A Piggybank's Grotto~ 💖

I watched and wrote about all of the Illumination films

With the newly condensed animation industry now starting to close the book on producing television series, priorities have shifted to even shorter production times and a larger focus on three things: movies, 30-40 minute movie-like indie pilots and "limited series" (slightly longer movies).
I've felt motivated to brush up on creating animation and storyboards for the needs of film, because that's what all three of those things technically are.

So I've been watching a lot more animated movies lately! And I just got back last month from watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie with a group, and we didn't like it very much!

And I realized something else: I no longer knew very much about Illumination, the animation studio behind those films. I remember loving Despicable Me a ton when it released in 2010 when I was finishing high school and dreaming of getting into animation, enjoying The Lorax and the Once-ler spawning what I recalled as the beginning of the tumblr sexyman memes... and after that, Illumination's presence in my mind mostly drops off for me. I got older, I guess.

I assumed they were a studio located in Paris who were contracted to make things... and it turns out that I was half right: their main animation production arm is in Paris (and was originally a studio called Mac Guff before turning into Illumination Mac Guff sometime around Lorax, then turning into Illumination Studios Paris somewhere around the start of the 2020's), but the headquarters of Illumination is actually in Santa Monica! They're also an independent contractor who works primarily with Universal, and as far as I know they're not actually owned by them?

So I've fallen down a rabbit hole, and it turns out this studio is very interesting to me! They also employ a lot of very smart tricks that we often see in TV and series animation, but applied to feature film production and given enough pizazz to make them fit into the expectations of the medium. I think they're a very compelling success story to study!

I also threw in a final ranking of the films and a couple bonus unrelated movie writeups too at the end, cuz hey why not, i'm here and this is my blog and I can do whatever i want >:3

Illumination Films

Despicable Me

Dang, what a great film this is! I rewatched it for the first time in maybe 14 years. The last time I had watched it was maybe on my iPod Touch in, like, 2011 or something.

It's amazing in hindsight reading about how Illumination had something like a three film plan on trying to find a hit to keep the studio afloat: an original fully animated IP (Despicable Me), a live action/anim mix (Hop), and adaptations of other IP (The Lorax). All of these films would stay well under 100 million for their budgets; this was a key part of Illumination's strategy, to cut costs elsewhere in production beyond the outsourcing.

But then Despicable Me was the first film to release, and it immediately blew everything away right out of the gate. I can imagine it was probably like the dream outcome of hitting your Kickstarter goal in the first 24 hours, when you still have a month left and you don't have to spend the month sweating profusely and having headaches.
Hop and Lorax wouldn't reach the numbers this film would hit. All of the live action/anim projects were quietly cancelled, and adaptations of other media would also be cancelled, save for a Grinch adaptation (which did marginally better than Lorax, though behind what their original IP were still doing) and the two Mario films. All of which pale in comparison to the billion-dollar check printer Despicable Me and its spin-off Minions would become going into the 2010's and onward into the 2020's.

This film still holds up very well in its foundation. You can already start to see the shortcuts in the rigging and art departments; I kept thinking this film released in 2007 or 2008 based on how it looks, but it actually released in 2010. Illumination and Mac Guff opted to use a lot of default settings and features in Maya for their films, which on one hand makes them look more dated (especially in these early films), but it also makes their render times lightning fast and cuts down the workload on the artists.

And when you have a very strong idea and script like this one, plus great character designs and solid animation for most of the film, it holds up better than I expected. All of the characters are still so much fun to watch, and there's many quotable lines that have stayed in my vocabulary even today. Gru's relationship with the girls is very well done and paced, and I really love how well they illustrated his struggle and eventual success in holding things together.

Most of the script keeps the plot moving fairly well, save for some brief downtime like the Minions going to a department store and making wacky things happen.

I also like how the toyetic weapon/gadget ideas Dr. Nefario builds are written off as him mis-interpreting whatever Gru asked him to build, because he's old... but then they'll give him a moment where he builds what Gru needs, exactly the way you'd expect it to work! Only for Gru himself to then fumble the execution because his ego gets in the way. It's great stuff! It's kinda Looney Tunes like that.

Also, I like the Minions! I think they're funny, and a lot of fun.

When I think about some of their imitators like the Rabbids (who for a long time only screamed and didn't have a brain) I liked that jokes involving the Minions often had a little more care and thought put into them. Not too much more care, but just enough to make it feel a step above. Apparently they also came from Sergio Pablos, who did a lot of work for Disney in the past and would go on to direct Klaus, and that care and attention feels apparent here.

This was an excellent foundation for what would become a big franchise and a touchstone of 2010's pop culture. Much like Pixar with Toy Story, Illumination really did hit it out of the park with their first film.

Hop

I've never watched this film before! I may have gone out of my way to avoid this day for years.

This film is not very good! It looked awful back in 2011, and it looks even worse today. The story is crammed with every live-action family film cliche in the book. It tries to take the concept of Easter and make a holiday film out of it, but the execution and concept didn't do anything for me.

There was one joke that legit made me laugh: it was when a bunny shot a tranquilizer dart into a security guard's throat. The rest of the plot had something about a chick wanting to become the new easter bunny and transforming into a bunny at the end, and the bunny who was supposed to be the easter bunny is running around LA, and there was at least one Playboy bunny girl joke featuring a Hugh Hefner who sounded to me like he had a microphone shoved in his face and was very confused, and it all kinda blurred together after a certain point. Oh, and poop jokes! Gotta love poop jokes.

I could also swear that some of the sets used here were in Columbo episodes. I'm guessing it's likely this movie used some of the Universal sets. I didn't look it up to double check though, because I'm lazy and I'm supposed to be working right now instead of writing for a blog no one's likely reading except for me.

I like how the film is a timepiece of 2011 in some ways. I was gonna lament more about the bygone days of 2011, but I can't remember much else about 2011 other than the song "Dynamite", skeuomorphic UI design and it being the year where I found out about Tumblr.

Oh wait, I still have a version of this phone laying around that's also running an early version of Android! Mine is an HTC phone that has a trackball, but it has almost all of the same buttons and layout and everything. Neat!

There are multiple valid reasons for why Hop is often considered "not great". I'm glad to see Illumination didn't feel the need to flirt with live action/animated hybrid films for long and dropped them like a rock. Now if only we could get SEGA and Sonic to do the same...

The Lorax

Much like the first Despicable Me film, I also hadn't seen this film in years. This one is just kinda okay, but it's nice to revisit it once more.

The original songs in this film are the best in any Illumination movie. John Powell should write more songs, I need more fun songs backed by his signature style and orchestral compositions. I'm listening to the album again as I write this, and all of these songs are getting back into my head all over again. There's not a lot of them, but they're the best part of the film for me. They peaked early with this soundtrack.

This film also dulls down the message of both the original book and Chuck Jones' special, though it's not as awful about it as I've seen it discussed. It was hard however to ignore the marketing for this film being (ironically) ignorant of its own message as well, honestly the marketing was much worse than this film in this department. In hindsight, perhaps it was a sign of things to come with how sloppy Illumination and Universal would let the Minions marketing become.

Maybe the most notable thing this film did in my mind was kick off the "Tumblr Sexyman" term with the Once-ler. Which in hindsight is more than fair, I can see why Once-ler kicked off that trend as he's also probably the character I liked the most in the film.
Danny DeVito also does a great Lorax. I only wish he had got more time to say and do more Lorax stuff that was truer to the book and its message. I think he does great work with the few emotional moments he does get, though.

The presentation is a step up from Despicable Me; they keep a lot of the wacky environment design while also reusing incidental rigs from DM, since that film's design and the Dr. Seuss aesthetics are similar. It doesn't look as nice as Horton Hears a Who did, but it ain't bad. It does the job.

I don't think I can rank this film very high on my list, unfortunately. It's primarily carried by the songs in my mind.

They also name-dropped Donkey Kong in this film years before the Mario movies, holy crap the Illumination and Nintendo and Dr. Seuss worlds are all connected!!!!!

Despicable Me 2

A solid enough sequel! I haven't seen this one since I saw it in theaters in 2013.

Image density, rendering quality, and color palettes have all been overhauled over the first three films. Gone are the sunken-in, beady eyes of incidental rigs and the general uncanny look the early films had. Some of the lower-cost elements are still present (like matte paintings being used for some locations) but in general everything was able to get a lot more love from the art departments this time around. It's much nicer to look at!

Character rigging and overall fidelity, incidentals especially, received a much-needed overhaul. The appeal has been turned up for almost everyone that isn't a main character. The work goes a long way towards making the main characters, plus secondaries like Jillian and Shannon, a gazillion times cuter and more fun to watch. You also get some wacky animation sometimes, which is a treat. If only it wasn't buried under all that motion blur, but hey, whaddya gonna do

Story-wise, it's okay! I like the drama with Gru trying to shift to other ventures, but not being totally aware at first of how his actions and his chosen life direction are affecting his friends and his new family. I think they did a solid job exploring what they could with his single dad life in this film before tying him down with Lucy.

As for Lucy herself, she's good, I like her! I remember not liking her as much back when the film came out; her actress had already been doing the same performance for Lola in The Looney Tunes Show for a few years at that point, so it felt like I had already seen this character before. Years later though, I think she's grown on me. She contributes more than enough fun stuff to justify keeping her around.

This film did crazy financial numbers, and Illumination would skip 2014 to bring us Minions in 2015. From 2015 on out, they would roughly put out at least one film a year.

Minions

This is my guilty pleasure film out of the entire filmography so far.
Is it really a "guilty pleasure" film though? Or do I only feel guilty about liking this one because it made a lot of money and had an out-of-control marketing campaign? The answer is yes, that's the only reason I've felt guilty about it, and I should have more self-confidence in my preferences for animated kids films.

I LOVE the concept of trying to create a feature-length animated film starring characters who spend most of their appearances not talking in full English. It ain't as captivating or award-winning as Wall-E or some of the other films out there that have leads who don't drive all of their scenes with dialogue, but I still think it's cool and different. I think it's very respectable to see them shoot for something more unique with a film that everyone knew was going to print money regardless, and I get the vibe that they were able to relax and have some fun with it.

I love how this was a prequel and really honed in on the Minions themselves, saving Gru for only the absolute end of the film. Again, the improved character and model fidelity is paying dividends at this point and the appeal has been turned up across the board. Of course there's more cute girls I can gawk at, but the large swath of supervillains here are very creative and lots of fun.

Scarlet is also a great villain, and Sandra Bullock does a great job playing her. I really love her almost magical transforming skirt, it makes her both perfectly mobile on her own but also being able to spawn a rocket, armor and more fun and crazy stuff (and somehow powering it with nuclear energy without dying lol) whenever she wants. It's a really cool idea, and I can't recall whether I've seen those elements elsewhere before.
I've heard Scarlet shows up again in Despicable Me 4... I'm excited to see what they do with her.

Anyway, yeah! I think Minions, the film, is great fun.

From here, Illumination would try their hand at two brand new IPs after Despicable Me and the Minions have both established themselves as certified billion-dollar check printers. This is also where my desire to keep up with Illumination's releases began to wane, so this is where we start entering the films I haven't seen yet.
I wonder how successful these new ventures will be?

The Secret Life of Pets

It's fine, I guess. The premise for this one is very basic and bare-bones, though they have at least a smidge more character going on than the Mario movies, so that's... something?

The variety of animal rigs they've built are nicely done. As a cat person I wish the main crew had more than one cat in it, and/or they had less cats that were villains. I liked the Sing poster cameo, that was a cool idea, it makes me want to do something similar. Katie has a really cute design, I like her a lot.

There's a joke where they kick a turtle shell and it bounces around Mario style. Again, coincidental, but there's more nods to Nintendo in these films than I expected. No wonder the Illumination staff were all over getting to actually do the Mario films.

I didn't type a lot of notes for this one, nor do I know if I'm looking forward to watching the sequel to this. But it's inoffensive, safe and looks like something you could put on in the background for the kids.

Sing

I saw this once years ago, and couldn't remember anything about it other than I didn't like it for some reason. After revisiting it though, I have no idea what I was on back then, because this was great!

The story was nice, the characters were great, and the song choices were good! Most of the music was licensed, but I think there were a few originals mixed in too? Either way it's cool to see them revisit a musical-like setup for the first time since Lorax.

There's more than a few great characters in this film, too. I think I liked Ash the most, but for her character instead of her design this time. I remember Sing 2 doing even more interesting stuff with her, and that latent potential within her character is apparent here. The scene with Ash also slowly falling apart at the mic while trying to sing is gut-wrenching, serious props to everyone who worked on those shots and knocked those out of the park.

This one might place above Minions for me. I liked this one a lot more on my revisit than I did the first time I watched it, which is a very pleasant surprise. It'll never replace Cats Don't Dance in my heart as the best "talking anthro animals sing and dance to stardom" movie, but it's still very solid and does just enough to stand on its own.

Also wow they put out both Life of Pets and Sing in one year.

Despicable Me 3

This is a weird movie to make for the third in a series.

I originally started this Illumination watch by signing up to Netflix, but it turned out they only had DM3 and Minions 2 on the site. So I watched this one first, then Minions 2, then came to my senses and went elsewhere to watch the rest of the filmography in order. The joys of streaming!

This story is... fine, I guess. It tells the tale of Gru being tempted to return to the supervillain life after being married to Lucy and finding even more new family, all while another villain runs loose and Gru continues to not be very good at the hero thing. It feels weird after we kinda covered a similar story in DM2, but we also sorta didn't cover that story... again, it's weird. I can't tell if we're retreading or not.

Lucy also struggles with her newfound role as a mom, and the girls tag along with her for most of the movie. I can't recall if the feeling I had of the girls starting to get the short end of the stick in these stories was a valid one. There's even more weird bits of story throughout that feel like they either lead nowhere, get cut off or unresolved. I've got a feeling things didn't go to plan here.

I liked the villain concept for Bratt, the 80's stuff was fun and it was a smart enough way to mix in some licensed songs without it feeling forced (coughMariocough). The rendering during a faux episode of his show was also really good and extra realistic, for some reason... I don't know why that scene captured my attention in that way. Maybe it was the added film grain?

Bratt mentions Donkey Kong by name years before the Mario movies, holy crap it's all connect-wait that's weird why did they do a similar Donkey Kong namedrop joke twice

I could go on... but I won't. We need to focus on what's really important in this film.

We need to talk about the real star of the movie: Valerie Da Vinci.

This woman, this goddess of fiction, immediately captured my heart from the first time I saw her.

She's got all of the essential components of what I'd call, "the perfect cartoon businesswoman": she's a brat babe with a tight business outfit, a goofy big nose, stick legs and arms, hourglass bod, high heels and a pencil skirt!

And, AND!! Just as quickly as she appears, she's gone from the franchise forever. Zero explanation is given for this to my knowledge; she only appears in two scenes, and then she's dropped between movies like a lead balloon. Despicable Me 4 quietly erases Valerie like she never existed and reinstates the original leader of AVL (and putting my silly fondness for Valerie aside, I think Rambottom is a more fitting character for the role with his mix of bumbling incompetence and playing his role straight).

I can't imagine Valerie was very popular of an inclusion. And yet, it's like we got to witness an angel, a fleeting glimpse that only lasted for a moment. Sigh...

The Grinch

It's okay. A timeless 20 to 30 minute story stretched out like taffy to an hour and a half. Lots of air, not much plot. Characters look a lot more like Dr Seuss characters for this go-around, and closer visually to what Blue Sky did for Horton. Lorax looked fine enough for the time, but the polish they're now able to give these films is very noticeable compared to their first three films.

The ending scene with Grinch attending the dinner was nice, I felt it made good use of the more gentle Grinch that Cumberbatch portrayed. It's also very accurate video footage of me attending any party and having no idea how parties or social gatherings work.

I also love this buildup to where Grinch gets punched by an inflatable snowman, it flows well with a similar energy to a smash cut and is visually satisfying:

I think this film overall deviates too far from the book and what made the Chuck Jones film a tradition for many, but if you need an inoffensive and bland holiday film that you can put on in the background, it at least does the job better than the live-action film (and definitely does a better job than Hop). And you won't have to worry about having your kids see Jim Carrey in green fur makeup stuff his face into cleavage, which I of course think is a very important character-building moment for any growing child to experience through the magic of film during the holidays but I digress

The Secret Life of Pets 2

This film has the first swear word I caught in an Illumination film, plus two cases of vehicular manslaughter!

It's interesting how the first film had many scenes featuring animal control being a constant threat, but in the second film they make zero appearances. Which means a pack of wolves and a tiger are now free to roam and cause chaos in NYC, all of them forced to answer to the whims of Evil McBadguy and his evil twirly monkey, who openly beat and shoot humans and animals alike.
It's... a lot. It's maybe overcompensating a little.

Lighting is becoming a more established thing with these films than I expected, and I think I'm starting to see what people were talking about when The Grinch dropped and people began to notice how most scenes felt the same as the last.

A lot of scenes tend to use the same general lighting setups without much being put into changing things to suit the mood of a scene. A dense forest during the day looks the same as any other location during the day, for example. The Grinch also has this same issue where every scene uses the same lighting system, sometimes regardless of the tone or mood of a scene. The inside of the grumpy Grinch's lair during the day looked the same as both the outside of his mountain and cheerful Whoville during the day.

There's also some places in Pets 2 that have different lighting, but they also tend to hold a universal lighting setup no matter when they're visited in the story. I get the feeling that the staff are likely aware of this, though. There are tricks one can do in at least editing to add some color variety without making too much extra work, so I'm curious to see if future original films decide to improve on this.

I also like the stylized superhero and video game sequences. It's nice to see them start to do a little more experimenting with the visuals again.

Overall, definitely held my attention better than the first film! But I'll be real with you, I'll likely never watch this one again.

Sing 2

One of Illumination's best yet. A serious contender for the top of my list. Great looking sets and visuals that play to the studio's strengths (LOVE the location design for Clay's house), and fantastic acting and storyboards. The studio's focus on putting their money and effort into the animation and acting itself is really paying dividends now. When they have a strong script and idea, that experience really... sings! heeeyyyy see what i did there

There's a lot of great stuff here (and I liked Moon getting called out for his constant "lying with confidence", a bad behavior that's become much more common in the years since this film dropped), but Ash and Clay Calloway's scenes are my favorite parts of this movie. I only wish there was a little more of those two and Clay's climb out from hiding... but that's not a bad thing at all, it's only me wanting more of a very good thing. His struggle hit home a lot harder on this second watch than it did for me when I saw it around 2021.

Definitely check out the two Sing movies if you haven't yet. I could see them maybe get one more film out of these characters. Even if they don't, this is still a great couple of movies.

Minions: The Rise of Gru

This is fine. It's fine. Oddly enough, I don't have a lot that I can think to write about this one.

It's interesting seeing them come back to build a lot more on young Gru after what the first film did with him, and I like the old guy teaching Gru the lesson of respecting and supporting your teammates. There's a couple really nice shots in this film too. I like the kung-fu/acupuncture lady. The Zodiac gimmick is fun.

...I dunno, should I have more to say here?

Overall, this felt more to me like a prequel to Despicable Me than Minions did, which is fine.

It's fine.

The Super Mario Bros Movie

This was my next film to watch after watching Sing 2. I remember liking this one enough when it released, but after watching Sing 2 and loving that film so much, I had a bad feeling that this one was gonna be a considerable downgrade.

Somewhere near the third act of the film, however, the main takeaway I have from this project hit me: Illumination is a really cool studio, who can (and often do!) make really cool things, and are capable of far more than I had been giving them credit for over the years.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a nice enough celebration of Mario for the fans, and a fun opportunity for the staff to work on something new. And there's nothing wrong with that in itself. But I'd stop short of saying it pushes Mario and Nintendo forward, nor maximizes the skills and potential of Illumination's collective ability to tell a story with film.

As a product of marketing, it's fine! But as the foundation of a growing movie multiverse... maybe not so much. Despicable Me, this is not.

I think the part of the film that I liked on this rewatch was the first 20 minutes: the plumbing gig, the commercial, the hijinks, Brooklyn (wow there's a lot of Illumination films that take place in NYC), Mario and Luigi's family, getting to hear Charles Martinet give a different but nice performance as Mario's dad, the brotherly bonding, more worldbuilding and plumbing stuff. All of the detail put into the new locations and incidentals in Brooklyn, almost all of which probably had to be cut from whole cloth.

There's still some visual Illumination hallmarks like the reused lighting setups and some possible landscape and foliage reuse, but it looks the part of the much more expensive film that it was (which I assume Nintendo footed the bill for to help sweeten the deal for Illumination and Universal). It's got a lot of Mario fanservice! But it ain't no Lorax, and it ain't a Grinch.

Also yeah, they really did go overboard with the licensed music in this one. For a film that's otherwise confident in its video game roots, hearing them otherwise shove the original music aside is a strange omission.

Adaptions of IP into film can be done much better than this. I don't think the IP holder of Mario is as good at telling stories as they think they are. But I think Illumination did their job here as well as they could.

Migration

A fun romp! The characters were all great and bounced off each other well, and again the animation and acting is wonderful. The focus on ducks and birds always intrigued me, it's an odd idea but also one that fits Illumination well, and it gave me the same vibe of experimenting like Minions did. I like Danny DeVito's character of the uncle duck (not to be confused with another uncle duck), again it just felt like I was looking at myself on the screen. I don't know how Illumination keeps getting Danny back to do more stuff, but I guess he enjoys working with them?

John Powell returns to do the soundtrack, and it's amazing as always. I can't think of any other orchestral composer I've heard who regularly incorporates wobbling sheet metal as a musical instrument. Wonderful stuff.

I'm happy that Illumination has continued to bring in people from its roots with Blue Sky and 20th Century Fox, and in a time where Blue Sky also no longer exists and 20th Century Fox has been consumed by The Mouse. They do a fine enough job keeping some of the spirit of the studio alive, even if Illumination lacks the resources to fully recapture all of the energy they had and has their own goals to focus on.

It doesn't seem like this film bombed (again, thanks to those low budgets), but it had the weakest worldwide total of a new IP from the studio, which is still a bummer. I wouldn't oppose to watching more of this idea in the unlikely chance it returned someday.

I also liked the chef's tiny head on big body, an excellent design choice.

Despicable Me 4

I didn't actually know this film existed, let alone released, until I started working on this blog post. Go figure.

This was an improvement over DM3! I think watching this confirmed my suspicion that the sisters were getting sidelined in 3, as the family shenanigans now get a lot more time in this one. They also added Gru Jr. or whatever the baby's name was, and it's a baby who does baby jokes. If you like baby jokes, Gru Jr. will probably win you over. I wouldn't know though.

There's a fun side plot with the Mega Minions (an Avengers-like team of transformed Minions), a character called Poppy whose presence helps create a fun stealth sequence, and there's a lot of Gru overcompensating in social situations, usually with his brand new neighbor Stephen Colbert, played by Stephen Colbert. He's not actually called Stephen Colbert, but the thought of a fictional character suddenly getting a real-life actor as a neighbor is funny to me. Like Homer with George Bush... actually now that I write that out, why didn't they do that here?

The town they move to is very picturesque and does the job, though it largely looks and acts the same as their main town... and most locations in Illumination films at this point, tbh. I'm always a sucker for their vivid color palettes and dreamy locales, but it does start to blend together after a certain point and lack an identity.

I'm not sure if I like Gru as much as I did in Despicable Me 1 and 2. There's been a lot of will-they-won't-they on whether he should be a bad guy or a good guy, and he's often pulled into doing villain work again when he's not supposed to be, or suggesting the kids do bad things. But you also can't have your lead in a kids film be a villain forever, right? It's a strange moral conundrum, but also one that was probably inevitable when the foundation of DM1 has now run as long as it has. I doubt anyone at Illumination thought DM would have ran this far in 2010.

Also, I gotta say: I've been going through most of these films in VLC to get the screenshots you see in this post, and Illumination loves their motion blur. It's interesting seeing most studios now going the "Spiderverse" route with their CG productions and getting rid of motion blur, letting you see the smears and breakage of the models in full display.
But Illumination? Nope, motion blur everything, everywhere, we're not changing anything, we're not gonna mindlessly follow the latest trend in Hollywood. We're using the defaults in Maya and that's what you'll always get. And I kinda like that about them? It's a very Hanna-Barbera "screw you we're doing things the cheapest way possible while still giving you something fun because we are running a business" way to do things.

This movie also does some weird pseudo-retcons of DM3, pushing some characters like Dru into cameos and erasing odd additions like Valerie. Some characters (finally) return, like Dr. Nefario. And Scarlet does indeed return for another cameo, complete with a cute white streak in her hair!!!!

The world of Despicable Me has become a lot bigger since this all began in 2010 (holy crap time flies), and I love the ending bringing in many characters from all over the films to celebrate. It was a sweet way to cap off what I assume could be the last DM film for a while, and it works great for ending this marathon as well.

Or at least, I wish this was the end. But we have one more film to get to.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

I saw this one in theaters, and I really didn't want to watch it again. But I'm giving it a second watch for the sake of this post, because this is our last movie to cover and I've come too far to not go the whole way and make sure I do my homework!

Almost all of Brooklyn and its characters are dropped from this film, save for a montage sequence with Yoshi. Mario and Luigi have fully moved out from Brooklyn and into the mushroom house they ended the last film with, and their family is completely absent from this film to my knowledge.

At first I wrote this off as understandable because this film is already crammed with way too much, but after rewatching the first Mario film... I dunno man, I think that could be a big mistake in the long run. Trading away what little we had for worldbuilding and story threads to double down on empty Mario celebration fanservice only makes me lament the missed potential.

At least my favorite girl from the first film is back: the commercial lady! She even gets a new outfit and eats pizza in a shot, then gives a full back view of her original outfit in another shot! These filmmakers are spoiling me rotten.

There's an increase in Mario musical scores and much less licensed music. There's also an increased desire to let the weird game stuff take center stage, which I liked in the first film and thought was a smart step above the Sonic films! But the constant references wear out their welcome by the end for me when they often lead nowhere.

Wart is here, he barfs bubbles, and I was the only one in our group who knew who he was. Birdo is a baddie again, again confusing my group who had only known her from the spin-off games. Peach finally eats a mushroom and becomes a giantess before your very eyes, and this did not confuse anybody because everyone loves a giant Princess Peach.

If you recognize the avalanche of references this film throws at you like I did, but you're like me where you don't get satisfaction from pointing at the screen and saying you know that reference and could ace that question on the pop quiz, and you then run around and call anyone stupid who doesn't know... then you're not left with much.

They also brought in non-Mario character Fox McCloud after they ran out of Mario characters who can bring people through space, and made him front and center in some of the marketing for some reason. I think he's cool and played well! But man, I'd be lying if I said I didn't leave the theater wishing I had watched The Star Fox Movie instead. He just had that strong of a presence for me, and outclassed the main cast for me in every way. It's hard for me to ignore how simple, poignant and straightforward his character and motive are compared to most of the cast.

I like the visuals for his backstory sequence too. It's a nice mix of actual 2D animation paired with the faux 2D look for 3D assets, similar to what we saw in Life of Pets 2.

Some miscellaneous thoughts:

Hop was at least a beautiful and insane train wreck, and one that I would be more than happy to watch again with friends. But Galaxy is so toothless, sanded down, vapid and... nothing. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle. Hop didn't make me mad like Galaxy did.

I don't believe this to be Illumination's fault: they can only play the hand they've been dealt. I also can't prove it, but to me these films feel like products born from Nintendo's marketing department.

Why Nintendo couldn't stand back and let Illumination cook, just like they let Universal Studios' teams do for their recent theme park rides, is beyond me.

I'm bummed that this list is ending on a downer. But when I look back, what a journey it's been! There's more hits for me than I thought, less terrifying lows than I expected, and plenty of creamy middles.

Illumination has had some very respectable highs, even when one pulls away and looks at their work compared to their contemporaries. They're a very capable studio who have found a way to create while staying in a very reasonable budget for a feature-length animated film (and for perspective, the usual 60-80 mil budgets for these films hovers around the same amounts as the money-laundering fronts pinnacles of filmmaking that are the Adam Sandler films), and I've emerged from this marathon with a newfound appreciation for their work.

I hope they both continue for years to come, and that more people find appreciation for the studio. They're doing good work! I'm excited to see what Minions & Monsters turns into as well, maybe I'll do a little write-up for that one too someday.

anyway here's my list of all the lady designs who caught my eye that I'd love to draw someday

and here's my film rank list, best to worst:

  1. Despicable Me
  2. Sing 2
  3. Minions
  4. Sing
  5. Despicable Me 2
  6. Migration
  7. Despicable Me 4
  8. Despicable Me 3
  9. The Lorax
  10. Minions: Rise of Gru
  11. The Grinch
  12. The Secret Life of Pets 2
  13. The Secret Life of Pets
  14. The Super Mario Bros Movie
  15. Hop
  16. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

Bonus Unrelated Movie Thoughts of other things I've watched since last time that have nothing to do with Illumination

Disney's Hercules

This is a favorite of mine in the classic Disney Animation renaissance lineup. I love the style of this film, and the casting is perfect for the time. I love the visual effects in this film too, you can tell Disney had grown far beyond most studios when they don't simply ask themselves, "what does water look like?" but instead ask, "what does water in the world of Hercules look like?"

The character acting is excellent. Super polished and refined. I like some of Pain and Panic's bits, I'm always a sucker for the output of Eric Goldberg's cartoony mind.

also Meg is hot

Avatar TLA: The Legend of Aang

Boy, it sure would be cool if this film ever came out! If I was hypothetically able to watch this unreleased film (hypothetically speaking), I would probably type something like the (hypothetical) following:

This is one of the most gorgeous things to come out of Flying Bark. It's great to see the studio handle the demands of a ATLA production, and reach beyond the excellent work the Rise of TMNT team offered them for that show and LEGO Monkie Kid. I hope Flying Bark is offered the reins to more ATLA stuff in the future, I think they're a worthy successor to the work Rough Draft (?) did for the original and Korra.

The movie itself is... good! It's good. It's about what I expected, and I went in without a clue of what the story was going to be about. It made me nostalgic for my first watch-through of Legend of Korra, funnily enough. Without saying too much, I like how the film prioritizes using Korra for a chunk of its foundation over the original ATLA show. If you've watched Korra and enjoyed it, I think you might find some things to love here!

The only big knock I have against this film is the voice recasts; they were all cast with soundalikes, and while they do a fine enough job and are very talented, I can only speculate on why they didn't bring the originals back.

...Hypothetically speaking, of course. The film, I mean.

#film #posts with my art in them #reviews