Two Minutes Hate Tuesday

Destroying My Childhood Memories (part 1)

I understand people want to make money...and a easy/lazy way to do that is to make a sequel to a beloved movie or TV show. That is fine...some sequels have been awesome (Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, Godfather part 2 for example). However, sequels are low quality, low budget, misguided affairs. Disney is the master at this...but what I saw over vacation made even their partial birth abortions of straight to video films seem like Oscar nominees.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys

This movie is basically the devil. It takes the awesome stop-motion characters from the 1964 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (a show that I love and usually watch yearly although I haven't been able to catch it the past couple, which led to my desperation of trying to watch RtRNRatIoMT) and puts them in a new story. This probably would have been acceptable if they were true to the original animation and characters...after all I also watched the Miser Brothers' Christmas and didn't hate it. But no...they went the lazy CG route.

Original Hermey & Rudolph

New CG Hermey & Rudolph

Yes, I suppose you can tell it is the same characters (if you really tried)...but the new computer animation characters have no soul. They are boring, their world is boring, there is no charm. The animation immediately made me want to retch. I couldn't concentrate, the plot and story slipped through my mind as I stared in a dumbfounded stupor at what the had done. And Rudolph's nose? No longer does it just glow, it shoots freaking laser beams across the room...demonstrated by Rudolph lighting up a disco ball for the elf holiday ball (or something like that). I had to turn it off withing about 10 minutes or risk my brain dying. Oh and Richard Dreyfuss is no Burl Ives, that's for sure - yes, I know they are different snowmen (Original = Sam, New Crappy Snowman = Scoop) but the quality, the quality was the thing that was missing. Even Elf did a good job at emulating the original...and that was such a small part of the story that they didn't have to.

Stop screwing up the things I love with terrible sequels (this means you too George Lucas - I'll probably get to you in part 2).


End Hate.