[Non-Pony] The Emoji Movie: Why Does it Exist? · 4:16pm Jul 28th, 2017
Greetings, my good ladies and gentlemen. Today I made a discovery whilst browsing IGN. This:
Naturally, this invokes the obvious question: why, why does this thing exist?
I looked upon it with bemused shock. Perhaps I'm wrong, I thought. Maybe this is a great movie, and it's merely masquerading as the worst possible sort of cynical corporate directed advertising.
So I read the reviews. My first instinct was correct, as it transpires: nobody likes this thing. Nobody. It's bad. It's bad in exactly the ways you think it's going to be, and for the reasons you will have suspected. Writing in the Guardian, Charles Bramesco argues that children, the target audience of this abomination, should not watch it at all:
Children should not be allowed to watch The Emoji Movie. Their impressionable brains simply aren’t set up to sift through the thick haze of corporate subterfuge clouding every scene of this sponsored-content post masquerading as a feature film. Adults know enough to snort derisively when, say, an anthropomorphic high-five drops a reference to popular smartphone game Just Dance Now (available for purchase in the App Store, kids!), but young children especially are more innocent and more vulnerable.
Peter Sobczynski, writing for rogerebert.com, goes to the heart of the matter quite eloquently, drolly noting the ease with which one might order the sponsors by monetary contributions:
Once we get outside the walls of Textopolis, we are essentially placed into a series of mini-ads for well-known apps that range from brief detours to the lands of Facebook and YouTube to extended commercials for the Candy Crush and Just Dance games. Since nothing of import goes on during these scenes (or any others, for that matter), I found myself speculating on which ones spent the most money to appear in the film based on the length of their exposure and the praise that they receive from the characters.
So yes. This is targeted advertising towards kids, it's true central message, behind the "be yourself" lipservice, being:
"Kids, download our Apps. And make sure mommy and daddy buy you a tripped out smartphone (with Dropbox and Facebook, download now), because without that, your nothing and nobody."
I hope it tanks. And I'm pretty sure it's going to.
Which brings me back to my original question: Why does this exist? Who greenlit this? Who in the world thought this was a good idea? Is someone, somewhere, surprised that this is abject garbage?
And finally, one last question:
Through what devil's deals, what Faustian bargains, what souls were traded to convince Sir Patrick Motherfucking Stuart to star in this very obviously shitty movie as, of all things, a walking, talking pile of shit?
Whoever managed to make that happen should really be turning their talents to the service of better movies.
Wow. So many terrible reviews on fimfic of the emoji movie. Though I don't know if I agree about children. Their a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
He couldn't be seen in the same franchise as
QJohn de Lancie, where else could he go? :)4615849
Your not wrong. Still, I felt that the Guardian review gave a good impression of the general critical consensus on this thing. Apparently, the movie opinions that "words aren't cool" (I quote this directly), sentiments with which I must disagree in the strongest possible terms.
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That is true. I can agree with that.
I heard at some point, one of the creators said they wanted this to be the next LEGO Movie. Which suggests to me they were trying to copy that film’s success, while completely misunderstanding why it succeeded.
The lesson of The LEGO Movie was “Even the most blatant, corporate-shilling cash grab of a movie can be successful, if you have clever writing, interesting characters, and an engaging story.” Seems like the makers of The Emoji Movie stopped listening at “successful.”
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I can see what they were thinking there, but, as well as the critical points you make, there are several differences: Lego is a beloved brand with a long history of making quality products and several generations of nostalgic parents, grandparents, uncles et cetera (who, remembering said products, are inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt) to drive it's success.
Emoji have none of this. In my experience, they're largely just annoying things my niece insists on including in text messages.
Right? Somewhere out there a movie executive board - people with millions of dollars, whose business is to spend millions of dollars in calculated gambles on films - heard the pitch for this movie and said "Yeah, I think this'll turn profit."
...
Oh my goodness, that was Patrick Stewart.
No, I haven't seen the film; just a few previews. But as to how it can exist, I suppose someone felt is was the logical next step after they made a movie out of Angry Birds.
It currently holds a proud 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. So, it's not even a "so bad it's good" kinda movie like The Room (32%) or Birdemic (19%). Hell, even Manos: The Hands of Fate got 7%. With 0%, it's just crap in its purest form (including one of the characters, no less).
pics.onsizzle.com/Facebook-e29b87.png
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It also helped that it had a genuine message to give the audience besides the stock "be creative", namely to let kids enjoy kids things and to stop trying to make children's properties overly "mature" to appeal to adults.
These are all very good questions you raise.
I submit that the simplest answer to all of them is, 'There is a God, and It hates Its creation and wants it to suffer.'
At the very least, the Angry Birds movie had some basic plot to work off of. Not much of one by any standards, but there was, in fact, something there.
This? I question what class of a plot they even came up with.
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Wow. Even the brand-plugging abomination that is Foodfight! managed to score a 10% on the Tomatometer.
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Updated: we are now at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. This thing got one sort of positive review.
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Currently it's 3%, but that still doesn't change the fact that The Wicker Man got 15...
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I'm not sure I entirely trust this review... Interestingly, their review of Clerks listed " a child purchasing cigarettes" as one of the reasons it's not suitable for kids younger than 17.
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It doesn't help that the Lego Movie was, as has been previously stated, clever. It was less about being a corporate cash grab - even if it was one - and more about a cash grab being handed to a very talented studio who capitalized on the fact that it was a silly movie about toys. They poked fun at hollywood storytelling in the same film where they did a lot of clever things with animation and concepting to make it a great movie to look at as well as a funny experience.
It took a lot of effort to bring the lego movie to life. Pushing that same amount of effort into emojis just seems... difficult, at best. The makers of the lego movie clearly cared about the fact that their subject matter were toys, putting in details like chips and cracks into the design of certain characters to show they were things somebody owned and played with. But emoji aren't personal objects, they're symbols we send out in communication. You'd have better luck making a film about letters or numbers.
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Oh, they're not to be trusted at all: they review from a very moralistic, religious perspective (a bit like capalert, but far less crazy, and far more benign). This leads to some rather odd priorities: they tend to assume that everything they review is for like-minded parents to assess suitability for their children.
I'm surprised that they didn't call foul on this movies blatant, manipulate advertising, though. They simply state that IRL apps feature prominently. Their review, in it's entirety:
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Confession time: I have yet to watch the Lego movie. I now find myself wanting to.
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It was surprisingly good. Funny, a bit on the irreverent side, very internet-humor in some of the best and worst ways, but ultimately a charming movie that never takes its plot entirely seriously but does care quite a bit about the central characters. Also includes some great line reads, Morgan Freeman's ghost, and some very clever Toy-Story-esque logic where the ancient magical artifacts of the world are clearly just bits and bobs of household junk the characters have encountered.
oh, and it actually looks pleasant. The animators went with this thing where every single detail of the world that can be rendered as artificial is, which fits the theme. I love it.
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"It's time to crunch the numbers!"
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I already love it.
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So, The Phantom Tollbooth. Granted, that was a book first...
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I mean, The Phantom Tollbooth is about more than those things. And to nitpick, it's about language, math, and visual puns more than anything else. ("Killing time? That's even worse than wasting it!")
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Awful puns were pretty much The Phantom Tollbooth's raison d'etre.
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Ah, now I know where people who censored "loser" in Canadian airing of Party for One come from. Also, now I wonder why they reviewed Clerks in the first place. Like, who'd have an idea to watch it with their kids?
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I like to think of it as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland meets more language arts jokes.
I still can't get over the fact that the twin princesses are named Rhyme and Reason, which abruptly vanish after they are kidnapped. Or the fact that the characters literally jump to a place called Conclusions.
Oh that's an easy question to answer! Have you ever seen that episode of 30 Rock where Jack Donaghy makes a terrible TV movie, but he gets so many companies to pay upfront for product tie ins (and carefully makes sure the revenue is a flat fee not dependent on viewership), that he makes a huge profit even though only 7 people ever watch the movie?
Well, someone realized they could do that in real life and made the Emoji movie.
4616196 See the Lego Batman movie first, it's even better. Whether you consider yourself a Dark Night Aficionado or like casual comedies, either way you will love it.
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Shades of "Springtime For Hitler".
Of course, that's also very similar to how Uwe Boll got into filmmaking in the first place, using a (since closed) loophole in German tax law to profit off of crappy films no one wanted to see. Then he started believing his own press releases...
It would have been a better film if it was a story about how emojis are actually the result of alien signals transmitted into human brains in order to try and facilitate communication, as a way of spreading a memetic infection to eventually turn every single human into a walking bomb.
With an antisocial hero who's never used an emoji in his entire life, the fanservice-y, shallow love interest and the bumbling sidekick taking on the mothership of aliens who came up with the ideas of emojis and doing what the entire US army couldn't do by saving the world.
There. I came up with a better plot in 3 minutes than they did for the movie.
I can't find it, but there was an article in the LA Times about producers acquiring franchises. They're about out of big things like comic books and major, popular books, and besides, those are expensive. So the latest thing is franchise franchises, like games. Evidently, Fruit Ninja will be coming to a theater near you.
Here you go :https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/magazine/why-hollywood-is-trying-to-turn-everything-into-movies-even-mindless-games-like-fruit-ninja.html?_r=0
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Even better. Think "Springtime for Hitler" if Bialistock and Blume had figured out a way to keep all the profit no matter how successful or unsuccessful the play was.
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Given the number of independent properties that have never been adapted and are so much better than anything that the Hollywood machine is coming up with, that's truly sad. But the film industry is pathologically risk-averse, and want something with a built-in audience. Just another demonstration of how creatively bankrupt the industry is these day.
The cynical jackass in me wants to say it's punishment for certain political choices and such, but I don't want to start a flame war so I'll stick with my original opinion...
I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know. All I do know is that it does, Sir Patrick Stewart plays a piece of shit and we, as a race, are all lesser for it's existence.
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Lego Batman was awesome. It's one of the best Batman movies ever. And might arguably be the best if not for The Dark Knight.