension. The cute and innocent Professor Rupert Marmalade IV is revealed to be the real villain of the piece. The final heist’s conclusion is flipped on its head by a series of secret bait-and-switches.
I’m not one to notice or even complain about the nature of storytelling as an artificial construction. The idea of three-act structures having strong emotional contrasts is a straightforward way of creating and understanding the different beats that can make up a compelling story. Seeing a character presented in an entirely different light recontextualizes everything they’ve done up to that point, providing a reason to re-examine the work. Why not add mini-heists on top of the big heists already being pulled off, to show how crafty this band of thieves really are?
But where this becomes a problem is if you’ve seen any other film in the same field. Whether we’re talking Dreamworks animated movies, post-2010 mainstream American cartoon films, or heist movies: these are all well-worn storytelling concepts in their respective groups. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it means that it becomes very easy to see the artifice in these concepts and lose interest in the work.
I have to admit that when the third act kicked off, I started losing interest in The Bad Guys. I saw what they were doing, the same old thing I’d seen in a dozen other movies, and repeatedly thought to myself “Oh, they’re doing this again? Fine, whatever.”
“Fine, whatever,” is not a phrase you wanna be thinking when experiencing a work that’s otherwise grabbed your attention as much as this had.
The movie did manage to keep up my interest with revealing Diane as the Scarlet Paw (admittedly something that was hinted well in advance), with her antics resulting in some of the best scenes such as the prison fight and the highway truck chase. But that problem never really goes away.
It presents something of an unfortunate dichotomy: while the visuals and animation style present a mainstream US cartoon film quite unlike any other, the storytelling structure still conforms to the expectations of how those cartoon films should be done. There’s one foot in the unfamiliar and exciting, and the other stuck in the old and overdone.
I do believe it’s still worth watching The Bad Guys. If you’re a fan of that particular Ocean’s trilogy breed of heist films, or just looking to see an animated American film in the mainstream do something visually compelling, I’d recommend it with little qualms. If only to admire the sheer confidence on display, even.
But those qualms are there: this feeling of narratively going through the motions because this is what we have to do in animated films, heist movies or whathaveyou. The film seems to be doing quite well in terms of critical reception and bringing in the cash, so I can only hope that it will encourage the people behind this movie to branch out even further, to somehow surpass the standard storytelling guff holding it back.
The many folks who created The Bad Guys made a modern American cartoon film I enjoyed. Now, I hope they can make one that I love.
(Also, a brief note on the cinema experience.
This was my first time watching something in a movie theatre since a local screening of Dragon Ball Super: Broly in January 2020. something something pandemic et cetera. And it will probably be the last time, certainly in a big public cinema.
The experience of watching The Bad Guys was perfectly fine, but the litany of ads which preceded it was unbearable. The sound mixing had the ads playing at several decibels louder than the movie, which was already awful when I easily suffer from sensory overload triggered by loud noises. But the use of modern music sensibilities with big horns and bashing electronic percussion turned it into a living nightmare.
I had to spend the entire 10+ minutes-period listening to music on my 3DS and repeatedly convincing myself not to leave the theatre because I wanted to see the film. I know a lot of discussion has been had over the need and validity of cinemas as a movie-watching experience, but I can personally say that the entire concept of seeing a film inside a movie theatre can go to the nearest black hole.)
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Post by spanky on Jun 27, 2022 9:55:55 GMT -5
Watched Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe.
Always loved B&B - the original run, the movie and the 2011 revival season. I even bought the bootleg King Turd Collection DVDs so I could watch the complete series.
The streaming age has produced rights holders so desperate for content they'll revive almost anything for nostalgia. After being hugely disappointed by Star Trek: Picard, I figured I was done subscribing to random services to watch the latest reboot or revival of a beloved property. Still I have a weak spot for Beavis and Butthead so I paid a whopping 5 bucks to Paramount for the privilege to watch it.
It's pretty good overall. The marketing makes it look more like a "multiverse" movie, but it's really an excuse to set the boys in 2022. It's almost exactly what you'd expect - iPhone jokes and the boys having a complete misunderstanding of the current culture war. The concept of taking un-PC 90s characters and putting them in modern times seems a bit rote at this point but the Beavis and Butthead still have this fundamental innocence behind them that makes it endearing and Mike Judge does a great job of making this sort of thing funny without being preachy or eye rolling.
There's some very funny gags and dialogue and I laughed out loud several times. There's probably a little too much sci-fi and fantasy for something that is normally pretty grounded but it works here. There's a few pop culture references and even some product placement that feel very modern and out of place but that's also a pet peeve of mine.
Like almost all modern 2D animation it does look cheap. The animation is very stiff and robotic looking to me and it really highlights how ugly the people in the B&B universe are. There's no spectacular animation like the bad trip segment of Do America. It's serviceable but just looks extremely flat. Also Mike Judge sort of struggles to do his voices nowadays, especially Beavis. You get used to it but watch an old episode of the series and you'll notice he sounds completely different. I'd imagine doing Beavis's voice puts a lot of strain in you though.
Worth a watch for fans.
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Post by windfisch on Jul 1, 2022 12:37:05 GMT -5
This was nearly two weeks ago (man, how time flies quickly), but I actually popped down to the cinema for the first time since early 2020 to watch this. The Bad Guys (2022, dir. Pierre Perifel) is that new Dreamworks animated film doing the rounds at the moment, mainly because it's the most interesting thing the studio's done in years with its animation leaning way more into illustrative goofiness than the vast majority of their previous work. A lot of people on the World Animation Discord (basically my online home away from home) were quite excited about it and most of them came out saying it was pretty good, so I decided to give it a look myself. I actually had a lot of thoughts on it, to the point where I even ended up writing a review of the film for an animation blog I regularly write for called Cartoon Milk. The article can be read here, but I'll also put it under this spoiler tag since I DO SPOIL THE FILM IN SAID REVIEW.TL;DR - It's a very good film with a lot of confidence and style to back it up, but I think it's constrained by narrative conventions for both mainstream cartoon films and heist films. Following you recommendation, I gave this one a try. And I pretty much agree with your review. It is a well-crafted film, feturing expressive and precisely-timed animation. But it becomes way too formulaic towards the second half or so. None of the "twists" were surprising to anyone who's seen one, two movies before in their lifetime. And I agree with you that it needed more actual heist-scenes. I also wished the movie was less sweet. Having more ambivalent, shadier protagonists and supporting characters would've given this one some well-needed bite. Similarly, the main antagonist went a bit too crazy in the last act, becoming less menacing in the process. That said, overall it was a pleasant experience. Not a must-see, but still time well spent.
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Post by lurker on Jul 1, 2022 13:53:46 GMT -5
Granted the movie’s target audience isn’t as likely to pick up on those cliches. Having seen pics of the art from the source material, I think I like the movie’s designs a bit more.
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Post by windfisch on Jul 1, 2022 15:57:28 GMT -5
Granted the movie’s target audience isn’t as likely to pick up on those cliches. Having seen pics of the art from the source material, I think I like the movie’s designs a bit more. I wasn't even aware this was based on a series of books. And sure, if this was one of the first movies to introduce me to those clichés, I'd probably love it unequivocally. That said, these kinds of movie do target children as well as adults (like parents, but also others). They still could've made it slightly more exciting for older folks without loosing any of the appeal to younger ones is what I'm getting at.
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