Yeah, I’m sure you’re all shocked. After watching James Gunn’s Superman I decided it was high time that the big blue boy scout got the same treatment as a certain pointy eared co-worker of his.
So yes, we’re going to be looking at every live action Superman movie while we wait for Matt Reeves to finish the script for The Batman 2 roughly around the time of the heat death of the universe (I am not bitter, I am passionate.)
Let’s begin at the beginning. It’s 1948, a mere decade after Superman’s debut in Action Comics and the character is already a bona fide cultural icon with a radio series, newspaper strips, some of the greatest cartoon shorts ever made and a metric shit ton of merchandise. But, weirdly, despite kicking off the entire superhero genre (asterisk asterisk) Superman was actually pretty late to the party when it came to being adapted into live action.
Some of the choices I stand by but jeez, I’ll probably have to re-do that list entirely. Or will I? Are listicles even a thing anymore? Are blogs? Is anyone out there reading this who’s not a bot? Hello? Hellooo?
Anyway, existential dread aside, one of the big surprises for me was that 2014 Mouse apparently put 2008’s Kung Fu Panda on the list, a movie I think I have seen maybe once and have never had the urge to watch again. I have no idea why I did that. I feel like the years must have Ship of Theseus’d me into a completely different person because I cannot imagine that movie provoking that strong a reaction in me, either positive or negative. And I know that this is definitely a “me” problem. These movies are, structurally, very very good. Like, just put together magnificently well. I get the praise for them. Mostly. Some of the more rhapsodic critical responses to this movie I find a little baffling. Particularly the praise for the visuals. Again, they’re very good. But I came across one review (from a critic who’s opinion I rate very highly) who actually claimed that Kung Fu Panda 2 was the most visually beautiful film Dreamworks had made up to this point in their history.
There really should be a sub-genre for animators who left Disney during the eighties all ready to set up their own animation studio with blackjack and hookers…only for Disney to get their groove back with The Little Mermaidand eat them alive. We all know of Don Bluth, of course, the one who came closest to unseating the Mouse from its throne. And we’ve also met Phil Nibbelink. Well today we’re going to look at another of these would-be contenders; Richard Rich:
So how’s this for some animation bona fides: Richard Rich was the director of not one but two Disney animated features.
Now now, let’s be fair. Disney in the mid-to-late eighties was in its most hellish creative funk since World War Two. The kind of hellish creative funk that would not be seen again until the early 2000s and…now. Of all the hellish creative funks Disney has been in I’d rank it…somewhere in the middle. Bad times, anyway. Disillusioned by working on Oliver & Company (as anyone would be) he left in 1986, convinced that the old studio was a goner and that nothing could ever change that.
Oops.
After a stint in the desert making religious animation for the Church of Latter Day Saints, Rich watched the Disney Renaissance take off and decided to make his play for the crown with The Swan Princess, an animated re-telling of the ballet Swan Lake, without any actual ballet (thank Christ). Made on a paltry budget of 20 million dollars, it was worked on for four long years before being released in 1994, where it had to compete against The Lion King. The result was pretty much what would happen if you pitted a real swan against an actual lion, but it did have an extremely healthy second life on video. It’s not the worst of the Disney-chasers of this era, nor is it close to being the best. But it is significant for one very important reason. This was the last feature length, cinematically released animated motion picture that was created entirely by hand. Not a single cel of this was touched by the infernal machine. So let me be clear, no matter what I think of this movie…
unshavedmouse 