Tinker Bell

[Randall]

I found Tink to be far from boring or one-dimensional, and not particularly misunderstood. In the new movie, her temper gets her into deep trouble more than once, and when things go wrong she lashes out at others, while still insisting that she be the only one to fix the problem. At the same time, she does have a sweet side, and lots of ingenuity.

That said, this Tink IS differeent from the one in Peter Pan. No doubt. She'd have to be, to support her own movie. To use the original Tink would be to doom her to being "one-dimensional and boring." Naturally, they have to expand on her personality (and soften her up) for her to be a feature star in her own right.

Also... I wouldn't judge a production situation by pre-release marketing. That can be just plain misleading as to what the final product is anyway. The marketing people and the story people may even live in different countries, after all. And if there were last-minute changes, that would hardly be unusual either. We all know other examples from the Mouse House.

[ShyViolet]

Not terribly big news but apparently the number of Tinkerbell features has just been cut back:

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... ience.html

[Randall]

Five features still sounds like plenty to me. Were they ever really going to do 10?!

[GeorgeC]

Miracles still happen at Disney I guess?

[EricJ]

Five features still sounds like plenty to me. Were they ever really going to do 10?!

I wouldn't doubt they'd thought of it, since they originally thought it was just a matter of adapting the book-novels.
But that didn't turn out to be the case, so it came down to how well the sequels did, and there were a lot fewer of the character-loyal fans on the second one after the curiosity factor of seeing what the first movie would be like.
And, since this was some of their better-looking CGI than most direct-videos, it didn't come cheap and was harder to stay on schedule.

(And we know Bob Iger is one of us Old-School Tink fans, so it's not like he would have personally thrown himself in front of the franchise to defend it.)

[Ben]

The <I>original</I> concept was for a trilogy. But then that first film had "bumps" and they kind of said, "well, we'll have the first one be the set up and then we'll do our trilogy", so that became four films, which was announced up front.

When the first one sold so well, the announcement for the second one contained the fact that the Tink story would continue into <I>five</I> films, which would deal with each of the four seasons, and that was it as far as I understood it as well.

It was probably the case that if two did well, then we'd get six, if three did well then we'd get a seventh, and so on. Since all five initial films had been made or were in development, then that's the place to cap them at. Since number two didn't do as well as hoped, the law of diminishing returns suggests that a third will do less business, meaning that they're just about breaking even by the fifth and that future outings wouldn't be financially worthwhile.

So although eight to ten films were never officially announced, if each one sold as well as the first, then of course they would have just continued churning them out, Land Before Time style, announcing a new addition to the list each time a new film was ready for release. In a way, this is good news, since it means they have a finite number of films to wrap up any arcs under, and those boarding the fifth film right now can aim to tie up loose ends and finish off this spin-off franchise neatly.

[estefan]

I'm still surprised at the fact that Lasseter would be supportive of upteen Tinker Bell films, especially since he was the one who closed down the direct-to-video animated sequels department and they were smart enough to not do more than two sequels per film (Aladdin, The Lion King, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid each got two a-piece).

[Ben]

But this was a <I>franchise</I>, totally separate from Peter Pan, so it wasn't a sequel series as such.

And even Lasseter is a businessman: his biggest complaint was that the DTVs took away from the magic of the original features. Once he saw they were a good breeding ground and could be made as stand-alone series, he realized that they made the kind of money that added to the bottom line that then allowed him the room to go and make The Princess And The Frog, for instance, and accepted them as a "necessary evil", just as with the likes of Cars 2, which I wouldn't be surprised to find out, behind closed doors, was the safety net trade off for Pixar to go off in their live-action direction.

[EricJ]

I'm still surprised at the fact that Lasseter would be supportive of upteen Tinker Bell films, especially since he was the one who closed down the direct-to-video animated sequels department and they were smart enough to not do more than two sequels per film (Aladdin, The Lion King, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid each got two a-piece).

All the early first ideas for a Tink Movie involved sequelizing Peter and Neverland's relationship to the "real" world (remember that little London girl from the first teasers?), which Lasseter fought tooth and nail--
Even to the point that the ex-Toon Studio executive was literally keeping two sets of books to keep Lasseter from finding out which movie they were working on.

The treaty that was reached was that Lasseter could ban sequels, and Toon Studios could market Disney Fairies as a "franchise", but only as the video extension of a character-marketing franchise, with no specific references to the events of classic movies.

[Josh]

Anyone else think this new trailer for Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue looks really, really good? The movie was written by Bob Hilgenberg and Rob Muir, the same team who wrote Circle 7's Monsters, Inc. 2 script (which was rumored to be amazing).

[Randall]

The movies have been pretty good, so far, and I have high hopes for this one.

[Bill1978]

I resisted the Tinker Bell movies for a very long time. And then one day when I asked what would be a good present for my niece I was told she loves TinkerBell, so I got her the first movie. Ofcourse upon opening it, she required to view it straight away, so like a good Uncle I sat down and watched it. And was surprised with how good it was. I like the humour that's in it, especially some of the jokes that the kids wouldn't notice. The animation was good, the music was great and the characters were well developed. I ended up buying the 2nd movie for the niece for Christmas, as her family requested that they were sick of watching the same fairy video over and over. I thought the 2nd one improved on the goodness of the first and broke down and purchased copies of both movies on DVD for myself. And I found myself looking forward to the third one.

This new trailer has actually increased my hope for the third one, the first trailer I thought gave away too much of the story and I wondered how it could be a TinkerBell movie if it was Tink that needed to be saved. Glad to see that it's Tink that is going to be the saver not the savee. Looks like the movie will still have that great humour I've come to expect from this franchise. Sure the movie appears to have taken it's inspiration from Fairy Tale: A True Story but who cares if it looks as fun as the first two.

My only concern is there hasn't been an appearance of Terrance in any of the trailers. I thought the development of the romance and friendship in the 2nd one was done well and I was looking forward to it developing. I imagine he will at least appear somewhere in the movie.

[EricJ]

Terrence only seems to be left over from DNA traces of story concepts for the first movie, where T&T had a secret Romeo & Juliet friendship that was going to stop a war between the boy and girl fairies--
Just like this one seems to be a retooling of that London-girl idea from the very first teasers. Looks like they're finding useful rehabilitation for all those years of abandoned storylines.

(And hate to say it about vidquels, but they actually get better:
The first movie seemed like generic Disney doesn't-fit-in default and may be the weakest of the three so far, but the second one is...not too bad, with an actual plot. And this third one even seems to have improved on more detailed trailers.)

[Macaluso]

It still looks terrible, but the animation in that trailer was great.

I will say though I did like that the fairies apparently can't actually TALK to the humans

[Randall]

Tink's latest reviewed:

http://animatedviews.com/2010/tinker-be ... ry-rescue/

A bit of a step down for me, but still pretty decent. And great for little girls.