Not to be "that guy," but...

[Captain Fabulous]

12 hours ago, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

Come to think of it, that's one complaint I do have about both versions of Little Mermaid. Real heroes need proper villains, and Uncle Walt knew kids love having seven shades of sriracha scared out of them. Ursula's stylish, evil and manipulative but not genuinely frightening, where quite a few others have been. Maleficient, Hades, Mei's pandazilla mom... even Syndrome has his moments (and he's quite prepared to casually murder ranks of supers, whole families and risk civilian casualties.)

I know quite a few children who were genuinely terrified when Ursula went all kaiju at the end.

[GM Crumpet]

23 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

Not one of you mentioned Bobcat Goldthwait.

who?

[TheOtherTed]

4 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

who?

The voice of Pain in Hercules.  How can this be?

[GM Crumpet]

4 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

The voice of Pain in Hercules.  How can this be?

Oh the guy with the silly voice. No idea who he is. Is he famous for something? I'm not from the US so some people don't really register on our consciousness across the pond. I've had to google no end of "Famous Superstars" to see why they are a big deal.

[Bionic_Flea]

33 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

who?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/25/bobcat-goldthwait-interview-police-academy-joy-ride

[GM Crumpet]

Oh police academy. I remember watching the first couple on video back in the 80s

[biostem]

I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent here, so please feel free to ignore me if so desired, but I really wish, instead of remakes of previous movies, that we'd get extensions or expansions of them.  For instance, my partner and I were discussing Lilo & Stitch, and how it'd be the perfect launching pad for a new space opera franchise - imagine a teenage or young adult Lilo as the first full-fledged human agent of the Galactic Federation - romping around the galaxy with Stitch, investigating crime, saving planets, and generally meeting interesting people and visiting amazing new places.  You could keep focus on the notion of Ohana/family, how different societies and lifestyles are just as valid as all others, but still keep people entertained with good action and deep storytelling...

[TheOtherTed]

1 hour ago, GM Crumpet said:

Oh the guy with the silly voice. No idea who he is. Is he famous for something?

Well, mainly, he was famous for being the guy with a silly voice.  He could also be a bit... energetic... with his stand-up routines and talk show appearances.

[GM Crumpet]

9 hours ago, biostem said:

I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent here, so please feel free to ignore me if so desired, but I really wish, instead of remakes of previous movies, that we'd get extensions or expansions of them.  For instance, my partner and I were discussing Lilo & Stitch, and how it'd be the perfect launching pad for a new space opera franchise - imagine a teenage or young adult Lilo as the first full-fledged human agent of the Galactic Federation - romping around the galaxy with Stitch, investigating crime, saving planets, and generally meeting interesting people and visiting amazing new places.  You could keep focus on the notion of Ohana/family, how different societies and lifestyles are just as valid as all others, but still keep people entertained with good action and deep storytelling...

There was the animated series and a couple of spin off movies, but yes that does sound fun. The problem is they rarely pull off a good sequel. I watched Frozen and thought it was wonderful. I watched Frozen 2 and thought it was terribly dull. They didn't really move the story along, they just tried to take what they thought people liked in the first film and make a film with those bullet points. Even the songs didn't pop like the first film. I didn't find any of them particularly memorable.

 

At least some of the direct to video films tried something different. Aladdin, Return of Jafar and King of thieves at least tried to make a coherent story, but (I'm probably in a minority) they overdid the genie in my opinion. Robin Williams was very talented, a genius even, but he could go too far in his wild tangents and like Jim Carey I always felt he worked better with a bit of discipline from the director.

 

I think it's just a problem with having a writers room. The films that work well are generally made by a person or small group who are all on the same page. Writers rooms smooth any edges over and act as an echo chamber throwing ideas out and going for a consensus. They always end up with the blandest and safest options instead of just telling a new story. They analyse why they think the first film was a success and then hope that giving the audience more of the same will make it successful. Then blame the fans when it's not.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

2 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

Robin Williams was very talented, a genius even, but he could go too far in his wild tangents and like Jim Carey I always felt he worked better with a bit of discipline from the director.

I don't know how much of the improv that Williams (or Woods) did still exists, but with that much material you can pick and choose your takes. They pretty much are a walking writer's room.

 

Similar deal/problem with Billy Crystal. His Princess Bride role as Miracle Max was supposed to be five minutes on-screen, give or take.

But teamed with the wonderful Carol Kane (who's coming to Strange New Worlds for Season 2), that one scene took three days' worth of 13th-century standup gags to film.

Cary Elwes had to be swapped out for a prop dummy because he couldn't control himself - which gives a whole new meaning to corpsing - and Patinkin had to take a day out from filming because he bruised a rib laughing. A lot of that B-roll still exists.

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

 The problem is they rarely pull off a good sequel.

...and the problem for that is that Disney orders a sequel be done and in the can in a certain period of time rather than let the writing crew ruminate over creating a truly organic extension to the story.  "Just duplicate the favorite bits from the original" seems to be the mantra of the Disney execs.  "As long as little kids see it has character 'X' it will sell."  Well, yes, they do, but few are the sequels that are still talked about a decade after release. (Full disclosure: former Disney Store castmember here.)

 

One exception to this was Pixar's The Incredibles II.  They had years to think on a good sequel, but the results were tepid at best, though certain scenes were quite good.    My guess is they'd kept it as a back-burner thought for too long, and eventually realized that Craig T. Nelson wasn't getting any younger, so they suddenly made it a front-burner project, rushing through it like I described above.  The results were sub-Parr.  (And it was painfully sad how ancient Mr. Nelson's voice sounded.  I love his acting, and have wondering if a little more time and care, possibly with a voice coach could have returned his voice recordings to a 50-ish Bob Parr.)  I long for a proper third movie to redeem the situation, possibly using Respeecher to handle Bob Parr's voice.

[GM Crumpet]

8 hours ago, Techwright said:

...and the problem for that is that Disney orders a sequel be done and in the can in a certain period of time rather than let the writing crew ruminate over creating a truly organic extension to the story.  "Just duplicate the favorite bits from the original" seems to be the mantra of the Disney execs.  "As long as little kids see it has character 'X' it will sell."  Well, yes, they do, but few are the sequels that are still talked about a decade after release. (Full disclosure: former Disney Store castmember here.)

 

One exception to this was Pixar's The Incredibles II.  They had years to think on a good sequel, but the results were tepid at best, though certain scenes were quite good.    My guess is they'd kept it as a back-burner thought for too long, and eventually realized that Craig T. Nelson wasn't getting any younger, so they suddenly made it a front-burner project, rushing through it like I described above.  The results were sub-Parr.  (And it was painfully sad how ancient Mr. Nelson's voice sounded.  I love his acting, and have wondering if a little more time and care, possibly with a voice coach could have returned his voice recordings to a 50-ish Bob Parr.)  I long for a proper third movie to redeem the situation, possibly using Respeecher to handle Bob Parr's voice.

I loved Incredibles and was excited for a sequel as I watched the end credits for the first one. I thought, OK it'll take 3 or 4 years, but it'll come. How could it not? The first one was wildly successful, but we had to wait so long a lot of people had lost interest. As you say, it just seemed to be "Everyone liked Jack-Jack, make sure he's in it doing wacky stuff". "Edna Mole was a hit, make sure she's in it".  And the Jack and Edna stuff was indeed great. Unfortunately the story was just "meh". The first one was exciting, complicated, had fun characters, a great villain with superb motivation, exotic locations, and the sequel lacked any of that. I think they just went too simple. They had the set pieces they knew everyone would love then tried to make a narrative to link them all together. It wasn't a bad film, it just wasn't in the same league as the first one.