Disney's Frozen

[gaastra]

You should look up his collider rant he did a few days ago! Yikes!

[Ben]

I can totally see why people regard it as animated (c'mon, you can’t really say it’s a "cartoon"!), but the intention was a photorealistic film made as a live-action feature would be. If you’re going to deny this even the chance of being regarded as such, you may as well lump the majority of the Disney "live-action" remakes as animation, too, given the amount of greenscreen and CGI animated characters and environments they contain. We have to have a line *somewhere*, and maybe the new Lion King straddles or blurs that line...but at the end of the day it was "shot" with a live-action crew, on a stage, with setups and cameras.

Is the new Jungke Book animated or live action? Except for one human element (and even he was mocapped for some of the time!), it’s seen as live-action, as a photorealistic VFX movie. Lion King is the exact same thing, however dumb it was!

[ShyViolet]

Hmm, I can’t help but be reminded of the similar arguments for/against Avatar being considered an animated film or not (wow, can’t believe that was ten whole years ago!! ). I agree with Ben’s take that mo-cap/photorealistic films should really not count as animated features.

I have a TON of respect for the artists who created the animals/aliens/fantasy creatures in these films (particularly WETA’s work on Gollum in Two Towers); I know the amount of labor they do is back-breaking. However, I still see these parts of 21st Century films to be SFX: jaw-dropping SFX with plenty of creativity, but still tools to help bring life to the movie in question.

That’s simply not the same as an entire CGI/classically animated feature made from scratch, where the animation is more than a tool to make the film more “real”, but the “main event” so to speak: the movie is built around it and the characters, backgrounds, colors, and voices are what the viewer experiences all throughout the film. (Oh just wanted to emphasize that I am NOT placing animation in the “genre” category, but simply as a medium that the artists have chosen as the best way to tell their story.)


To put it another way: NO ONE considered Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, or for that matter Who Framed Roger Rabbit to be animated features. CGI/traditional were very important (and brilliantly executed) tools to help tell the story...but in the end of the day...all three said movies were seen as live-action films. (And still are by the great majority of audiences.)

[gaastra]

Roger rabbit, t2 and others you listed are live action with some cg or animation. They have more live action then cartoon. Jungle book at least has a live action kid and some live props plus the live village scene.

Lion king has ZERO live action actors and ONE live action 5 second shot and it's made on a pc like all cg films! sorry but that's called a cartoon to me. Avatar has tons of live action actors walking around. Lion king has NO live action animals or actors walking around.

Again if you want to think it's live action that's fine (nothing wrong with that) but you will never convince me it's not a cartoon and i'm not the only one who says it's a cartoon.

Edit-and I am really getting off subject! Yikes! Time for me to stop getting so grouchy again!

[Randall]

The problem, of course, is that TLK '19 is not truly live action visually (as gaastra said, there's not an actor or live animal in sight, regardless of methodology), nor is it an animated film in the same sense as cartoon films. Cartoons, by definition, are either simplifications or exaggerations of life, not representational in the realistic sense. The Lion King '19 is its own beast, though certainly it was animated.

Meanwhile, Roger Rabbit, Mary Poppins, etc. are hybrid films that combine live action and cartoons. A film like Avatar or Lord of The Rings or the other Disney remakes are live action films with a heavy reliance on visual effects, including animated elements.

With so much line-blurring, the old definitions are losing their meaning. And an attempt to classify TLK '19 as one thing or another is doomed from the start.

[ShyViolet]

Great post Rand! Agree 100%. You summed up the situation really well.

With so much line-blurring, the old definitions are losing their meaning. And an attempt to classify TLK '19 as one thing or another is doomed from the start.

Yes, exactly. It’s truly a crazy time for “animation”, or at least different forms of visual effects that some consider animation and others do not. (Again, not in any way trying to bash the very hard work that artists who work on mo-cap and the like devote themselves to.)

[Daniel]

I've been referring to the new Lion King as a livebrid offline. Makes sense... as much as it can!

[ShyViolet]

Lol! . I like that term!

[Kaszubas]

Great post Rand! Agree 100%. You summed up the situation really well.

With so much line-blurring, the old definitions are losing their meaning. And an attempt to classify TLK '19 as one thing or another is doomed from the start.

Yes, exactly. It’s truly a crazy time for “animation”, or at least different forms of visual effects that some consider animation and others do not. (Again, not in any way trying to bash the very hard work that artists who work on mo-cap and the like devote themselves to.)

I cannot disagree more, Vi. Line might be blurred but TLK’19 by definition isn’t even close to cross it. It just looks similar. It’s consciously created to look similar. More! It’s deliberately stylized to look kinda like live action (to some extent also Snyder’s Owls of Ga’hoole took similiar approach) with some minor to major stylization touches to character and set design (to emote better, to be more graphic, to be funnier), dialogues spoken by animals, society and politics modeled after human world, musical sequences, human-like morality and ethics, mating behaviors, social life ideas, verbal humor, precise choreography and so on. There is no live action footage (aside from one shot that should be treated more like an easter egg), no real sets, no real human beings nor animals, even no life action performace on mo-cap stage! YEPP! There is NO MOCAP AT ALL. It’s all hand key framed animation done by REAL animators. ARTISTS not just technicians. They didn’t meticulously clean some mocap data nor rotoscope to get 1:1 representation of some reference. They created performance! Like in 1994 original. It’s like claiming that Madame Tussaud wax figures are real humans just because those are made to closely resemble one. It just very technically advanced animated movie stylized to imitate live action look similarly to how Loving Vincent was made so that it emulated the look of Van Gogh paintings. It just the choice of rendering method. It’s not even trying to fool viewer it’s actually life action Animal Planet show (the same way Avenger to not try to persuade us it’s documentary). It’s an animated fantasy!

[Daniel]

Wow, long time Kaszubas! Nice to see a face from the past.

[ShyViolet]

Yes, definitely! . It’s great to see you again Kaszubas!

Yeah, I probably should have been clearer when discussing ultra-lifelike animation (TLK ‘19) vs. mocap; I know they’re not the same. I guess what I was trying to say was that even while acknowledging that there WAS certainly much creativity by the artists when creating the photorealistic characters in said film, in my mind it just doesn’t measure up to a film like, say, Finding Nemo. There the characters were based on “realistic” renditions of fish/sea creatures, yet we could still feel the beating heart of an artist’s soul in every frame. Their movements and expressions were not only “funny” but projected real depth. (Particularly Marlin as well as Nemo.)

It’s an animated fantasy!

Yeah, but animation is and has always been about caricature and capturing the complexity of human feeling in a seemingly “simple” way that is anything but. That’s why the original ‘90s LK was such a GIGANTIC hit. The expressions/body language of each character communicated so much depth of feeling and resonance that it almost felt as though you knew them personally.

I mean this as absolutely NO slight to the artists who worked on the re-imagining, I guess you could call it, of TLK; I’m sure they crafted wonderful work even with the limitations that a photorealistic film must have set on them.

Because how can you possibly re-create the absolutely devastating scene of Simba slowly coming to the realization that his father is gone forever by designing the characters to be as realistic as possible? Or Marlin’s horror when he first loses Nemo to the fishermen? His grief when he thinks Nemo’s dead? In my opinion, trying to do this with photorealistic characters robs us of pretty much everything we’ve come to expect from an animated film that TRULY moves us.

Same thing for human characters, by the way. If the scenes of Riley and her parents in Inside Out were re-done with a photorealistic (but not mocaped) design of an eleven-year-old girl and two adults also designed this way, would the scene where Riley breaks down in tears after coming home be even HALF as beautiful/heartbreaking?


(Just my opinions! )

[Bill1978]

Even though Frozen II has been given the crown of animation's biggest earner at the box office I feel the original movie had more cultural impact. When it was released songs were all over the web and on the various charts. I couldn't get on the web without some Frozen related article/video appearing. Frozen II nothing. If I didn't know better I would have said it was a flop, the cultural impact just isn't there. Even in real life I don't find people referencing/discussing Frozen II like they did with the first one. Just weird.

[Randall]

Yeah, lots on interest in seeing it, obviously, given the numbers--- yet no buzz. I've had almost no one talk to me about seeing it.

[EricJ]

Yeah, lots on interest in seeing it, obviously, given the numbers--- yet no buzz. I've had almost no one talk to me about seeing it.

My opinion is, even when Disney/Pixar sequels aren't bad, and even pretty good, once they get past the big front-loaded expectation and actually open onscreen, they're just sort of...THERE.
Ralph 2 was cute (even with the Jennifer Lee moment and an out-of-character ending), Cars 3 was pleasantly forgettable, Finding Dory was unpleasantly forgettable, and Incredibles 2 was a tragic waste of fourteen years in the lives of a lot of fans.

There's nothing really "in" Frozen 2 to talk about, except for the refreshing lack of bad things from the first movie--Look Ma, No Hans , a plot that safely keeps the story away from further misandry (mostly), only one stagey made-for-Broadway number, and Olaf is actually tolerable in this movie, with a better song.
Basically, "We had to do one, but at least we didn't ruin it", but that doesn't mean we'll be seeing Ryder or Honeymaren at Disneyland.
(And case in point: I remembered their names only from the Disney Magic Kingdoms app game. ONLY.)

[Daniel]

Although I like "When I Am Older", "In Summer" is still my favorite of the two. More catchy and memorable.