N'Al on 7/7/2008 at 09:27
Eh, is everyone forgetting about A Bug's Life here?
That was a soppy kids movie; Finding Nemo is comparatively 'adult' (lol, pron) in comparison.
fett on 7/7/2008 at 14:59
A Bug's Life is the only Pixar I don't own and didn't care for.
demagogue on 7/7/2008 at 16:52
I just remember it came out right at the same time as Antz (google is telling me 1998, heh, the same year that Armageddon and Deep Impact also came out together.) And I remember thinking, after a double-dose of movie deja vu, do they do this sort of thing on purpose? It just seemed absurd at the time.
fett on 7/7/2008 at 17:11
They do:
Bug's Life = Antz
Madagascar = The Wild = Over the Hedge
Chicken Little = Hoodwinked (which is the coolest fucking kid's movie ever made)
Ice Age = Happy Feet = Some other penguin movie I forgot the name of = the Penguins from Madagascar
Finding Nemo = Shark Tales
Toy Story = Robots
Etc.
It's usually Pixar/Disney coming up with a fabulous idea, and Dreamworks copping it within 6 months, although I give props to Madagascar and Robots (both Dreamworks) for being pretty great. Disney's Meet the Robinson's was also great and hasn't been copped by anyone yet afaik.
Fafhrd on 7/7/2008 at 18:12
Robots came out 10 years after Toy Story. And was from Fox Animation, not Dreamworks.
The story I've heard about Dreamworks stealing all of Pixar's ideas is that when Katzenberg left Disney in '94 he took a rough outline of all of Disney's upcoming slate with him, and immediately set Dreamworks Animation to the task of making the exact same movies and trying to beat Disney to releasing them. This also fueled the not at all subtle digs at Disney in Shrek.
And A Bug's Life is win just for being a combination of 'The Grasshopper and the Ant' fable with The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven/The Three Amigos.
fett on 7/7/2008 at 18:36
Right - several of those aren't Dreamworks, and aren't even contemporary. I was just trying to point out that studio's tend to recycle Disney/Pixar ideas in some shape or form, even if the plot is completely different. For example, Shark Tales could have just as easily been done with squirrels or bung moles, but they obviously chose fish because of Nemo's popularity.
a flower in hell on 8/7/2008 at 02:46
Quote Posted by Vivian
I like how you make it sound like scientists are stopping you personally from building a nuclear power plant or refining coal as if you would have a fucking clue how to, you goon.
When I say "us" I don't mean "me" in particular. Nice personal attack there, by the way. Really shows maturity.
Stitch on 8/7/2008 at 03:10
Perhaps, but I'm finding his "goon" accusations difficult to find fault with.
crunchy on 8/7/2008 at 04:00
Quote Posted by The_Raven
I read a comment somewhere that Wall-E looks a little too similar to Johnny-5.
A-ha! I was at the cinema the other day and they had a 3D cardboard mock-up of Wall-e and I couldn't think why it looked so familiar.
Angel Dust on 22/9/2008 at 01:00
Apologies for the thread necromancy but this film has only just opened over here! Anyway I saw it opening night and it is easily the best mainstream release I have seen this year, and just as good as the great festival/indie films I have seen this year. Genuinely charming, relentlessly inventive and beautiful there wasn't a bad scene in the whole thing. I pleasantly surprised with how the humans were handled in this film, a lesser film would have treated them with contempt and done a lot of finger wagging, but Wall-E choose to portray them more as people who had lost their way and needed to be reminded of what was important. This made the environmental message of the film much much less preachy than it could have been.
About the only complaint I have is with the live-action footage in the film. It's not bad but it I don't feel it adds anything at all to the film. I got a bit of a 'FMV in a computer game' vibe from them adn they really didn't utilize Fred Willard as well as they could have.
