The Worst CGI Kid Films In Recent Memory

[Muppet Master]

Honestly, I'm getting sick of these Ice Age sequels, I thought 4 was the end. I am a huge fan of the first movie, I think it's up there with Toy Story and Shrek as one of the best animated films of all time, a great movie that knew how to balance comedy with drama. Then the sequel, The Meltdown came out and it was meh, just a bunch of pop culture references and cliches, Dawn of the Dinosaurs was okay, but Contidental Drift was a disaster. There were way too many random characters, and there was literally no use of the Ellie, Crash, or Eddie characters. None of the sequels, besides maybe Dawn of the Dinosaurs, had any heart. Contidental Drift was just the worse, especially the addition of a teenage Peaches, just awful, and Collision Course looks even worse, the writers are so obsessed with cramming bathroom humor and pop culture references that they forgot what made the first one great. They probably don't even care at this point, whatever they do will make an insane amount of money overseas.

 

[Drtooth]

To be honest, even the first one really should have had an extra draft or two to really make it pop. I still think that their best film (minus Peanuts, since they just animated it) was Robots, and frankly that deserves a follow up a crapload more than Ice Age or especially Rio did. Like I said before a hundred times, Ice Age 4 is half a fun movie, half a terrible tween drama cliche storm. I liked the pirate angle and the grandmother. I wish more of the film focused on that, and they left out the unnecessary love interest between Diego and Jennifer Lopez Tiger. And, hey, I'll do you one better. The Christmas special is the most completely unnecessary and pointless Christmas special I've ever seen. And I've seen some real pointless garbage. I mean half of it was just "Oh! Look! We invented something!" And because Robots didn't make almost a billion at the box office, the story of Rodney and Fender just faded out and remains completely forgotten. How forgotten do you ask? Lemme put it this way. Remember back when Mattel released that atrocious excuse of a One Piece toyline and they had to recall the Zoro figure (and sadly the best toy of the lot) because of loose magnets that a kid could swallow? Same bleeding thing happened with the Robots toyline, only because no one bought them, nothing was said or done about it. Well... no one but me. They just managed to slip out on the fridge I put them on.

Oh... and I just found this out. Know what's more pointless than an Ice Age Christmas special? A freaking Ice Age EASTER special. Guy wasn't born yet, guy didn't die and come back yet... really?!?!

That said, the thing that bugs me about this is I do indeed like the characters...errr.... for the most part anyway. Scrat and Sid especially, but Buck, Grandma sloth, and Captain Gutt with his crew were nice additions. Just... They really didn't need more than 3 movies. And even then, the second one was so so.

But at least they aren't planning a Rio 3. Seriously, *&^% that movie.

 

[Muppet Master]

To be honest, even the first one really should have had an extra draft or two to really make it pop. I still think that their best film (minus Peanuts, since they just animated it) was Robots, and frankly that deserves a follow up a crapload more than Ice Age or especially Rio did. Like I said before a hundred times, Ice Age 4 is half a fun movie, half a terrible tween drama cliche storm. I liked the pirate angle and the grandmother. I wish more of the film focused on that, and they left out the unnecessary love interest between Diego and Jennifer Lopez Tiger. And, hey, I'll do you one better. The Christmas special is the most completely unnecessary and pointless Christmas special I've ever seen. And I've seen some real pointless garbage. I mean half of it was just "Oh! Look! We invented something!" And because Robots didn't make almost a billion at the box office, the story of Rodney and Fender just faded out and remains completely forgotten. How forgotten do you ask? Lemme put it this way. Remember back when Mattel released that atrocious excuse of a One Piece toyline and they had to recall the Zoro figure (and sadly the best toy of the lot) because of loose magnets that a kid could swallow? Same bleeding thing happened with the Robots toyline, only because no one bought them, nothing was said or done about it. Well... no one but me. They just managed to slip out on the fridge I put them on.

Oh... and I just found this out. Know what's more pointless than an Ice Age Christmas special? A freaking Ice Age EASTER special. Guy wasn't born yet, guy didn't die and come back yet... really?!?!

That said, the thing that bugs me about this is I do indeed like the characters...errr.... for the most part anyway. Scrat and Sid especially, but Buck, Grandma sloth, and Captain Gutt with his crew were nice additions. Just... They really didn't need more than 3 movies. And even then, the second one was so so.

But at least they aren't planning a Rio 3. Seriously, *&^% that movie.

I agree about the Ice Age specials, both were literally the most pointless drivel I have ever seen, and I agree all the characters are great, but the material sucks. As for Robots, I wouldn't say it's as good as the original Ice Age, but it's Blue Sky's best work besides it, sucks that there never was a sequel.

 

[Drtooth]

The Easter special didn't air yet. Though, ehhh... I guess we can all see what it's going to do and where it's going to be taken with.

I have to admit, while I don't think the Ice Age movies, even at their worst should be considered "The Worst CGI films in recent memory," the series charm was fleeting. And at least the animations a crapload better than most of the other films mentioned here. At least they put effort into the films looking good.

Compared to a certain other movie franchise that somehow was considered "successful" enough to get 3 DTV cheapquels. One released as late as last year. Then again, can Open Season sequels be called "cheapquels" when the first movie wasn't any good? It's not like Disney's DTV sequels that actually take anything away from the originals. Same deal with the inexplicable Lionsgate Wolf movies. A sucky sequel to a sucky movie isn't exactly "Aladdin 4: Jafar may need Glasses."

But yeah. Imagine if Ice Age took that route. Like they were successful enough to have follow ups, but not successful enough to be theatrical. Obviously, those would be worse, and everyone would be recast with soundalikes (Open Season's soundalikes kept getting cheaper, actually). But the animation would have looked dreadful. I can't fault Ice Age for at least being visually appealing. But visual appeal with lack of substance is still just that.

 

[Muppet Master]

The Easter special didn't air yet. Though, ehhh... I guess we can all see what it's going to do and where it's going to be taken with.

I have to admit, while I don't think the Ice Age movies, even at their worst should be considered "The Worst CGI films in recent memory," the series charm was fleeting. And at least the animations a crapload better than most of the other films mentioned here. At least they put effort into the films looking good.

Compared to a certain other movie franchise that somehow was considered "successful" enough to get 3 DTV cheapquels. One released as late as last year. Then again, can Open Season sequels be called "cheapquels" when the first movie wasn't any good? It's not like Disney's DTV sequels that actually take anything away from the originals. Same deal with the inexplicable Lionsgate Wolf movies. A sucky sequel to a sucky movie isn't exactly "Aladdin 4: Jafar may need Glasses."

But yeah. Imagine if Ice Age took that route. Like they were successful enough to have follow ups, but not successful enough to be theatrical. Obviously, those would be worse, and everyone would be recast with soundalikes (Open Season's soundalikes kept getting cheaper, actually). But the animation would have looked dreadful. I can't fault Ice Age for at least being visually appealing. But visual appeal with lack of substance is still just that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Age:_The_Great_Egg-Scapade

Actually, they aired it on FOX in March, and it was more pointless then the Christmas special, but I agree it's not even close to the worse, and the animation is really good.

 

[D'Snowth]

I will say that ICE AGE, like both Pixar and DreamWorks' movies, the overall animation and everything did improve with each movie, but there were a few other things that suffered as a result: some of the creature characters looked a lot more realistic in the original movie, whereas they look more silly and cartoonish in the sequels.

 

[Drtooth]

I really think that when other studios decided to stylize the humans and animals and give them a more fluid, cartoony look (think Madagascar), all the studios followed that lead. To be brutally honest, it's not that I don't like the look of Shrek, but I think that Madagascar nailed the perfect CGI animated movie look. Shrek was too realistic, bordering on Uncanny Valley. Plus, it was pretty stiff. Not as much a disconnect say as Disney's Snow White movie with the stiff as a board humans and bouncy, animated dwarves, but seemed like Puss and Donkey (among others) were just a little more fluid.

Ice Age no doubt would have gone for a more bouncy, cartoony feel since only the first film had humans, or rather pre-humans. Once the second movie rolled around, they made the franchise more about talking animals and less about animals that were around at the dawn of humanity, so naturally the films would be far more cartoonish. Plus, like I said, when Madagascar came out, the CGI animation industry just discovered how 2-D squash and stretch could work in computer animation. We've had that almost ever since.

 

[D'Snowth]

Shrek was too realistic, bordering on Uncanny Valley.

That bothered me about Shrek in the beginning, but I was somehow able to move past it, and if anything, I think that somehow gave DW something of an immediate edge over Pixar, if only because Pixar's human characters were few and far between up until then, so their cartoonish look could be forgiven; but back then, DW as far as CGI animated films went was like Disney compared to other companies producing traditional animated features (pre Don Bluth, that is).

 

[Drtooth]

So the first actual trailer for Trolls popped up...

Yeah.... I think I'll skip this one

It feels like the edgy remake of some long forgotten 1980's Smurfs ripoff. Though, conceptually, it at least looks like a better Smurfs movie than the actual Smurfs movies.

 

[Mynameisdean]

So the first actual trailer for Trolls popped up...

Yeah.... I think I'll skip this one

It feels like the edgy remake of some long forgotten 1980's Smurfs ripoff. Though, conceptually, it at least looks like a better Smurfs movie than the actual Smurfs movies.

Eh, mediocre is the word to describe this. I kind of see what kind of movie this is. Also, they used the new Justin Timberlake song for the trailer, which they probably was used because he's in the movie, but I feel the song was made for the purpose of becoming the song of the summer. That isn't a compliment.