Zemeckis needs to be banned from any involvement with a movie featuring CG in the next decade. For his own good. (although I release he was only a producer for this film)
I'm puzzled by this "quote" from me. That is the thread title only. Nothing I typed in my post but yeah it was crap. I explained that in my post. This is just an erroneous "quote" and I wanted to point that out.
Exactly. There are articles around that went "The boys didn't like the title, more girls went". No one went, it's not a demo thing, the movie looks bad, graphics and plot wise. Once and awhile a bad movie actually does as badly as it should.
I think the biggest mistake was NOT following the source material (yes, there is source material) AT ALL - except maybe in title. The produced chose to go with his personal favorite cheesy mocap straight from the bottom of the Uncanny Valley instead of Berkeley Breathed awesomely wonderful and beautiful artistic style. So instead of a unique and beautiful animated film - we get this creepy dead-eyed mess. It really sucks to, because Breathed's style of drawing is really beautiful and unique - just like the book the movie takes it's name from. But sadly now, when people hear "Mars Needs Moms", they will think of this abominable mess of a film, instead of Bearkeley Breathed's wondrous and magical book. ETA: Here's an article from Berkeley Breathed about what went wrong: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/06/entertainment/la-ca-mars-moms-20110306 EATA: funny think is most reviews i have read say it's a pretty good flick - not perfect, but not that bad. Unfortunately, I think a combination of bad marketing and...well...that creep mocap filming style...turned people off. Plus, we are in a recession...and I can barely even afford to take all of my my 3 kids and their 2 1/2 sister and brother and myself - and maybe my ex-wife - to see *one* film - in 2D at the *Early bird* Matinée ($2 off the regular $7 or $8), LET ALONE take all of us to an $11 or $12 a pop 3D film...and I think most parents, when they can afford to take the family out to a 3D flick, probably can only afford one movie - and there's a lot of competition out there for that money... And I think "MNM" just lost out to "Rango"...
I know it was the title of the thread but I wasn't the OP. See the confusion? It reads like a question/statment I made but didn't. Your answer I agree with, I'm just not the one asking "What happened?" I knew that answer months ago.
The very title of your thread says "What happened?" YOU put that in there! And that's my answer, it looked like kiddie crap that doesn't appeal to me so I didn't go see it, and I'm sure countless other people felt the same way; it didn't look like a movie that'd appeal to both adults and children and since the latter can't go without the former being there the movie bombed as it probably didn't appeal to kids at all either. The movie looked like crap, it failed. Nothing to do with 3D (which movie studios are way over doing, but at least with animated movies it the 3D can be "faked" the "proper way"), Zemeckis or anything else. The movie just didn't look good so no one went to see it. That's what happened. Question asked, question answered.
^^^^ Thank You. I wasn't getting through to him. Everyone's post in the thread is titled "Mars Needs Moms: What happened???" Because 23 Skiddo the OP made it that way. Frankly getting Trekker to see the error was more fun than talking about this craptacular movie which we all answered anyway as to why it failed.
Seeing the full trailer it doesn't look to be that bad and I have no real issue with motion capture except for the dead eyes. But the TV ads that I saw were nothing like the full trailer. They should make the biggest deal about this flop because maybe people will go see it just to see how bad it is. I'm kinda intrigued. And Trekker, I'm pretty sure that you aren't the demographic they were looking for with this movie. Referring to a kids movie as kiddie crap is like referring to a sci-fi movie as sci-fi crap. If you don't like the genre, then chances are the movie won't do anything for you.
Ah, I attributed the thread's title to the wrong person in my quote. My bad, sorry for the confusion.
I think that this story, this particular failure, is a BIG story for Hollywood, in conjunction with the Yellow Submarine story on the other thread. And it goes well beyond Yellow Submarine. Think about this.. Hollywood is in a 3-D kick, but it possible that this fad might die down, and fast. Then, think about his, too, that ALL the big names are investing in the motion capture shit... Zemeckis, Jackson, Spielberg, and Cameron, and the only one who seems to be using it correctly right now is Cameron (Jackson did use it right in the past with Gollum and Kong - basically anytime the character isn't really a human but must have an expressive face). These are the biggest names in the business and they are putting a lot into it, and, Avatar excepted (at least for the time being) the audience isn't nearly as enthusiastic as the filmmakers, and kids couldn't care less about the names attached to the film. I think this one flop will have some long-term repercussions.
Eh, I don't think the failure of this film really says much about the future of 3D. The title is extremely off-putting and unattractive. I didn't know it was coming out and I frequent enough genre websites to be pretty aware of what releases are on the horizon. The idea that this movie's failure would cause studios to rethink the use of 3D strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of those who don't like 3D. I don't have any special attachment to it either, for the record, but I don't expect it to disappear anytime soon. For that to happen it would have to become clear that making a movie in 3D hurts the bottom line more than it helps, which I doubt is the case for the time being.