Serious in the sense of not for the kiddies (not like that stops parents). And, I suppose, in the sense of hand drawn animated movies.
Dem backgrounds.
Heavy Metal is excellent for what it is. It's adolescent, and it makes no apologies about it. It doesn't wallow in existential angst and try to pass that off as a grand aesthetic exercise. It is what it is.
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
In a way I find Heavy Metal more admirable than genuine examples of serious animation which try to be serious and important and fall flat on their faces. It at least is immature and makes no bones about it.
The same goes for Fritz The Cat, and some of Bakshi's other work.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
Yeah. Bakshi's work is often quite ugly, and deliberately so. In Hey Good Lookin', Coonskin, and Heavy Traffic, he's dealing with often unpleasent characters in ugly circumstances, and the films communicate that visually quite well. His fantasy pieces are much more attractive to look at, even if the heavy rotoscoping isn't always done very well.
Yeah. We arent shitting on Heavy Metal dog. Its cool and badass, its definitely something one as a parent wouldnt show a kid. But we are talking about actual maturity, as in not something juvenile. But that's not dissing Heavy Metal, in fact, the fact that it goes unchained in its badass juvenile insanity is what makes it such a classic. In fact, most serious serious can come across as a bit pretentious.
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Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
While there is quite a bit of serious animation (and I include action) that's pretentious, the fact is that at the time, you - sadly - had to have sex and violence in your film to make sure you wouldn't be mistaken for a kids' film. Remember Fritz The Cat and how the posters boasted "He's X-rated and animated!"
There were a few really great films that did badly because they weren't sexual or violent enough for people to not mistake them for kids' films. (I'm thinking Shinbone Alley, among others.)
And this is probably why this film didn't make it; superheroes were still seen as a kids' thing and hadn't become associated with adult nerds yet. Of course, The Spirit itself was originally syndicated with the Sunday comics, where kids could read it.
edited 18th Apr '15 6:09:46 PM by Aldo930
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
Never said it wasn't. I just question it being cited as an example of more "serious" animation.