Experiment gone wrong

[pasithea]

Last night, I decided to test a new idea. My experiments can be a little iffy at times, but I think this one went well outside the realms of sanity and I learned things that I think mankind was never meant to know...

I have two monitors and two DVD players... So I played 'Fritz the Cat' and 'The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat' side by side and.... Wow... The horror. What I learned is this: Ralph Bakshi's film was better animated, more coherent, less rotoscoped, and less offensive than 'Nine Lives'. Let me repeat that: RALPH BAKSHI'S FILM WAS COMPLETELY SUPERIOR. And now I must live with this knowledge.

Comments

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I think Bakshi suffered for that because there were so few geek-oriented films out when he made it that every single mealy-mouthed whinging self-righteous fanboy on the planet went to see it, and it didn't stand up to their fantasies, so they whined and whined and whined.

Nowdays, mainstream movie companies are willing to produce films adapted from existing works (Indeed, they haven't had an original idea in decades) and there are enough titles out there that one need not really see something that looks like it might be bad. I for instance, did not go see, "I, Robot" because I enjoyed the book and knew it would have little in common.

Not to mention, Jackson already had a low bar established for him. All he had to do was 'be better than Bakshi'. Bakshi had what? $250,000 and at most 90 minutes to tell the story? Compare that with Jackson's budget, and it's a no-brainer which version is probably going to look nicer.

Personally, I'm not his #1 fan, but I've animated a five-minute long short on my own and I took WAY more shortcuts and had a much lower production quality than Bakshi films so I'm not going to knock him.

[idragosani.livejournal.com]

LotR cost $7 million and was about 2.5 hours long.. .and he had to cut corners by rotoscoping because it would have taken forever!

Bakshi does make a good point about how anyone can make an animated movie these days, all you need is a computer, a drawing tablet and some good ideas. And he's right.

[idragosani.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on "I, Robot", too :-) Too bad they couldn't have made Harlan Ellison's treatment, which was Asimov endorsed.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I read the Ellison version of I, Robot and was pretty impressed. It's a shame it wasn't made into a movie.

If you think of the Wil Smith I Robot movie as 'inspired' by the Asimov novel as opposed to an adaptation of it then it's a better movie :-) I was actually impressed with the movie in that they made it a 'mystery' movie -- most of Asimov's Sci-Fis have been mysteries in disguise. Another aspect I liked about the movie is that they kind-of touched upon the Zeroth Law of Robotics (although they never really mentioned it).