NEW Muppet Poster

[Drtooth]

Maybe with the Smurfs...You know now that I think of it the door would most likely kill the poor little things ;.; (Since when did a movie been set in the middle ages where magic is real become uncool to little kids? Even in today's market you could get the same readers of Harry Potter into a canon setting Smurf movie *sigh*

Well, at least with the Smurf movie, that's an actual scene in the film. Ugh.

I still think they needed to get some Belgian script writers in on the film to hammer out a better plot. I've said for a long time that bringing them out in the real world is a terrible concept, a completely overused one at that. And I've said, all it will do is make jokes about how either they're small and fall into things, they question human technology (with brand names mentioned), and of course, how blue they are and how they say Smurf for everything (in the wrong way, naturally). But I've accepted that. At least we got the comics published in English out of it.

Still, kids LOVE Shrek, that took place in a Medieval fantasy setting. Heck, Disney movies are usually period pieces and kids love watching them on video. To think that they'd throw the magic out of the Smurf World out for a bunch of cheap falling into toilets jokes just shows why Sony sucks. Either the movie will horribly bomb, or it will be a success leading to MORE bad Smurf movies (and Smurfs and the Magic Flute never getting released in region 1 format).

 

[Convincing John]

And of course, random sunglasses because it's perpetually 1980's summer time.

Really, the only Muppet with sunglasses I want to see on a poster is this guy (ok, Clifford would be OK, too).

I'm undecided on the big "M" logo. It's...OK, but where it looks like it's made out of felt is kind of weird. If it looked like it was made out of something besides Kermit's skin, (like metal for instance or neon lights activated by Bunsen and Beaker getting shocked), it wouldn't look so odd. Especially with Kermit right there next to it.

It just reminds me of that old "Poison to Poison" Sam and Friends bit:

Harry: "That armchair you're sitting in is quite striking."

Chicken Liver: "Very expensive, too."

Harry: "Why is it so expensive?"

Chicken Liver: "It's made out of real arms."

The idea of Animal or Gonzo interacting with the M is a great idea.

You know...I just noticed something about Walter. Why is Beaker freaked out by him? We're all saying Walter looks too big (he's really like...Roosevelt Franklin size).

I'm almost tempted to think that where Walter is now used to be Bunsen, but they made a mistake in Photoshop, then tried to cover it up by making Walter looked like he gained some weight.

The hand-on-head thing is kind of strange. It could be Walter's "Oh wow! I'm here with the Muppets! I can't believe this!" look. To me, it almost looks like Walter is giong to impersonate John Cleese as Nearly-Headless Nick.

All in all, an OK poster.

Eh...ehh....ehhhh! Uh oh! I need to get something before I sn...sn...snn...(quickly grabs Marmaduke poster) ACHOOOO! Whew! Good thing this big tissue was here...(sniff).

 

[Redsonga]

They missed a very good story they could tell in the Smurfs about a clumsy boy and his donkey to :\

The only thing with the M poster is those flat pictures in the back you can tell those muppets aren't really there

 

[douggy]

Smurfs does look awful but Sony certainly don't suck, all studios make turkeys. Don't forget they made Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. I think that's the cloest film to rival pixar's offerings. A fantastic film, parts of that actually reminded me of the muppets, the way the characters were animated.
I work at a post production studio who did a lot of work around gargamel, but yeah..i'm certainly not going to stick up for it. I think the smurfs were only good in book form anyway, the old books are superb.

 

[outerelf]

Smurfs does look awful but Sony certainly don't suck, all studios make turkeys. Don't forget they made Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. I think that's the cloest film to rival pixar's offerings. A fantastic film, parts of that actually reminded me of the muppets, the way the characters were animated.
I work at a post production studio who did a lot of work around gargamel, but yeah..i'm certainly not going to stick up for it. I think the smurfs were only good in book form anyway, the old books are superb.

Oh cool, so we have an insider to the movie. But the whole not sticking up for it... tells me I should wait until the dvd comes out, right?

 

[douggy]

Well i don't know as I've only seen the trailer but it falls into the same bracket as alvin and the chipmunks it seems. The smurfs look really ugly. Do cartoon caracters really need dimples and pores? ughh. And yeah as Drtooth mentions, all these reworkings of old cartoons are terrible.. I'm sure there will be a scene where a smurf breakdances or does a matrix style slow motion jump and looks super cool when he lands..or one gets hit on the head, cut to another smurf 'oooh, that's gotta hurt'.
I've never been a fan of cartoons acting cool. Bugs bunny - Great character, perfect even.. stick him in a leather jacket and baseball cap (as they do so often).. nothing.. awful.
Nor when cartoons reference other films or shows for a quick laugh.. it's real lazy writing and it really dates the film, not to mention throwing the audience out of the picture. I'm sure there's plenty going on in the smurfs, i just hope there isn't any or much of it in the muppets.

grumble grumble. I'm going to go and watch some old huckleberry hound cartoons to calm myself down.

 

[Drtooth]

Smurfs does look awful but Sony certainly don't suck, all studios make turkeys. Don't forget they made Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. I think that's the cloest film to rival pixar's offerings. A fantastic film, parts of that actually reminded me of the muppets, the way the characters were animated.
I work at a post production studio who did a lot of work around gargamel, but yeah..i'm certainly not going to stick up for it. I think the smurfs were only good in book form anyway, the old books are superb.

You don't know me very well, do you?

I've said it before, I cannot abide that film. it raped the book and turned it into a generic children's movie by explaining things that need not been explained. The magic of the original Cloudy book was that the food falling out of the sky was an unexplained phenomenon that was beneficial when the weather was good, but when a huge storm came it was a natural disaster of unnatural proportions. The told the story thus... a scientist did it. That's like saying a wizard did it or a weird character is an alien (MFS cough cough). Cheap explanations are cheap explanations. I saw a huge chunk of that, right in the climax, and it was like, Oh no... the whatever malfunctioned (successfully killing the "it's a natural disaster" bit), people running from food, stereotype black cop, hero uses one of his failed joke inventions presumably from the beginning of the movie... and that was the 10 worst minutes I ever spent at a Blockbuster.

All the stuff they've made just seems awful to me... Open Season (is there any reason for there to be 3 films?) Surf's Up... I do say, Hotel Transylvania sounds good, but only because Genndy Tartikovsky's working on it (not impressed with the voice cast, though).

Well i don't know as I've only seen the trailer but it falls into the same bracket as alvin and the chipmunks it seems. The smurfs look really ugly. Do cartoon caracters really need dimples and pores? ughh. And yeah as Drtooth mentions, all these reworkings of old cartoons are terrible.. I'm sure there will be a scene where a smurf breakdances or does a matrix style slow motion jump and looks super cool when he lands..or one gets hit on the head, cut to another smurf 'oooh, that's gotta hurt'.

You know, I fail to see what was horrible about Robert Altman's live action Popeye. The characters looked and ACTED like the characters, Popeye didn't need to hip hop or fall into piles of crap or Olive to be proactive... in fact, it was closer to the Thimble Theater comics than those cartoons where Popeye eats spinach and punches out Bluto in different settings. it was delightfully campy, and Robin Williams manged to keep one eye shut the entire film. Now, you can't even get Chow Yun Fat to wear a Beard and be bald to play Roshi. Cartoon based films are rarely done right, and rarely amazing or good when they are. Again, with the Smurfs, Paramount was planning a far superior trilogy that took place Smurfside, but something happened, the Sony exec claimed to see them when he was in the Netherlands as a kid, and bought the rights. then they just threw together a script before the rights expired. Something tells me there's zero faith in this movie, since there isn't any merchandise, and it comes out very late season. It was almost given the August death slot at one point.

 

[douggy]

agreed, popeye was a good one.
and check this smurf crap out.
http://www.16bit.com/toyfair2011-jakkspacific-smurfs.asp

 

[douggy]

I never read the cloudy book but i loved the film and I know a whole load of kids who love it too. It's funny and colourful. I don't know what you mean about stereotype black cop, what are you saying?

 

[Drtooth]

agreed, popeye was a good one.
and check this smurf crap out.
http://www.16bit.com/toyfair2011-jakkspacific-smurfs.asp

Luckily, I haven't seen it on store shelves yet. I know that's unfortunately the next McD's promotion... and I bet they will look movie-fied, since they always make movie versions of the cartoons they base the movies off of. That said, i love my entire collection of BK's Flintstone Prequel set that looks like the cartoon from 10 years ago.

I never read the cloudy book but i loved the film and I know a whole load of kids who love it too.

The book is very sweet. It's an old grandfather telling his kids this impossible story of how the food just randomly was there falling out of the sky. There's never any explanation for it, the illustrations are beautiful and it has a cute little ending too. I'm just very close to the source material, it was always one of my favorite standalone books.

Mentioning the unexplained just killed the movie for me.