Saturday, March 10, 2012

First Impressions: Frankenweenie

Hey everyone, welcome to another installment of First Impressions. Today we’re going to wrap up the topic of the movie trailers that I saw last weekend when seeing The Secret World of Arrietty. We already talked about The Pirates! Band of Misfits! so now we’re going to talk about the upcoming stop-motion animated movie Frankenweenie, the remake of the 1984 movie of the same title by Tim Burton.
The plot is similar to the original; a young boy named Victor Frankenstein has a dog named Sparky, whom he befriends and loves more than anyone. Then one day, an unfortunate event happens that causes Sparky to lose his life. Victor decides to resurrect his dog back to life by harnessing the power of science and lightning. While the experiment works successfully, Sparky escapes and causes trouble around the town.
After seeing this trailer, I was beyond ecstatic. Similar to the original Frankenweenie and Ed Wood, the entire movie is in black and white. It looks dark, yet atmospheric and beautiful with its shadows, unique angles, and odd shapes just like Tim Burton’s previous work with his older movies. Also, similar to Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, it’ll be stop motion animation, which is awesome. As I said previously in my First Impressions on The Pirates! Band of Misfits, I’m getting tired of seeing every animated movie and TV show being CGI and miss seeing 2D hand drawn animation, stop motion, and claymation.
But the cherry on the sundae for me is the casting. Actors and actresses who had previously worked with Tim Burton such as Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Landau, Martin Short, and Christopher Lee will be part of the new voice cast in Frankenweenie. That’s awesome! It’s been so long since we’ve seen them in a Tim Burton movie and it’s definitely a nice break from seeing Johnny Depp and Helena Bonhan Carter all the time. 
In a way, it’s like Tim Burton is kinda going full circle when revisiting Frankenweenie again. Although this was the same movie that got him fired from Disney for it being too scary for kids, this was the same movie that inspired Paul Reubens to hire Tim to direct Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. So, it’ll be really nice to see a newer, longer, and artistic take on this classic short movie that should be appreciated more for what it had brought for Tim. Here’s the trailer and let me know if you’re excited about it.

That’s all for now. Thanks for hanging out with us at Old School Lane. Stick around and expect a big top # list from Kevin. It’ll be a lot of fun. Hope to see you soon.
-Patricia

No comments:

Post a Comment