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Review: Monsters, Inc.
Before I get to the review, I want to mention that I saw this at the crappy theater in holland. The sound system is super assy, and the screen is kinda small. I've seen many movies here, but the Holland 7 always kinda taints a movie for me just because the theater is dirty and the sights and sounds aren't to par with a state of the art theater. Also our showing was led off by the Star Wars Episode II trailer (which wasn't really very interesting) and a Pixar short. I love shorts before films. I wish that this was standard practice. All movies. At least, all comedies anyway, should start off with a short. And this one was hilarious.
Since this is a computer animated film, I'm gonna start by talking a little about the CG. I don't feel like Monsters Inc has hugely advanced the state of the art for computer animated graphics with this film. There are however exceptions: especially in James, John Goodman's character. They hair system they used on the gigantic blue-with-purple-spots monster is simply stunning. There are some scenes where I simply couldn't take my eye off of it. Also the finale which takes place in a gigantic room with a roller coaster like system of children's closet doors whizzing through the air is absolutely a site to behold.
There are other exceptins too, but really what Monsters, Inc. has done is taken the state of the art CG that pixar has perfected, and used it to tell a story. And I think that it might be awhile before a movie comes a long and is able to up the ante as much as Toy Story and Toy Story 2 did. I think this is much more akin to a Bug's Life, where they broke less new ground in the rendering techniques, and instead tried to do more with the characters.
The look of the film is simply stunning. The warm tones of past pixar movies have been chucked out the door for blues and purples and neon green. But when monsters pass into the human's world, you feel as if you might be back in Toy Story... but why would you want to when this world is so interesting? The centerpiece is the Monsters, Inc factory which has a look that is sorta like a factory with a bit of airport stirred in. But then all skewed. Thats where this movie has really taken off: previous Pixar efforts have all taken place in a relatively believable world (assuming that you believe bugs or toys can talk). They take place in a subset of our world. But MI takes place in what might be thought of as a parallel world with gateways (read:childrens closet doors) back to ours. So the artists were given a chance to truly create something unique.
Now I'm going to try to give you a brief summary of the plot without spoiling anything. The main characters are the blue and purple hairy James (John Goodman) and the little green one eyed Mike (Billy Crystal). The main enemy is a chameleon monster named Randall (Steve Buscemi). Other notable smaller parts are voiced by Frank Oz and John Ratzenberger.
Anyway, James and Mike work at Monsters, Inc. The factory is a power plant... but in Monstropolis, they don't use coal or natural gas. Rather they use the power generated by the screams of children. Using a complex system where doors open into Children's Closets, the monsters run in, get their scream, and the juice is collected. It's dangerous work because children are lethal to monsters. One touch, and a monster is dead! James is the best scarer of all time... until his rivalry with Randall goes wrong, and a little girl (nicknamed 'Boo') accidentally comes back to Monstropolis.
The bulk of the show then revolves around Mike and James dealing with this tiny (and adorable) "Monster" that they have accidentally been stuck with. While trying to get her home, protect her from the Bad Guys, and unraveling the secret plot, good times are had by all.
The voice acting is all fairly solid. And I'm not particularly fond of Billy Crystal any more. I was really worried that his baggage was going to carry over into the character and his lame humor would drag everything down. But they /almost/ never let that happen. And Goodman just has great charisma as a voice. What a lucky man. I'd kill to get to be a voice in a Disney or Pixar film, and he's already got a chance to do both! (To say nothing of practically having a guaranteed part in every Coen bros. movie. What a sweet gig!). But as you would expect, all the voice acting was top notch.
The score was excellent for the film. I'm not going to comment on the sound effects because (as I said above) I saw this film in a crappy theater so its just not fair for me to mention that the audio clipped a bit in places and the surround sound effects weren't very good. I purely blame my theater.
Worth noting is that this is the first Pixar film not directed by John Lasseter, and I think it shows. The pixar trademark of being family friendly, but just skewed enough to make it fun for adults is definitely strong here, but MI is a little edgier then its predecessors.
Pixar's deal with the devil (read:disney :) is almost at an end, and I'm really interested to see what they're going to do after they have free reign to create films on their own. But as long as they are producing films as solid is this one, I'll continue to show up to the theater on opening night. The eye candy. The humor. It's just a class act in an age where most movies have none. I still think TS2 is a better film, but you're not going to see many better all-ages movies this year. Unless of course Harry Potter is everything it could be...
Pixar's style is a lot different than what we've seen in other full-CG movies including Final Fantasy: TSW and even Shrek. So how do they do? What kind of process to these guys follow? At Pixar, there are four key stages to making a movie. They start with development, move on to creating the storyline (they don't just make the graphics). First, a text treatment (short document summarizing the main idea of the story) is written. Then the storyboards are drawn the old fashion way. Pixar begins to scout for voice actors and then get them into the studio to get some recording done. The editorial staff then begins making reels. If you aren't familiar with reels they are basically videotapes with cleaned up storyboard sequences on them. Finally, the art process begins. The art department at Pixar begins illustrating the world and the characters. They also design sets, props, and visual looks for surfaces and colors. These are reviewed and then the 3D process begins. The models are sculpted and articulated (not sure if this is done on SGI OCTANE workstations, but I do know that the actual rendering and animation is done on them). After the models are adequately designed, the sets are also built in 3d. Now they can begin adding models into the backgrounds and setting the stage according to storyboards. The shots are then animated and shaded and lighting is added. This is where Pixar's RENDERFARM is put to work. For a Bug's Life, 150 dual-processor Silicon Graphics OCTANE[tm] workstations and an Onyx2[tm] visual system were employed. [If anybody knows if the same were used in this, please respond.] After everything is rendered, sound and other final touches are added. Boom! There is your movie.
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Glad to see a movie review posted by someone other than JonKatz. Nothing wrong with Katz IMO, just when he posts you have to fight hundreds of anti-Katz submissions under it. Bleh.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Even before my wife and I saw the movie, it was worth the price of admission. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars trailers all looked excellent, and I'm looking forward to seeing each movie. Watching the trailers side-by-side really pointed out how different these movies are. They aren't competing with each other at all, even if they're all fantasy/sci-fi movies.
Lord of the Rings is quite obviously (attemping to be) an epic fantasy movie. Epic is hard to pull off, but I believe Lord of the Rings will make it. Will it be as good as the books? No. Will there be times you're distracted by the special effects? Probably. But the source material of the movie is the very definition of Epic Fantasy, and if the director (Peter Jackson) has a devotion to stay true to the source, Lord of the Rings can't help but achieve its goal of successfully portraying the epic nature of Tolkien's books. The trailers quite clearly pitch it as a teenager/adult movie.
Harry Potter is another fantasy oriented movie, but it's quite clearly just "Good Fun". This doesn't mean the movie doesn't have depth. In fact, J.K. Rowling gave each actor a complete background story for their characters (which she has in her head, but hasn't been published in any books). It tries to portray a child's wonder at and adventure in the world of magic. It's not striving for epic. It's a movie that could and will be enjoyed by the whole family.
The Star Wars review had dark overtones, but was just shot after shot of breathtaking scenes packed with tension and action. It's a special effects, action movie. The plot might not be Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, but it's still ten times the plot of any other action movie. The Star Wars story doesn't have much depth anymore. (Especially since George Lucas tried to rewrite Han Solo as a good character from the start, instead of learning to love things other than himself.) But Star Wars does have a *LOT* of breadth, and that comes across in the movie. Just seeing all the different cultures and planets is still very exciting.
-Ted
You don't generally get previews attached to a print. They arrive as separate reels and can be mixed and matched as desired. If previews were actually part of the movie, it would be difficult for projectionists to insert the theater chain's traditional "turn off your cell phone/enjoy our concessions stand" spiel right before the movie itself.
You are right that trailers usually come separate from the film itself, but I believe that in this case Lucas decided that he really liked MI and Pixar, and created the special teaser trailer just for the film. I haven't actully seen MI reel, but I believe the Star Wars trailer actually came on the MI reel 1.
If a theater wanted to put their instructional trailer in, they could splice it in. It's really not much extra work, since a film comes in several reels (probably 5 for MI) and most theaters splice the whole thing together into one long piece of film to show it. In doing so they have to take the header and footer off of each reel and then splice the end of one reel to the beginning of the next.
I don't remember if the theater I saw MI in usually adds instructional trailers, but there wasn't one for MI last night, and they did show the Star Wars trailer.
Actually, it's not a case where they individually modelled, but rather individually simulated. They all probably used one of a handful (or a large handful of models) depending on the length, color,etc. But then software (Fizt) was able to apply the physics so it worked on all the hairs.
The most impressive scene that shows this is where Sully and Mike are banished to Nepal with the Abominable Snowman. Seeing how the snowcone's parts flew into Sully's hair was quite impressive. As was seeing the snow on Sully when he crashed the sled.
They're lemon...
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I gave Monster, Inc the acid test:
Went with my wife, my 5 year old and my two year old.
Each of us loved it, each of us found plenty to laugh at.
What amazed me most was not the CG (though really good), the acting (though really good) or the writing (though really good).
No, what amazed me most was watching my squirelly little two year old sitting on the edge of her seat with wide-open eyes glued to the screen.
A personal favorite moment (that, fortunately, doesn't give anything away) was the scene showing the beginning of a scare shift at the MI factory. The "scarers" -- a very goofy looking group of monsters -- walk onto the floor in a group with the group, pausing for a second in a low-camera-angle kind of shot that makes you think of a million "here come the good guys" scenes. Almost guaranteed to make you grin.
Good movie.
Great fun.
If you don't have a kid, consider borrowing one.
Anyway, my girlfriend and I took her 10 year old sister, and we showed up at 6:15 to find a fairly long line already there to get tickets for the 7pm show. I haven't seen a line like that since Phantom Menace, so I'd guess Monsters is going to win the box office game this weekend.
Monsters, Inc, and Harry Potter are the two movies I've been most excited about seeing (old enough to drink, but still into the kiddie films... go figure). I figured that since Monsters was backed by Disney and Harry Potter by AOL/TimeWarner, I wouldn't be seeing a trailer.
WRONG!
The new Harry Potter trailer played! It was pretty much the same one as before, but had some addition footage of quiddich and other eye candy that probably just recently got finished.
Then, just after the theater had played their little "hey, we're Carmike cinema's and we have a lame 3D intro thing" thing, and I was beginning to think that the rumors were false, the LucasFilm logo popped up and did its shiny thing, and I was treated to some very hastily thrown together scences from AotC set to Darth Vader breathing. Got to see portman, the new anikan, yoda, some light sabers and some ships. Nothing special, but enough to remind me that I should be getting excited about seeing it this summer.
Then there was the Pixar short, which was probably one of the best short cartoons that I have ever seen. The CGI wasn't so much impressive as the level of emotion that the characters had. I won't give any spoilers, but I will say that I enjoyed the short more than the movie itself
And don't get me wrong, it was a good flick. However, it did play out like a chilren's cartoon. While there was some stuff for the adults, this was certainly no Shrek. It was still enjoyable, and the munchkin liked it.
So um, yeah. Go to it. You won't be disappointed.
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Fans of animation already know this, but Ray Harryhausen was one of the greats of animation. He brought stop motion animation to an entirely new level with movies like Jason and the Argonauts and 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Apparently only a couple of us in the theater last night got the reference that appears briefly in the movie, so I thought I'd mention it for those who haven't heard of him.
Going to be pretty tough this year with Shrek and Monsters, and two decent entries Final Fantasy and Atlantis. In an average year I'd be happy to just have one of these.
I'd give it to Shrek by a sliver. It had a little more interesting story, humor and computer graphics techniques. I also have a soft spot for musical numbers, a few which were in Shrek.
I rather enjoyed watching for the subtle stuff that the animators included like the book titles, posters on the wall in the background and the Powerbook? ad on the back of a magazine cover. Its really quick so you miss it if you are not careful, but any more obvious and it would have been tacky.
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RiCurves();
Curves (as specified in the RenderMan Interface Specification) are curves with no thickness in 3d space. "Attached" to the curves are square faces with normals that always face the camera. Since there is no cross section of the hair, fur or whatever you're rendering (remember this is a line, not a tube or cylinder) rendering time is grealy improved.
You can literally put tens of thousands of these on a head, or in the case of John Goodman's charachter, its probably in the millions.
Curves are very simply described, and they render fast, MUCH faster than curved cylinders, which is what most people think they are. You can write shaders to make them look like they shine as hair would, or what have you.
Judging by the trailer (I haven't seen the film yet) it would look as they're not just hanging hairs either. when he moves, the hairs react. And just from the tiny amount of screen space and screen time that this hair has on the trailer, i can tell you that pixar wrote software to make the reactions believeable. they act as very clean straight hair would - it looks like it anyway - i've never seen a 7 foot tall hairy monster.
That film is Ice Age, and it being done by Blue Sky Studios which Fox bought a few years ago along with VIFX (which they later sold to Rhythm and Hues). Blues Sky Studios have even won an Oscar for best animated short, "Bunny", just like Pixar did and they are CG veterans, founded in 1987 (one year after Pixar), though many of the principals are veterans from other facilities. They also are a mostly propietary software house just like Pixar and PDI. Besides doing commercials and animated shorts they have also done tons of FX for movies including Joe's Apartment, the CG aliens in Alien Resurrection and the penguin in Fight Club. They are in the same league as Pixar and PDI and I wouldn't discount them. Tghey seems to be going for a more classic cartoony feeling, like the old Warner Bros or tex Avery cartoons. personally I can't wait to see it. At SIGGRAPH Blue Sky had the short first teaser during the Electronic Theatre and I can tell you it was a success.
Blue Sky StudiosBunny site
2017.
Steve Jobs showed a demo of Pixar's 1985 Luxo Jr. running in real time on a home computer this year. So if history holds, you can expect Monsters Inc. to be possible 16 years from now.