Saturday, May 22, 2004
I fucking hate Dreamworks.
OK, so I just watched the trailer (http://www.dreamworks.com/trailers/sharktale/sharktale_tsr_qt_480.mov) for Dreamworks' upcoming CG movie Shark Tale. It's a movie about fish. And plenty has already been said about this, but really. Does Dreamworks honestly think that nobody will notice or care that they're shamelessly imitating Pixar's Finding Nemo? Pixar and Dreamworks have been playing a years-long game of "Lucy and Harpo" (starting with buggy movies, Antz and A Bug's Life; then monstery movies, Shrek and Monsters Inc.), and both studios are definitely guilty of borrowing ideas, but there's a larger issue: when Pixar makes these movies, they tend to be good; whereas the Dreamworks equivalents are just movie industry masturbation.
Here's something Dreamworks does that pisses me off: they never fail to cast the biggest and most expensive stars to be the voice actors in their movies, regardless of their vocal talents. They must honestly believe that the more popular the actors in their movie are the more money the movie will make at the box office. OK, here's another thing: in the trailer for Shark Tale it's obvious that they intentionally made the character designs actually resemble the actors who play them. The Will Smith fish is the spit and image of Will. Renee Zellweger's character is uncanny. The Robert DeNiro shark has a fucking mole. I guess so the people who were still at the snack bar when the opening credits rolled won't be in the dark about exactly who is playing whom. OK, and then there're the cultural stereotypes. "OK, Will, you be all black, you know, flamboyantly african-american; Ok, now, Robert, you be the Italian mafia don, because all Italians are involved in crime syndicates; OK, Renee, you be all ditzy and womany. Comedy gold!"
So this is the shit that we're totally giving up hand-drawn animation to produce?
Yeah, that turned from a nice little piece of insight into a totally unorganized rant, but since I spend so much time writing it, I'll post it anyway.
OK, so I just watched the trailer (http://www.dreamworks.com/trailers/sharktale/sharktale_tsr_qt_480.mov) for Dreamworks' upcoming CG movie Shark Tale. It's a movie about fish. And plenty has already been said about this, but really. Does Dreamworks honestly think that nobody will notice or care that they're shamelessly imitating Pixar's Finding Nemo? Pixar and Dreamworks have been playing a years-long game of "Lucy and Harpo" (starting with buggy movies, Antz and A Bug's Life; then monstery movies, Shrek and Monsters Inc.), and both studios are definitely guilty of borrowing ideas, but there's a larger issue: when Pixar makes these movies, they tend to be good; whereas the Dreamworks equivalents are just movie industry masturbation.
Here's something Dreamworks does that pisses me off: they never fail to cast the biggest and most expensive stars to be the voice actors in their movies, regardless of their vocal talents. They must honestly believe that the more popular the actors in their movie are the more money the movie will make at the box office. OK, here's another thing: in the trailer for Shark Tale it's obvious that they intentionally made the character designs actually resemble the actors who play them. The Will Smith fish is the spit and image of Will. Renee Zellweger's character is uncanny. The Robert DeNiro shark has a fucking mole. I guess so the people who were still at the snack bar when the opening credits rolled won't be in the dark about exactly who is playing whom. OK, and then there're the cultural stereotypes. "OK, Will, you be all black, you know, flamboyantly african-american; Ok, now, Robert, you be the Italian mafia don, because all Italians are involved in crime syndicates; OK, Renee, you be all ditzy and womany. Comedy gold!"
So this is the shit that we're totally giving up hand-drawn animation to produce?
Yeah, that turned from a nice little piece of insight into a totally unorganized rant, but since I spend so much time writing it, I'll post it anyway.
