"Peanuts" movie in development for November 2015 release

[Drtooth]

The funny thing about this movie is how they pretty much had to reverse engineer what made the Peanuts cartoons simplistic stylistically. Low budget animation recreated in higher quality just...comes out wrong somehow. Kind of like when cartoons put an anime sequence in, but it doesn't really look authentic because they're just trying to poorly ape the style of a specific show. As it pertains to this animation studio, the completely awkward "ninja" sequence of the Horton Hears a Who movie had too high a frame rate, and anime that do have those kinds of frame rates in movies don't look like that.

It seems the devil is in the details. The Peanuts characters, no matter how many toys we make of them, don't translate to 3-D well (look above about the Snoopy Toys all having the same expression, and when they don't, things get...weird). Snoopy has Homestar eyes (or rather the other way around, but you get the idea). In trying to copy the simplicity of the original cartoons, they wound up making things painfully difficult. The big scenery porn of Snoopy flying around on his "Sopwith Camel" had one rule holding them back... never in any of the scenes were they supposed to show the doghouse actually leaving the ground (according to a making of video I saw). So they had to make a 3-D battle revolving around how they had no money to actually animate it in the original specials. Then again, that's something totally forgivable for a 2-D free to view TV special. Not so much in a 10 bucks a ticket movie.

That said, there are noticeable bumps in quality with the original specials once they started getting more established. The 60's specials (the Christmas one specifically, but you can see it in the Halloween one as well) had very choppy animation due to their relatively low budgets. Because, why put a huge budget into something that there was no future perspective on? But you look at the 1970's Thanksgiving special, the animation improved considerably, and there were some bigger action sequences, like Snoopy fighting with the folding chairs, which had some very smooth animation. (I haven't seen too many specials made since Great Pumpkin and before Thanksgiving in a while to give a case by case basis). Then the 80's came along and they have a very significant style to them. That's due to the animation studio, and that style can be seen in Early Garfield specials (it really sticks out in the Halloween one), the Cathy specials, and then that Frosty Returns thing.

 

[mr3urious]

That said, there are noticeable bumps in quality with the original specials once they started getting more established. The 60's specials (the Christmas one specifically, but you can see it in the Halloween one as well) had very choppy animation due to their relatively low budgets. Because, why put a huge budget into something that there was no future perspective on? But you look at the 1970's Thanksgiving special, the animation improved considerably, and there were some bigger action sequences, like Snoopy fighting with the folding chairs, which had some very smooth animation. (I haven't seen too many specials made since Great Pumpkin and before Thanksgiving in a while to give a case by case basis). Then the 80's came along and they have a very significant style to them. That's due to the animation studio, and that style can be seen in Early Garfield specials (it really sticks out in the Halloween one), the Cathy specials, and then that Frosty Returns thing.

Flashbeagle used a lot of rotoscoping for the dancing, as well. Or at least it looked rotoscoped.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Flashbeagle used a lot of rotoscoping for the dancing, as well. Or at least it looked rotoscoped.

It was, you can see it in the special You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown! (1990)

 

[D'Snowth]

On the subject of animation, was there any reason why in many of the specials the animators weren't credited for animation, but rather, "Graphic Blandishment"?

 

[DARTH MUPPET]

I know I've said this before, but one of the things I love about the old Peanuts movies is that Charles Schulz never tried to outdo himself: so many animated series, whenever they get a feature, they always try to outdo the series in terms of animation, layout, scenery, ink and painting, as if they're trying to Disnefy - and I'm sure, if they've had budget constraints with the series, they probably want to take advantage of having more money to improve everything for the feature, but the Peanuts movies all had the exactly same level of quality that the specials and other cartoons had, and in a sense, they retain the charm that made the specials so endearing; and given the style and look of the Peanuts in general, I'm not exactly sure if trying to make the movies look something like Disney would have made would have worked for them . . . it'd be like if Rocky and Bullwinkle had decent animation, it'd lose part of its charm that made it so unique.

If It is written well and stays true to what the Peanuts are then we might be in for a treat and it wont matter what animation style they use. Only time will tell?

 

[Drtooth]

The Schulz estate seems pretty protective of their characters. Seems that, if anything, this will at least be better written than the last crop of TV specials. If the Boom comics are any indication, their willingness to make new stories with the sensibilities of the original will pay off. Nothing in the trailers screams "lowest common denominator" and that's usually only reserved for Pixar films.

Unlike the...other comic strip movie they made. Yeah, I am a fan of Jim Davis and all, and you can totally see that in the past couple of decades he completely fell into the "doing it for the money. It's always about the money. Yeah...money" trap. And as far as Garfield goes, there's really not too much you can do to screw it up because there's just not much there. Same deal with the Yogi Bear movie (and yes, I mentioned that again). But somehow, they found a way. They just made them both boring, and miscast the heck out of the human roles. To me, Jon Arbuckle isn't Jon Arbuckle unless he's over the top at being a complete schmucky loser. Why take the funniest aspect of the strip and toss it out? And it's become almost canonical now. Even in The Garfield Show he rarely does anything dorky. This from the same guy who wouldn't let anyone so much as touch Arlene because she's oh so complicated a character. The Garfield movies were cash grabs and sure as heck felt like it.

I'd say something about Marmaduke, but he always sucked... let's face it. It's a terrible comic strip and even the cartoon series was dull and stupid and forgettable.

Then you look at the live action cartoon remakes and they basically show you how much they care by not bothering to watch an episode. And yeah... Jem is the one everyone gets ticked off about. Jem was supposedly bad enough to send death threats. Meanwhile Inspector Gadget and Underdog were far less respectful of the source material and only a couple disapproving clucks were floating around (though Paul Dini's epic takedown of Underdog was more satisfying than anything the Jem fandom could say about their film). Dragon Ball Evolution was so revolutionary bad that it actually got Akira Toriyama to take notice. So annoyed was he by the fact they made the movie without his input (or any of the ideas and concepts that made Dragon Ball a staple even in the US), he developed 2 movies and a new TV series. Something he never would have bothered.

I have a lot of faith in this movie. Unlike most cartoon based films, there's always an audience. Peanuts specials are still reran every year, everyone in the world knows who they are. There's no margin for error of trying to get kids to latch onto something they're unfamiliar with, all the while ignoring the fanbase of it for being too old to see the films anyway (unless they have kids). If they screwed this up, they'd royally screw it up. Doesn't seem like that at all.

 

[DARTH MUPPET]

The Schulz estate seems pretty protective of their characters. Seems that, if anything, this will at least be better written than the last crop of TV specials. If the Boom comics are any indication, their willingness to make new stories with the sensibilities of the original will pay off. Nothing in the trailers screams "lowest common denominator" and that's usually only reserved for Pixar films.

Unlike the...other comic strip movie they made. Yeah, I am a fan of Jim Davis and all, and you can totally see that in the past couple of decades he completely fell into the "doing it for the money. It's always about the money. Yeah...money" trap. And as far as Garfield goes, there's really not too much you can do to screw it up because there's just not much there. Same deal with the Yogi Bear movie (and yes, I mentioned that again). But somehow, they found a way. They just made them both boring, and miscast the heck out of the human roles. To me, Jon Arbuckle isn't Jon Arbuckle unless he's over the top at being a complete schmucky loser. Why take the funniest aspect of the strip and toss it out? And it's become almost canonical now. Even in The Garfield Show he rarely does anything dorky. This from the same guy who wouldn't let anyone so much as touch Arlene because she's oh so complicated a character. The Garfield movies were cash grabs and sure as heck felt like it.

I'd say something about Marmaduke, but he always sucked... let's face it. It's a terrible comic strip and even the cartoon series was dull and stupid and forgettable.

Then you look at the live action cartoon remakes and they basically show you how much they care by not bothering to watch an episode. And yeah... Jem is the one everyone gets ticked off about. Jem was supposedly bad enough to send death threats. Meanwhile Inspector Gadget and Underdog were far less respectful of the source material and only a couple disapproving clucks were floating around (though Paul Dini's epic takedown of Underdog was more satisfying than anything the Jem fandom could say about their film). Dragon Ball Evolution was so revolutionary bad that it actually got Akira Toriyama to take notice. So annoyed was he by the fact they made the movie without his input (or any of the ideas and concepts that made Dragon Ball a staple even in the US), he developed 2 movies and a new TV series. Something he never would have bothered.

I have a lot of faith in this movie. Unlike most cartoon based films, there's always an audience. Peanuts specials are still reran every year, everyone in the world knows who they are. There's no margin for error of trying to get kids to latch onto something they're unfamiliar with, all the while ignoring the fanbase of it for being too old to see the films anyway (unless they have kids). If they screwed this up, they'd royally screw it up. Doesn't seem like that at all.

I happened to like the special about Linus and his blanket, and that was fairly new, it stayed true to the peanuts IMHO, USA Today gave the Peanuts a great review says that it is a classic telling with just a bit of a Modern touch, has anyone on here seen it yet?

 

[Colbynfriends]

I actually just saw it not too long ago. Even though it's 3d they tried very hard to replicate the old specials/2d animated look and they did so really well. Was pretty funny however I'm not a "hardcore" fanatic of the strip or specials, only having read/watched a few. But I felt it was fairly faithful to the source, I never thought "this isn't peanuts, this isn't charlie brown", because in essence it was. I'd recommend it.

 

[DARTH MUPPET]

I actually just saw it not too long ago. Even though it's 3d they tried very hard to replicate the old specials/2d animated look and they did so really well. Was pretty funny however I'm not a "hardcore" fanatic of the strip or specials, only having read/watched a few. But I felt it was fairly faithful to the source, I never thought "this isn't peanuts, this isn't charlie brown", because in essence it was. I'd recommend it.

was the music from the Trailer in the movie like The Who and some of the Modern Music ?

 

[CensoredAlso]

On the subject of animation, was there any reason why in many of the specials the animators weren't credited for animation, but rather, "Graphic Blandishment"?

I think it might have just been a term Schultz coined (unless anyone here has heard otherwise?).