Tim's Toons: Surprisingly, the new Peanuts teaser isn't a toxic affront to humanity
Thursday, November 20, 2014 at 8:41PM Tim here. Before I start, I want to briefly point you all in the direction of Cartoon Brew’s gallery of animated TV commercials featuring the comedy duo of Nicols & May, assembled in honor of Mike Nichols’ unexpected passing yesterday.
With that said, and not to shift moods too abruptly, but how about that teaser for the 2015 Peanuts movie that came out this week?
The film Experience is not in the habit of spending too much time with teasers, so no “Yes, No, Maybe So” treatment for this one yet (though if I were, the verdict would be Maybe So, written out like “maaaaaaaaybe so?”). But I wanted to talk about it a little bit anyway, because strictly in terms of animation it’s one of the most fascinating things to have been released by any of the big studios all year.
I’ll admit right away that I’ve been unremittingly hostile to this project ever since it was announced by Blue Sky Studios, home of Ice Age and Rio and not remotely the right fit for the melancholic low-key world of Charles M. Schulz’s legendary comic strip. Nor have the still images and tests released in dribs and drabs throughout 2014 budged me on this: they’ve uniformly made the thing look waxy and unpleasantly over-detailed: the backgrounds are too realistic for the characters, the finely textured hair sits grotesquely on the simple body shapes, the lighting adds too much three-dimensionality to faces that have smudgy line drawing mouths and eyes.
But put that in motion, and suddenly it feels right, somehow, in a way that I would never have predicted. If nothing else, it suddenly becomes clear how the animators planned to get around the inherently two-dimensional nature of the characters: by foregrounding it, rather than trying to run from it. In the current environment for mainstream CGI animation, which favors ever more realism and illusion of life, the fact that Peanuts is apparently going to embrace limited movement and low frame rates is bold, much bolder than I’d have ever expected from Blue Sky (whose style has always been, more or less, “do what Pixar was doing five years ago”). Though the characters are 3D models, they end up feeling very flat, especially with the action all staged in strictly 2D space. All that CGI really seems to be adding to the mix that wasn’t in all those television specials over the last half-century is textures and a wider mix of colors. The whole effect feels pleasantly like the old Peanuts View-Master reels, where the characters were played by little statues in featureless voids. (Note to the younger readers: View-Master is… hard to explain. Google it).
By no means do I expect great things of the Peanuts movie: the pop song interlude is jarring and awful, and the rumors and innuendos sneaking out of the studio over the past several months haven’t suggested that we should expect good, or even tolerable things of the script. Still, it seems clear from this little bit of footage that the creative team is giving serious thought as to how they can best marry two very different artistic styles in a way that produces something new and appealing in its own right. We have a ton of modernized vesions of classic cartoons coming out in the next couple of years, and it’s too much to hope that all of them are equally thoughtful in their approach, but for right now, I am pleasantly shocked to say, Blue Sky’s Peanuts looks like it might be doing something worthwhile and good.
What say you? Am I crazy, or does this actually look like it won’t burn out your eyes when it’s turned into a whole feature?
Reader Comments (6)
I laughed out loud at the title, and have to say I agree with the whole thing. I am now cautiously interested, which is more than I ever thought I'd say!
Tim, the minute the teaser came out, I thought, "What will Tim say?" You did not disappoint. As for me, I have no idea. I still watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special because I am a giant sap, but otherwise I just want to run screaming away from anything that looks/feels/sounds Smurf-y, which this does in concept. I'm conflicted, is what I'm saying.
good grief
Thank you for the beer commercials. It was great to hear their voices.
I love your posts Tim and I learn something from them every week. This week it was Foregrounding.
And I am also glad to hear Snoopy's voice
I think this looks great. It seems very in keeping with the Peanuts visual style, soundscape, and storytelling sensibility, while also giving it a more contemporary 3D look. And even with Snoopy flying over the Eiffel Tower, they don't seem to be turning the characters into action heroes or ironic, winking wise-asses. Seems really promising.
thank you Tim for the viewmasters bit. EXACTLY. and also omg i loved those when i was little for some reason.