Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

[Anonitolia]

Just most of everything is dead with only some (emphasis on some btw) diamonds under the bottom of the mountain of rough.

the point is that indie animation was hit the hardest, not that it's the only thing that was killed by that change

 

[TVB]

the point is that indie animation was hit the hardest, not that it's the only thing that was killed by that change

And my point is in general, and not just indie either.

 

[Anonitolia]

And my point is in general, and not just indie either.

that's fair, though it wasn't what was being discussed

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

the point is that indie animation was hit the hardest, not that it's the only thing that was killed by that change

Even mainstream animation has become indie, so to speak. People used to be trained properly in animation in the James Baxter Genndy Tartakovsky days, now studios pick hires based off Twitter and Tumblr feeds. A lot of the general problems in animation post 2010 can be attributed to studios investing a lot less in 2d and shifting to 3d, more than it can be attributed to wokeism although that plays a part too. Even anime suffers some problems due to the same reasons although that has more technical problems than content problems. Not every westerner is Japanese and can work under stress with less pay to produce quality animation. Unless animation is taken more seriously and studios are willing to pump money, nothing will change and will continue to get worse.

 

[TVB]

that's fair, though it wasn't what was being discussed

It is actually. And speaking of

A lot of the general problems in animation post 2010 can be attributed to studios investing a lot less in 2d and shifting to 3d, more than it can be attributed to wokeism although that plays a part too.

And it's not just having companies switch from 2D to CG nor the idea of leftist identity politics and other wokisms, but also the fact that even the adult animation seen on TV or streaming platforms 2010s onward have to be more like sitcoms by aping whatever humor was used in either Simpsons, Beavis & Butthead, South Park, Family Guy, Futurama, Aqua Teen, American Dad or Robot Chicken, despite their humor being products of the 90s and 2000s, respectively, but most have to ape the same artstyle as Matt Groening's or Seth MacFarlane's.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Oh God I just realized the kids who grew up with The Lorax movie are now entering adulthood, and they're finding things to meme beyond The Onceler self-cest that made it infamous on Tumblr and DeviantArt (and left enough of an impact to make it Internet history).

This may not be the place to mention this but I think one reason the lorax has found new life is..partly because of doug walkers review of it. I know between both the movie and the review it's been a decade since both. But the thing is, walker made that review with the intent on shredding the loarx a new one. Exposing it as the hackneyed piece of corporate marketing trash it was.


At the time he felt the lorax popularity was waning and one point he made in the video was once people grow bored with the current popular thing they move on to the next and what was popular at one time becomes a forgotten relic the next.


Ironically his review sparked renewed morbid curiosity in the lorax, people watched it to see if it really was as bad, soulless it really was. From there? People dug up more on the making of the movie and how the movie itself was hounded by corporate meddling and how Chris mellondari WANTED the oncler to be more than just a bland one note character who went from well intentioned opportunist to corrupt greedy ahole, but the studio heads told him to dumb the conflict down to be more digestible for "the kiddies."


back then it found new life in meme culture that made fun of it, now its found new life in meme culture that for lack of a better word has a fond nostalgia for it.

 

[Coolio55]

This may not be the place to mention this but I think one reason the lorax has found new life is..partly because of doug walkers review of it. I know between both the movie and the review it's been a decade since both. But the thing is, walker made that review with the intent on shredding the loarx a new one. Exposing it as the hackneyed piece of corporate marketing trash it was.


At the time he felt the lorax popularity was waning and one point he made in the video was once people grow bored with the current popular thing they move on to the next and what was popular at one time becomes a forgotten relic the next.


Ironically his review sparked renewed morbid curiosity in the lorax, people watched it to see if it really was as bad, soulless it really was. From there? People dug up more on the making of the movie and how the movie itself was hounded by corporate meddling and how Chris mellondari WANTED the oncler to be more than just a bland one note character who went from well intentioned opportunist to corrupt greedy ahole, but the studio heads told him to dumb the conflict down to be more digestible for "the kiddies."


back then it found new life in meme culture that made fun of it, now its found new life in meme culture that for lack of a better word has a fond nostalgia for it.

That's really interesting. Doug's review is how I found out about the movie.
It probably did but I'm not actually sure that it was released where I live. I certainly don't remember much of a big marketing push (although I could've easily tuned it out).

 

[A Grey Cat]

That's really interesting. Doug's review is how I found out about the movie.
It probably did but I'm not actually sure that it was released where I live. I certainly don't remember much of a big marketing push (although I could've easily tuned it out).

Oh trust me they went all in with the lorax marketing, one infamous example was the Mazda line of cars. Mazda tried to defend its decision to market to a movie all about saving the environment by claiming it was for a hybrid that ran primarily on electric and was going to later run on renewable bidisels, but nobody believed it.


You wanna know something funny? As I hinted at before the movie we got wasn't what Chris melonhead originally wanted. There're deleted scenes and song showing Chris had intended to portray the onceler gradually taking a bit more as he became more of a success and demand for his th needs grew. Before how bad can I be the song was originally called biggering...and Utsav almost heartbreaking to think we live in a world where this song got cut because the dumbasses at illumination/universal told Chris "it's too scary for kids"..before they later told him "it's too anti corporate and makes us look bad."

Not only does the song sound better because unlike the pop tune how bad can I be,, biggering has more influence from rock opera, but also if the lyrics and storyboard are anything to go by it actually fixes a complaint walker had with the oncler in the 2012 version versus the 72 version. He makes the excuse for himself that he needs more than the little cottage he started out with and tries to justify himself, only for the lorax to warn and try to reason with him that he's not thinking about the long term consequences of his actions and only the short term rewards.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Honestly, The Lorax movie was good when it was the adaptation of The Lorax. I didn't give a shit about the original fluff they had to put in to pad out the run-time and to give Zac Afron and Taylor Swift some voice-acting roles since they were huge at the time (though I think Zac was on his way out). The corporate villain didn't really make sense when you think about his motives, and that might've legit been the point especially since they further hammered it in in that one song where he has a singing role talking about how he doesn't actually give a shit.

If anything, I think the movie is an interesting piece of Illumination filmography in that it comes in between Despicable Me (and Hop lol) and Despicable Me 2 which was the moment (least for me) when you realize how sanitized and corporate-mandated their films are, further proving that the first Despicable was a complete fluke and had no right to be as good as it is, but there was legit something there in The Lorax that wasn't allowed to be fully realized due to the handicap of being a feature-length movie. Like I totally understand why it is The Once-ler got so fucking popular, he was kinda cute, but when he became the villain, he just slapped so hard and was so much more interesting.

So I can see why it is it's getting memed on over ten years later, but it's still bug-nuts it's already that old and those kids are more grown-up now and looking back on their childhoods. 'Cause at least in the early-2010s, there was still some worth in animation, and people are looking back on them ten years later to see how they still hold up--which I think is, unfortunately, somewhat true just because of how awful a lot of modern cartoons are, and some folks are trying to figure out when things started going downhill.

Though if anything, think I'm surprised that of all the 2012 movies getting new life breathed into them, it's not Brave, Rise of the Guardians, Frankenweenie, The Pirates, or even Foodfight, it's the fucking Lorax. Like holy fuck.

 

[Anonitolia]

-snip-

The entire second half of this post made me feel old, thanks. I can still remember eagerly awaiting a new issue of a magazine because it talked about films and I wanted to know more about Rise of the Guardians (specifically, I wanted to know more about the dude at the forefront of that ensemble cast), then being really weirded out when I first saw Paranorman on the front of its cover instead. That magazine convinced me to never see Paranorman, and I'm still regretting that choice a decade later. Looks way better now that my tastes have changed.

That aside, I agree with the rest of your post wholeheartedly. It really is interesting in that it's definitely an Illumination film- the whole thing reeks of corporate blandness- but it also has more heart to it than dogshit like Rise of Gru that came later. I'd say some of that is nostalgia speaking, but just a little bit earlier there was discussion of deleted scenes trying to make the villain more fleshed out and such.
I'm not inclined to believe them without a source, nor am I willing to say that those cut scenes would've made the film better or anything (the Onceler is way more entertaining as a flat bad guy, honestly, and fits the environmentalist message much better than someone you could sympathize with), but they suggest that there might've been more to this film than all the slop that Illumination put out after it.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Rewatching the opening of the lorax I think I've found something else about that has aged better than the environmental message.

OK so theendville is a town where everything is artificial and manufactured, the populace is so obsessed with having the latest trendy plaything or pleasure, they're sworn an undying almost religious level loyalty to the companies that provide for them, and their obsession with pleasure and happiness has made them blind and uncaring to whatever long term problems that may arise from being so reckless.


Again this movie is from 2012. Long before coonsoom buy obey was a thing and long before normies would happily lay back and take whatever got thrown at them so long as the iPhones where new and the lattes were hot. (Current events notwithstanding)


AND yes I know that's sorta lost when you remember the lorax itself was guilty of being a marketing tool for universal to print money, but the people who made the movie can't (mostly) be held accountable for that. The writers and animators on big budget animation almost never get a say in that sorta thing.

 

[TVB]

Though if anything, think I'm surprised that of all the 2012 movies getting new life breathed into them, it's not Brave, Rise of the Guardians, Frankenweenie, The Pirates, or even Foodfight, it's the fucking Lorax. Like holy fuck.

But then again, it's still not as good as Wreck-it Ralph, Hotel Transylvania or ParaNorman. Hell, 2012 also saw the year of Where the Dead Go to Die, and it's also not even on the same level as The Lorax, where it's just placed in the middle ground.

 

[Maurice Maine]

There are good female led action/animation tbh, the stuff now is just made for hugboxes and online optics. Japan is usually queenshit here again with stuff like angel cop and gunsmith cats but there are western shows like Aeon Flux and Xena warrior princess which are fucking excellent. The ugly colorful hugbox shows just pander to feelings, try to portray the creators as "people who care" and dont even portray women authentically. That last point is possibly the worst and again Japs are better. Rally Vincent and Minnie May are empowered women, theyre really knowledgeable and they kick ass but theyre also very attractive and do womanly/girly shit, like go on dates, do housework, splurge on television, hangout at cafes, wake up late and tons of other things. They act and behave like normal people, which i think is sorely missing from all these mary sue characters who are so unlikeable as theyre made specifically for hugboxes of people who are unhealthy, unhappy and pathological who want their pathology portrayed as good so they can feel good. Its something which goes back to male and female biology i feel, people can authentically recognize what is male and female behavior and none of these mary sue characters are female, theyre male characters written as women.

Gunsmith Cats fucking earned it. Today's bullshit isn't even worth of mention.

 

[thegooddoctor]

On an unrelated note I know we complain so much about LGBTQ rep and woke shit being shoved into cartoons now, but are there any good examples of LGBT characters in cartoons? it seems almost all of them are forced in some way.

 

[Anonitolia]

On an unrelated note I know we complain so much about LGBTQ rep and woke shit being shoved into cartoons now, but are there any good examples of LGBT characters in cartoons? it seems almost all of them are forced in some way.

the cop couple from gravity falls
mainly because they're actually entertaining

 

[Betonhaus]

On an unrelated note I know we complain so much about LGBTQ rep and woke shit being shoved into cartoons now, but are there any good examples of LGBT characters in cartoons? it seems almost all of them are forced in some way.

the leader from Voltron was decent. Him being gay wasn't a big part of his personality or mentioned much

 

[AnOminous]

On an unrelated note I know we complain so much about LGBTQ rep and woke shit being shoved into cartoons now, but are there any good examples of LGBT characters in cartoons?

Big Gay Al.

 

[TVB]

On an unrelated note I know we complain so much about LGBTQ rep and woke shit being shoved into cartoons now, but are there any good examples of LGBT characters in cartoons? it seems almost all of them are forced in some way.

Roger Smith from American Dad

 

[TheRetardKing]

 

[Flexo]

the cop couple from gravity falls
mainly because they're actually entertaining

Eh, I feel like making them gay ruined the joke.

I mean as an example, make one of them a woman, establish they are romantic from the start, then reread their lines.

"If being delightful was a crime, you'd be breaking the law!"

"With you, every day is a dream."

Not really funny any more is it? Now it's just... cringe. Having them be overly affectionate friends (or even better - only work colleagues) makes those lines funnier IMO.