Popeye Movie First look at CG Popeye

[gaastra]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/06/17/ ... cg-popeye/

Not bad. Could be worse.

[Ben]

Okay, so this is going for the Blue Sky/Charlie Brown look, which is kind of appropriate given Popeye's Thimble Theater beginnings, with a dash of Fleischer's surrealist visual accents.

As with the Peanuts movie, there seems to be a genuine affection for the characters, and I'm intrigued to see more...

[Randall]

I don't want to judge so early, but I'm not really digging the "happy happy" vibe. I hope this is not really the direction Genndy's taking.

[Ben]

Agreed, although as a first teaser pic I think this is just that...something that shows the overall good guys/bad guy aspect and gets the characters over in one image for those - unbelievably - unfamiliar with them.

[droosan]

Well, it's just a conceptual painting .. and it's being used as one of several images -- announcing multiple properties -- on a portion of a flyer at a licensing show.

I'm not sure whether Sony intended for it to be seen by anyone outside the 'licensed-merchandise' industry .. but here it is, regardless.

[EricJ]

I don't want to judge so early, but I'm not really digging the "happy happy" vibe. I hope this is not really the direction Genndy's taking.

It's the myth that's refused to die for TWELVE YEARS: Producers thinking that Genndy Tartakovsky has the Great American Artistic Animated Movie somewhere inside of him, struggling to get out.
(Mostly from producers who thought Samurai Jack would be a big deal at the time, and thought it would revolutionize the industry like Secret of the Kells.)

It wasn't any truer on the first Clone Wars series than it was on the Dark Crystal Sequel.
And if Hotel Transylvania hadn't starred Adam Sandler, we'd have had a clearer idea who to dump blame on.
Genndy's always going to go for a kitschy/ironic happy-happy look, because he literally doesn't know the difference anymore--Once a Cartoon Networker, always a Cartoon Networker.

[Ben]

Okay...apart from Popeye looking and sounding a bit too "young", not to mention his laconic character not being quite as we usually know him, plus the "lifting" of a comparative line from Superman: The Movie, what do we think about this "animation test" for the new Popeye movie from Sony?

On one side, I'm liking (not loving) the Fleischer-esque attempts at bendy animation, on the flip I'm not loving some of the modern music and the fact that they just don't seem to have got Popeye down at all, even if Thimble Theater was their supposed inspiration. Where are the anchor tattoos on his arms (forget that...where are his bulging arms!), why is he wearing a t-shirt instead of a sailor outfit, and just where *is* POPEYE!?

[Randall]

I think there's more here right than wrong. Lots of energy, rubber hose animation, physical humour, nice gags. All positives.

I do hope these don't turn out to be final character designs. I hadn't noticed the t-shirt initally, but now it bugs me (the sailor's cap does still make him look like Popeye, though.) And whites on the eyes never look right on these characters (at least Popeye and Olive) to me, but perhaps it's inevitable to have them, given the limitations of black dots for eyes (though Segar and Schulz did alright with 'em!). And yes, Popeye looks way too young. He needs to be more grizzled and snarky.

I think it's a good start, but it could use some tweaking.

[Dacey]

Apparently, this movie might no longer be happening at all, with the story being that Sony doesn't have enough faith in the project performing well on a financial level...

http://www.slashfilm.com/genndy-tartako ... peye-exit/

[droosan]

Cartoon industry guru Jerry Beck seems to be of the opinion that it's mainly "Genndy Tartakovsky's Popeye" which may be no longer happening. Comic strip syndicate King Features and producer Avi Arad maintain that they're still working toward getting a Popeye animated feature made.

The recent upper-level management shakeup at Sony would seem to be most responsible for this setback; whenever new leadership takes over, a lot of projects greenlit by outgoing execs get shuttered -- especially if they're in the early stages of production.

Thus, if Popeye does end-up going forward at Sony, it will likely be a completely different take than what was seen in the test footage released last year.

[Ben]

To be fair to Jerry, what he's been told by Sony does sound like hogwash. After three years without a greenlight it just seems as if Sony is not up for a Popeye movie. The test footage was obviously supposed to pull a Deadpool and get enough fan excitement going for them to push the button on it, but as we know, and as good overall that sequence was, it was probably not refined enough to really please everyone, and although "well received" it wasn't without much criticism and comments that dampened that reception.

As one of the posters says on one of the above links, it'll take the success of something like Peanuts for them to look at Popeye seriously again, or for Can You Imagine to be huge so that Genndy can then dictate his next project (and then hopefully make that Popeye). But to all intents and purposes, or at least until another director comes on and wows them with another angle if the above doesn't happen, I do believe that while Popeye is not "dead" dead, it will languish in (non-)development mode...

[GeorgeC]

Ben,

Does even 5% of the population even remember Popeye at this point in time?

Honestly, it's the same thing with the Looney Tunes and classic Disney shorts! If you don't let the public see these films, how are they supposed to get interested in the features based on the characters let alone spin-off TV series/sequels? At least if they showed the original shorts regularly on basic TV -- if that even exists anymore! -- the characters would get exposed to more people!

It would be lovely to see a Popeye feature that's more like the character most of us remember (which is what the Fleischers produced). I've read some of Thimble Theater comic strips and honestly they didn't do anything for me. The Fleischer Popeye series is definitely an example of where they stripped the original series to the core and concentrated on basics that appealed to a lot more people. It may be lovely if they re-introduce some of the other characters like Ham Grady and Olive Oyl's parents and siblings but most of us are only going to care about Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Bluto (and maybe Wimpy and Swee'Pea or the Jeep).

I dunno. I sometimes think some things are just part of an era that can't be recreated. The sensibilities of the public changes over time as well as what inspires people that create new media. Thirty years ago, animators were inspired by the classic Golden Age animated shorts. Today, most of the newer-generation animators are influenced by mid-1990s and upward feature animation, a lot of it CG -- or anime. The kids 20-and-under probably do not know Popeye or Mickey Mouse.

It's a rare case where the classics are recreated or captured well... they're rarely improved on. I don't think that's happened very much with a lot of the classic animated/cartoon characters.

(Even Disney seems to forget who Mickey Mouse is... The less said about how WB is handling Superman, the better... I'm convinced DC/WB forgot who that character was over 20 years ago! They didn't even bother to use Cliffnotes to write the last Superman movie!)

I've seen at least snippets of most of the Popeye animated TV series and shorts after Fleischer became Famous Studios but I don't think anybody handled Popeye as well as the Fleischers did.

[Ben]

I agree, George, which is why I think Sony have cold feet.

But...did anyone really know what Big Hero 6 was before last November? Or what a Wreck-It Ralph was? Or an Ice Age, or Kung Fu Panda?

No...so why should marketing an old property be any different than marketing a new one? The goals are the same: take characters and stories that very few people know and turn them into must see event movies. For all anyone knows, Popeye could be a brand new character, just like those funny bendy ones in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

So I don't buy that films can't be made because no-one remembers the characters. The point of them is to reintroduce them to new generations. Where they have an advantage is when the older group *does* remember them, and those folks go to see it AND recommend it to their children (and grandchildren).

When it comes to the film itself, the Fleischers' take is the one that set the standard for the character, so one would hope they're able to recapture some of that, but to all intents and purposes, Popeye, like Peanuts, today is just another "new" property that needs to be introduced and marketed right.

[GeorgeC]

Yeah,

I agree with most of your points... I just think it would also help marketing a new film if they actually DID show the older series on TV again, or the Net because that's where people are increasingly going to for entertainment as the old cable channels continue to commit suicide with horrible block programming and over-emphasis on cheap entertainment like ((un)Reality TV.

My parents aren't even the most tech-savvy people and THEY have a subscription to Netflix.

(Strike that... Mom's definitely more on the ball with mobile devices than I am. She lives by her smartphone...)

The superhero films continue to surprise me with the longevity they've had this time around. The Superman films were around 5-6 years during the Reeve era before they really took a dirt nap. (As much as I loathe Man of Steel, I don't particularly want to remember Superman IV, either! Nothing counts after Superman III for me! LOL Superman Returns was just a disturbing film and let's leave it at that.) The best superhero films I'd argue are probably not even based on the best-known characters. Guardians of the Galaxy was better than I thought it would be... I'm actually familiar with the original character line-up in the comics but that's NOT what was on the big-screen. They reinvented that title with a completely different set of characters in comics within that last five years and even that's not exactly like the film (despite using the characters from the most recent comic book version of GoTG). The Yondu character was about the only character from the original comic that actually showed up in the film but other than the name and the blue face he's still almost an entirely different person in the movie! (Not that I hated that... I actually LIKED seeing a more red-neck character for once. It sort of reminded me of something Dennis Hopper would have played but the guy they hired to play Yondu was still perfect. I dunno why but it worked for me! LOL)

Still, a lot of people thought Westerns would be around for them and that was a very durable genre for a long time... It practically died for the mid-1970s. Sci-fi has come and gone in waves forever for as long as I can remember. Nobody really thought traditional animated features would die out in the West but even Disney gave up on them.

Hopefully, I'm wrong and it doesn't take that long for some of the old stuff to be revived. I still, however, would like more variety than superhero films, princess movies, and certainly just about anything but reality TV and infomercials!

[Randall]

Genndy on leaving Popeye:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/animationsco ... e-20150925