News, Analysis and Reviews of the Disney Entertainment Business
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Showing posts with label Warner Brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warner Brothers. Show all posts
I recently finished watching the brilliant new documentary on MAX about the 100 year history of Warner Brothers, written and directed by the amazing Leslie Iwerks and narrated by Morgan Freeman.
I’m a Disney guy first, but Warner Brothers holds a special place in my heart.
Mickey and the gang are fun, but the anarchic behavior of Bugs, Daffy and the rest of WB’s Looney Tunes taught generations about comic timing (and was our introduction to opera.)
I grew up in the late 70s/early 80s, when Warner Brothers was cranking out hit after hit.
Christopher Reeve’s Superman really did make us believe he could fly, Clint Eastwood was the ultimate stoic tough guy and Spielberg’s Gremlins and Goonies were the stuff that (kids') dreams were made of.
Then... 1989 and Tim Burton’s Batman. The one that changed it all.
This documentary is a great trip down Hollywood’s memory lane.
It was also a reminder of how powerful a player Warner Brothers became on television in the 1990s with Friends, ER, The West Wing and others, a streak that continues to this day.
I especially loved Baz Luhrmann’s reminder about the collective power of seeing movies in a theater with a crowd. There’s nothing like it, which is why Studios like WB are still around.
One of the other things I enjoyed about this new documentary is how they explained that in the early days of Hollywood, studios like Warner Brothers, Universal, Columbia, and FOX were seen as also-rans compared to Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) which had the biggest stars and the biggest budgets.
Disney wasn’t even close to being a power player, and yet they are the only studio that survived without ever being owned by another company.
Ironically, Warner Brothers now owns the classic MGM library of films, after Ted Turner’s Company (now owned by WB) acquired MGM in 1996. Ted Turner sold the famous MGM Culver backlot, where classics like Gone With The Wind, Singin’ In The Rain, and The Wizard of Oz were filmed. It’s now home to Sony/Columbia, but they still have a giant rainbow leading to soundstage 27, the home to Munchkinland.
My expectations ran high for both Eternals and Dune when heading into the movie theater. Those expectations actually were exceeded with Dune. Unfortunately, Eternals turned out to be a gross disappointment, and as a result, the movie added fuel to a troubling trend emerging with recent Marvel projects.
Of course, both films have faced box office challenges with the ongoing struggle to emerge from the pandemic, as well as Dune being offered immediately via online streaming on HBO Max and Eternals expected to move rather quickly to Disney+ (perhaps just before Christmas). Dune opened domestically on October 22, and as of November 11 on BoxOfficeMojo.com, it had still taken in $332.6 million globally. After opening on November 5, Eternals registered $170.9 million worldwide. It is worth noting that the Eternals’ opening weekend domestic take came in behind the other pandemic-era MCU releases, that is, Black Widow at $80 million (along with an announced $60 million on Disney+), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings at $75 million, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage at an inexplicable $90 million.
As for critics and audiences, on RottenTomatoes.com, Eternals has earned a woeful 47 percent critics score, with audiences coming in at 80 percent. Meanwhile, Dune has scored well with both critics (83 percent) and audiences (90 percent).
In general, I think that the critics got both right.
Dune ranks as sci-fi/fantasy done right. It’s a visually rich, immersive story, with interesting characters. The film offers hints of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Game of Thrones and Lawrence of Arabia. The cast is spot on, and the director, Denis Villeneuve, gets fine performances out of each actor, including some who have not showed such abilities before, like Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista.
Throughout the film, my mind never wandered to thinking about when this would be over, but rather wanting the movie to go on, and pondering where the characters were headed and the implications of their actions. And given the ending, I found myself thinking that Legendary and Warner Brothers better greenlight a sequel with Villeneuve at the helm, and thankfully, they have.
In contrast, Eternals was a bloated, uninteresting story, with characters that largely were flat, along with most of the performances.
And unlike Dune, Eternals was plagued by story points that made little sense, including glaringly contradictory moments for assorted characters (such as Richard Madden’s Ikaris, not to mention that his ending was way too on the nose).
Amazingly, there are some out there arguing that Eternals isn’t getting the love it deserves because fans are unwilling to deal with big issues being brought up in a superhero movie. My immediate reaction to such assertions is to laugh – and to be perfectly clear, to laugh mockingly. Big issues? The writers and director, Chloe Zhao, seemed to be striving to present some deep moral quandaries over which the characters and audience were meant to wrestle. Alas, though, these so-called big issues amounted to shallow or meaningless situations seemingly dreamed up by a group of college students believing that they had great insights on matters that in reality they possessed little or no knowledge of in the end. The so-called moral quandaries served up in the Eternals spoke more to the obtuseness of the filmmakers, at best, or to their amorality.
It also needs to be pointed out that the more the MCU goes in on CGI effects, the worse the results seem to get. Though not as bad as the end scenes in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or what was offered in Captain Marvel, several of the scenes in Eternals came across more like crude animation, as opposed to interesting and/or immersive CGI.
Interestingly, the character and performance that turned out to be the most interesting in Eternalswas Angelina Jolie as Thena. Here was a troubled character whose challenges and reactions made sense, and there was some life to Jolie’s performance. Don Lee also was pretty good as Gilgamesh, and Kumail Nanjiani had amusing moments as Kingo, though most didn’t fit with where the story was at the time.
Regarding how the Eternals fits into the MCU, part of my high expectations going in could be attributed to an assumption or hope that this film would break the recent trend in MCU entries being poor-to-middling. WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had moments on Disney+, but came up miserably short in the end, while Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings were middling MCU movies (with Black Widow coming in ahead of Shang-Chi). The LokiDisney+ series has been the lone major MCU standout really since Avengers: Endgame.
Eternals was supposed to get the MCU back to interesting, exciting and compelling storytelling and characters, devoid of plot holes and character inconsistencies. But that disappointingly was not the case.
My thoughts at the end of Eternals were pretty much the exact opposite of what I experienced with Dune. I was thankful that Eternals was over, and rather than wondering what would come next for the characters, I was left wondering where the heck the MCU was heading – and not in a good way.
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Ray Keating is the editor, publisher and economist for DisneyBizJournal.com, and author of the Pastor Stephen Grant novels and assorted nonfiction books. Have Ray Keating speak your group, business, school, church, or organization. Email him at raykeating@keatingreports.com.
The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?
Great Christmas Gift! The Disney Planner 2022: The TO DO List Solution is here! It combines a simple, powerful system for getting things done with encouragement and fun for Disney fans, including those who love Mickey, Marvel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pixar, princesses and more. Also, “The Disney Planner 2022: The TO DO List Solution” comes with a handy spiral binding for easy use.
Happy 80th birthday to Mickey Mouse’s corporate “rival” Bugs Bunny - who officially made his on-screen debut with that name in the Looney Tunes short “A Wild Hare,” on this day in 1940.
Courtesy of Top Disney
Bugs partly evolved from a popular Disney character of the 1930s, Max Hare.
Max was a wisecracking, sarcastic rabbit who was featured in a series of Disney’s Silly Symphony cartoons. One of the artists who worked on Max - Charlie Thorson, who’d also created the look of Disney’s Snow White - was asked to develop a similar looking bunny for Warner Brothers.
He christened him “Bugs.”
The folks at “Termite Terrace” (which is what the Warner Brothers animation building was dubbed early on) had an astounding output that revolutionized cartoon comedy.
Some of the creative staff members at WB, including directors and animators such as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng (an old friend and co-worker of Walt’s from the Kansas City studio), Robert McKimson, Tex Avery, Robert Clampett, Arthur Davis and Frank Tashlin had Disney connections, and are considered major figures in the art and history of traditional animation.
The humor in those Looney Tunes cartoons was off the wall, zanier than anything Disney was putting out. With constant repeats of them airing on television from the 1950s to the 1990s, they influenced generations of comedians and comedy writers.
Courtesy of Top Disney
The legendary Mel Blanc - voice of Bugs Bunny and all of the other classic WB characters - actually played a major role in a Disney film the same year Bugs debuted. He was Gideon the Cat from Pinocchio.
Blanc recorded hours of dialogue for Disney. Unfortunately, Walt himself thought that Gideon - like Dopey - would be funnier if he stayed silent. The only remnant of Blanc's work in the film are three hiccups.
Walt made it up to Blanc years later by hiring him as the voice of kooky Uncle Orville for the bath tub scene in the Carousel of Progress. To this day, you can still hear Blanc's distinctive voice in the show as it revolves all day long at Walt Disney World.
Though the rivalry between Disney and WB is a mostly friendly one, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny have only ever made one big screen appearance together, in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
On the PRESS CLUB C Podcast, enjoy Ray’s recent discussion with Chris Lucas about his career as an actor, author and Disney expert. Tune in right here!
