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End Of Fox Animation

Posted by Hemos on Mon Jul 24, 2000 06:41 AM
from the it's-closin'-time dept.
Media Movies
RobM writes: "I've found on the New York Times (registration required) that Fox Animation has been shut down after Titan A.E. flopped. What do you think of this film and the reasoning in the article '2D sucks, 3DCGI is the way to go'?"
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  • Plot.... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I saw Titan:AE on opening night and I too was dissappointed. They really were attempting to market it to both kids and older teens/sci-fi fans but I think it failed on both counts. The characters were mostly one-sided and the plot was too simplistic. The movie focused more on "non-stop action" at the expense of actually becoming interested in the characters or the plot.
    Some of the CGI was pretty impressive - like the ice crystal shots at the end. Most of the rest just didn't work. Heck Reboot kicked the S*&@ of the Draj-thingies CGI-wise!

    On the other hand I just caught "The Iron Giant" the other day on HBO, and I must say it was one of the best animated films I've ever seen! It had everything Titan:AE lacked:

    -Good plot

    -Interesting, realistic(for the most part) characters

    -Good CGI/2D integration

    and most importantly,

    -IT DIDN'T TALK DOWN TO KIDS OR ADULTS!!!

    TIG, had some really great 50's cold war nuclear culture references that kids would really not get, I mean, they had an absurd animated "Duck and Cover" film, in an animated movie! The movie was done well on almost all aspects, and it too was mostly ignored by the public, although it did get EXCELLENT reviews by the critics.

    I honestly don't think that American studios will produce the kind of animated movies that older folks will really like. They will usually be mass-market drivel (Disney) or uninspired fluff like Titan:AE. That's why I'll stick with Anime (Escaflowne and Key ROCK!) or perhaps some Canadian animation (Reboot).

    Sincerely,
    Kevin Christie
    kwchri@wm.edu

  • Hardly surprising... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not too surprised that they closed Fox Animation - if we judge them on the quality of their product, then the whole company was a disaster from the outset. They produced two feature length animations - Anastasia (an indifferent piece of animation, based on the dullest storyline imaginable) and Titan AE (a piece of pseudo-Anime, which insulted the intelligence of anyone above the age of five). Even though these animations had very little inherent value, their lack of commercial and critical success demonstrates that the public has begun to tire of animation.

    Let's face it, traditional "pen and ink" animation has been stale for many years, and the foul stench of its rotting corpse is beginning to upset cinema goers. I also believe that computer generated animation will prove to be a short-lived fad, since this animation has a cold, soulless quality which doesn't endear it to the public. Ironically, the future for animation doesn't lie with animation itself - live action "animation", in the style of the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", which combines traditional cartoon humour and slapstick action together with real actors and heightened realism represents the future of animation. The spirit and values of traditional animation will survive in this form of "animation", but the tired old methods of traditional animation will finally be laid to (a well deserved) rest.

  • Considering all the 3D CGI movies this year have been unmitigated disasters (Dinosaur cost 200 million to make and only made $100 million at the box office, Rocky and Bullwinkle was a much-deserved bomb) I'd say studios should be _more_ wary of them than traditional animation.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • The problem with the perception that 2D sucks is that the only 2D stuff these people know of is 70s quality animation (like Titan AE). I was constantly amazed when people both on Slashdot and in the real world raved about the quality of the animation in Titan AE, despite the fact the characers were drawn in a 30 year old style and the 3D rendering was only average. Still, the quality of the animation didn't kill Titan AE, the quality (or lack thereof) of the story did.

    I don't think the moviegoing public is as dumb as most people seem to think. I think people really do prefer a movie where the plot stays together and doesn't feel the need to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. I fully believe that if Fox animation wants to pull out of its slump, it needs to smarten up and convince its animators to update their style.
  • What 3 films did the Phoenix studio do?

    Anastasia (1997) [imdb.com]
    Bartok the Magnificent (1999) [imdb.com] [direct-to-video Anastasia prequel]
    Titan A.E. (2000) [imdb.com]

    -danimal

  • this could be equally described as creativity vs. non-creativity.

    anyway, the comment made by one of the artists - "i'm never going to sign away the rights of a character." that's very telling. if one looks at free software as an attempt by individual programmers to maintain control of their work, one wonders what other creative people will want to do with their work when they realise the power of the net for distribution.

    mp3 and other compressed music formats actually enable musicians to distribute their work without record companies. it's not perfect yet, something needs to be done to encourage people to pay for the music, the quality needs to be better and we need more bandwidth. however the seeds are there.

    online comics also have similar potential. recently chris baldwin, author of bruno [brunostrip.com] decided not to try for syndication of bruno and is trying to earn his keep from bruno directly.

    this could be said for a host of artists in a variety of media - even tangible media can be sold over the net.

    so what if these guys start drawing up animated shorts, mixing in some sort of slashdot style discussion boards on animation in general and maybe their work in particular. perhaps a forum for other animators to discuss their work, not just a place for consumers of it. i think they'd do rather well. their work would stay theirs, they would decide what to publish. they could sell better quality copies of the animation (or tapes/dvd's of it), shirts, merchandise, etc, as well as banner ads on the site itself.

    essentially the web allows for the *possibility* for creative people to build their careers directly with their audience. programmers have been first because we're most familiar with it. but we're not alone.
  • Titan A.E. (hackneyed story), while not being a masterpiece, was much more enjoyable than MI:2 (garbage directon). Chicken Run (well written/acted, funny) outshines both of them by leaps and bounds. It's a shame Titan A.E. didn't do better - it was the better film that weekend and I would like to see the animation evolve instead of be stymied by lack of dollars. I don't enjoy anime all that much (maybe I should watch more), so I like to see what non-Disney Hollywood pumps out in animation. Disney animation, while very well done, usually doesn't grab my attention story-wise.

    Hollywood has this stigma about the genre or catch of the film being reason to make another one of the same type (i.e., imitate). However, I doubt they fail to understand the elements that make the film good. They do know, however, that if you make another one, "they will come". People seem to fall for this all the time. The movies make money, so they keep making them. Some cast and crews put some real effort into them, so you get some gems. It's the way it goes.

    Woz
  • I did watch (and liked) Akira and Ghost in the Shell. I've seen a couple other ones, but I can't recall what they were. I also thought they were good. I guess I just can't get rabid about it, but I certainly have no serious complaints about it (like I do about MI:2). I'm probably turned off from it by the insane fans I hear that debunk anything that comes from Hollywood (animated or not) as pure crap and anything anime as an entertainment zenith. I guess typing that up makes my position seem kind of stupid.

    It's probably time to give it another shot. I will check out your suggestion. Thanks.

    Woz
  • The problem was Woo managed to cliche himself.

    He played up all the stylistic elements that made him an original director and made them looked hackneyed and stale. The fight scenes did look good, but when you slow them down, there is no action - and every "action" scene was slowed down, making for a slow movie. Essentially, nothing happened. By the time you got to the end (where something resembling action took place), you just didn't care.

    Movies like MI:2 are not known for their riveting storyline and in-depth character studies. They are simplistic and shallow. They require adrenaline to be made interesting. MI:2 did not have it. For that matter, neither did Titan A.E., but at least it looked a helluva lot better (visuals do matter in film, you know).

    Woz
  • The movie flooped because the story was bad. The plot did not bother me at all, but the dialogue and the fact that it went by quickly like a childrens movie did bug me. Things like a singular enemy in "a" ship, bad guy "pal" that flip-flopped on being good/bad and forming a planet in 15 seconds were very unrewarding intellectually (yeah, cartoon, but should have been made for adults).

    Visually the movie was stunning. I loved the 2D characters in a 3D environment.

    "That's just my opinion... I could be wrong." -Dennis Miller
  • I didn't see Anastasia, but I really liked Titan A.E. Great, great design work, and the plot wasn't as bad as people say. The mix of 2D and 3D worked for me. It was a LOT better than the last Trek movie. I'm sad it went out of theaters so fast: I wanted to see it again.
    Let's face it, traditional "pen and ink" animation has been stale for many years, and the foul stench of its rotting corpse is beginning to upset cinema goers.
    Odd, then, that attendance at anime conventions is growing by leaps and bounds. Odd that Disney is doing quite well, and branching out to release the Studio Ghibli movies. Odd that there are more animated TV shows than I can ever remember, and more movies coming out all the time.
    I also believe that computer generated animation will prove to be a short-lived fad, since this animation has a cold, soulless quality which doesn't endear it to the public. Ironically, the future for animation doesn't lie with animation itself - live action "animation", in the style of the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", which combines traditional cartoon humour and slapstick action together with real actors and heightened realism represents the future of animation. The spirit and values of traditional animation will survive in this form of "animation", but the tired old methods of traditional animation will finally be laid to (a well deserved) rest.
    Hello? Bueller? TRON came out, what, 20 years ago? Pixar has been going for about as long. Kind of a long-lived "short-lived fad," if you ask me.

    As for the rest of your pedantic rant, get a clue. Radio didn't kill the printed page, TV didn't kill radio, photography didn't kill painting, and traditional animation isn't dying either.

    Jon

  • Maybe you were betrayed by your expectations?

    All I know is, I went into the theater with a basically skeptical outlook, and ended up really enjoying myself. I'll be buying the DVD.

    Jon
  • I work in the 3D CG business, doing visual effects as opposed to animation.

    In 20 years of working with hundreds of 3D animators I've found that an absurd percentage of the best ones started out as 2D animators. I believe that nothing can teach motion, layout, action, and representation of emotion like painstaking 2D work -- when you draw every frame, or review every frame of other people's work you really see it in a way that you just can't see in CG.

    It will be interesting to see where we get our 3D animators twenty years from now if 2D is really dead. I guess Japan is the most likely place.

    thad

  • I'm really curious: at the Annecy International Animation Festival during the 'premiere' of Titan A.E. Bluth/Fox was giving away an 'animation magazine': the opening article was written by Bluth himself, and detailed quite well how he became involved with the Titan A.E. project (was asked to 'take over' the work of two other directors, that worked on the film for more than a year) and why he accepted even if he never worked for a sci-fi film ('Hollywood requires you to do these kind of thing", and thus it was a good thing for he to accept).

    By chance, isn't it that these two "Anonymous Directors" are/were working for Blue Skies studios? ;-)

    I'd be really glad if this turn out to be true.

    Ciao,
    Rob!
  • You can simply avoid movies, television and other forms of packaged entertainment. Surely if it's truly excrement, it's not worth watching or listening to.

    I haven't gone to a movie or watched TV in years. Can't say I miss it.

    D

    ----
  • You're right. I meant, The King and I.
  • But Disney's movies are all a financial success. And part of the reason for this is that they all share a high production quality. They look expensive. This is what I mean. There is no place for a low-budget, great script, innovative animation.

    But the American market for adult animation is also almost non-existent. Since Bakshi disappeared, no one has made any real effort in this direction. We get movies targeted at teens or children, never any higher.

    And if Fox makes four flops and one success, then eventually they'll have to declare animation as dead. The problem is not now, and never will be, animation itself. The problem is in the movies, not in the genre.

  • it has nothing to do with the form of animation. it's the quality of the story IMHO. Disney has been doing this for years and made a killing with it. I have never liked three dimensional animations. It doesn't feel right if you know what I mean. a good example is the new transformers vs. the old ones. 3D work is not expressive enough.
  • I'm not sure where you're at but just yesterday I saw both Cowboy Bebop and BLue Sub 6 on DVD at Fry's. You might want to check your local one to see if they have it. The one around here has a huge stock of movies on DVD including Zombie Grannies and Condorman.
  • and Japanese animation is proving it.

    The creation of an Anime is usually very traditional. CG is usually used very little, and often it's hidden as much as possible (at least, most good shows do that). This doesn't make shows any worse, or any less successful (at least in Japan, here it's sadly another story).

    The problem is that animation fims are most of all stories. If the story sucks, the movie sucks. Plain and simple. Nobody is going to watch it, even if it has all the eye-candy in the world. Disney learnt the story. The Little Mermaid and the Beauty and the Beast are both reductions of hits centuries old, and The Lion King is a cheap Rip-off from Tezuka's "Jungle TaiTei" (I hope I got the title right). You just can't miss with titles like these. What does Fox retaliate with? Anastasia (which I still haven't had the change to watch, despite wanting to), and Titan, which I haven't seen and I'll pride myself not to see since I've gotten so bad reviews that it's not funny.
    The bottom line is: if you don't have a certain hit (and Disney sort of snagged all those), you have to be sure you have a damn good story, or it won't matter how much money you pump into a movie, it won't sell.

    Take Princess Mononoke for instance. When I went to see it, I was utterly moved by the beatiful backgrounds, the great animation, the wonderful story. There is no way that CG art can give me those kind of backgrounds, that essential yet immensely expressive way to draw characters, and the story has nothing to do with how you draw it.
    Photorealistic drawing is not what I want either: if I wanted that, I'd go watch a live movie. Aardman studios' works are great, or take the Muppets, or Barney (*heh, just kidding. There's not a chance in hell*). There is no CG in them, yet they're both good and they sell. CG in and by itself is irrelevant, if there is no story to tell, and I'm not surprised that many geeks (myself included) turn to Anime as a preferred form of entertainment.
  • IMHO the reason Titan didn't do so well is because they couldn't decide on their target audience. Was it designed for the young child/Disney group, a more intellectual teen group, or the scifi/animation/cgi fan? Some things were definately geared toward a more sophisticated set, and yet many elements remained for the kiddies. "It is a cartoon after all," I can hear Don Bluth saying. I personaly found it fun. I say bonus points to Fox for taking a step like that. I loved being able to see something a little edgier from a US animated movie. Titan and Anastatia were some of the best looking films I've seen. It would have been much better if they would cut the talking animal convention. I can't wait until the industry will stop thinking of animation as a lower art form and approach it the same way as a live action feature.
  • They never claimed that it was fox. They simply stated that after Toystory 2 did so well in the theater, fox cut back it's staff. In other words: Fox exec's saw the writing on the wall that 3D animation was what is selling in the theater and they couldn't compete with it.

    If Fox execs looked at Toy Story 2 and saw that it was 3D animation that was selling in the theater, then they're just a bunch of dumb yutzes. What made Toy Story and Toy Story 2 such wonderful movies was that they were really well-written and well-acted. If I had to condense this down to the simplest possible statement, of why Pixar's films are so good and other people's wannabe things are not, that would be:

    John Lasseter is a genius.

    If the Fox execs didn't realize that the problem was that Pixar has John Lasseter, and they have no answer to that, then they won't have learned anything.

  • Anna and the King [imdb.com] was not an animated movie. Are you thinking of Anastasia [imdb.com]? Anastasia was not that bad, or should I say no worse than anything Disney puts out.

    I disagree with your assertion that Disney has set the bar too high. I think that with animation in America, it has been successfully cast into niche status by Disney. Disney has successfully convinced everyone that they are the source of animation innovation in the world. They don't make bad movies, they're fine (if a little simple).

    Movies like Iron Giant [imdb.com] and Princess Mononoke [imdb.com] are truly excellent films, animation or not, but are still considered fringe, despite their excellent production.
  • guyver series, nge, macross II, ninja scroll and akira are SERIOUS?

    Come on, they are shoot-em-up action flicks. They are good, shoot-em-up action flicks, but they are NOT SERIOUS film

    If you want serious film look at films by noted directors, look at films which don't center around a giant special effects spectacular, ninjas, or giant robots.

    I love anime, but I wouldn't call it "serious".
  • Don Knuth is the CS guy.

    Don Bluth is the guy who did Dragon's Lair.
  • While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.

    Your kids are media slobbering brain-washed babboons? It's too bad that the vast intelligence required to know what the correct taste in media is isn't even genetic. How does this sound: could you write down a list of what you watch/read/listen to during the day, so us brain-washed babboons can understand what's "better"?
  • Funny you should bring up the Simpsons, since last night I saw a rerun of the Homer^3 episode, where Homer enters a 3-d world.

    His comment, while standing around picking his nose, is "Boy, this sure looks expensive."

    It's also a little ironic that you mentioned South Park. While that show was originally done with about as low-tech as you can get (cutting out construction paper, I heard,) it's now rendered on expensive machines with fancy software.

    Does anyone remember Ralph Bakshi's animation from the 70's? Some of them were "Fritz The Cat", "American Pop", and "Wizards". One of his techniques (used to great effect in "American Pop") was to shoot live actors, then trace over their images for his animation. It was sort of a low-tech motion-capture, but it gave the movies a very warm, mature feel.

    So Fox Animation Studios failed. That sucks for them, but then again, their movies sucked for us.

  • So true. That's exactly how I feel about american movies and television.

    Have you tried out japanese animation (anime), though? Imho, it is overall of much greater quality than the garbage that passes for TV around here. The good anime has deep, realistic characters, and a kind of overall creativity and artfulness that is really refreshing. I feel it's on par with what you get at (real) theaters.

    There was an Ask Slashdot [slashdot.org] a while ago asking for recommendations of good series. I recommend Neon Genesis Evangelion, a series which everyone likes and a lot of people are crazy about. The series is really intense, and once you're finished you still have hours of fun analyzing the psychology of the characters and finding all sorts of hidden meanings and interpretations to all the events (if you're into that sort of thing :). I'd like to see an american film where you can do that!

  • ...Long live the King.

    2D animation will die about the same day newspapers, libraries, brick-and-mortar businesses, peer-reviewed journals, and all the rest of the currently-fashionable-predicting-their-death ways of providing services and content goes the way of the dodo.

    I mean, hell, Katz has been predicting the death of everything not connected to the internet for how many years now? And when is he wrong...

    Anyways, for a glimpse of the future of 2D animation, check out the newly released teaser trailer for Atlantis [go.com], Disney's newest and quite possibly best effort since the Little Mermaid.

    For those who want something with an extra dimension, check out the also-newly released teaser for Final Fantasy [finalfantasy.com] the Movie.
  • Having grown up on Don Bluth films, as well as having played hours of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace on my Amiga and SegaCD, I was at TitanAE opening weekend. Visually, the movie has some beautiful CG work, but then again, what doesn't nowadays? Some of the most stupid commercials on television are utlising the same technology Titan used and yielding better results. So, what set this film apart from anything else?

    Absolutely nothing.

    The characters were typical Don Bluth-style characters, with generic features and shallow personalities. The premise was interesting, but hardly original, and in the end you can't help but ask yourself "where was the climax?" The voice actors weren't particularly great (I mean, c'mon, Bill Pullman?) and when they create an entire planet in the same time it takes for Slashdot to load, you're just like "yeah...sure".

    Being a huge fan of anime across the board, whether it be Japanese, Disney, or what not, I tend to give shows and movies a little slack. TitanAE was acceptable in that respect, but no less disappointing. At least a mediocre Manga-style anime is generally geared toward adults. They tried to play to both audiences with this movie, and they didn't succeed. They should've picked one or the other.
  • Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing. The reason that they did this is very, very simple: you can't market class and good taste. A talking Dinosaur sells, a Classical music epic does not. While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.


    The problem isn't that the majority of people are slobbering idiots. The problem is that we are all idiots outside of the areas we know. The world is too big for a single mind to hold all of it. If you are going to make a movie (record, TV show, etc.) and are going to put a lot of money into it, you need to get a large audience to make back that investment. To do that, you can't aim at small niche markets. You aim for mainstream tastes. You eliminate elements that will alienate the larger audiences.

    One of the benefits of the networking of the world is that it reduces the cost of marketting and distributing to niche audiences. Geography is becoming much less relevant. Could copyleft.net [copyleft.net] have survived as a business before the Internet took off? Probably not. Not because there were fewer geeks, but because we were harder to reach. The Net helps us form virtual communities.

    As more people with a greater variety of interests get online we are seeing two trends. The first has already happened. The content of the Net shifted from being primarily geek-oriented to more mainstream a couple of years ago. The second is that communities with a variety of interests are growing. At one time they centered around Usenet groups and maybe a few BBS's and ftp sites. Now any niche group can have a web site and usually does.

    The big productions will always aim at large "least common denominator" markets. That is where they can recoup large production and marketting costs. But as entertainment moves online, it makes sense that there will be niche cultural products. There always have been. They are likely to become more diverse and easier to find.
  • as a disclaimer, what I heard was that Titan AE was a very good movie. It's kind of depressing that the studio was shut down because the movie didn't perform as well as the bigwigs up top wanted. You know that if it had done well those same bigwigs would have been fighting over who would have gotten credit for the idea.

    Gene Siskel said that Titan AE was the movie that Battlefield: Earth wanted to be. And yet no one has (seriously) talked about John Travolta's career being finished. yet.

    Moller
  • What Cartoon Network shows is not good anime, because they mangle it through censoring and by showing dubs. The shows themselves are good, but by the time they're done with censoring them and by adding insult to injury by showing dubbed versions, they just suck.

    I'm not trying to be negative here, but there's nothing worse than a censored dub. :/
  • 2D animation sucks? I think you'd find quite a few otaku (anime fans) who would disagree with you. :)

    Yes, I realize that a million others have posted this before I did, but I still think it's worth a post.

    PS: Otaku, literally translated, is a derogatory term describing someone so obsessed with something that they shut themselves off from the outside world; however in America the term is usually used to describe a person that likes anime and/or manga a lot, and it doesn't have negative connotations as it does in Japan.
  • I'm not flaming here, but is 3D animation really the way to go? Look at what happened to Reboot. :/
  • While I may concede on the point of Fantasia (only to a point, my experience when I went to see the re-release a few years back was one of the worst movie experiences I have ever had the non-pleasure of enduring), I have to completely not understand any point that you tried to make with:


    Sounds like you're making the same assumptions the studios are, which is why we get so much crap. Self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps?


    This is NOT an assumption. My littler brother, who is now 13, used to watch AT LEAST 5 hours of TV a day. His grades suffered and so my mom took the TV away. His grades shot up, and all of a sudden, he could talk sensibly about a subject other than some show or commercial he saw. He reads more and understands now more that there are such things are developed characters and PLOT.

    My point is this: TV and cinema serve their purpose when utilized by people that want to say something.. not by people that are solely interested in making a quick buck.

    Interestinly enough, it is the movies that say something that usually stand out most in our minds.

    Rami James
    Guy with a crick in his neck.
    --

  • I was going to see Titan A.E. (Score:3)

    by substrate (2628) on Monday July 24 2000, @02:03AM (#911020)
    When I first saw the teasers for Titan A.E. on television it looked like it was going to be awesome. It looked like it was going to be closer to anime than the typical american movie: an actual plot, character development, deep story and characters as opposed to the typical saturday morning cartoon action hero with the a somewhat typical plot and two dimensional characters.

    When they showed the trailers I felt robbed. It looked more akin to Lion King than what I was expecting. I was half expecting the characters to break out in song. To my eye they geared this thing at the same people who religiously watch Disney cartoons (not that there's anything wrong with that, but its not what I'm interested in) who may not really be into science fiction.

    I didn't see it, but I had every intention of seeing it prior to seeing the trailer. Good marketing that, changing somebodies mind 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

    I don't know where the fault lies, but it just didn't seem like a very compelling movie to win 8 bucks and a couple hours of my time. Maybe the studio forced there hand in the animation and story department. I don't think animation is dead, nor do I think two dimensional animation is dead. It just looked like a single episode of Gundam Wing could involve me more than a full movie of Titan A.E. would.

    I don't even know if what cartoon network shows is supposed to be good anime, but I do know I like it more than what I've seen coming out of the U.S.

  • 2D sucks? (Score:3)

    by Rob Kaper (5960) on Monday July 24 2000, @02:05AM (#911021) Homepage
    Yeah right.

    And what about The Simpsons?
    Southpark anyone?

  • Remember folks, this ain't Japan where animation is considered a highly respectable, serious artform that all ages appreciate.

    Too true. What's worse is that generally, when good anime does make it to the American market, its American distributors dumb it down and strip out all of the "naughty bits" so that American parents won't be scandalized by boobs when they take their kids to see a film in a genre that is defined for them by Disney. (The peculiar American delusion that nipples are somehow a threat to civilization is a rant for another occasion.)

    I didn't see Titan A.E. It wasn't on account of the trailers, as some have said, since I stopped watching TV more than a decade ago and it's hard to get me to go spend money for two hours of passive low-brow entertainment. It was because everyone I know who is an avid animation fan said it sucked. I have no idea how the animation was -- most of my acquaintances' venom was reserved for the purportedly awful plot and characterization. I was actually planning to see it up until then.

    There's plenty of room for 2D animation, especially for parents like me who are tired of seeing Disney recycle the same three plots twice a year. (Anyone ever notice how all Disney films since Walt died revolve around orphans and dead or absent parents? What's up with that?) I'm actually less likely to go see a 3D CGI film, because -- excepting Pixar -- computer animation has only started to outgrow its gimmicky gee-whiz phase.

  • Thye're all wrong. (Score:3)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush (12795) on Monday July 24 2000, @03:13AM (#911023)
    Don Bluth: "Computer-generated animation, it's the flavor of the month"

    How wrong can one person be? CGI is no more the flavor of the month, than sound or color. It has changed the movie industry as a whole and revolutionized animation.

    That said. There's no reason that traditional animation studios can't succeed. Disney does it. I didn't see Titan A.E., so I can't comment, but Quest for Camelot and Anna and the King were awful. QfC had a mid-grade Saturday morning quality to it. My daughter, who can sit through just about any movie, walked out on this one after 30 minutes.

    No one in the industry really knows why some movies do great and others fail. The secret starts with a good script, and add quality on top of that. With animation, though, it has to look expensive, and most of the time that means it has to be expensive. There isn't much room for dog crap cartoons. Disney has set the bar too high.

  • Toy Story 2 is Pixar, not Fox...

  • The Bogie factor (Score:3)

    by hey! (33014) on Monday July 24 2000, @04:45AM (#911025) Homepage Journal
    I don't think Casablanca was anything like state of the art in terms of production values for its day. Look at Gone with the Wind or some other contemporary blockbuster.

    Under the old studio system, they used to churn out films like this like Hormel puts out spam. They didn't have much budget to do spectacular scenes, so they were a bit claustrophobic. To make up for the workman like but mediocre production values they had to have a cracking good yarn. By in large the studios aimed for steady small successes with these movies, but every so often they'd hit the jackpot.

    I don't think Casablanca was viewed in its day with the kind of reverence it is today. It came roaring back in the 60s though, because it solved a very big cultural dilemma. To be cool, you have to be jaded, experienced, detached. On the other hand, in the sixties it was cool to stand for or to be against something. So, are you going to be a tough sophisticate or a sensitive idealist? Will it be James Bond or Dr. King today?

    Bogie showed us the way: you act cynical but hurt like hell inside.

    Nobody could do it like Bogie - to be one thing on the outside and another inside. He could laugh and make it cut like a scream of pain. My favorite Bogie movie was Key Largo. Bogie was low key in that one, but the question was who was going to be tougher in the end, Edward G's sadistic, treacherous gangster or Bogie's soft spoken WW II vetran? What makes it exciting is that there's no way Bogie should win -- the gangster has all the advantages and will stoop to anything to get his way. In the climactic scene, I always get the urge to jump up and shout "Don't trust him, Bogie! He's a goddamn lying snake!"

    You can't buy a sincere reaction like that. It takes genius.

    The Fox animation stuff I've seen is very well crafted, as good as anything that Disney puts out on a technical level and in some cases visually interesting and original. However, none of it has the creative spark that makes you want to get up and shout at the characters on the screen.

    The idea that there is a technical fix -- going to 3D or some such thing -- for creative deficiency is ridiculous.

  • Re:2D vs 3D (Score:3)

    by Grendel Drago (41496) on Monday July 24 2000, @04:20AM (#911026) Homepage
    Well...

    SoftImage|DS is a $150,000 editing studio that includes full cel-animation facilities. There's a program called ReTimer (NT/Irix only, I think) that does some kind of dense-field inbetweening that (in the ads) looks bloody *fantastic*. Most professional 3D programs (and even Blender has been able to do this from the get-go if you know how) include "ink 'n' paint" facilities to simulate 2D animation.

    But we all want volumetric 3D 4-billion-polygon eyecandy. Which has its place, see www.finalfantasy.com.

    Of course, I think that animation's problem lies in its content rather than method. If only they'd make, say, a Watchmen animated movie, with John Malkovich as Dr. Manhattan... mmm...

    -grendel drago

  • Some leave, some enter. (Score:3)

    by Animats (122034) on Monday July 24 2000, @06:56AM (#911027) Homepage
    Animation is a tough industry. Warner Animation is gone, and Fox is exiting. Sony Pictures Imageworks was saved by Stuart Little, but it was close.

    But look at the new players. Centropolis. Pixar. Aardman. Mainframe. Plus all the effects houses that don't do entire features.

    One of the most interesting efforts from an industry perspective is the Starship Troopers TV series. [flatearthproductions.com] Flat Earth Productions cranked out weekly half-hour episodes of this near-photorealistic animation with a budget and team comparable to that for a typical sitcom. This project is about two orders of magnitude cheaper per minute of content than most CG feature animation.

    We're going to see more work at that price point, and it will get better. This is where the action is. The high-end CG films with the $100 million and up costs can kill a studio if they aren't huge successes. That's what happened to Fox.

  • If a movie sucks, it doesn't matter if it's animated with cardboard paper, claymation, computers, or live action. It still sucks. Titan AE had no real clear market, no "core constituency" of people who'd see it, like it, and spread the word. It also had to go up against MI:2, which was essentially a cartoon done with live actors (a John Woo trademark), and that further sealed it's doom.

    One of the many problems in Hollywood is that a studio will release something original, thoughtful, and creative, and that triggers a huge wave of "me too" copies. Disney has success with animation? Let's all get into animation!

    Since "Chicken Run" was a hit, there'll probably be a huge wave of Claymation films coming up. Nobody understands why Chicken Run was a hit - they just understand that it made a lot of money. Duh.

    Remember this mentality when we complain about the utter lack of clues that groups like the RIAA show. This is how they think. They can't see any farther than the first dollar signs, and reflexively avoid doing anything different. As soon as someone stumbles across a way to make money using digital technology (like MP3), every studio will jump on board. And if they come up with a way to make money selling unencumbered DVD's, they'll all shift within days.

    In Hollywood, it's all about two things: not risking your job if possible, and, of course, the Benjamins!

    - -Josh Turiel
  • '2D sucks, 3DCGI is the way to go'?"

    I'm sure many studios said 'Black and white sucks, colour is the way to go' but Highlander II is still a pile of crap and Casablanca is still a masterpiece.

    A good story well done will (normally) do well regardless of technical issues/methods.

    TWW

  • The real story (Score:5)

    by danimal (1712) on Monday July 24 2000, @02:12AM (#911030) Homepage
    Fox only closed the Phoenix facility. The New York based Blue Sky Studios [blueskystudios.com] is still open and working on a full length feature (I know, I work there).

    The reason the Phoenix facility was closed was that after 3 films the returns were just dissappointing. Fox is a business and this was a business decision, plain and simple.

    -danimal
    *disclaimer* these comments neither represent Fox or Blue Sky Studios, they are mine alone.

  • 2d, 3d is irrelevant. (Score:5)

    by Lonesmurf (88531) on Monday July 24 2000, @02:20AM (#911031) Homepage
    All animation is still just that: animation.

    The vast majority of all animated films that have come out in the last ten years have been a flop; with the glaring exceptions of some monumental Disney flicks.

    The newest cgi movie from Disney, Dinosaur, was technologically astounding but was an utter disgrace when it came to the acting and the story. I was almost crying it was so bad (no, not really).

    Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing. The reason that they did this is very, very simple: you can't market class and good taste. A talking Dinosaur sells, a Classical music epic does not. While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.

    So, this isn't about the animation (plenty of good animation from toystory to wallace and grommit and back again) but about making bad pop-culture movies that have no story/plot and no intrigue to pull an audience in.

    Fox Studios doesn't seem to be able to make those kind of movies, I will not miss them.

    Rami James
    Guy who like cartoons.
    --
  • We've been raised for generations to believe that animation is for little kids and that live action somehow is for adults. Most of the kids at my high school (I'll be a senior this year) don't even for the most part respect anime thanks to the marketting bastards that have made many americans think "sailor moon/pokemon==anime".

    Most of americans won't even watch serious anime like the guyver series, nge, macross II, ninja scroll and akira. So I say that there isn't much hope for serious animation in general here in the US if most americans won't even willingly give some serious anime like the series listed above.

    Remember folks, this ain't Japan where animation is considered a highly respectable, serious artform that all ages appreciate. You can find R rated anime in theatres in Japan and it can do quite well if it is well done, but here in the US it will be lucky if it is successful in ANY form at all.

  • My opinion. (Score:5)

    by Kickasso (210195) on Monday July 24 2000, @01:53AM (#911033)
    "2D sucks, 3DCGI is the way to go" == "painting sucks, sculpture is the way to go"
    --

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