So I have been watching some none-Japanese animated films lately, and I thought I'd post my thoughts on them.
The first film I watched was The Thief and the Cobbler. It's a film by Richard Williams which he worked on for like 24 years, before he lost control of it due to not making the deadline. Then his adult-targeted masterpiece was butchered into a Disney-esque musical. It's got a complicated and depressing history behind it, but there is a fan edit copy which is easy to find (Actually, I think it's the only version I could find) and that is the version I watched, with the movie pieced roughly or assumingly how Williams originally intended.
I watched the movie (It most definitely would've been the final cut musical version) years ago as a kid, and I remember being somewhat board, and underwhelmed by the whole movie. Except that there were tiny things I remembered liking about it. Well, for nostalgia's sake, and because I read how awesome it supposedly was on Wikipedia, I went ahead and re-watched it.
It is an incredible movie. So many of the animated sequences blew my mind. For example when the thief is climbing up the sewer duct, the way the metal bent, and the weighted movement of him pulling himself up it. It was just so pleasing to look at. The super fluidity did cause it to seem like it was slow-mo at times, but the characters had such weight to them. As for the stylization of the characters, I didn't mind it. I actually found it more appealing than stock Disney character designs. Also the movie's backgrounds were so sweet. I loved the M.C. Escher stairway that ZigZag and Tac walk on, and by-pass each other on. However the ending battle sequence was pretty underwhelming. I loved the Rube Goldberg-style explosion and destruction of the enemy's battle machine, but I didn't like the mannequin-feel of the bad guys. I wanted to see an awe-striking battle like the one that we see the arrow-filled messenger leave. I'm talking some Lord of the Rings army clashing here. But no, the bad guys just blow up.. At least the exploding machine looks really cool.
After Cobbler, I watched Gwen, Or the Book of Sand. It's a 1985 French animated film, and it was pretty cool. It was much more thought-provoking and implicit than I was expecting. The animation style was sweet though. When it ended I was left intrigued, and wanting to watch more. I dunno that I'd say it was better, or worse than Cobbler. They are two entirely different films, and I don't think you could compare them.
After Gwen, I watched The Black Cauldron. This is another film I watched as a child, but I never owned a copy of it like I did with most Disney animated classics, so I only watched it one or two times when I borrowed it from a friend. I remember being heavily influenced by this title as a child. With the skeletons all over the place and raising from the dead, the little dog thing jumping to his death, the dragon things stealing the pig, and just the sheer overwhelming darkness of the film compared to other Disney classics.
Getting past the sweet nostalgia of seeing the skeleton army, this movie wasn't really entertaining. The animation was an eye-sore after watching Cobbler. The character's movement seemed super stiff, and the excessive fluidity and bounciness of everyone's hair was anything but appealing. Unlike Cobbler, none of the characters seemed to have weight to them at all. Like when the boy is swinging the sword around, it looks so unnatural and awkward. The story was so underdeveloped, yet at the same time overly crammed with unnecessary crap. The frog scene in the witches house? It was straight out of The Sword in the Stone (In fact, I think the scene even featured the same voices). Overall the movie was extremely forgettable, and I didn't really get anything out of it, other than getting to see some animated skeleton soldiers that warped my mind and imagination as a child.
Following Cauldron, I decided to spice up my viewing evening (I was watching all of these back-to-back) with some Don Bluth. So mid-way through Cauldron I grabbed a copy of The Secret of Nimh. This was also one I had seen as a kid, probably twice as much as the other two. Again I remembered this film being super dark, and imaginatively inspiring. I always had a desire to read through the book because of how cool I remembered this movie being.
Nimh was definitely better than Cauldron. However, even the life-evoking hidden-hand animation of Bluth didn't top Cobbler, imo. The characters were just over-acting facial expressions and excessively in-betweened movements. It didn't have the same weight and life that I saw in Cobbler. I will say this though, the VA of Mrs Brisby was awesome. She sounded so genuine. However, despite her acting, the story of Nimh seemed super weak. Like, I remembered pretty much all of the film before I started watching it, but because of how it just ends like it does, I was positive there was more to it that I was forgetting. But no, I remembered pretty much the how thing just fine... The story is literally all about her moving her house. Starts, boy's sick, they need to move, see gets the rats to move them. Then there is this pretty sweet fight between the rats, which consists of generic-good-guy beating generic-bad-guy.. It's all about the rats of NIMH, yet the movie barely even talks about that. It just sort of sums it all up in two and a half minutes. It's like "yeah we were injected with crap, learned to read, and escaped. Your husband helped. moving on." The film just felt so substance-less. Overall, as I said it's much better than Cauldron, but it's not on the same level as Cobbler, and Gwen is on an entire different plane.
Aside from those films, I decided to continue on the nostalgia train and watch the first episode of Highlander: The Animated Series. This aired on the same channel's after-school cartoon block as Pokemon when I was a kid without cable TV. We had a TV, and with the antenna placed just right we could get this channel that showed a whole stream of cartoons. I don't even remember half of the ones that aired, but Robocop and Highlander were two that I do remember.
The Highlander was pretty much exactly like I remembered it being. Only, going into it fresh (and not being a fan or even very knowledgeable on The Highlander story), the story seemed super ridiculous and had me scratching my head all over the place. The dialogue was all really lame and cheesy too. However when those bad guy footmen came out in their green armor junk, and the tank things with the giant treads, it surpassed nostalgia and seemed more like super strong dejavu. Suddenly these soldiers and tanks that I somehow remembered being super influential on me as a kid came popping into my head. it was pretty awesome feeling. Although in general the characters weren't really appealing, and their animation was pretty cheap. However, the highlight of this episode that I watched was definitely the backgrounds. The backgrounds were incredible!
I mean, look at that! So awesome. It totally made the episode worth watching.
Lets see, after Highlander came Sym-Bionic Titan. This is the new series from Genndy Tartakovsky [Samurai Jack, Clone Wars]. I hadn't realized this was already out, but I was looking up a release date the other day, and it turned out that 4 eps had already come out! So I grabbed the first one, and sat down to see if the man's still got it.
I was very impressed with this first episode. Visually the series isn't too far off from Ben 10 or Generator Rex (Which, though I've only seen one episode of, I didn't feel it lived up to it's eerily interesting PV). And it's whole concept isn't too far off either. However, despite the fact that this series looks like something we've all seen before, it feels fresh and cool. Who would've thought we'd get a home brew'd giant combining mecha cartoon? Definitely heavy Japanese inspiration there, just like in all of Tartakovsky's other works. By far I found the scenes on the alien planet to be more interesting than the earth setting. The scene with the monster thing ripping the thing out of the ground and breaking it is just one of those little things that this guy knows how to do to instill an awe-striking sense of awesomeness. The scenes with the anti-alien guys and military were all cool and done well. And I think my favorite part of the episode might've been the high school TV series commercial where every kid is sucking another kids face. I laughed out loud at that. Overall I'd totally enjoy checking out more episodes of it, but it is kinda low on the priorities list of what to watch.
I wanted to hold off on posting this until I get around to watching another handful of movies, maybe even including some Japanese ones. But then I remembered I tend to write far more than I plan to, so I thought I'd better jot these down, and then save the next batch of films for another blog.
Now I feel like I should say something to close it out, like "thanks for reading," but taht sounds really cheesy.. I dunno how to close this. later.