@Ring Team
And just because something is popular, doesn’t make it bad. A popular song can be as good as something original.
I don’t think something popular is bad just because it’s popular. I’m not one of those. I could be one of those, but I want to be sincere, not trying to trick people.
Frozen, Encanto and the Marvel movies are really popular and yet they have features that make them either unique, entertaining, creative and/or great, unless the film is Iron Man 2.
My problem with Illumination is that most of these films feel like a collection of gags instead of a story that could be told in a movie. And even if they focus on gags, the moments aren’t as impactful as in other works that have much better slapsticks, like Tom & Jerry I mentioned before. Most of these characters have a still line action (an invisible line to illustrate a pose) with no interesting poses to communicate an action or a mood. The Minions, for example, are not designed to have an extended movement. They have bulky bodies with too small arms and legs to toy, and it’s really hard to make a compelling animation with these limitations.
Not to mention, they tend to copy the templates of other stories or designs that worked in the past. For example, I’ve heard many times that Secret life of Pets was like a shittier Toy Story. But the appeal of Toy Story wasn’t the toys that come to life, it’s the relationship between Woody and Andy and how this co-relates to his experiences in the 3 movies (4 if we count Bonnie). In Secret Life of Pets, the payoff is that the animals talk. That’s it. It’s like someone understood only half of the appeal of Toy Story and said “let’s give them cute puppies”.
Probably the most shameless example to me was the design of the antagonist of Despicable Me, which was mostly based on Edna from The Incredibles. The glasses, the haircut, the structure of his head… He has some clear differences, but when the similar features are on his face, the character part we see the most, it’s very jarring.
But basically, the “TLDR” version of my point is this: More focus on being a compedium of gags, not enhancing the animation, irritating sense of humor, irritating characters, derivative premises, derivative designs and that’s it. If you want to know in a funny way why I don’t like Illumination films, check out
this video.
Will this change for the Mario movie, since this looks like an actual movie? Maybe, but the scene we saw a couple of days ago was too loud in my opinion. Still, it’s the only film that might get good once it came out. I just don’t want that scene to be representative of the movie. I have high hopes, but very low expectations.