Good Idea, Poor Execution

Really? Gotham High has always struck me as an awful idea.

Me as well. Shoehorning pre-existing characters into a scenario that is 100% removed from the one they were created for smacks of a horribly wrong headed idea at best and a cynical ploy to exploit fans of an existing property into giving your hackneyed high-school soap opera a five minute chance at worst. Make the Archie gang into a band of futuristic commandos fighting an alien invasion, while you're at it.

I think they've done that with the Archie gang before, actually.

Okay, so, The Amazing World Of Gumball. According to the page, it used lots of animation tricks and combined it with live-action backgrounds or something. Seems like an okay idea. Until it's put into practice. Then it just looks terrible.

edited 13th Oct '12 9:09:23 PM by PhysicalStamina

Well, if it actually happened, it would be complaining. But looking at the concept art, it looks kinda cool.

Now, I'm a fan of the Arkham video games, but Batman shouldn't be dark all the time.

edited 14th Oct '12 2:06:05 PM by Smasher

Pretty much every sequel to Don Bluth 's films except Fievel Goes West (which I'd say is more like a mediocre idea,fantastic execution) and the later sequels to The Land Before Time (which are just wrong entirely)

-Secret of Nimh 2 could've used better animation and kept track better with continuity,and the Thorn Valley mice could've not been jerks,Nostalgia Critic may have hated the third act,but I'd say that's the only passable section thanks to being So Bad, It's Good.

- Never seen the other An American Tail sequels

- ADGTH 2 could've done with a touch more surrealism and better voice acting

- The first 3 LBT sequels simply needed to think less on the songs and more on the plots themselves,and of course less Off-Model animation.

edited 14th Oct '12 3:09:12 PM by terlwyth

The Secret of Nimh II was one of the things that popped into my head when I read the title of this thread. It had a wealth of potential that just doesn't get realized.

I liked a lot of the American Tail sequels, the ones that were set in New York and treated the "Feivel Goes West" stuff, and the TV series it spawned, like a dream. Not that I hated Feivel Goes West, it just didn't do much for me. And the sequels gave Tony Toponi a good-sized supporting role, and for some reason I always liked his character.

I remember thinking the first LBT sequel would have been rather enjoyable if they just edited out the songs.

I agree with the Secret Of Nimh sequel too. It's not a horrible idea per se (it's even based vaguely on the novel's sequel) some of the new characters aren't even that bad and could even swallow it being Lighter and Softer, but it's all executed completely haphazardly. Like the prophecy just appearing out of nowhere. Hell if they took out the prophecy and did something like Rasco and the Rats of Nimh it arguably would have caused a lot less problems story wise.

edited 14th Oct '12 6:02:24 PM by Psi001

Come to think about it, I may add the first Secret Of Nimh in here as well. It's much better than the sequel of course, but it seems a bit awkwardly paced and can't seem to decide whether it's a cute little Funny Animal adventure or a sinister epic. It feels somewhat like it's lacking in proper establishment story and character wise as well, like there was a whole lot of footage taken out that explained important parts of the story.

Nearly all adaptations that go for this 'darker and mystical' route seem to have a very similar problem (eg. Sonic Sat Am, The Legends Of Treasure Island), like the staff didn't quite know what they were doing and as a result came off as rather pretentious. There are a lot of cool ideas, but they don't seem to be melded into one piece very well and lack in their full potential. Their most common redeeming aspect is that they tend to look rather flashy, but as one wise media observer once said "Those aren't ideas, those are special effects!"

edited 17th Oct '12 6:21:39 PM by Psi001

"Come to think about it, I may add the first Secret Of Nimh in here as well. It's much better than the sequel of course, but it seems a bit awkwardly paced and can't seem to decide whether it's a cute little Funny Animal adventure or a sinister epic. It feels somewhat like it's lacking in proper establishment story and character wise as well, like there was a whole lot of footage taken out that explained important parts of the story."

You just gave a lovely capsule description of virtually every Don Bluth film ever made. There are places in every Bluth film that hint at the dark and have echoes of possible grandeur, but they get buried in a lot of funny animal stuff (which in Bluth's hands has a tendency to get much too cutesy). Hell, even Rockadoodle had moments The bare bones of Rockadoodle could make for a brilliant film if handled correctly (or even if handled adequately). The concept is quite a mythic one, and the villians are great with loads of undeveloped potential, there's just way too much in it that's trying way too hard to be cute.

I don't mind the more light hearted points of the films, in fact I often tend to prefer them over the dark concepts, I just wished they'd made a better blend of the two that makes for a more consistant story, as well as avoiding such heavy Mood Whiplash.

I loved Jeremy for example, but his role after saving Mrs Brisby was near superfluous and they try awkwardly to keep him in for comic relief while still Shooing Out The Clowns, making most of his scenes from that point Big Lipped Alligator Moments (oddly this happens to him in the Lighter and Softer sequel too). Some of the more darker moments such as Nicodemus' death also seemed a bit abrupt and lacked enough emotional value, and the magical elements come off as kind of unestablished upon and WTF moments.

It just seemed like Bluth was trying too hard to separate his work from Disney, but at the same time that tone is where a lot of his heart was, and so his attempts at being more dark and mystical are awkward and a tad overambitious (though could maybe have been refined with a bit more time and effort). Again one of those "not quite sure what it wants to be" examples.

edited 17th Oct '12 7:51:37 PM by Psi001

I thought Mrs. Brisby's encounter with Brutus was massively overdone, particularly in light of how Brutus's threat level is shortly dismissed by Mr.Ages (some of that mood whiplash you speak of, imo). You never got to see Brutus humanized (or whatever ), either, as he was in the book. A lot of the dramatic bits feel a bit overwrought.

Exactly (it's ironically one of the things the sequel fixed too, albeit with loads of other issues added on). Secret of Nimh (as well as other Darker and Edgier adapations I've already mentioned) seemed like the writers had loads of cool and ambitious ideas they wanted to try out, but didn't quite know how to execute them properly, so we end up with lots of random, undeveloped moments that come off more as random attempts at mystique than a full depthful story.

Sort of like an adolescent vision of darkness with 'Oh this is badass, let's put that in, oh and that's cool too, let's stick that in somewhere...'

The Legends Of Treasure Island is basically what happens when you make a full show revolved entirely around this strategy.

edited 17th Oct '12 7:58:21 PM by Psi001

Yeah this is why I find The Land Before Time to be his best period,there are cute moments,but they are nicely blended in

Kinda ironic the one film that actually does have a helluva lot cut makes more sense than the one that as far as we know has none (or at least not obvious ones)

Going to step on some toes, but what the hell:

The Legend Of Korra. The series was massive offender of the Show, Don't Tell rule. The idea behind the equalist movement was an interesting concept, but the problem was that a lot of the so called oppression was never actually seen on screen. In fact, when no active oppression to non-benders occurred until after the Equalist started terrorist attacks.

And then there was the Romantic Plot Tumor that was Makorra. <_<

I loved Legend of Korra, but I must say I mostly agree with you. I got the impression that the series was exactly what the creators wanted, and that they didn't WANT there to be any real oppression of non-benders, that they wanted us to assume the anti-bender fervor arose from nothing, or at least nothing valid (like feelings of jealousy on the part of non-benders, or Amon's naked charisma —the average person in the Avatar-verse seems to be pretty gullible) I Imagine we're supposed to get a "it's wrong to distrust/hate/discriminate against those who are different message, but we ARE left with a feeling that the anti-benders' feelings must arise from somewhere. Even where hate doesn't arise from oppresion, it arises from something, even if that something is a completely unfounded fear. It would have been nice to have seen the characters at least discuss the ideas of where the anti-bender stuff comes from.

Still love the show, though.

It seemed to me that a lot of the supposed oppression the Equalists felt really came from organized bender gangs. There was supposed to be a lot of crime in Republic City, and we saw bender gangs a lot, at least early on.

Thing is though, bending criminals got a lot less focus as the series went on, and things didn't seem as bad as they probably intended. I think what they really wanted to go for was for these non-benders to feel helpless and terrorized by these bender criminals that could push them round, as opposed to a city ruled by benders who took away the rights of non-benders. This would also tie better into the history with Yakone, and would help show that Amon's main target would be these criminals.

edited 18th Oct '12 8:20:09 PM by StarOutlaw

Going to go ahead and step on those toes with you. I enjoyed Korra and I defended a lot of stuff waiting for the writing team to get their act together. Still a number of things could have been done better and I was disappointed.

I can't believe no one's said Pound Puppies (2010) as of yet - I don't even hate that show, but still - the overall stench of disappointment and being a victim of negative tropes is strong with this one...

But I'm sure the reason for that is because a product like Pound Puppies - yeah, not that feasible an idea for a TV series, now is it?

I would also be tempted to add A Kind Of Magic to this list - I wrote a review on this site, but it's terrible - however, I still stand by it, if only because of what could have been, IMHO...

edited 19th Oct '12 7:59:23 PM by LostAnarchist

Hard to believe it's the second Pound Puppies animated series, isn't it? And that there was a movie, too. Not just straight to video, either.

Legend of Korra. The equalists plot was genius as was the idea to set the story in the distance future. But making Korra the Mulan of the Avatar world complete with a Disney romance ruined a lot for me. Pro-bending felt like a lame substitute for action. Maybe book 2 will be better. I'm hoping they'll eventually leave Republic city and explore the world, with less focus on melodrama and romance.

EDIT: Just caught that post. Couldn't agree more.

edited 25th Oct '12 10:13:13 AM by Nicky

Um, what?

The Black Cauldron. A good adaptation of the Prydain Chronicles would be awesome.

So many Korra spoilers in this thread that I'm trying my damndest to avert my eyes from. Please spoiler-tag that stuff—I can understand saying it unspoilered in the actual Korra thread, since the people there are most likely all caught up, but not everyone else is.

While I enjoyed Disney's The Black Cauldron, I have to go with Lloyd Alexander (the author of the series on which it was loosely based)in his assessment of it, which was the, while he felt it was a fine and enjoyable film, it wasn't anything at all like the book he wrote (which is simple observation, really, and not really criticism). The same can be said about most, if not all, Disney animated films that have been adapted from books (I think Peter Pan comes the closest to at least following the plot of it's book, while having pretty much a completely different tone).

And I agree with you. I'd love to see a straight adaptation of the whole series; I was actually surprised that no one tried to do one back when, after Harry Potter, film companies were trying to adapt every young readers series that anyone had ever shown an interest in.