Over the past week I saw a few movies, more than I usually would see in a week. So I’d figured I write out some thoughts on them here:
1. The Super Mario Bros. Movie. (2023)
When I first saw the trailers and teasers for this movie, I was feeling very conflicted. I knew this movie was going to have a rough time due to how polarizing it’s been with the casting choices as well as illumination being the one to take up the movie. Unfortunately many of the things I was dreading about what this movie would be ended up being the case.
The things I did enjoy about this movie was the visuals. I think this movie does a fantastic job at capturing the look of a 3D animated Mario world. It’s certainly a standout for Illumination, as many of their movies have never been super complicated visually.
Unfortunately what really hurts this movie is the pacing and the writing. I know Mario games have never been known for great storytelling, but the games aren’t aiming to tell a narrative, it’s made to showcase level design and gameplay. In a feature length film, I can’t care about the journey the characters go through if they all feel one dimensional and never feel fleshed out, the movie just kinda expects the audience to fill in the blanks based on the games.
The soundtrack was fine for the most part, they were mainly orchestrated renditions of Mario music which was nice. But because this is also an Illumination movie, they couldn’t help themselves and there are a few licensed songs used in some scenes, and none of these choices fit the movie. The worst offender of this was Take On Me by Aha in the scene introducing the Kong Kingdom. It does not fit with the scene at all, and what makes it more bizarre is they originally had a rendition of the Donkey Kong theme but replaced it for the official release:
https://youtu.be/fSMFdQU745Q. I don’t understand this decision at all and it’s just an example of how gratuitous Illumination is with their music choices.
The movie at the very least is about as basic as you can get for a 3D animated Mario Movie, you could certainly do much worse than this, but you can also do a whole lot better. 3/10
2. Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)
I haven’t seen this movie since I was 10, and the child in me preferred to watch the recent Pixar movie that year, UP. I don’t blame myself for not liking it back then as it’s not exactly as accessible for kids compared to Pixar movies. I got way more out of this 2nd viewing as an adult and can appreciate better what the movie is going for.
Now I will say I’m not familiar with Wes Anderson’s films, as I’ve heard both this movie and Isle of Dogs are his signature style of filmmaking. Which is interesting considering these are the only animated movies he’s made, and I wonder how the style works in the context of live action.
I loved how much detail and thought was put into the animation, especially since this movie contains banter between the characters which not only helps makes the characters feel real, but also gives them more subtle movements that add to their emotions. It really feels like a ton of care was made to bring as much life to the world as possible.
The only main issue I had with this film is I wish they had shown a bit more of the world these characters and anthropomorphic animals lived in. Like we don’t know how much damage the hole digging on the tree caused to the rest of the animal society. As far as the movie is concerned the only ones that were chased out of their homes was the Fox family. Like how did it affect the Beaver Lawyer if their office or home was in the forest with the dam? It just felt like it came out of nowhere and I just wish we could have seen how much damage was done outside of the tree.
Still, I have a ton of appreciation for what this movie set out to do and I think it’s a beautiful looking stop motion film. 8/10
3. Isle of Dogs (2018)
I wasn’t expecting to love this movie as much as I did, but wow. This is the another stop motion movie directed by Wes Anderson, and it really feels like this movie had improved on some of the issues that were in Fantastic Mr Fox.
The setting was really interesting. Even though this film takes place in Japan, I liked how the film didn’t use subtitles for the Japanese speaking scenes, as it makes the audience relate to the dog characters not understanding what the humans are communicating. Even for some scenes that did heavily feature a ton of Japanese speaking, they were mostly done in a way that you could tell how they were feeling based on their body language, or if someone was translating the news broadcasts or when the mayor was speaking to the public.
I also liked how mature the themes in this movie were. Tacking topics such as Authoritarianism and Conspiracy, as the current Mayor clearly doesn’t want to compromise on his decision to banish dogs to trash island, as it’s what garnished his support in the election, even going as far as to prevent the truth of the matter from reaching the public.
Another huge improvement is the animation. I did love the animation in Fantastic Mr Fox was impressive, but Isle of Dogs is on a whole different level. There are many scenes in this movie that make me wonder how they were able to pull it off, such as the Sushi scene, but also scenes where a dog would be moving inside a cage, which on an animation perspective you’d think the cage has to be removed for each frame and a side effect would be the cage would be slightly shifted every time, but surprisingly the cage stayed dormant the entire scene, which goes to show how much thought and detail they put in the look and feel of this world, where instead of feeling like a stop motion movie, it feels like the characters are actually moving in real time.
The soundtrack is also incredible. There’s a constant sound of a steady drum beat in many of the tracks that is difficult to get out of your head, further putting this impending doom in your mind of what the characters are about to face.
There’s very few things I can really complain about with this film that wouldn’t change my overall experience. It is a rare once in a blue-moon film that not only tells and engaging story, but is also gives an incredible amount of visual details to pick up on with every watch. I hope Wes Anderson continues to make more amazing stop motion films like this. 10/10
I’m gonna try this again and hopefully it’ll work. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Unity’s annoying sync stability in libTAS is to blame.