Disney buying Lucasfilm

[Fordel]

Pixar are kids films that understand adults watch them too and focused on catering to both audiences.  Like the old Loony Tunes.   I'm sure many of us have fond memories of the Transformers and GI Joe cartoons, too.   They're utter shit, however.  Complete and utter shit with zero redeeming value.  I've watched them since they're on HUB and thought, "Why the fuck did I ever enjoy this."   However, my son enjoys them.  Why? He's the market and I'm not.

The Transformers Prime show is pretty darn good though!

[Samprimary]

I took a cursory look back at all the stuff I watched as a kid and good god almighty was it all complete and utter garbage. I couldn't even make it through a single episode of Inspector Gadget. And today's kids have shit like phineas and ferb and between the lions and gravity falls and those lucky little dirtbags will be way more cultured than us damn it it's not fair

[sickrubik]

Don't forget Avatar.

[Shannow]

Found myself watching Phineas and Ferb the other day, my son walks in (who at 12 is just WAY to cool for this stuff now) and says 'Dad why are you watching a kids show?'

bah.  I got my revenge the other day though when I caught him watching some Avatar and I asked him the same question. (Mind you I promptly sat down and watched the rest with him).

[Ingmar]

I took a cursory look back at all the stuff I watched as a kid and good god almighty was it all complete and utter garbage.

Looney Tunes is still awesome. Not that it was made when we were kids, I guess.

[TheWalrus]

Found myself watching Phineas and Ferb the other day, my son walks in (who at 12 is just WAY to cool for this stuff now) and says 'Dad why are you watching a kids show?'

bah.  I got my revenge the other day though when I caught him watching some Avatar and I asked him the same question. (Mind you I promptly sat down and watched the rest with him).

Fuck that. I watch that show by myself, it's that damn awesome. My kids know if they want to watch tv with me and that babys on, the channels not changing.

[sickrubik]

I took a cursory look back at all the stuff I watched as a kid and good god almighty was it all complete and utter garbage.

Looney Tunes is still awesome. Not that it was made when we were kids, I guess.

That was at the time when they were still writing it for all audiences. Something that very few "toons" carried on past the 80s. About the best examples that DID was Animaniacs.

[Merusk]

I think you've got it wrong.  Animaniacs represented the first cartoon to return to trying to appease all audiences.  Before that you have Hanna-Barbara of the 60's and 70's, the 80s Toy Commercials and that was a wasteland of "Kids only" crap.

[sickrubik]

I think you've got it wrong.  Animaniacs represented the first cartoon to return to trying to appease all audiences.  Before that you have Hanna-Barbara of the 60's and 70's, the 80s Toy Commercials and that was a wasteland of "Kids only" crap.

I didn't mean to actually include the 80s as an example of RICHNESS. I meant that it was absent in the 80s. I should have said "in the 80s" or "during" instead of "past the".

[Ironwood]

Can I wait till we're up to 10 pages before I chime in with 'I don't give a fuck?'

Wake me when they've made the next abortion that I have to 'Be There' for.

Also, this thread needs more Nutsack telling us that because the films made money, they were good.

[Yegolev]

Can I wait till we're up to 10 pages before I chime in with 'I don't give a fuck?'

At this rate you'd only need to wait about an hour or two.

[ghost]

Jar Jar would have been fine if he wasn't such a character portrayed in such a blatantly racist manner. 

[Ratman_tf]

They were obviously for kids from the start. The first movie happens before all that other stuff, and is the kiddiest movie that ever kidded.

Which just makes the claim even more bizarre. I can only assume Lucas had gone full Howard Huges at some point.

[Samwise]

what makes me want to literally strangle someone (Lucas) is the "durr I'll just accidentally open this ammo truck's rear door and somehow the ammo'll run down-hill and win the battle single-handedly" scene, as if the entire defending army is a bunch of chucklefucks and jar-jar is, by accident, the best fighter there

See also Anakin accidentally flying into space and blowing up the control ship.

Regarding Ewoks, I actually remember the first time seeing ROTJ at 19 at a friends house, and thinking they were completely lame. Its not the battle scene actually that did it, it was the scene that everyone erases from their memory with C3PO telling the story with R2D2 providing sound effects. That made me cringe.

Hey, I actually liked that scene.  (Although I don't think the idea was that R2 was doing sound effects; I thought 3PO was able to make arbitrary sounds because he's a protocol droid and communication is the one thing he's really good at.)  

I also liked the original "jub jub" song and celebration at the end, before the Special Edition changed the music and spliced in a bunch of CGI footage from other planets that we had never seen before and didn't give a crap about.

The battle scene still makes me cringe, though, because it's excessively cutesy and slapsticky and to me doesn't fit the tone of everything else going on in the movie at that time.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I'm with Samwise, the story scene is cool. The incredibly conveniently placed log traps smashing military hardware, not so much.

[Fordel]

I think you've got it wrong.  Animaniacs represented the first cartoon to return to trying to appease all audiences.  Before that you have Hanna-Barbara of the 60's and 70's, the 80s Toy Commercials and that was a wasteland of "Kids only" crap.

The 90s were basically a renaissance for cartoons. Between the fun and goofy like Animaniacs or the 'Serious' stuff like Batman TAS, good times that never really stopped. Writing, Acting, Animation, all went way way up for the most part.

[HaemishM]

Yeah I'm with Samwise, the story scene is cool. The incredibly conveniently placed log traps smashing military hardware, not so much.

Even as a 12-year old, I thought something was hinky about that whole "Ewoks bitchslap the Empire" thing. I liked the movie, especially the hoverbike scenes but the older I've gotten, the less I've liked the entire sequence with the Ewoks, to the point where I just hate them now.

I didn't have much of a problem with Jar-Jar honestly. He's all the stupidity of the Ewoks condensed into one giant-sized turd, but having already established that armies can be defeated by fucking sticks despite all the pew-pew, his role as savior of the Gunguns didn't grate me. No, what grated on me was Lil' Anakin accidentally piloting a goddamn starship into a battle and blowing up the one womprat-sized weak spot on the fleet controlling the army of droids. Take every fucking bit of Minikin out of that movie and it's ROTJ with much better swordfights (Obi-Won/Qui-Gon/Maul swordfight still best action scene in the entire 6-movie arc).

[Bzalthek]

Also, There was a surge in Japanese animation coming to the states in the early 90s.  Places like Suncoast all of a sudden started having whole sections of anime of all kinds of stripes and people started realizing, this shit can be good!

[Fordel]

Also, There was a surge in Japanese animation coming to the states in the early 90s.  Places like Suncoast all of a sudden started having whole sections of anime of all kinds of stripes and people started realizing, this shit can be good!

Most of course, was really really bad 


There was a window there where they would shovel ANY and EVERY god damn anime in existence over here.

[Bzalthek]

Also, There was a surge in Japanese animation coming to the states in the early 90s.  Places like Suncoast all of a sudden started having whole sections of anime of all kinds of stripes and people started realizing, this shit can be good!

Most of course, was really really bad 


There was a window there where they would shovel ANY and EVERY god damn anime in existence over here.

A lot was horrible, yeah, but it sold because it was mostly ecchi shit.  Also, you didn't have much in the way of resources to look up what you were buying so you just guesstimated based on the box art.  Thank god for the Internet.  Although it's still mostly ecchi shit, but oh well.

[Ratman_tf]

A lot was horrible, yeah, but it sold because it was mostly ecchi shit.  Also, you didn't have much in the way of resources to look up what you were buying so you just guesstimated based on the box art.  Thank god for the Internet.  Although it's still mostly ecchi shit, but oh well.

I rememeber getting Macross Plus and Orguss 2 around that time. I had a Suncoast membership and everything! 

[Ratman_tf]

I think you've got it wrong.  Animaniacs represented the first cartoon to return to trying to appease all audiences.  Before that you have Hanna-Barbara of the 60's and 70's, the 80s Toy Commercials and that was a wasteland of "Kids only" crap.

The 90s were basically a renaissance for cartoons. Between the fun and goofy like Animaniacs or the 'Serious' stuff like Batman TAS, good times that never really stopped. Writing, Acting, Animation, all went way way up for the most part.

In their defense, 80's cartoons were under some pretty crazy scrutiny. The cartoons of the 90's didn't have to contend with enforced PSAs and all that "Get along gang" bullcrap.

I still rather like the G1 Transformers cartoon.  A lot of it was nonsense, but there's a few episodes that stuck with me as quite good. And the voice acting was top notch.

[Venkman]

I'm sure many of us have fond memories of the Transformers and GI Joe cartoons, too.   They're utter shit, however.  Complete and utter shit with zero redeeming value. 

I think comparing those cartoons with Pixar is a false equivalency. The former are TV shows designed for one audience. The latter (studio) makes transgenerational films becuase they know the parents are trapped there with their kids.

Phineas & Ferb and to a degree Penguins of Madagascar are not only an example of a transgenerational show that drives co-viewing at home (becuase home viewing continnues to rise while movies, not so much), it targets more directly the Dad in the family, in part because we're way beyond 80s-era cartoons that still perpetuated 50s-era household archetypes.

As to Star Wars, I don't re-watch the original trilogy because I remember being 7 seeing them for the first time. I watch them, and the original Indiana Jones, because they hold up well. I see old special effects in the same way I saw early shaky-cam footage: you did what you could with the tools you had. I no more mock bad rotoscoping than I mock the obviously-not-filmed-live scene where Santa is talking to the Macy's Day Parade crowd in the original (only!) Miracle on 34th Street.

The new trilogy were not good. They had good parts, and one can apologize for some other parts, but they fail the watch-over-and-over requirement of timeless classics that the original still has.

[Cyrrex]

I am not going to comment on any of the SW movie stuff (yet!), but if you are talking about cartoons that cater to both young and old, then you have to include Adventure Time and The Regular Show.  In fact, those would be the top two, IMO.  Both of them are pants-wettingly hysterical for both kids and adults.  Not for my wife, though, who is completely broken as a human being.

[Bunk]

I still rather like the G1 Transformers cartoon.  A lot of it was nonsense, but there's a few episodes that stuck with me as quite good. And the voice acting was top notch.

[Yegolev]

yoink

[Merusk]

That one's so old I would have guessed you had it already.   We should compare notes sometime, though my collection has fallen off over the last 2 years since they don't work in Outlook.

[Yegolev]

I didn't start actually collecting pictures until a couple years ago.  After I realized the true value of DropBox.  Most of my older pictures are apparently from Hexen.



I have a lot more of that.

[Fabricated]

Don't forget Avatar.

gonna make a lot of people mad but Avatar is shit.

[sickrubik]

Don't forget Avatar.

gonna make a lot of people mad but Avatar is shit.

Not going to make me mad... I usually feel sorry for the stupid. ZING. (I kid.)

[Fabricated]

I tried watching it after my younger relatives and their friends went nuts over it and it was boring. Just boring. Milquetoast American animu blah.*

Thankfully I hear the new season was really bad and the fans are all heartbroken so at least it'll be donewith for good after this.

*note: this isn't really indirect praise of anime from GLORIOUS NIPPON; I haven't really liked any new anime series for years at this point. Probably just because I'm getting old; I used to be able to ironically enjoy terrible series and movies/ovas.

[Bzalthek]

I wouldn't say that.  Anime has been by and large a total disappointment for years.  There is the occasional gem, but mostly it's bland crap.  And the gems are probably only shiny in comparison to the rest.

[sickrubik]

I tried watching it after my younger relatives and their friends went nuts over it and it was boring. Just boring. Milquetoast American animu blah.*

Thankfully I hear the new season was really bad and the fans are all heartbroken so at least it'll be donewith for good after this.

*note: this isn't really indirect praise of anime from GLORIOUS NIPPON; I haven't really liked any new anime series for years at this point. Probably just because I'm getting old; I used to be able to ironically enjoy terrible series and movies/ovas.

I will say that hte first time I saw it years back I didn't like it. I revisited at the behest of a friend last year and when I gave it an honest chance, was pretty blown away.

Also, most of the people I know that like Avatar really enjoyed the new season.

All that being said, of course there are always going to be people who don't like something. I am definitely not saying you are WRONG... but you are. (Again, I kid.)

[Ironwood]

I still rather like the G1 Transformers cartoon.  A lot of it was nonsense, but there's a few episodes that stuck with me as quite good. And the voice acting was top notch.

This one always bothered me.  Not because I know it was when Spike rescued Hound from being trapped under water and that it has nothing to do with Robot/Human Sodomy, but more because Hounds hands are small enough to massage Spikes back.

When, in fact, they could hold Spike in one hand and crush him like a grape.

Also, human managing to pull boulder off of Robots foot to free him underwater was fucking retarded since he's a fucking ROBOT and if he couldn't move it, you certainly couldn't Meatbag.

[Samprimary]

I thought Avatar was pretty awesome, but it took a lot of cadging. Like, I watched the first eight episodes or so going "why the fuck am I watching this obviously for kids cartoon?"

Then there was this sort of point where that ended and my fucking friends had me hooked on a nickelodeon cartoon for children. Fuckers.

Also as far as I know reception of the latest season has been pretty good; people were just disappointed in the abrupt ending. It's certainly going to continue being produced.