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Shrek 2 Trailer Released
ParticleMan911 writes "The Shrek 2 movie trailer (other formats) has finally been released by Dreamworks. Apparently Dreamworks has a goal to release 2-3 animated movies every year through 2006. Will Shrek 2 live up to the original, or will it be a dissapointment like most sequels?"
First, it's one 's' and 2 'p', but that's not the point. Making the Rottentomatoes link for Revolutions is something like saying LotR1 was good because Rotten liked it. They are taking their measurement from critics for Petes' sake!
Rotten is much worse than the IMDB in that regard IMO. Why? Because critics are way worse than the most angst-ridden pimpled teen. Now, I don't want to defend Revolutions (it's an extreme matter of personal taste), but Rotten is just bad.
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Its good to see another 'made on Linux' movie!
I wish hollywood would stop using these cheep sales tactics, afew very long stories - eg Lord Of The Rings, series - eg Harry Potter, James Bond justify having more than one film, but often they are just taking the piss knowing that people who liked the first will undoubtedly go see the second and only be dissapointed after they have paid their money. I dont want to live in a world where there are no original films and every month there are only sequels, prequels, remastered re-releases, remakes, adaptations, remakes of previous adaptations and directors cuts.
Lets see in the past couple years theres been:
T3, X-men 2, Legally Blonde 2, Bad Boys 2, Scary Movie 3? American Pie er 2, no 3? Austin Powers (ok it was quite good), Men In Black 2, The italian job, Texas Chainsaw massacre, Oceans 11, The Mummy Returns, Rush Hour 2, Planet of the Apes, Jurrasic Park 3, MI:2.
Most of them were blaitently milking money.
Its the same with the music industry - covers, re-mixes, re-mixes of covers, re-mixed dance versions of covers and bands that sound so similar that not even their parents could tell them apart.
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Pixar and Monsters Inc should have won that Oscar, not Shrek. All Shrek is a melting pot of childrens stories as told by a green guy and his Ass.
Not only was Monsters Inc an orginal story and equally if not more funny, it was also innovative from a technical aspect.
I don't know about you, but to me, the 1st Shrek already failed.
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there's a problem with movies that have stories more complex than arnolds "the commando" has. people don't want to use their brains enough to get it(matrix1 in reality needed barely any thought to be enjoyable, the plot part was so _short_ and it left everything open, which some people mistook as being very complex or somehow totally cool, when the plot could have been fitted in a short movie without losing anything plotwise).
people want them to be simple.. heck, most people excepted the matrix 'stop existing'(whatever that means, killing everyone in it?) or the machines to lose totally or whatever, while it was pretty friggin clear for anyone who followed plot of 2(and animatrixes) that the world was in a state that there were just about 2 options, either zion would fall or machines would make peace(and that smith was a common enemy for both humans and ai's, and from animatrixes it was obvious that the ai's weren't inherently evil but would be able to coexist with humans if humans themselfs would allow it). of course there were 'stupidities' in it (weaponry & etc, but it wasn't told where zion had gotten it's weapons anyways).
heck, if lotr was a new story it wouldn't have snowballs chance in hell to not get totally bashed same way.
reloaded and revolutions were hell a lot better entertainment than episode 1 and 2 at least.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
But Lithgow's character is back? How, pray tell, do you come back after being swallowed whole by a whopping-great-dragon?
If Jonah could survive being swallowed whole by a sea monster, and if Geppetto could replicate the stunt, then why not F-wad?
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Hmm. Let me see if I can explain myself clearly here.
Bond is, was, and always has been a serial. The introductory premise is one that lends itself to an infinite variety of stories, each of which is effectively a chapter in the life of 007.
Serialisation is certainly a way to spawn many stories, but calling them 'sequels' isn't exactly correct.
Now when you take Shrek (and for that matter, any of the more traditional fairy tales; not to mention most of the stories written) the characters are created from nothing, to tell a story. Generally there's some transformance, which is certainly the case with Shrek and Fiona.
The thing is that after the story ends, after the transformance has occurred, there is no more development that can be done on those characters without going back and gluing stuff onto them, and it's usually a very awkward process.
Serialisation is fine, if created as such. Bond, great. Miss Marples, lovely. Sam Spade, definitely. Serialization of a complete story is generally (not always, but close) doomed to disaster.
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Story goes something like this ... Katzenberg worked at Disney for ten years, but like many others, didn't get on too well with Michael Eisner, and vice versa. He quit in 1993 to create Dreamworks SKG.
When Shrek was created, Dreamwork's first real feature animation, the character of Farquad (or Fuck-wad) was supposed to be Eisner, and Duloc (Farquad's Castle) is modelled on Disneyworld.
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I don't think Aliens is a useful example, because it's highly atypical. It's a sequel only in the sense that it's set in the same universe, deals with the same creatures, and is set afterwards.
However, unlike most sequels, it's not a remake of the original in any form. It's in a different style and genre (action rather than suspense and horror), from a different director, wasn't made soon after the original, and shares only one character and almost no locations. In short, it's not trying to be a sequel in the usual cookie-cutter, copy-the-first-one-only-larger sense we've come to know it. It's a separate film in its own right; and it succeeds as such.
Because of this, it also has a slightly different intended audience. People who like suspense and horror but not action are unlikely to enjoy it, especially if they're expecting a cookie-cutter sequel. OTOH, people who enjoy action but might be put off by the first one's tension and gore might enjoy the sequel much more. (I myself fall in between the two, FWIW.)
So: 'X is better than Y' assertions are always subjective; while they may at least have some relevance for cookie-cutter sequels, in this case IMO the two films are so different that I don't think such a statement is valid or helpful.
(Nothing personal, DWIM, just a bugbear of mine. In Amazon's music reviews, for example, I'm fed up with reading that someone thinks this is the best CD in the world -- unless I share their taste in music, that's meaningless. Instead, a description of the style, how it compares to that artist's other work, what other artists it sounds like, &c would be far more useful, even if less exciting to read than endless superlatives.)
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Pixar has a stellar track record largely because John Lasseter (who spent most of his early career at Disney, BTW) understands and values how to tell an engaging story. Pixar spends a lot of time and energy on getting the story right, and the results speak for themselves in terms of quality of the movie. When you combine that with Disney's marketing muscle, you get good box office.
The others you mention are great films, but the box office record is mixed. Ice Age was a hit, but Iron Giant but did pretty lousy box office ($23M domestically in four years) despite being a great film. Spirited Away is stunning, but didn't crack the mainstream U.S. market (only $10M U.S., although it did do $260M worldwide).
But the real point is: For every one of the artistic successes you mention, there are many more lousy kids pictures. Go to Blockbuster with any parent who's trying to find a good kids movie that's also watchable by adults. There's a ton of crap there, just like there is in any genre.
The fact that there are, thank goodness, examples of good kids/animated features we can point to doesn't mean that it's significantly easier to write or make a good kids movie than it is any other kind of movie.