SONY's POPEYE

[Shonokin]

^ Gegege no Kitaro has come up against Western/Universal-type monsters on a few occasions. He's even fought four generations of Dracula.

[lhb412]

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

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[MekaGojira3k]

Probably for the best.

[mr.negativity]

[mr.negativity]

Departures looks at films by talents who defied expectations and tried something different. Are these films true anomalies, or not quite the left turns they appear to be?

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

Hmmm... their clothing has been somewhat modernized, but (and this is a trend I'm appreciative of) it seems they've pulled in a lot of the 2D details that make their character designs work into the 3D mode. They look Fleischer-y. They look like themselves. That's more important than Popeye having his proper black shirt with red collar.

I approve.

Now that I think about it: Altman's film also eschewed Popeye's black shirt (which he does wear for a few scenes) for a white one. I believe I heard something about the black one just not looking as good on set. It'd certainly make him stand out less against the background, a problem easily avoided in comics and traditional animation.

[mr.negativity]

CBM:


YouTube:

[lhb412]

Wow, I think I'm gonna move from cautious optimism to straight-up anticipation. Tartakovsky seems to have nailed the utter strangeness. Popeye seems to have been de-aged a bit, but he's in his traditional duds, has one eye, and no teeth. Those are the important bits.

... and I was worried that Tartakovsky's love of the Fleischer cartoons over the original comics would mean the exclusion of some characters that are comics staples - but what do I see but heavy use of Eugene the Jeep and a pre-production art of a particularly grotesque Sea Hag!

... and Popeye's boat is called the "S.S. Pappy Finder" !!! This movie is going to be great!

[The Shadow]

The animation test looks great, everything seems to be shaping up for a great Popeye movie. I hope the movie does well, I'd love to see Sony snap up the movie rights for Samurai Jack so that Genndy Tartakovsky could finally do what Cartoon Network wouldn't do.

It occured to me while watching this test animation that if Robin Williams hadn't died it would have been great if he could ahve reprised the role of Popeye for this movie; and of course Shelley Duvall to return and play Olive Oyl.

[lhb412]

^Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.


...anyway, that seems to be Tom Kenny (Spongebob, The Ice King) as Popeye in the test footage.

[mr.negativity]

[daikaijusaurus]

[The Shadow]

Segar's designs really do work best in animation where they really have the chance to come to life without compromising the overall world.

Does anyone else remember when Cartoon Network ran their compilation show, THE POPEYE SHOW? I'm not sure about the 90s but it during much of the 00s it used to be a staple on CN's evening schedule ( along with LATE NIGHT BLACK AND WHITE). Unfortunately, the as the Adult Swim monster grew and finally consumed all of CN's evening schedule THE POPEYE SHOW was off the air for awhile. Boomerang took over airing duties for a time, but eventually dropped again for newer stuff (even the Hanna-Barbera shows are in short supply on Boomerang nowadays).

THE POPEYE SHOW was great to watch, someone did a voice over prior to the 3 shorts in each half-hour episode talking a bit about each short -- very much like what Robert Osborne does for the evening movies on TCM. It's a real shame that CN doesn't run it anymore.

[lhb412]

I remember the Popeye show, but it was Late Night Black and White that was truly formative for me: it's what introduced me to all this stuff at a very young age.

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[lhb412]

Dammit! This has pretty much ruined my day, right here.

Genndy is awful diplomatic about the whole thing, but it's obvious if you read between the lines that it's chaos behind the scenes at Sony. I sure hope the project itself has been cancelled, because the alternative is that they found Genndy's (entirely appropriate) take a bit too out-there and want a more generic, safe version. If there's one thing you can infer from the 80+ years of the Popeye franchise it's that all the good versions have been bizarre, experimental, and entirely unsafe.

[The Shadow]

Very disappointing, I was looking forward to Tartakovsky directing the Popeye movie too.

[mr.negativity]

[lhb412]

Glad to hear that there's still movement, but in my opinion SONY thinking Genndy's take 'too old fashioned' seriously damages their credibility as far as Popeye is concerned.

I mean, Popeye was old-fashioned when he was introduced in the '30s. He's a throwback to earlier adventure characters.

[The Shadow]

When I first saw the news about Sony starting up the Popeye movie again I had hoped that they had gotten Tartakovsky to direct again, but alas no. I want to see where this Popeye movie is headed, hopefully it will have half the promise that that Tartakovsky's Popeye movie had.