Zootopia

[Ben]

Uh-oh...

I *was* merely going to say color me very unimpressed as the trailer began...

By the end of it I just felt like we hadn't moved on from Chicken Little after all...

http://youtu.be/g9lmhBYB11U

Oh dear...I see why Disney is burying it in the dreaded March slot. The title over here in the UK makes even less sense...we get it as Zootropolis.

At least Zootopia is a fun play on words but it seems Disney has no faith.

And there's a painful fly zip gag.

Oh dear...

[EricJ]

By the end of it I just felt like we hadn't moved on from Chicken Little after all...

http://youtu.be/g9lmhBYB11U

I was dreading it with full facepalm from the first description (or at least was worried that someone had tried jumpstarting "Wild Life"), and it's really got its work cut out for it making any rational audience forget Chicken Little and DWA's neurotic reliance on Madagascar.
But I'm not using the CL words just yet--That's a bit harsh, as Dindal had real contempt for cartoon animals, and you could see it in The Holy Martyred Warner Movie as well.

Here, it's just a hide-and-seek original trailer, so the humor does feel a little bit more like Pixar/WDFA Brain Trust gags, if they decided to slum a dip into hip-animal water and try cleaning up the pool.
Okay, it's a challenge, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But they BETTER come up with a huggy Pixar/WDFA plot to make up for it, or I'm declaring Frozen the Lion-King end of the Lasseter Renaissance.

[droosan]

.. what th!?


It's just a teaser .. and it looks fine, to me. It looks fun.

[Ben]

Wild Life popped in my head, too, and I would bet that some DNA from that film's gags have remained ingrained in several story artists' heads, finding an outlet here.

Chicken Little may be "harsh", but that's what came to mind when watching this. However it turns out, this particular teaser does not inspire confidence.

Sorry, Droo...but my heart was just stinking the longer it went on...

[Dan]

Doesn't look bad to me. I like the designs, some of the ideas present are interesting.

[LotsoA113]

Hard for me to pass any judgement on this one yet, only because none of this footage is obviously in the movie. As a teaser, this one isn't as memorable or funny as the ones for Frozen and Big Hero 6, but I am still interested to see more from it.

[EricJ]

As a teaser, this one isn't as memorable or funny as the ones for Frozen and Big Hero 6, but I am still interested to see more from it.

One thing about Pixar/WDFA is that they CAN think in terms of dialogue-free Pixar shorts, and at least knows how to give us out-of-context humor like the Frozen and BH6 teasers. It's completely removed from the film, but we know the characters in sixty seconds.
Unlike Fox's Ice Age, which is divided between pimping the Wile E. Scrat shorts and the sitcom humor of the actual film, and people coming into see more of the silent-cartoon squirrel.

That's the secret ingredient that could keep Disney's final product from being a disaster, but boy, are they wading in disaster-filled waters...

[droosan]

If there is anything which has proven to be a constant over the past several years, it is that the Disney marketing department seems to have no clue how to cut an interesting (or even 'honest') trailer or promo for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film.

Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen and Big Hero 6 -- each of them had terrible teasers, which either gave an outright false impression of being 'more-of-a-comedic-farce / less-of-a-Broadway-musical' than they really were .. or were simple 'spot-gags,' giving little to no hint of the movie's overall story.

All of these movies went on to be anything from 'generally well-received' to 'monster-ultra-record-shattering HIT!' .. often (seemingly) in spite of the marketing.


I can agree with some of the complaints here and elsewhere on the internet; the term 'anthropomorphic' doesn't really need a detailed explanation, the 'zipper' gag is a bit crass (still funny, though), the animal sight-gags and puns seem a tad 'obvious' ..

.. but I also have zero reason to expect that this is a capsule version of the movie which will be shown in theaters next spring.


The only aspects of this teaser that I feel I can really 'trust' are the character's designs and personality animation .. both of which are super-appealing and really, really fun to watch.

[Ben]

The zipper gag doesn't even make sense though...

[EricJ]

The zipper gag doesn't even make sense though...

He's wearing pants (because animals have to in this world), and X'ing his Z because people are looking. That's IT. It's not "Something About Mary".

[EricJ]

Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen and Big Hero 6 -- each of them had terrible teasers, which either gave an outright false impression of being 'more-of-a-comedic-farce / less-of-a-Broadway-musical' than they really were .. or were simple 'spot-gags,' giving little to no hint of the movie's overall story.

I remember cringing when Disney announced "a lovable snowman" for Frozen (that Princess & the Frog sense of "Oh, if these are the major characters that we're just expected to market for a year, just shoot me now..."), but the teaser put Olaf in a perfect bit of context for why the animators thought he was funny. In fact, we arguably saw more of Olaf and Sven in their own standalone teaser than we saw in the whole final movie, and some people didn't even ask whether there was a plot to Wreck-It Ralph beyond the support-group scene.
And thought Tangled did a good first-look job at condensing the whole funny "frying-pan" scene with Flynn, Rapunzel and Pascal--Remember, this was during the Eisner-Wars years, we were expecting another loud obnoxious Chicken Little, and if they'd showed us a happy singing princess musical, the results would have been ten times worse. (Especially with everyone trying to find a "social" scapegoat for P&tF's box office.) What they gave us was something in between, and while we were still smarting from horror stories of "Rapunzel Unbraided", this at least didn't look as painful as we'd heard about.

Again, that's how Pixar/WDFA have a better grasp on the bigger picture and tone of their movie stories: The BH6 trailer could give us a funny Pixar-style dialogue-free three-minute short about a boy trying to build a robot too lovable for battle, but that in fact DOES reflect the major plot of the movie.
If Fox wants to sell us an Ice Age movie, they give us a standalone Scrat short, and if Illumination wants to sell us a Despicable sequel, they give us a standalone Minions short, but neither one has the slightest connection to anything that happens in the movie. (I remember thinking "Will someone please tell me what happens in Despicable 2, all they keep showing are spot-gag Minion shticks!") Even DWA doesn't quite know how to sell it's "lovable" Kung Fu Panda, except to have Po assault us with "funny" staring contests....Get it, get it?

[droosan]

Well, it really is only my 'opinion' that Disney's marketing is terrible. Overemphasizing sideline characters while playing-down aspects of a movie that may be a selling-point if more people were aware of it just doesn't strike me as the best approach .. but I guess that only means I'm not cut-out for marketing.

From their point-of-view, of course, they must feel like the biggest geniuses in the business .. precisely because of the box-office success of the movies in question.

[Ben]

I take it back about the zipper - I was watching on a smaller screen and the fox does have pants on, which wasn't clear before (it's not like they're a particularly different shade of color).

I still think it's a crude joke, but since he has pants on then it does make sense.

[Dacey]

I liked it.

But, then again, I also liked the teaser trailers for Frozen, Tangled, and Big Hero 6. Heck, I even liked Chicken Little, so what do I know?

[Sid Philips]

The zipper gag doesn't even make sense though...

You're correct. He's got "nothing" down there to hide...