Board 8 > Board 8 Watches and Ranks Animated Movies 4 - The Results Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just put La jeune fille sans mains high on my list because it's in French

Johnbobb posted...
85% audience score with 2500+ reviews for Sita is wild though, I figured it'd at least be polarizing

I think this just serves as a reminder that the demographic for this project is incredibly specific, since almost all the rankers come from a sub group of the already very specific community that is B8. It's not that surprising then that most of the votes for a given movie might be way different to how it's generally perceived by most people who see it, and Sita placing 29th is no more objective or indisputable a statement of its quality than its 100% RT score or the awards it won at European film festivals.

I don't want this to be taken as a personal slight against Ermine, but it seems a little silly to me to get upset that not everyone hates your least favorite movie or to claim that if they enjoyed it they must have some sort of "wrong" reason for doing so.

It's all good. Overreacting is MY thing, it's just fun to do. I mean, I have all 5 of my bottom 5 still in but only 4 movies have dropped so far so we are far from this being actually outrageous.

I think at the end of the day, it's just frustrating that movies like Sita, or Girl without Hands or whatever get a pass from people just because they are different and artsy. You can clearly see this in their RT scores.

Zigzagoon posted...

It's all good. Overreacting is MY thing, it's just fun to do. I mean, I have all 5 of my bottom 5 still in but only 4 movies have dropped so far so we are far from this being actually outrageous.

I think at the end of the day, it's just frustrating that movies like Sita, or Girl without Hands or whatever get a pass from people just because they are different and artsy. You can clearly see this in their RT scores.

I fully agree with this mindset, btw. I feel like 'artsy' movies are given far more leeway than standard consumer popcorn movies, even if they're poorly written or whatnot.

26. Strange World

Inviso: 7
Karo: 12
Johnbobb: 17
Mythiot: 24
Suprak: 24
Plasma: 26
Red: 26
Ermine: 27
Evillord: 28

Total: 191

Inviso: Im honestly disappointed in Disney for not advertising this more (and seeming to leave it to die in theaters), because this was a genuinely solid movie. I liked Atlantis and I LOVED Treasure Planet, and this felt right in-line with those two as just a fun adventure movie. It had that 1950s serial adventure tone to it, complete with the Clade theme song, but I love the fact that you start of with the adventurer and his less-adventurous son, the son finds success on his own, only to hear the call of adventure once more as all of his hard work is in jeopardy. But more than that, I love the idea of this film exploring a strange, bright and colorful world, only to realize that its more Fantastic Voyage than anything else. All of the visuals you saw throughout the film come back in a completely different light when you realize the movie is taking place inside this giant organism. That, to me, really helped sell the film. Im also always a sucker for father/son relationships in Disney films, and this is that twice over, so thats a big deal.
I just feel the need to add one more note though, regarding the movies performance at the box office. I hate the fact that Disney has had so many movies that brag the first gay X, when its some background character that they can easily cut out of the film to appease hatemongers. But this film has not just a gay main character, but also a loving interracial couple as another pair of main characters. It manages to be woke without coming across as heavy-handed, or just trying to pander or anything like that. The characters are who they are, and things are shown, not told, and the end result is a likable cast overall. Its just really disappointing that Disney had so little faith in this one and threw it to the wolves the way they did. Its not a bad movie. Not the best, but definitely not bad. I mean, its pretty high on MY list, and I have only 5 films left.

Karo: The legendary Claude family, known both for their knack for adventure and being ignorant boomers, set out on an expedition into a mysterious system of underground caverns in order to protect their way of life.
Conflict soon arises between the grandpa (who wants to set fire to everything he doesn't understand), the father (who wants his son to be just like him, and is also afraid of everything he doesnt understand), and the son, who is thoughtful, independent and frustrated that nobody seems to understand his generation.
This heavy handed approach goes for the low hanging fruit and tries to make me hate the patriarchs of the Claude family for laughs, but they succeed far too well and I am just annoyed by these two characters throughout the whole runtime of the movie due to their egomaniacal arrogance and their seeming inability to comprehend any of Ethan's mouth noises.
So the world they live turns out to actually be a giant creature, something they shamelessly stole from Xenoblade while hoping people wouldnt realize and would think they were being super cool and original. The three generations of Claudes then patch things up in a very standard feel good kind of ending. Yay.
In many ways the movie reminds me of the adventure movies of the Disney dark era (Atlantis, Treasure Planet), and though Strange World is vastly superior to those films it still steps into some of the same pitfalls. Namely, too heavy of focus on the setting, and subsequent neglect of the cast of characters, because I honestly can't think of a more forgettable group of people in the whole modern Disney era than the Claude family. I mean its cool we got our first openly gay Disney protagonist, but why does he have to be just so... boring?
Strange World is a perfectly 'fine' movie with a good message about keeping an open mind, but in terms of the Disney revival era that is actually quite low and I can't help see this as a misstep from the studio.

Johnbobb: This film would've benefitted a LOT by losing about a solid 20 or so minutes. I enjoyed it a decent but, but it absoluitely dragged at times in the middle, despite almost always being visually interesting to look at. I enjoyed the characters and the intergenerational struggles they presented. What the film did best was in how it handled that dynamic, with each generation (while usually being well-intentioned) usually refusing to acknowledge the perspective of the generations to come after. I rolled my eyes at the opening "I'm not you, dad" scene but thought to myself that at least we got it out of the way early instead of having it be the peak of the conflict like so many movies before it. And then it does it again at the peak of the conflict anyway. Not the most original story but far from the worst and overall an enjoyable time

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Plasma: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, minus the charm, conflict, and suspense. Aside from a poignant father-son moment near the end, Strange World plays everything ridiculously safe and delivers little beyond its vivid visuals.
Also Did I really watch a scene where a blob creature escapes a locked closet, unlocks the door, and then returns back inside so a dog can open the door instead? Seriously?

Red: I really don't want to get into it too deeply, but I'm kind of sad this movie bombed so hard because this is absolutely being used for nefarious means. The movie is just bad, it shouldn't be blamed on inclusion or anything like that. I tried to rewatch this film for this list, I just couldn't do it. Its boring, every attempt pretty much resulted in immediate sleep. I'm not sure what they thought they were selling, but with how animation has advanced and with so many different "strange world" movies already out there, the world itself needed to be interesting to be a draw. Instead the world just has a giant wall and generic weird creatures; they don't bring much to the table. It is being explored, also not bringing much to the table. But at the core we're just getting doubled up on the parent/child conflict, which if you look at this list animation is already full up on that regard. We know how this story ends before it begins, none of the family is a villain so they are all going to come to understand each others differences and get along hurray. So we're rehashing what everyone else has already been doing in a world that never amounts to more than strangely boring. Oh and it was all just an allegory for fossil fuels or some sort of climate change thing. I'm sure this was well intentioned but it feels shoehorned in to give the film a larger purpose that also never amounts to being particularly interesting. Strange World was very well-intentioned but also doesn't dispel doubts that Disney's creative juices are currently running on empty.

Ermine: GENERATIONAL CONFLICT!
DO YOU LIKE GENERATIONAL CONFLICT? BECAUSE HOO BOY DO WE GOT IT FOR YOU HERE!
Fuck this movie, man. It's so trash. None of the main characters are interesting or likable in any way at all. I hate all of them and I wanted all of them to die. There was zero sense of danger because apparently, Disney doesn't do villains anymore so guess what? Now you get nothing. You get nothing interesting at all, ever, because that's Disney now, Yay!
Even the plot twist of them actually being on the back of some creature is lost because it's so completely nonsensical. I don't believe for a second that they couldn't see past a couple of mountains to see the ocean and also that they couldn't travel past or through the mountains in some way. THERE WERE LIKE A FEW MOUNTAINS in the way. None of it made any sense.
Maybe just everyone that exists on the back of the creature are just all complete idiots. I mean, I already believe that so it's not too far-fetched. 0 laughs. Unfunny movie with 0 jokes that hit. The stupid "OHHH I WANNA MERCHANDISE IT." Guy? If anyone actually laughed at that, I hate you as a person.
Trash movie. Belongs in a dumpster fire.

Evillord: The Disney Animation Studios film no one knows exists. Maybe they didn't advertise it because the main character's son is explicitly gay and they were worried about marketing issues in less accepting regions such as China or Texas, or maybe it's because they knew the film is garbage. I thought it was cool that the family's pet dog had a missing leg, and the setting has some potentially interesting aspects, most notably that the entire world is on the back of a giant turtle, which is only revealed near the end and hardly explored. That's all it has going for it. The reject Wreck-It Ralph character designs are disconcerting and the writing is godawful. None of the characters ever shut up, it's just this constant deluge of forced faux-charismatic dialog hammering in the most trite and obvious story beats imaginable. The opening scene has the main character and his dad trying to climb a mountain until the son sees a random plant and decides for no reason that it's so important he has to stop the expedition and study it, leading to an incredibly contrived argument after which the dad disappears for 25 years. The random plant turned out to be a miraculous all-purpose power source, but then one of the other members of the old expedition shows up to inform the main character that the plant is under threat and they have to go on an adventure to save it, where, surprise surprise, they find the dad again and sort out their family issues after like 50 minutes of tiresome, obvious, petty arguments. The environmentalism theme that comes in later on is also way too simplistic to be worth a damn. The film basically imagines that you could solve The Climate Emergency by shooting at a big bad guy. Oh yes, and regarding the gay son, he has a bf with about 30 seconds of screentime so the film doesn't explore their relationship at all, they just keep having painfully awkward dialog where all the other characters remind the audience that the son has a crush on a boy. This is Disney's superficial approach to representation and about as lazy as the rest of the writing in this shithouse movie.

Outlier:

Inviso: 50
Ermine: 38
Evillord: 35
Karo: 28
Plasma: 27
Johnbobb: 22
Mythiot: 18
Red: 16
Suprak: 14

Ill take that dropping.

Yellow Submarine is my next pick

I dont know why Disney has gone so anti-villain.

Their biggest period of success always had iconic villains.

Their animated movies went from surprise twist villain to now just no villain.

The live action movies sounded fun when they were going to be twisted villain takes on the old stories but are now just bloated scene for scene remakes.

It is such a weird and boring choice .

also back to back spot on.

With an outside shot of back to back to back.

I was not expecting that one tbh

Letting it ride on yellow

Leafeon13N posted...

I dont know why Disney has gone so anti-villain.

Their biggest period of success always had iconic villains.

Their animated movies went from surprise twist villain to now just no villain.

The live action movies sounded fun when they were going to be twisted villain takes on the old stories but are now just bloated scene for scene remakes.

It is such a weird and boring choice .

I actually somewhat disagree with this. What they're doing is worse than that and they have character that do truly awful, reprehensible stuff that rivals what their most iconic of villains do, but then hand waves it away because tee hee they weren't so bad after all!

And wow I went from competing for the biggest outlier in satire to the lowest satire in animated films, huh?

Both Lightyear and Strange World are similar for me, in that they felt utterly lifeless. We do movie nights with our kids and we were watching Lightyear and my wife was chiding them for not paying attention and I was like "no, they're right this time." Strange World was slightly better but that might just be because I didn't have any sort of expectations connected to it like I did Lightyear.

Going with Early Man for next.

No Mythiot write ups :weary:

PAYOUT TIME! Exdeath makes that strange money and closes in on JB!

Vegas Odds on #25:

+750 Yellow Submarine (1968)
+750 Sing 2 (2021)
+750 Vivo (2021)
+1000 The Girl Without Hands (2016)
+1000 Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2017)
+1000 Early Man (2018)
+1250 The Willoughbys (2020)
+1250 The House (2022)
+1250 Wendell and Wild (2022)

+200 ANY UNLISTED MOVIE (+2000 if guessed correctly)

Vegas Leaderboard:
1) Johnbobb $1700 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, The Hobbit 1000)
2) Evillordexdeath $1300 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, Strange World 600)

The House Won On:

• Sita Sings the Blues (+500)
• Lightyear (+1000)

Still predicting Ne Zha, since it's not on the payout list yet.

Leafeon13N posted...

I dont know why Disney has gone so anti-villain.

Hateable/evil villains have fallen out of style in recent years, but Disney likely excludes villains altogether in order to look as family-friendly as possible.

@Mythiot

Alright Zigzagoon, but you're not going to want my opinions so badly when we eventually get to Girl Without Hands

--Lightyear is not a great film, but it's made even worse by its framing device of being the in-universe movie Buzz Lightyear was based on. I'm sorry, but I can't buy that at all. The Buzz Lightyear we know from Toy Story came from a cheesy old-fashioned adventure story of good vs. evil, not this muddled melancholy mess, there's just no reconciling between the two, story or character-wise. Why not make it an in-universe reboot instead? You could have a post-credit scene of Andy seeing it with his kids and being like "Eh, it's not MY Buzz, but I'm happy you enjoyed it."

Honestly, it gets off to a pretty good start! It's genuinely heartbreaking seeing Buzz return to the outpost every failed attempt and seeing his friend get older until the inevitable happens. And the animation's pretty impressive, even if Buzz's character design kind of clashes with everything else. Unfortunately, as soon as we get to the Zergs, the film loses what soul it had and we get dull sequences of Buzz and his irritating sidekicks running from one setpiece to another. It's bland and by the numbers till the awful plot twist of who this Zerg is and the time-travel nonsense of his backstory.

Just watch Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, it does Buzz Lightyear's in-universe adventures much more faithfully to the Toy Story character. As for Sox, he's okay. Too stiff and limited in expressions to be that endearing honestly. Six months later, Hi-Fi Rush would give us the most adorable robot cat ever anyway.

--All these years later, who would have thought that this humble television movie would still be the best adaptation of The Hobbit we'd have. Kind of sad actually, can we get Cartoon Saloon the rights somehow?

Okay okay, I've still got a lot of affection for this film, even if hardcore Tolkien fans hate it. The animation is crude, but charming in an old storybook way, the landscapes can be genuinely beautiful sometimes. I love those spider designs for the record. And it's much more faithful to the original tone and message of the book than Peter Jackson's bloated mess.

Unfortunately, it has the opposite problem in that instead of having too much bloat, everything speeds by far too quickly, giving it a frantic pace that harms several scenes, particularly the Unexpected Party and trolls from the beginning. The humor is what made those scenes so beloved in the book and the film just blazes through them like it's going through a checklist, no time for jokes. And my man/bear Beorn gets left out entirely, though that might give him more dignity than the Jackson films where the party break into his house instead of...ahem, getting off topic.

Despite my criticisms, I do really enjoy this film, cheesy soundtrack and all.

--I'll get to Strange World tomorrow morning.

I'll go with Ne Zha as well.

For some reason my brain can't keep Strange World and Fantastic Planet straight. I keep wanting to call it Strange Planet.

For Vegas I'll say Vivo is about to become Muerto

I willl also choose to bank on Ne Zha.

Mythiot posted...

Alright Zigzagoon, but you're not going to want my opinions so badly when we eventually get to Girl Without Hands

:weary:

All the Ne Zha guesses are making me want to switch to it.

Zigzagoon posted...

All the Ne Zha guesses are making me want to switch to it.

Don't do it, coward

25. Ne Zha

Plasma: 8
Suprak: 12
Johnbobb: 14
Evillord: 19
Mythiot: 25
Red: 25
Karo: 26
Ermine: 29
Inviso: 30

Total: 188

Plasma: When Ne Zha opened with a lengthy info-dump, I feared the worst, but this one kept getting better and better. If this were an RPG, Id play it. Loved seeing a child demon-hero as the main character, and his arc kept me guessing. The animation effects were fun and engaging to watch. Bonus points for the battle scene where bubbles turn characters body parts to stone.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Johnbobb: This is probably the movie I was the most torn on. It's almost like two movies combined into one. One movie, about 2/3 of the runtime, is an incredible folklore driven epic with thrilling fantasy combat and interesting lore and humor and hart. Kind of like Kung Fu Panda. The other movie is a sloppy direct-to-video animation with ugly, cheap characters and fart and snot jokes. It legitimately gave me whiplash, because there's often not a transition from one to the other. But man, the good stuff here is good enough that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and would watch it again, even if the less good stuff means I probably won't recommend it to people.

Evillord: This is the first film in some sort of planned Chinese Mythology Cinematic Universe, complete with a post-credits stinger advertising the next movie. It's loosely based on the story of a protection deity who appears in two chapters of the Investiture of the Gods and is also described in Journey to the West, but here the figure of Ne Zha is reinterpreted as Naruto. A child container for a demonic power who is prejudicially hated by his village and grows up as a prankster when really he just wants to be loved, gives all the villains pep talks and turns them into better people and defies his fate in extremely Shnen anime style. From my Wikipedia synopisis-based understanding of the original myth, he originally kills the dragon Ao Bing (who is just some dragon who gets sent after him) and then carves himself up and sends his flesh to his mother and bones to his father to prevent retribution from the dragons. In this version Ao Bing is his prettyboy friend and they have the dynamic of pals fated to be enemies until they defy that fate and make up, essentially the Sasuke in this analogy. They even do the rigmarole from early Naruto where Sasuke loses to the bad guy, but the bad guy needs to reveal his greatest trick in the process, allowing Naruto to come in and beat him. At least it gives both characters some conflicting motivations, there's a sequence where Ao Bing is torn between helping Ne Zha and going along with the schemes his dad and teacher have raised him for. It gives him a little nuance. I've seen enough anime to be tired of Shnen story tropes and the animation itself is incredibly so-so, but I at least found it funny how distinct the Naruto vibe ended up being.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Red: A few of these films have some pretty bad messaging, Ne Zha is up there with the worst. Remember, life isn't about enjoying it, being good for some sense of fulfillment, or even doing good because its good for you personally. No no no, its all about doing good because that is how people are going to see you when you are dead. Even if you are going to die, you don't get to enjoy life at all because that would shame your living relatives. The motives here are dubious at best. The random villagers are all horrible. Ne Zha's parents are horrible. But the most outlandish thing that stands out to me here. In the process of the climactic fight of the film, everyone gets dragged into the paintint world. Kind of a cool concept, you think we're going to get some cool setpiece or whatever and it might be kind of interesting. Nope we're just there for a fart joke. It might be the single worst scene on this list.

Karo: So there's this weird crystal head floating in the sky and the forces of heaven split it into two orbs one of which is so evil the it must be smote by God's lightning, but only in three years time because that would be more dangerous and irresponsible. They decide to implant the good orb into a pregnant woman for some reason but use the evil orb by mistake and the good orb ends up raised by dragons. Thus, Chinese Bart Simpson is born to a family of kung fu demon hunters and our story begins. Are you with me so far? No?
Confusing narrative aside, this is something that has no fucking clue what kind of film it wants to be, and the tone shifts wildly from dark inner turmoil to characters being propelled by flatulence. I have a hard time understanding what the movie is trying to make me feel at any given point other than utter bewilderment. It is honestly like someone marathoned a bunch of really dubious western CGI films and said 'this is what I want my artistic vision to be'.
Regardless, the film is a mess of substandard animation, complete lack of understanding of basic story structure, and full to the brim with unlikable and unpleasant characters with incomprehensible motives.
Ne Zha is the highest grossing animated movie in Chinese box office history, and though it horrifies me to say it, I fear the Chinese masses might actually have even worse taste than the American ones.

Ermine: I don't know if the dub for this film is just so god-awful, but I'm going to chalk it up to the movie just being trash as well. The movie has moments of looking cool, mostly during some of the fight sequences, and then during any other period of the film, it looks ugly as sin.
The character, Ne Zha, is one of the most unlikable and unrelatable characters of ALL TIME. And that's saying something. I do not understand in any fashion why this movie has good reviews and several times I stopped the movie to make sure I had the right version. I honestly thought I had downloaded the wrong film and was watching a terrible parody or something.
I hated Ne Zha SO fucking much. His stupid shit-eating grin every single time, I wanted to punch him in the face over and over. Nothing was funny. Nothing was even remotely interesting. Oh god, and the stupid fat ass mentor, don't even get me started. Was he somehow even more unlikable than Ne Zha? I dunno, that's a tough line to beat.
Then you have the other "child?"... For a character that was born from a dragon, it really would have been cool if we could have seen his dragon form for more than like 20 seconds.
I could honestly go on and on about how trash this film is but it's not worth my time. I still cannot believe how highly rated this film is?! Even now... did I watch the right film? Did I download the wrong thing? I must have. Right? This can't be real... This movie can't be THIS bad? Can it? Something is wrong...

Inviso: I cant believe this fucking bullshit was almost two hours long. I hated EVERY fucking minute of this. This hearkened back to classic Disney bullshit, with a bratty, obnoxious lead character who made the film utterly unwatchable. Ne Zha is created as a result of some spiritual treachery that leads to a baby being infused with a demon spirit instead of a heavenly spirit, and as a result, the main character of the film becomes an obnoxious piece of shit (as babies/children often are), cranked up to fucking eleven.
For like, the first eighty percent of the film, he is portrayed as uncaring, bratty, and just generally mean-spirited to everyone around him. The village he lives in hates him, yet its NEVER portrayed like their hatred is irrational. Even when they mistakenly blame him for something, he goes out of his way to behave far worse than what theyre accusing him of. This attitude continues, until a random flashback hits and shows the audience a deleted scene showing Ne Zhas dad willing to sacrifice himself to protect his son from a curse. I would willing to tolerate this this kind of purposeful withholding of information, if it didnt feel forced onto the plot to makes us give a shit about this character.
And wouldnt you know it, after being a piece of shit the whole movie up to that point, and throwing a fucking tantrum as his birthday party when he learned that he actually IS a demonits like a switch flips, and suddenly every action he takes is unequivocally heroic. Theres no character growthits literally just a switch flipping. And what makes it more frustrating is that he becomes the hero, fighting Ao Bing, after Ao Bing ALSO makes a completely stupid heel turn and tries to murder an entire villagebecause the bad guy justtells him to? Oh, but then both he and Ne Zha (who are friends because theyre both outcasts), BOTH turn good and help each other save everyone.
I feel like this would have been more enjoyable if Ao Bing was the main character, growing up in solitude as a dragon, even though he was given the heavenly pearl, because him going from villain to hero could feel like legitimate character growth, plus Ne Zha might be more tolerable as a side character in Ao Bings story. Itd feel like Ao Bing, a dragon, having to prove himself a hero by tempering the demon child raised in the human world. But alas, instead they decided to just go hard with Ne Zha as their overbearing brat, and Ao Bing barely makes an appearance until over half the movie was over, at which point his plot points get rushed along extremely fast. The whole plot, tone, and pacing just made this unbearable to watch; especially for such a long runtime

Outlier:

Inviso: 55
Plasma: 44
Ermine: 42
Evillord: 41
Johnbobb: 33
Karo: 29
Suprak: 27
Mythiot: 18
Red: 16

*fist bump for Ermine*

Damn, figured Ne Zha wouldn't do great but still had hope

That was actually my prediction for Ermine's last place until he started going on against fork without hand

Let it ride

Glad this is out. Man this movie sucked.

Whether Ne Zha is Chinese Naruto or Chinese Bart Simpson will go down as the great scholarly debate of this project

Yeah Ao Bing's little heel-turn is poorly written thinking back on it, I appreciated that they gave him some inner conflict but the execution was definitely wanting.

I think the combination of mythic battling and fart jokes might make more sense in Chinese culture, Journey to the West is similar from what I could get through of that. Most of the book is extremely dense theological descriptions of various deities that I was never sure if the author invented on the spot or sourced from another text and expected the reader to be familiar with, but it's also a children's comedy adventure story with jokes about fornication, male pregnancy, and at least one instance of Sun Wukong pissing to insult someone, similar to that scene with the trap conga line in Ne Zha. Some canonical Western Literature can be like this too, like the scenes upon scenes of dick jokes in Shakespeare. On the other hand though the mythological Taiyi Zhenren apparently isn't anything like the drunken and flatulent version from the movie. It really takes a LOT of liberties with the source material.

Sticking with Vivo as my Vegas prediction

If you need me, I'll be mortgaging one of my casinos.

Vegas Odds on #24:

+750 Yellow Submarine (1968)
+750 Sing 2 (2021)
+750 Vivo (2021)
+1000 Early Man (2018)
+1250 The Girl Without Hands (2016)
+1250 Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2017)
+1250 The Willoughbys (2020)
+1250 The House (2022)
+1250 Wendell and Wild (2022)
+1500 Turning Red (2022)

+200 ANY UNLISTED MOVIE (+2000 if guessed correctly)

Vegas Leaderboard:
1) Inviso $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
1) Mythiot $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
1) Red $2000 (Ne Zha 2000)
4) Johnbobb $1700 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, The Hobbit 1000)
5) Evillordexdeath $1300 (The Angry Birds Movie 700, Strange World 600)

The House Won On:

• Sita Sings the Blues (+500)
• Lightyear (+1000)

PrinceKaro posted...

25. Ne Zha

Plasma: 8
Suprak: 12

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/2/3/AABj6fAAEtB_.jpg

Casino gonna need to take out a loan here soon.

I actually really liked about half or so of Ne Zha. Which made up for the half I did not like. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. But I would say it was the movie I was most pleasantly surprised by on this list. I saw it was on Tubi and was like "oh ok this is a bottom five film" but thought it was pretty solid. Not great. I'm not recommending it to anyone but I enjoyed my time with it.

I'll bet the house on The House.

It's bonkers to me that people think The House would be coming up any time soon, but maybe these unknown quantities all put it at 30 or something *baffled*

Given what has already been eliminated, I'm going to make a long shot guess of Wendell & Wild.

how ron's gone wrong hasn't dropped off yet completely astounds me

Back to back to back spot ons for me.

Zigzagoon posted...

It's bonkers to me that people think The House would be coming up any time soon, but maybe these unknown quantities all put it at 30 or something *baffled*

Thats how I felt when you predicted The Girl Without Hands

And also when redacted showed up in Vegas

War, you didn't watch Ne Zha

It was so so SO much worse than Ron's Gone Wrong

Also the reason Ne Zha rates so highly is pretty obvious: Money.

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

how ron's gone wrong hasn't dropped off yet completely astounds me

I actually think that one has a good chance of doing well, and might be the winner of the smaller-studio kids' films like Abominable and Over the Moon were last year.

Johnbobb posted...

Thats how I felt when you predicted The Girl Without Hands

And also when redacted showed up in Vegas

I would've reacted the same way last year but it makes more sense to me knowing that movies in the artsy genre have done so poorly on the previous lists, like It's Such a Beautiful Day in 26th and Persepolis below Sing. Yellow Sub is like 95% sure to bite the dust before Girl Without Hands or Birdboy though.

Yellow Sub probably is just next.

There is a lot to like about Strange World. The world itself is very beautiful and the setting and central premise of the movie was pretty cool, even if it's been done before (My first thought was Bionicle) And I can't complain about getting another adventure film in the vein of Atlantis and Treasure Planet. Unfortunately, the film is so focused on filling the scenes up with mediocre action and dialogue that we never really get to take it all in, nor the characters, who are likable, but never satisfyingly developed. The movie should have focused a lot more on either its central premise and allegory, or the family dynamics, both of which had a lot of potential but got shortchanged.

I admire Ne Zha's ambition and the animation is pretty impressive for foreign 3D animation, which is usually pretty bad. Got to learn quite a bit about Chinese mythology too. The central conflict is a pretty interesting examination of "nature" vs. "nurture" and destiny, unfortunately the pacing is pretty awful, and the story is pretty needlessly complicated. Very much worth a watch though.

24. Yellow Submarine

Evillord: 1
Mythiot: 8
Johnbobb: 16
Ermine: 22
Suprak: 23
Karo: 25
Inviso: 27
Plasma: 28
Red: 29

Total: 179

Evillord: The chronology of our somewhat rough-looking list of films begins with one bona-fide classic I should probably have watched like 15 years ago. With its grey depiction of England and the ugly, even disturbing figures that populate it, not to mention music from a famous British rock band, this put me in mind of The Wall, but while that film has the solid throughline of the album's track listing and Pink's mental degeneration, Yellow Sub is a phantasmagoric odyssey through the Fab Four's entire catalog - including some previously unreleased tracks - and through strange seas full of strange beings. This is an insane movie. The way John Lennon is introduced is that the submariner Young Fred goes into a house with Ringo Starr where they have the hallway setup from Scooby Doo, except instead of a chase scene there's a stampede of random images - some kind of velociraptor in a party hat, a floating bowler cap, a giant hand emerging from a portal, and a boiled egg in a jewelled cup. Then they find Frankenstein's monster, which Ringo brings to life, whereupon it takes a pill, transforms into Lennon and says "Hey Ringo, I've just had the strangest dream." I'm sure it's all essentially non-sequitur and you're probably intended to take LSD before you watch it, but the way the Beatles respond to all the bizarre happenings with stereotypically stiff upper lips and dry wordplay ("Perhaps time has gone on strike. What for? Shorter hours,") makes for a perfectly transcendental experience even sober. The cast's non reactions leave the viewer free to make what they want of everything. When the band do finally reach their destination, a paradise named Pepper Land invaded by Blue Meanies, and the villains' greatest weapon "The Glove" is utterly impotent against a rendition of "All You Need is Love", it feels like such a profound depiction of the kind of psychedelic, all-accepting spiritualism The Beatles were trying to convey at this point in time (though I do find myself wishing that scene were the ending as a result...) Of course, it's all made even better thanks to music from the greatest band in the history of rock.

Mythiot: *no writeup submitted*

Johnbobb: I had brownies available to me and I didn't think to eat them before watching this and I deeply regret it

Ermine: This film probably would have faired a good amount better if it just stuck to slapping Beatles songs on and having weird and interesting stuff happening in the background. Any time they tried to have any sort of plot, things fell apart and it became so much less interesting. I'll even go as far and say that the whole final act was complete garbage and uninteresting in every way. If I was basing this off the final third of the movie, it'd be bottom 5 for SURE.
Just give me good Beatles songs and trippy stuff to look at and I'll be fine, I don't need these shit blue meanies, please put them back in the trash.

Suprak: *no writeup submitted*

Karo: When a magical kingdom under the sea is taken over by the evil blueberry people, the only ones who can save the day are the Beatles for some reason. So they set sail on an extradimensional submarine of a certain color and then do an astounding amount of drugs.
The plot is a mite thin, and dialogue mostly consists of the Beatles saying things that are supposed to be humorous or something. Like, I don't think I have ever heard so many terrible jokes in a single movie before. It's like nobody can go a full minute without mumbling out some cringey quips that call to mind something your dad would say that youd have to pretend was funny before running out of the room to bang your head against a wall.
There are some interesting things going on with regards to the style, but it never fully gets realized due to how low the production quality in most places. Worse, there is a tendency to resort to garish flashing light effects in a truly awful decision that renders some scenes nearly unwatchable. Seriously, don't watch this film if you have any sort of photosensitivity or epilepsy because you will die.
Are there bright spots? Certainly. What they did with the stylization was visionary, especially for the time, and a wonderful love filled ending featuring a magic of friendship villain reform which was unheard of in an industry dominated by Disney and their black and white moral dichotomy.
The group's songs of course remain stellar and unlike with 'Help!' actually do have a token relevance to things going on in the movie.
Its influence in undeniable, yet just like Toy Story it has become incredibly dated and left far in the dust by an animation industry that has long since surpassed it.

Inviso: I feel like theres a specific timeframe from like, the late sixties to the early seventies where there are just a ton of movies being put out that are fucking WEIRD drug trips. This isnt the first such film weve seen over the years of our ranking topics, or even the first chaotic Beatles movie, for that matter. Its justits definitely a musical, and its a case of making just a complete nonsense movie about goofy shenanigans (that arent especially funny or interesting, instead focusing on being psychedelic or something) in order to fit the Beatles weird musical catalogue at the time. But theres no real plot, and the stakes feel completely pointless because theres no real plot. I wound up really REALLY bored watching this as a result.

Plasma: First movie on our list is a clunker. The story is nonsensical, and the humor and trippy animations barely offset the narrative shortcomings. Had I grown up worshiping the Beatles instead of Guns N Roses, I mightve been more receptive to this one, but it just didnt work for me.

Red: If you just want Beatles music, I'm sure this is fine. If you want any sort of a plot, any sort of value beyond the music, sorry you got to look somewhere else. Unfortunately this was a ranking of animated movies, not just music set to a bunch of nonsense. There just isn't anything to invest in here, everything is nonsense for the convenience of stuffing in a bunch of Beatles music set to an animation of someones experiences on various drugs.

Outlier:

Evillord: 64
Inviso: 58
Plasma: 48
Ermine: 44
Johnbobb: 41
Mythiot: 34
Karo: 30
Suprak: 28
Red: 21

There are some guys in my hometown who remind me of Jeremy Hillary Boob, Fudd.

Hell yeah

Onto sing 2

Huh...

That is the most odd number 1 I've ever seen.

And I thought I liked the Beatles. They are one of my favorite bands.

Clearly it's nothing compared to Evil's obsession.

o.o

(Part of the problem was probably a lot of the songs used in the movie aren't my favorite Beatles songs.)

Eh... I dunno, the third act would have still been trash either way.