"The Muppets" first preview screening

[ryan19]

Thanks for all that info Hiho ... I hope that the 1hr40mis worth of film contains all the 4 M's ... Musical,mayhem,memorable & MUPPETS , for us all fans to say at the end , that was all worth the wait .

 

[Zack the Dog]

my one and only question because i think people answered all my others and i didn't see this one asked. ;-)

Is Bean Bunny or Emily Bear in the movie?

 

[minor muppetz]

Considering Link and Strangepork don't have any lines, I guess that means there are no new Pigs in Space sketches in the movie. Are any recurring sketches from The Muppet Show represented with any new sketches in the movie?

I would have expected the jail scene to be a big plot point somehow. With that cut I'd expect more to be cut (like why they got arrested and what is done to get them out of jail). But now I wonder if that scene was only shot for the second trailer (with the reports of those cameos being slightly misleading). Of course since a new ending was shot recently, I wonder if the jail stuff was cut out as a result of it.

I wonder if this movie is a situation similar to The Simpsons Movie, where there was enough footage cut for two whole movies (I don't expect The Muppets to have that much cut footage). I remember when that movie was released, it was said that a large percent of clips in the trailer were cut, as well as many celebrity cameos. If this is the case with The Muppets, I hope the DVD has most of the deleted scenes included (The Simpsons Movie DVD disapointingly had only six deleted scenes).

 

[beaker]

There was a lot of the Simpsons movie cut? Wonder why it wasnt on the home release, usually in 2d and 3d animation they don't waste much footage and animatics/early unfinished cgi is the only extras.

Sadly, these days there's no extras on dvds as they want to force people to all buy the blu ray versions instead

 

[minor muppetz]

There was a lot of the Simpsons movie cut? Wonder why it wasnt on the home release, usually in 2d and 3d animation they don't waste much footage and animatics/early unfinished cgi is the only extras.

It was widely sourced. Sometime after the trailer came out I saw a quote from somebody who worked on the movie, saying most of the stuff in the trailer was already cut from the film. I don't really remember anything in the trailer that didn't make the film, aside from a shot of Itchy as a gangster. The original theatrical trailer doesn't even appear on the DVD.

I know that some celebrity voices were cut, a scene with Sideshow Bob was cut, and an ending scene with Kang and Kodos were cut. And yet none of those were on the special features (most of the deleted scenes we did get are very mediocre). If they couldn't include all the deleted scenes (it'd probably need to be a two-disc set for all the scenes) they should have at least included the stuff mentioned in the press releases. And considering all of the Simpsons season sets have been perfect when it comes to bonus features, it's a shame the DVD of the movie couldn't have been treated the same way. I've read that the blu-ray of the movie has the exact same features as the regular DVD and nothing else.

I'm confident that The Muppets will have a good DVD release. I think it was said that Disney wants to include video footage of the script read-through (I hope it doesn't get in the way of including deleted scenes and all the trailers). I'm hoping it'll be better than any Muppet movie DVD, past or present (and if it's a two-disc set then that'll be a first, not counting the two-disc-but-really-a-DVD-and-a-CD It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie).

 

[Stulz]

Does the Electric Mayhem perform one of new songs?

 

[dwmckim]

Poor Linkie baby. His curse of never getting a line in a Muppet movie continues. Would love it if there was an inside joke reference gag where Biff and Sully style, he goes to say something and someone else cuts him off.

 

[minor muppetz]

Seems like since "Muppets From Space", whenever there's been a new production we've been expecting recasts and many lines from those who have needed to be recasts, and often it's seemed like a let-down. While Rowlf, Scooter, and Dr. Teeth got dialogue in MFS, it was all one line or less. And then when It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie came out, Scooter and Janice were given many lines (Janice and Animal were the only members of the Electric Mayhem to get lines in the broadcast version) and Rowlf getting some brief vocal stuff (oh and all of Frank Oz's main characters were heard with new performers).

And then with The Muppets Wizard of Oz there was a bit more recasting, not just with Henson and Hunt's characters, but this time also Jerry Nelson's characters. Dr. Teeth was performed by Bill Barretta for the first time, Scooter was performed by Ricky Boyd for the only time (that recast was so perfect, I wonder why he didn't continue), Eric Jacobson did his first performance as Sam the Eagle, and we also got a recast Crazy Harry (like with Scooter, this was also Ricky Boyd's only performance as the character). And Rowlf got no dialogue.

And while Letters to Santa isn't a movie, we did get more recasts around that time, and this time the recasts seem to be permaneant now. It's known that Jerry Nelson trained Matt Vogel to perform his characters and trained David Rudman to perform Richard's (he had already taken over some of Richard's Sesame Street characters, and in the 40th anniversary book he says he was able to because he'd worked with Richard so much). I guess this happened sometime between 2005 and 2008. But most of the Muppets present in Letters to Santa got dialogue, even if some (Rowlf, Robin, Crazy Harry) only got one line. But even then, that's more than Rowlf's brief grunt and Dr. Teeth's one word in MFS.

I guess with this movie we were expecting dialogue from a lot of characters again, especially with the creative team wanting to focus on the classic characters. So I guess it is a surprise that Robin, Janice, Link, and Dr. Strangepork don't get any lines. Maybe they did and they were cut (I am most surprised that Janice doesn't seem to talk... I wonder if Zoot does). I'm sort of not surprised Thog doesn't have any lines, but I'm actually not surprised Wayne and Wanda do (if I saw the movie without seeing the trailers first then I would).

 

[frogboy4]

This screening was obviously a rough-cut. There could be one liners that need to be looped and some of the cut scenes could be sliced into the credits. You never know. I do believe they'll do something special for the closing credits.

 

[beaker]

Has anyone seen ANY Muppet related promo, advertising, merchandise, etc on the radar lately? Or is Disney waiting to September to start the push?