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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?"
The original Shrek was great because it was a creative story with a good plot. The good graphics were icing on the cake.
Only too many times are sequels a rehash of what went before only bigger, bolder, brighter, anti-alias shading. But as far as movies go the plot should be counts.
My theory is that movies with colons in the title are bad. Its like the studio knows the movie is crap but hopes that one part of the title or the other might attract some paying customers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Eddie Murphy turned in his best performance since Beverly Hills Cop in the original Shrek movie. I am dying to find out if he can duplicate it. Thank you for existing Eddie Murphy. Where would my life be without you?
./revolution
and I'll bet they haven't paid their SCO license fee yet. I won't be taking my children to see any movie that was made using stolen IP as it would be teaching them that stealing is OK.
Toy Story 2 was just as good as the original, and that's a 100% CGI movie too...
I'd agree, except if you follow the RottenTomatoes link, you'll see that the 3rd Matrix has the worst overall reviews by far. Call it what you want, but it fits.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
The clip looks promising, but good christ did they have to use a Smash Mouth song again? The end of the first one makes me cringe.
- b
Slashdot editors? Journalists? I have no idea what you are taling about.
Aliens 2 and 3 were superb.
... I mean, before making such generalizations, why not just think a little? 90% of all work stinks, as Theodore Sturgeon said, this includes many sequels, but it's hardly specific to sequels.
I think the original Star Wars trilogy was all equally well made.
Toy Story 2 was better than the original.
The James Bond movies went up and down in quality but generally delivered exactly the right kick each time.
Mad Max 2 was simply amazing.
The Godfather...
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Type it with me now:
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Feel free to disagree, but its not just hard-core geeks who panned this movie.
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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Will Shrek 2 live up to the original, or will it be a dissapointment like most sequels?
I thought a sequel to Shrek was already released this summer and it sure was a dissapointment. I'm sure it was a sequel, I saw the same green guy in it.
... oh wait, the title was 'hulk' or something, so maybe it was a different film. my bad...
This is a great file to release a torrent for, the server is getting hammered.
Only John Cleese could make something as simple as 'Ah!' sound funny.
This is shaping up to be a good movie!
Slashdot is a weblog, not a newspaper.
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... let's talk about the movie.
I note that John Lithgow (Lord Farquad) is in the credits for Shrek 2. Is he going to be the antagonist? How, as a steaming pile of dragon-shit?
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
The point about Rotten is that they throw out a gigantic net, and catch the reviews of a lot of critics. Morever, they spotlight particularly insightful or well-reasoned commentary (sound familiar?), and it floats to the top for everyone to see. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty good, and a lot better than relying on one person or critic certainly.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Or maybe the Slashdot editors actually went and saw it and are reporting on their own opinions of the movie? (To whit, that it sucked and blew at the same time, and did both with great force)
And it was a little more than 25 comments. In fact, almost every opinion I've seen of the movie from people who aren't die-hard fans and would have liked it even if the machine city had turned out to be filled with clones of Jar-Jar Binks is, at best, "it could have been worse."
OK, Shrek was a whole story. It ended, and did so in the classic fairy tale manner! Making a sequel to a finished story is usually a terrible idea.
That said, Mike Meyers has a history of making better than average sequels. We'll see.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Pretty damn hard. If it's so easy, why are there so few really entertaining movies for kids? Why are Shrek and Finding Nemo the exceptions, rather than the rule? Hollywood studios would be falling all over themselves making "entertaining kids movies" if it were that easy to make them, and to make money doing them. The great graphics serve the story, not the other way around.
Another poster got this right: The reason that movies like Shrek and Finding Nemo are the rare gems that they are is because they're well-written, engaging stories with real characters, not worn-out, thread bare plots with a "couple of childish jokes and a couple farts."
Good writing is hard to come by and difficult to create, no matter the genre.
try this one.
I'd call the animation...unique. It wasn't the star, it just supported a strong story with likeable characters. Shrek was fun - not a great technical movie.
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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Slashdot editors? Journalists? I have no idea what you are talking about.
Neither do they.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
I find it amusing that you're preaching about complex plots to someone that loves anime, but I'll humor you.
The reason I didn't like it was not because it had a complex plot, but because the plot sucked. Yes, that's right, you heard me: it sucked. It was poorly-written, poorly-handled, and poorly planned. They pulled too many about-faces. "The machines are evil and seek to wipe out the 'virus' mankind." "No, the machines are good, just misunderstood." "Oh, wait, they're evil again and are just toying with us." "No, they're good, they're just trying to wipe out humanity because we left the toilet seat up! Silly us!" To say nothing of the neutering of Neo after the first movie. He goes from being able to alter the Matrix however he likes with his mind, as its all just code to a bad Goku or Superman impersonator.
They wrote themselves into a corner with Animatrix and Reloaded, and Revolutions is the product of them desperately trying to get out of it. It suffers accordingly. I wouldn't say that its worse than Star Wars I and II, but I wouldn't say that its better either.
And something you're missing - for many, LotR is a new story. Many of the friends I've gone to see the LotR movies have never read the books, and they've still loved them. So its obviously not because its an old story that everyone knows. It seems to be because they're actually semi-competently written and directed.
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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Pretty damn hard. If it's so easy, why are there so few really entertaining movies for kids? Why are Shrek and Finding Nemothe exceptions, rather than the rule?
But they are not! Did Pixar has _ever_ released a non-entertaining movie? "Bug's Life?" "Monsters Inc."? "Toy Story(ies)"? What happens when Fox releases an animated ferature? It's the hilarious "Ice Age". What happens when Warner does it? It's the "Iron Giant", a +100 Insigthful look at the maccarthyism and the Golden Age of science-fiction. What happens when the Japanese do an animated feature? It's the stunning "Spirited Away". So who, actually, DO release crappy animated features? The answers is obvious: Disney, the Microsoft of animation.
And yes, I know that Pixar works for Disney, but they are not Disney. They don't even live in the same part of California. And yes, I know that Disney sometimes releases a precious gem like "Lilo & Stich", but even Microsoft has its "Age Of Empires".
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.