First look at the potential new Popeye feature
Thursday, September 18, 2014 at 8:30PM Tim here. A couple of months ago, you may recall, I shared my crabby old man thoughts on the current wave of making new CG animated films based on old-school cartoons, among them being Sony Animations still-not-actually-official new Popeye movie to be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky.
Now, without having actually committed themselves to making it, Sony has basically confirmed that they're making it, releasing an animation test preceded by a short interview of Tartakovsky explaining his interest in the material. The animation itself starts at about 2:01, if you're an impatient sort.
What do you think? For myself, I find Tartakovsky's commitment to the physical illogic of vintage rubber hose animation comforting, though the character designs are still kind of horrifying, Olive Oyl's especially. The way that fully rendered images tend to insist on their tactility is completely at odds with the extreme caricature of the movements and shapes of the characters. But I am willing to be persuaded that I'm wrong, because everything else about the colors, the softness, and the slapstick feel pretty right.
Popeye, animated films
Reader Comments (8)
The character design is HIDEOUS. The rest he nailed. I'm only watching this with good reviews.
Last Sony animated movie I've seen was Rio 2. Yeah. Fool me once, shame on you (Ice Age 2). Fool me twice, shame on me. So... Yeah.
I think this will work. I was skeptical but this guy got it right in terms of its tone. I hope the burger guy is in there and maybe a few references to Robert Altman's attempt on the film. It had its moments.
Jay: Count me as someone who wound up against Hotel Transylvania (the physical humour was mostly good, but there's also a LOT of terrible verbal humour). This? The slapstick also seems pitch perfect, but that early reference to a Cher song provokes a "What!?" reaction in this context.
Jay: That said, Blue Sky is almost entirely terrible and Sony should feel really bad about releasing their mouth dribblings. (I'm more scared for Peanuts than this.)
As a proof of concept this is pretty impressive.
Volvagia- 100% agree with your last point. "Hell, at least it's not Peanuts" is going to be the subtext to pretty much every experience I have with an animated film over the next 15 months.
Steven, the burger guy's name is Wimpy
I'm rather opposed to forcing such medium specific character designs into CG (I found it deeply unappealing in Peabody and Sherman), though some of the individual shots in this proof of concept - particularly those that frame the characters in a rather "flat" fashion - make me think the notion isn't as innately wrong as I'm predisposed to think.
Anyway, I'm just sad that they likely won't bring back the feature from the '30s shorts of "Popeye mumbles to himself about minutia, but it's post-production so his lips don't move."