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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 7 days ago

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Here's another fun treat from my copy of DISNEY: THE ULTIMATE VISUAL GUIDE, first published in fall 2002...

The final spread was about the future, what was right around the corner at the time...

You may notice something about BROTHER BEAR in the lower right hand corner...

Yeah, this was back when the movie was still titled - simply - BEARS. And at the time, it was aiming for a spring 2004 release, while HOME ON THE RANGE would've been the Thanksgiving 2003 Alan Menken musical movie event.

BEARS and HOME ON THE RANGE eventually pulled a swaperoo, with BEARS now aiming for fall 2003, and HOME ON THE RANGE going to the spring after. The rationale, reportedly, was the home video return of THE LION KING. The Platinum Edition DVD containing the "Special Edition" that ran in IMAX only at the end of 2002, much like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST earlier that year.

That would street in October of 2003. Michael Eisner apparently wanted BEARS there instead of the Alan Menken song-filled cow movie, which was largely greenlit because Eisner wanted another Shakespearean animal epic made in the wake of THE LION KING's success... This time adapting KING LEAR and set in the North American wilderness this time. KING LEAR with a bear. Obviously, the finished movie ended up not being that, but you see the DNA of it within, I feel.

BEARS eventually was renamed to BROTHER BEAR, and the release of it was handled so haphazardly. Disney execs were already in the midst of getting rid of 2D animated movie production, so they needed a reason to shutter the Florida division where BROTHER BEAR was made, and to can the in-development MY PEOPLES/A FEW GOOD GHOSTS, a 2D/CG hybrid that would've been the studio's summer 2005 release.

Now, HOME ON THE RANGE, back when it was aiming for holiday 2003, was looking towards Thanksgiving... But because of the LION KING DVD hitting in October, Disney wanted BROTHER BEAR closer to that. They took THE HAUNTED MANSION, which *should've* been an October release, and put it in the Thanksgiving slot. BROTHER BEAR had slim options, because the other prime weekends were taken by ELF, THE CAT IN THE HAT, and LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION...

And Halloween was a Friday night. Kids trick or treating, not going to the movie with their families... So what did Disney do? They release BROTHER BEAR on a SATURDAY...

It had already been playing in select cities beforehand, but that Saturday release was a real miscalculation. $19m for the opening weekend, had it been a Friday opening, probably would've been somewhere closer to $28-30m. Wouldn't have been too far below what LILO & STITCH took in the previous year. But it didn't matter, Disney was actively ending 2D animated features and needed an excuse to close down the Florida unit. They intentionally sabotaged TREASURE PLANET, so this and HOME ON THE RANGE would be no different. MY PEOPLES got cancelled, and for summer 2005, the first all-CG film from Disney Feature Animation - CHICKEN LITTLE - got promoted. Later on, CHICKEN LITTLE got delayed to November 2005, but you get the idea, right?

BROTHER BEAR had only cost less than $50m to make, and broke even. Big time. $250m worldwide, great against that price tag! But executives saw FINDING NEMO's $865m+ take, and it just didn't matter to them.

HOME ON THE RANGE appeared in April 2004, and just didn't cut it at the box office. BROTHER BEAR was on DVD at that point, and did excellently, I presume RANGE was also a DVD hit. That was the era of home video coming to the rescue of several "flop" animated movies... I mean, BROTHER BEAR sold well enough to get a direct-to-video sequel, so it must've been seen as something of a minor success. Just not successful enough for Disney Feature to keep making those kinds of movies for theaters.

Kenai and one of the Bob & Doug moose look noticeably different in that still. Bear-Kenai's eyes are a whole lot smaller, and the overall vibe the still gives is THE FOX AND THE HOUND-era Disney animation. Quite something! He appears to be discovering that he's turned into a bear when meeting the moose, not upon being rescued by Tanana like he does in the finished film.

When I first got this book in late 2002, I was really really into this final page spread and was very excited about BEARS, HOME ON THE RANGE, and FINDING NEMO. New animated movies from the Disney house, a special preview.

NEMO especially, the promise of a colorful underwater adventure made at Pixar. NEMO curiously is represented only through concept art here, no stills or renders of the characters were out at the time (unless you count Nemo's "appearances" in MONSTERS, INC.), despite the movie being less than a year away from release... and being in line first before HOME ON THE RANGE and BEARS... It wouldn't be until a few weeks later, at the end of September, when the MONSTERS, INC. DVD and VHS hit stores. That release debuted the FINDING NEMO teaser. I got MONSTERS, INC. on DVD that Christmas, so you could imagine how excited I was when I found that the NEMO trailer was on there. To see what it actually looked like, in motion.

(I didn't use the internet much in 2002/03, I was 10-11 years old, my computer time was limited, and I was mostly playing flash games and such, not looking at movie news websites. That came a little later!)

So to my surprise, when I saw FINDING NEMO on opening weekend in May 2003, I got the BEARS trailer in addition to THE INCREDIBLES teaser. I was excited, like, "Yes! BEARS is next!" And then the title came up as BROTHER BEAR, and I was like "Ohhhh, it's BROTHER BEAR... Not BEARS, huh." So, BROTHER BEAR it now was, haha. HOME ON THE RANGE would have to wait 'til 2004, I first saw the trailer on the FINDING NEMO VHS.

We rented the VHS because at the time, when I was visiting my dad on the weekends, he didn't have a DVD player yet. Thus, we rented VHS tapes in 2003. The local rental shop, which was not a Blockbuster or chain place like that, actually got copies of NEMO early. Friday, Halloween night. Trick or treated, went to my dad's, rented FINDING NEMO ASAP. I was *pumped*, I had seen the movie three times in theaters beforehand. NEMO was like my sun and moon movie back in the day, it was one of the first movies that - as a kid - I actively got hyped for.

Sadly, I didn't get to see BROTHER BEAR in theaters, likely due to family circumstances at the time. I don't recall seeing any movie in theaters from like November to December of that year, so BROTHER BEAR didn't happen, nor ELF, BACK IN ACTION, HAUNTED MANSION, PETER PAN, etc. We hadn't seen a movie in theaters in a while, and wouldn't see another for a while... There's like a big gap between the 2nd Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie (July 2003) and... Like SHREK 2 (May 2004), lol. I rented BROTHER BEAR right as it hit DVD, though.

Eventually, my dad got a DVD player, and we kept renting NEMO until my sister and I got the film as a Christmas gift both at his place and at home. I actually got the VHS of it, because back then, I didn't have a DVD player in my bedroom. I also got an Xbox for Christmas, but you had to buy an add-on to play DVDs, which I eventually got after finding out about that. The VHS was my substitute until then.

But yeah, this spread caps off at what would've been the spring 2004 release of BEARS. Nothing beyond that, no INCREDIBLES, no live-action movies even, like HOLES and FREAKY FRIDAY. The book did have some live-action stuff in it, but was largely animation history-focused. It weirdly also has JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH in it, but no trace of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS whatsoever... And there was a whole page spread for Touchstone movies in this book, so that's kinda unusual. No ROGER RABBIT, even.

It's quite a book, lol.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 7 days ago

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I have an old, right-around-the-first-pressing copy of the DK book DISNEY: THE ULTIMATE VISUAL GUIDE.

Published around September 2002, I got this really cool slab for my birthday that year, and read-read-read it nonstop.

There's a whole two-page spread dedicated to Disney TV Animation in there, and includes various shows from over the years, older and then-new, the latter category consisting of TEACHER'S PET, LLOYD IN SPACE, and HOUSE OF MOUSE... That's how old we're talking here.

Curiously... It uses what appears to be an early concept sketch for their 1993 series BONKERS...

The titular bobcat has a curiously lankier appearance here, his ears aren't like antennae, his tail is a tube, but it's not too far removed from the eventual design(s)...

BONKERS, for the uninitiated, had two sets of episodes, three if you count clipshows of shorts that aired first in 1992 on a skit show called RAW TOONAGE. In both sets of episodes are differences in the main character's design and the overall art direction of the show. This was largely due to upper dissatisfaction with the episodes being done with the original intended design, art style, and tone: They are often called the "Miranda Wright episodes", given Bonkers' lady cop partner in them. The crew threw all that stuff away, resulting in a delay. Bonkers was redesigned, his partner was now an Eddie Valiant-esque guy named Lucky Piquel, most of the supporting cast was out, and the art direction was a little less zany and colorful. Both sets of episodes aired, w/ an episode bridging the gap and sending off one set of characters and ushering in the other ones. So that anyone watching didn't have to be confused as to why Bonkers had a different partner in one episode or another, and the like. The RAW TOONAGE shorts, I suspect, were made in the interim to introduce the character and for Disney to have something for that show long before its completion. Despite being its own project w/ a similar premise, BONKERS was being positioned as a sort-of stand-in for the WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT franchise, which was then lost in the muddle of studio politics between Disney heads and Steven Spielberg, impacting its future.

I find it rather interesting that a 2002 book used that drawing instead of a still from the show or a publicity pic, but, that's the fun stuff you often see in books. I haven't seen that image anywhere else, either. The closest thing to that Bonkers design, I feel, is this publicity still...

... presumably made around the time a cluster of the "Miranda Wright episodes" aired on The Disney Channel as a preview of the show prior to its full debut in syndication. Miranda's hairdo is also somewhat different in that image from the finished show, subtly simpler-looking.

There are quite a few model sheets online for this show, but it's neat to see a little piece of concept art like that.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 9 days ago

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Two $117m+ live-action/FX heavy superhero movie openings within weeks of each other...

Almost as if... "Superhero fatigue" isn't really a thing, more so "superhero movies that people don't want to see", regardless of perceived quality or not. SUPERMAN and FIRST STEPS looked exciting to people, and they went. Also helps that Superman's... Well, Superman. And The Fantastic Four aren't exactly unknowns. I mean, they did have a few movie adaptations and some animated TV shows beforehand...

It's also worth noting that the openings for CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD ($88m) and THUNDERBOLTS* ($74m) weren't all that bad, the former had weak legs stateside and worldwide and couldn't cover its budget, THUNDERBOLTS* had more traction but also couldn't make it. THUNDERBOLTS* was largely agreed to be a solid movie, though, while Cap 4 was largely agreed to be an unsatisfactory mess. I felt THUNDERBOLTS* was a step in the right direction for the up-and-down post-ENDGAME MCU, it just cost too much. $380m+ worldwide against, say, a $120m budget or so, would've looked fine in a year like 2015.

So yeah, SUPERMAN and THE FANTASTIC 4: FIRST STEPS look to be big hits.

I extend this to concerns about big-studio animated family movies. I remember, around 2013, all the movie press bellowing "are there too many animated movies?", "are they all gonna cannibalize each other?"

No, much like superheroes, I think it boiled down to "Do I want to see this? Or do I not?"

I still think that somewhat holds today, even in a landscape where more original or more untested adaptations don't really enjoy the $45m+ openings that they used to enjoy before lots of things took a turn for the worst. If people are willing to see something in a theater, that they have to take a trip to and spend quite a bit of money at... Yeah, they'll go. It's often as simple as that when it comes to opening weekends.

SUPERMAN and FIRST STEPS had that, more so than some other recent superhero/comic book movies. There's a real art to getting someone to want to see a movie in theaters, and it has only gotten harder in the recent years, so... It's a real win whenever it works out like that, where movies live or die by the first 3 days of existence. It's a bad system and it needs to change some day, I know, but it's the only one at the moment lol.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 10 days ago

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There it is. Right out of Comic-Con.

COYOTE VS. ACME. August 28, 2026.

Nice. Away from pretty much all of the summer smackdown.

More Looney Tunes in the theaters, a nearly black holed movie saved, now it has a concrete release date. Again.

Viva la COYOTE VS. ACME!

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 11 days ago

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Welp, the Paramount-Skydance merger is happening, the final steps made because of some very worrying capitulation to our President. Corporate cowards giving in to his tantrums about 60 MINUTES and Stephen Colbert, all because they - long-standing institutions - dared to disagree with him about something. In what is ostensibly a free country... Petty wannabe-dictator shit...

I thought Disney being cowards and scrubbing their films of anything that could piss him and his supporters off, in addition to halting DEI hiring initiatives, was really bad... But this takes the cake.

Paramount and CBS certainly will still exist in some form, but... Yeah, they're now dead to me in a way. And immediately, there's all this talk of shuttering DEI and such, co-CEO Chris McCarthy is jumping ship, the fascist-run FCC want to crack down on "bias", etc.

Whatever Paramount is mutated into by next year and how that affects their movie/TV slate going forward, this will not last, as rough as it will most likely be for a little while.

That bumbling buffoon in office right now is not going to be around forever, no matter how much he, his messengers, and those who do their work for them (cough cough doomers) insist otherwise. It makes this capitulation even sillier, especially since these mediocre people can't engineer a right-wing culture, as much as they really want to... because that's truly not most Americans. Americans just wanna watch movies they'll love, regardless of how far left they may lean. The electorate, truthfully, is more independent than right or left. They decide our presidential elections more often than not, but when they disappear for a good four years, the left is far more diligent and hard-working. Stuff gets done, we've been winning midterms and special elections and smaller elections since roughly 2018. We largely prevented a super-inevitable Red Wave from happening in 2022. You'd be surprised...

I want to emphasize that in light of this, what MAGA is doing to NPR and PBS, and other recent dilemmas (like what's going on with itch-dot-io), etc. It all seems suffocating, it all seems like entertainment... Most of which an escape from the real world's frequent shittiness... Slowly steps downward to an entirely fascist-controlled media ecosystem, but...

Conservatives and far-right lunatics have foamed at the mouth over things people love, things that are embedded in the American pop cultural landscape, for decades. Things that looked at a world beyond their retrograde view of it, and every passing decade, they get significantly meaner and angrier about it. Trumpism is the latest incarnation of that. You can tell that these people don't even have their cold rotted hearts in it this time, because a lot of what passes for "conservative art" today is "I hate blue-haired trans women! Here's an ugly cartoon about that that no one even watches." At best, we just have major movies and TV being neutered of any theme or something cultural that's personal to the creator... Big money gets poured into that meanness cycle, and it all goes hand in hand. We're living it, the country has been going through it for ages, this is nothing new. It's just rearing its ugly head yet again, and it just sucks to see an institution like Paramount... A big Hollywood studio with a rich movie and television legacy, sink into a rancid pit of MAGA garbage juice.

But I don't think it will last, because things are always changing. His approval ratings are actually in the shitter (it hasn't been a year) and he's currently mired in a re-emerging scandal. We have midterms next autumn, and that man's presidential time will be up in less than four years. Heck, it could end before that, even. Yes, I know he's been floating around the idea of staying in office forever, but he can't just easily do that, and I think a lot of Americans are ONTO him and his schemes anyways. No one else in the GOP, who will have to pick up the slack, are him nor have his celebrity/cult of personality status. Once he's gone, it's down to them. Basically Romneys and McCains again, but much more wretched. Good luck with that. This is a party that's behaving in a way, that they KNOW they are losing relevancy and that no one - outside of their shrinking base - really likes their crap policies. They feel they're gonna lose both the midterms and the next presidential election, while a lot of the left does this obey-in-advance shit and claims that everything's over and that Trump and the GOP will be our leaders for good... Up until this past presidential election, they hadn't won the popular vote in a single presidential election since 2004. 2004! They literally had to steal an election to get their orange wannabe-king into office. And they did that in 2000 as well, for Dubya. That's why they constantly accuse Democrats of rigging elections. Accusation, confession.

I do not know who is going to be president starting January 20, 2029, but it isn't going to be him. If it's another Republican, be it his extremely off-putting creep of a VP, or some other garden-variety loser, I'd imagine there won't be THIS much capitulation. I think back to the Bush years, and yeah, there was a rough period there where you couldn't criticize him. He had a 90% approval rating in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he was seemingly untouchable in the early years of the Global War on Terror. The (Dixie) Chicks and Janeane Garofolo lightly criticized him circa 2003, and were made into Public Enemy #1, their careers taking considerable hits. He handily won re-election in 2004, and some of the pop cultural landscape reflected this. Shows like 24 existed, various songs were at one point banned from radio airplay, hell there was even a bomb scare in Boston over... LED lights promoting the goddamn AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE movie hung in random places throughout the city! If you're in your 30s like I am, do you remember that?? That was some ludicrous stuff!

Let's go back even further, the Reagan years. We had a whole saga where a stuffy group of "concerned" parents tried to repress music, a lot of cable TV was sanitized and squeaky-clean, the War on Drugs spun off a lot of utterly uncool propaganda that lasted well into the early '90s past Reagan's presidency. Hell, this was a time when BOTH Republicans and Democrats were in on this sort of thing. Did you know that Joe Biden, in his days as a Senator, had a big hand in the creation of CARTOON ALL-STARS TO THE RESCUE?! The big crusade against more adult music was spearheaded by, of all people, Tipper Gore. Like, that was a whole different time right there.

Again, this is all nothing new. The right may wield lots of corporate power, and corporations often go where they smell the money, but people often show that they're not going to be down with a heavily-controlled media landscape. They're going to attend movies that they think look cool, and watch shows that they want to check out. The far-right makes up this whole scenario where the majority of Americans are fed-up with anything leaning slightly to the left, but... Tons of successful movies and shows, things that are wholly embedded into the American pop cultural landscape (repetition, whew), prove and have proven otherwise.

Suppose nothing happens to Paramount and movie-making continues and it's all business as usual, while CBS becomes a FOX News-lite. Even then, still bad, and a merger and a bunch of pairings that don't need to happen. John Lasseter already shouldn't have been made a thing again in animation, we *really* do not need him in control over all Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon, among other mish-mash-ups that'll just throw everything into flux and lead to unneeded layoffs.

I don't like mergers. This one should not have happened, and especially for the reasons it ultimately ended up happening. I imagine at the end of this road, there'll be some shake-up and fall-out, and I'm sure given the legacy of Paramount as an over century-old Hollywood titan... They'll eventually move on to another era. I just don't know what that looks like yet, and where this unsustainable huge mergers will leave many entertainment companies in 5-10 years from now.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 13 days ago

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One thing I anticipate when a new animated movie I like heads for streaming is when, and you may laugh when I say this... Is when those "first time watching" reactors on YouTube get to it. And usually they quite dig these things, as if they're living on an island, away from all the "discourse". There's something so pure and nice about it.

I think that could be in store for ELIO sometime this fall. I assume the Disney+ release date will be some time around September.

A lot of the reactors I watch... They enjoy the other "bad" or "lesser" Pixar films, for the most part. CARS 2 especially... I was shocked by how much these people seemed to enjoy this maligned movie, often considered the worst thing to have come out of the studio. It's my least favorite Pixar film, for sure, and I still enjoy it fine. Even on a bad day, they turned out something I've seen multiple times and own on physical media.

I know because I was there, in summer 2011. When it first came out. I was already in college by that point in time, haha, I'm a mid-millennial.

You think this "bean mouth" discourse is bad? It is... But 2011-2015 times was a hotbed of a lot of deeply insufferable stuff about Pixar, too. All of it online or in nerdier communities. CARS 2 as it was, the finished product, was borderline-reviled online. Front to back. It was soooooo bad, that some people claimed it discredited Pixar's entire filmography, echoing rock critic/producer Jon Landau's venomous review of Paul McCartney's RAM in Rolling Stone magazine. An album released in 1971, barely a year after it was made official to the press that The Beatles had broken up. A disappointing album that was so bad, it insulted all the rock music that had lead up to its release, and the whole era that The Beatles had helped define. Damn!

RAM's a great album, actually, and everybody was 358% wrong about it in 1971.

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The further The Beatles break-up was in the rear view mirror, the more things changed for RAM. It helped that it became more clear that the blame for the band's break-up couldn't be pinned on one person (though many still continued to vilify Yoko Ono for decades), and after John Lennon's assassination in 1980, the records were all looked at differently over time. RAM, by the time it first came to CD in 1988, was being re-evaluated by rock critics and the music press. The 2012 expanded re-issue lead to what was perhaps its greatest resurgence, with some calling what was then a 41-year-old album the first ever "indie music"-sounding record. (That honor, I feel, belongs more to The Beach Boys' SMILEY SMILE, which came out in 1967).

Back to CARS 2's really bad reception in 2011. All around the forums, comments sections, etc. You would've thought that Pixar really shocked the world or something.

I'll always remember this one person's post, on a forum I used to visit. They put it like this: Pixar was like a good upstanding citizen for all of its life, but CARS 2 was the equivalent of them murdering someone...

Yes, that's an actual thing I read back in 2011. Such a post was so unhinged that some users on that forum said the poster went way too far with that analogy, so they softened it a bit to "Well, it's the equivalent of them shoplifting, then."

Like, damn. All this over a silly talking car movie.

The film did have the misfortune of coming off the quadruple Oscar-winning whammy that was... RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, UP, and TOY STORY 3. For some people, one not-great movie and it was all over. Pack it up, oh how the mighty have fallen!

If BRAVE was the movie to have followed TOY STORY 3 and came out in the summer or fall of 2011 (we'll leave out NEWT, a movie never realized), I think it still would've been viewed as a step down, but not to that degree. It'd be kind of in the BUG'S LIFE/first CARS pool of Pixar movies, "might be good enough but not great". I remember when those two movies were the rare "weak" Pixar movies.

CARS 2 did indeed have some major problems in its story structure and its attempts at giving Mater an emotional arc. I suspect a lot of the latter was what John Lasseter - who took over directing the film from Brad Lewis in its final laps of production - was trying to do with the movie in an attempt to make it more to his liking and more likely to "succeed".

I get the sense, many years later, that CARS 2 was supposed to be a pure B-team production at first. Like, I do know that it was a B-team production, technically. The A-team were working on TOY STORY 3 and BRAVE. And that this B-team were - to my estimation, if you worked on this movie please correct me - unabashedly making a slick and fun action blockbuster movie, removed from the "prestige" of the then-current Pixar films, that also happened to have a convoluted plot that needed some inspection... and also a dead actor situation. What kind of significance a deceased Doc Hudson would have on the story, as they chose not to recast. And in an attempt to "salvage" it at last minute, Lasseter added all this weird "heart" stuff and probably rearranged sections of it. To make it more like the praised, Oscar-winning tearjerkers WALL-E, UP, and TOY STORY 3. And that's a big part of why it doesn't work for some, I myself feel it yields mixed results. I like the idea of Mater being seen as a big dummy and how that makes him feel like a screw-up, how his vast knowledge of car parts surprisingly makes him a big help to someone "important", but the writers make him too much of an idiot (and Finn and Holley aren't very bright for that matter) for that to stick the landing for me. If they wanted that very "heart", why didn't they just lean harder on how Doc's passing affects Lightning and Mater? I think that would've made more sense, honestly, and you could still work in some of Mater's insecurity with his perceived lack of intelligence coupled w/ being far from Radiator Springs. Like being homesick, acting unusually because of it, etc. Lightning, too, how they clash because of all that despite being best buds.

So, yeah, the released movie does have issues. Even I have big problems with it. I own the Blu-ray, so I still found it worth my time, it's packed w/ bonus features, and it is DAZZLING to look at. Just top-rate stuff throughout, I wished future CARS endeavors had more international stuff, more of those World Grand Prix cars. Lightning and Francesco have a chemistry that would've been *great* in other stuff. Hell, I want an alternate universe CARS 2 that's more like CHALLENGERS. 2 hours of Lightning and Francesco competing for the love of Sally, and maybe falling for each other... That movie would be a banger, lol.

Anyways, yeah. CARS 2. It had big issues as a movie. The critical reception was shockingly pretty bad, too. Around, what? I remember i it being around 38-44% on Rotten Tomatoes. The internet lost its shit, and because it was a sequel to a movie that already had plenty of detractors, it was a perfect target.

And I didn't hear the end of it with BRAVE, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, THE GOOD DINOSAUR, etc. Pixar was dying, sold their soul, lost their magic, all of it. Everything that's being leveled at the post-Lasseter films now, was more or less leveled at the post-TOY STORY 3 films sans INSIDE OUT. I'd like to think a lot of those complainers stopped at GOOD DINOSAUR, because not even a month after GOOD DINOSAUR quietly walked into theaters... Well, STAR WARS had made its grand cinematic return. The KING of "nerd thing that everyone complains about and insists will never be good again". Pixar no longer making great movies didn't matter after that. At least, for a little while. It was kinda peaceful!

I mean, it checks out. Pixar used to be a division of Lucasfilm: The Graphics Group. Perhaps they're doomed to being fodder for complainy nerds who want things to be a specific kind of good, reminiscent of a perfect past that'll never be recreated because it's not 2007 (1977) anymore and that's just not how things work.

So after THE FORCE AWAKENS came out, THE GOOD DINOSAUR kinda just trailed away from the online complain-o-sphere. I don't remember much flack for FINDING DORY and CARS 3, and COCO was pretty well-liked. No surprise, like INSIDE OUT, it was directed by one of the same 4-5 white dads who directed all the beloved Pixar hits. We all found out that John Lasseter was a creep right as COCO was rolling out, so that put a lot of things into perspective. ONWARD, SOUL, and LUCA got some of that "it's not perfect so it's a letdown" nonsense, but it was fairly mild compared to 2011-2013 times. INCREDIBLES 2 and TOY STORY 4 got flack online, but that was mostly towards the films themselves and not the overall larger Pixar world.

No, this recent thing - I feel - really got going after TURNING RED came out. Because, ewww girls cooties, pipeline to woke DEI Lasseter should come back! Couple this with the pandemic and being home, and very very online, and the ensuing brain rot. All the rabbit holes people got lost in, and how it all morphed into these grifts. The YouTube thumbnails alone tell you everything, honestly.

And then there are the reactors, who just... Put on a movie, and they usually just enjoy the movie on its own terms...

CARS 2. That supposedly ridiculously-awful movie that ended Pixar... Most of the reactors I've watched, and they watched this movie from around 2022 to now... They DUG it. More than the first one, even. Funnily enough, some of these commentators are from Europe... And they really like Mater, which - for many - was the whole reason why CARS 2 fell flat in the first place. Here in America, a lot of us can't stand that redneck stereotype voiced by a literal living redneck stereotype. But these Europeans, and some Americans who aren't old enough to remember the whole faux-redneck comedian craze of the early-to-mid 2000s, they think he's a hoot. I guess, when removed from an all American or era-specific context, Mater is no different from any other goofy dim-witted cartoon character eh?

Hell, one of my co-workers, who was born the year the first CARS came out, we were discussing new Disney films one day. He unironically said "I miss Disney movies like THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG and CARS 2". That caught me by surprise.

It doesn't matter, and it won't matter. Sure, I'm talking about these weird internet subcultures and the "conventional wisdom" that gets passed around right this moment, but 10 years from now, it'll be in the rear view mirror, and ELIO might be looked back on as just that, ditto ELEMENTAL, TURNING RED, etc. "I loved that movie as a kid! Why did it flop?? They need to make stuff like that again!"

So, with that in mind, I'm looking forward to when the reactors get to ELIO. KPOP DEMON HUNTERS had the advantage of being released to streaming and being right at your fingertips, ready for the reactors to boot up and get to while the iron is hot. Whereas ELIO is not there yet. Funnily enough, it being a theatrical run is very... Traditional of it, much like the movie itself is. Very old-school. But it will be at our fingertips eventually. And I'm curious to see what more normal people who just like to watch movies and share their live reactions think about it, lol.

#Youtube

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 16 days ago

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Lowkey hoping that some renowned auteur director comes out and Scorsese-style says "No, animation is NOT cinema. Grow up and watch REAL movies".

Break the brains of all the adult-toddlers using KPOP DEMON HUNTERS to childishly knock ELIO (or anything recent that has the Disney name on it), the puritans who are freaking the hell out over the FIXED trailer, the baby-brains who insult the filmmakers who work hard on these movies, and the cranks who try to inject regressive conservative bullshit into animation.

Give them something to whine about for days on end. Something that'll make them show their asses more so than they already are. When Martin Scorsese said what he had to say about Marvel/tentpole movies, tons of people posted the most obtuse stuff about him, his movies, and all the cinema they perceive as hoity-toity.

Would be fun to watch, and it would spare us all this devoid-of-nuance playground console wars nonsense, for sure.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 17 days ago

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Fine Tooning co-host Drew Taylor also writes for The Wrap, and in a recent piece he did on animated original movies...

He referred to the director of the still-untitled Disney Animation movie coming out next year as "her".

Suzi, is that you?

Referring to, of course, Suzi Yoonessi, who is still apparently directing a feature for the studio... Her instagram bio has said that for years. Former WDAS head Jennifer Lee said in November 2019 that Suzi was at work on a film within the walls of the Burbank studio, but nothing was said beyond that.

Suzi was originally set to direct a Persian fairy tale film that would've come out last autumn (Taylor also mentions that briefly in the article, but doesn't say that it was her film), but Disney Animation heads cancelled it and had MOANA 2 hastily assembled from a Disney+ show to fill the vacancy.

She could very well be directing WDAS Feature #65, but it just hasn't been announced that it's her project yet. Maybe that's what Taylor means, but Taylor could also mean "a director who has never been announced before". That would also rule out Josie Trinidad, who was also announced as a director of a future film the same day Suzi was.

We'll have to see, but this narrows things down for me. Could be Suzi, could Josie, if not them, then likely one of the women within the "creative leadership" at WDAS - whom you can see in the MOANA 2 end credits. Maybe not.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 18 days ago

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Looks like BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE is going to try and take advantage of the 4th of July frame in 2027.

Previously set for 6/4/2027, it's now going for 6/25/2027... Back a few weeks, no big deal really.

That currently places it five days before an untitled Illumination movie, and a week after Pixar's GATTO. Three-in-a-row animated movies in theaters. I don't expect that to stick.

The previous date sandwiched BEYOND between STAR WARS: STARFIGHTER (5/28/2027) and live-action HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 (6/11/2027). Both big franchise entries, one I think will definitely do great, the other has a shot as well. Idk, new STAR WARS movie about brand new characters, not on the Skywalker or Mando side of things - which is a positive for me! But I don't how that'll work out, it could break out and be a big hit and successfully bring fresh new faces to the STAR WARS stable like THE MANDALORIAN did as a streaming show. Or it could pull a SOLO.

Of course, summer 2027 could look very different in a few months from now, as these things are always moving, but I can see why Sony pushed it back a bit. Untitled Illumination could be an original, so if anything, Untitled Illumination might have to move, and they probably don't have to worry about a Pixar original cutting into their chances. Either way, the thing is primed for a $100m+ 3-day opening anyways.

We'll have to see how it all shakes out between now and then, and that's a WHILE away lol.

Curiously, a movie called BUDS was added to Sony Animation's schedule, aiming for 3/12/2027. A week before SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 4. I have no idea what this even is, the only mention of it is in today's Deadline article, and that's it. Just came out of nowhere. Title, release date. Could be anything, best friends or flower buds or something to do w/ Budweiser or a new title for a previously-announced movie, I dunno! (Update about an hour later: Apparently it IS talking plants.)

But... Sony Animation's theatrical runway now:

02/13/2026: GOAT

03/12/2027: BUDS

06/25/2027: SPIDER-MAN: BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE

What else is happening there? HUNGRY GHOSTS was last mentioned a year ago, and nearly two years ago we were told about an untitled picture from writer-director Matt Braly (AMPHIBIA creator) co-written by Rebecca Sugar.

The adaptation of the podcast-turned-comic BUBBLE and Matthew A. Cherry's TUT haven't been updated on in a long while, and there's also Genndy Tartakovsky's BLACK KNIGHT, which *could* go full-steam ahead after HEIST SAFARI. TAO from Emily Dean is "paused" as of this past April. Animated GHOSTBUSTERS is going to Netflix. I know the Wikipedia page lists that all-female SPIDER-VERSE spin-off movie that was announced before the release of INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, but that too hasn't been talked about in a long, long while. Not since that announcement, it seems.

But I'm used to this game. Animation studios tend to announce lots of upcoming projects in development, years go by, they don't land release dates, but all of a sudden, here's BUD! A movie I've never heard of! And GOAT was another one, announced way after - like - TUT and BUBBLE, but it's on its way to theaters right now. Ya never know.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 18 days ago

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Gonna be serious here for a second.

So, Paramount is totally winning the award for "entertainment company who completely capitulates the most to Trump" now that they and CBS are ending Stephen Colbert's show. All because Colbert *gasp* criticizes the sitting President in what's ostensibly a FREE country?

All this, on the heels of the 60 MINUTES fiasco and during this unneeded merger with Skydance that needs to not happen... Yeah, this is corporate fascism through and through, coupled with Trump's attacks on NPR and PBS. I know some smartass will try to equate this with, say, Disney firing people like Gina Carano and Roseanne Barr over hurtful remarks, but that is not the same. No President or politician goaded Disney into doing that, they chose to can those people. The President is not a king, not an emperor, Colbert is doing nothing wrong and his show is being tossed because the President thinks he can just do that to someone who disagrees with him... And Paramount, a major corporation, is flat-out going "Yes, your excellency" and doing his work for him. Just like how Disney is stifling creators across their various divisions right now. Treating him as if he's inevitable and not to be messed with.

It's all very worrying, not just because of how it blocks peoples' freedom of expression in the arts, but freedom of expression in general. This is a move to scare, and sets a bad precedent, that your whiny President can silence you with the force of both corporations and the government.

That's pretty bad.

Colbert, given his years of work, can relaunch elsewhere I feel. Independently or with someone who is willing to have him.

Some people I follow elsewhere have half-jokingly suggested that he should... Run for President in 2028.

I dunno, I think we can do without another celebrity or someone who has no actual political experience (as in, actually being a mayor/governor/senator/etc. beforehand), but it would mean...

THIS:

Hey, I thought of something.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks (lol, he's the K in SKG), had a political background prior to Hollywood, and had often been a big supporter of the Democratic Party. He was BIG on Barack Obama as far back as 2004, and expressed enthusiasm for him being president that early on, and they had a pretty solid relationship thereafter. I do remember the Obamas touring DreamWorks back when HOME was in production. Katzenberg was even part of what was going to be Joe Biden's re-election campaign, as an advisor, which of course later became Kamala Harris' campaign last fall. In addition to Colbert's role as President Hathaway in MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, Katzenberg appeared on his show a year later.

So... Obama ran for president in 2008, and won, becoming the first African-American U.S. president. On the Tuesday right before the release of DreamWorks' MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA. Right around this time, it got out that Republican opponent John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin had apparently thought Africa was a "country"...

There's some debate, I've come to learn, on whether Madagascar itself is part of the African continent or not. Sometimes it's called "The Eighth Continent", it is a strange anomaly of a land. If it is part of Africa, the characters in that movie weren't really escaping 2 Africa, were they? Continental Africa, yes. But, if Madagascar truly is its own entity, then yeah... They did in fact escape 2 Africa. I remember back then, some people on message boards questioning the title *and* bringing up Palin's gaffe for good measure. "Escape 2 the Country of Africa", or something like that.

And of course, Obama was inaugurated January 20, 2009. Two months later, we see the release of the studio's MONSTERS VS. ALIENS. Probably in its final laps of production on Election Day 2008. Starring Stephen Colbert as the President.

Colbert had actually made something of a bid for that very election early on, in fall 2007, but nothing really came of it. His other political activity has been varied since then, but he's never actually been a politician.

Katzenberg left DreamWorks following Comcast's acquisition of the studio in 2016, and while the SKG is but gone from the DreamWorks Animation logo and name in general these days, he still started it with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. And they still make movies, THE BAD GUYS 2 is right around the corner.

And there's a presidential election in 2028.

It'd be lowkey hilarious if Colbert ran and won. Him, Biden, and Obama, DreamWorks presidencies. Love to see it.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 19 days ago

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It's a toy kinda day for animation... The original TOY STORY sees a 30th anniversary theatrical re-release on September 12th, which makes me wonder... Some kind of exclusive first look at the fifth movie attached? Would be a nice carrot.

An animated Barbie movie - fun coincidence, given all the Barbies and Ken that we see in the TOY STORY sequels - is taking off at Illumination, and... That's it. No director, writer, etc. revealed, only that the movie is a thing over there, and it had been talked about before, but it's apparently full steam ahead now.

Greta Gerwig's BARBIE was like a live-action cartoon to me, which is what I really liked about it. Very reminiscent of the 1994 live-action FLINTSTONES movie, and Robert Altman's 1980 POPEYE film starring Robin Williams. What sets them apart from a lot of today's live-action (and hyperreal CGI) takes on cartoons and animated movies is that they committed to the bit, big time. They constructed such elaborate sets, regardless of whether they'd look silly in real life or not. The Barbie world in Gerwig's movie was just that, too, lots of fun practical stuff and CGI aid where they needed it.

What's even funnier is that POPEYE was more based on the character's comic strip origins than the many animated shorts made from 1933 all the way up until about 1957, so it's a comic movie adaptation like few others.

So with what BARBIE did, visually, where is the animated movie to go from there? Since there were, like, a gazillion Barbie direct-to-video movies made over the span of decades, there's actually a lot they can do. Gerwig's film played with Barbie in the real world and what Barbie is as a symbol, the legacy of the brand and whatnot, it fits within the framework. This can do... Whatever the hell it wants, something unique to the movie and unique on its own... and I'd be down for it if it does just that.

And then we have, finally, our trailer for FIXED. Not much to do with toys, well, dogs do like chew toys... So, maybe?

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It tells me little, other than "It's an R-rated RAUNCHY cartoon dog movie!"

It definitely does look old-school and classic-like, as Genndy Tartakovsky had said in interviews. The linework and some of the character animation, definitely giving the '50s and '60s in some ways, he did compare it to LADY AND THE TRAMP and ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS in that regard. Him coming up with this movie and directing it is what hooks me, more so than "this movie is soooo raunchy". Don't get me wrong, I like a good raunchy fun time, I liked SAUSAGE PARTY for example, but knowing Genndy, I think it's gonna be more than that and what this short teaser showed.

#Youtube

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 20 days ago

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Heh...

That's the director of KPOP DEMON HUNTERS tweeting that.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 20 days ago

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"Pixar, abandon this calarts bean mouth grubhub style!"

"Pixar, make the exact kind of movies you used to make years ago!"

Meanwhile, I'm over here, nicely asking... Pixar, please make NEWT one day.

Please? It'd be cool.

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 20 days ago

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HOPPERS teaser, finally here! After a tiny morsel of the movie at the end of ELIO.

Dig the cartoony style, which we've seen glimpses of before. It's basically director Daniel Chong's WE BEAR BEARS in Pixar clothes, rounded and circular, but no dot-eyes. Rumor had it, back when footage from this film was shown at D23, that Lindsey Olivares - known for her work on THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES - apparently was a big part of the film's art direction. Either way, it's appealing, I like it. Translates fine in CGI. I was particularly impressed by the lighting in the forest and stuff like that, looks to be a smaller-scale film, in that the woods will feel immersive in its own unique way. Basically a sort-of WE BEARS BEARS characters-existing and the situations happening from there kind of thing, though the larger plot still appears to be "Mabel and the animals have to stop a mayor and land developers". No really massive spectacle or anything, certainly not galactic-sized like ELIO. I also quite like the bits with the scientists, they'll probably be a lot of fun.

The glimpses of the directing - particularly that shot of Mabel-beaver running, really cool! Like the movie looks pretty silly and I'm down for a lighter treat like that, though I'll have to see more of the comedy bits and such to really have any firm thoughts. I mean, even if future trailers don't really get my interest, I'll see it anyways, sometimes these things don't give me a good idea of what's coming. I remember kinda dreading, for example, TANGLED back in 2010... But I actually really like that movie, so there's that.

The shot of the ducks... There's five ducklings as the trailer goes "From the creators of TOY STORY... 2, 3, 4". Clever, 'cuz, ya know.

And for a tangent... I wonder if ducks being in the movie, given that it's set in a North American wilderness, was why some rumor-mills initially speculated that this particular Pixar movie would be about ducks. And would possibly be called DUCKS. That happens sometimes, scooper-types get some weird mixed signals from the trenches, and then go and misreport things. They get one detail right, but the rest of them all wrong... Like how MOANA was said to be a Polynesia-set Rumplestiltskin adaptation called THE NAME GAME circa 2013, but it never actually was. As far as I know, a Rumplestiltskin adaptation wasn't even on Disney Animation's boards at the time, nor was there any movie being made there that was going to be called "THE NAME GAME". So, I'm guessing someone saw a scene of ducks or art of ducks, and thought "Pixar's making a duck movie! And it's a musical!"

It happens. Like, whatever came of that rumored Barcelona soccer movie that was supposedly being made there in 2018? Real? Fake? I don't know, do you?

But yeah, it's here, it's coming, should make its late winter 2026 release date, and it looks neat and different enough from previous Pixars. Again, it's basically WE BEARS BEARS by way of Pixar, so it should make some kind of impression. Rootin' for it, as usual, for Pixar original movies' sake.

And also... YouTubers... Please direct me to where Disney or Pixar put out a statement chastising people for not supporting ELIO in theaters. Where did they say that?

I'll wait... I'll also take Things That Didn't Happen for $500, Alex.

#Youtube

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