Sony ditches hybrid Smurf movies, goes to straight up CGI

[Slackbot]

Wow. That poster made me happy. Now the Smurfs finally look like Peyo's Schtroumpfs! The eyes especially. Peyo drew them as elongated, backward-leaning ovals. The spheres in the previous two movies looked wrong and unappealing to me.

Now I'm going to go reread my English translations of Peyo's comics, the ones I was using as reference material back in the '80s.

 

[Drtooth]

The problem was they had to go with the "this is how fantastic characters look in real life" route and I never like that. Not with Scooby-Doo, not with Garfield. I admit, I grew to not hate how the Smurfs looked in the movie and collected pretty much the entire second Happy Meal promotion (with the exception of one of the Smurfettes and Vexy). Still, I'm very pleased this new direction is taking a cue from the Peanuts movie, and giving a good CGI/2-D animation hybrid look.

I wonder if they're going to recast other Smurfs. Some of the casting, stunt as it was, wasn't too bad. Paul Reubens as Jokey (which was a waste since he only had, like, one line), John Oliver as Vanity... I really liked those. Wonder if they're going to give Clumsy back his Gomer Pyle type voice.

 

[Muppet Master]

This is somewhat hilarious,first they made those hybrid movies, now barely a few years after those they're making it look like those movies never happened, just sad they did not do it before, so we wouldn't have to remember those hybrid movies.

 

[Drtooth]

The first movie was a modest hit. It was the second movie (the one where they actually tried and wrote a decent enough script) that failed. And that was because the first movie had no direct competition, but the second had so many freaking kid's movies (including the insufferable Planes). Had it not been for that, we'd've seen a third movie this summer or next. Other than that, I don't get it. The second one was not without huge problems, but it treated the characters better and had an excellent plotline regarding Smurfette's relationship with Gargamel. I'd even venture to say that, had certain story elements not been in the way, it would have been a great Smurf story that neither Peyo or Hanna Barbera touched. Sucks they figured that out the second movie.

Still, considering that we almost got "little girl cries Smurf toys to life" as the film, we lucked out. But this direction is where they should have gone in the first place.

 

[mr3urious]

The movie now has a new, less stupid title called Smurfs: The Lost Village. And they were able to snag Joe Manganiello for Hefty and Jack McBrayer for Clumsy!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...peek-joe-manganiello-jack-mcbrayer/80182954/#

 

[C to the J]

I hope they'll slightly increase the pitch of the Smurfs' voices this time. That is what made the Smurfs more convincing in the cartoon.

 

[Drtooth]

Jack McBrayer sounds like a good compromise between Gomer Pyle 80's cartoon Smurfs and sweet guy 10's hybrid movie Smurfs.

The recasts are mainly to say forget those other films. I mean, we'd be talking about the fourth one right now if the second one did better at the box office, and again...yeah...the one that treats the Smurfs like the Smurfs was the one everyone refused to see. Hopefully this will be a much better movie keeping them in the Middle Ages forest where they should have been in the first place.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

The movie now has a new, less stupid title called Smurfs: The Lost Village. And they were able to snag Joe Manganiello for Hefty and Jack McBrayer for Clumsy!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...peek-joe-manganiello-jack-mcbrayer/80182954/#

"Smurfs:The Lost Village", if i'm not mistaken, I believe this was the film that Sony was originally going to make several years back. But then they saw how popular the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies were and decided to basically do the same thing but with Smurfs.

I'm glad they decided to finally do this movie, the concept seems so much better than the Smurfs ending up in New York City to save Neil Patrick Harris' marriage.

 

[Drtooth]

I remember following this movie since it was first announced. Originally, Paramount in conjunction with Nickelodeon movies planned an epic trilogy of animated Smurf movies with CGI Smurf models based on the original Peyo drawings. John Lithgow was to play Gargamel and it was supposed to be how he grew to hate the Smurfs.

Then nothing happened and Sony got the rights for some reason.

They settled on two kinds of a film, and yes, HEAVILY inspired by Chipmunks being successful.

And I'm only repeating this as a "I kid you not," one movie was about a little girl who wasn't popular that cried the Smurfs to life. Yeah. THAT plot line. Something straight out of Tim Hill's sucktastic playbook (yeah, he did great on Rocko and Spongebob, I still think he sucks as a film director). Then they went to the guys who wrote the Scooby-Doo movie, and they clearly have never seen more than 2 minutes of the Smurfs in their lives.