It's a lot worse than you think for anyone with a name you dont recognize in the industry, because if you go somewhere and want to show your experience, if your name isnt on a credit on a released project, you basically never did the work. Imagine being an animator out of college and this movie was your first project. Suddenly 3-4 years out of school you are applying for jobs and you just have a giant employment gap, worse if you have to say that time was spent on a movie that noone thought was worth putting out.
I'm kind of curious what exactly is the sequence of events and worry here. Let me go full-on naive mode and assume the best in both people and situation. You work on this movie. This movie does not release, and this news is very public and known. So now you're at another job with this on your resume. The employer is going to see that and say "Oh yeah, that's the movie they never bothered to release for a tax credit". Moreso, I would have to assume there must exist some form of concrete proof that you worked on this movie and were paid salary for it. I'd also assume this for no other reason that if the company is trying to claim tax credit for this move, they'd need some damn receipts, with your work/employment as one of those.
I don't know, people just talk with this air like you would go into an interview, say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme", and the interviewer would just do a search on IMDB and go "Hmm, this movie doesn't exist, guess I caught you lying on your resume!". Or that the way people verify one's work on a movie is to literally plug the DVD in and start scanning the credits for your name? The idea that anybody in the industry would hear you say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme" and go "...Huh?" and think you otherwise just did jack squat for 3 years sounds asinine to me.
...That being said. I know how the world actually works, and it can be a real piece of shit. I can absolutely believe an employer seeing that on your resume and saying "Well that movie never came out and I never got to see it, so for all I know maybe you're a shit animator. Pass.". But that's also a level of bullshit I'd put on that employer, and one that is also kind of a related but also separate issue to the shit WB is pulling.
To my feeling, it’d be a combo of all those things. There’s no proof if there’s no comprehensive credits. Also, no scenes a person can point to and say “yeah, I did that” or “I cleaned up this sequence by this or that technique.” It’s just a shit situation all around for everyone except the out-of-touch management people that seem to have made this decision utterly capriciously.
"Comprehensive credits" I think is where I raise an eyebrow then. I've always kind of mulled over how important the credits roll at the end of a movie/game really are. On the one hand it is obviously important. Of course. At the same time it's not the sole primary record. Like I said, companies aren't literally punching up the credits and blind searching for your name. This record exists elsewhere. And they get this information elsewhere. The credit roll at the end of a movie/game serves almost no purpose except for the audience. And the audience isn't paying any damn attention outside producer/director/actors. So tell me you couldn't just... get rid of them and nothing would functionally matter at all. I'm not really arguing we should get rid of them. And if anything they probably serve as final concrete proof of work. ...Except in cases where companies literally remove people from credits, but that's its own can of worms. I've just sat through credits of games where they're 20 minutes long. And in the middle of this American produced game, when they're crediting the financial department of their Korean branch, I wonder... surely this vital information is recorded elsewhere and more reliably accessed from there. Nobody is seriously looking specifically at this specific instance of it... except me because I'm an idiot. So does it *need* to be here?
To maybe put it another way, I remember how when Star Wars first came out, it was apparently a *big fucking deal* that it did not have opening credits listing the producer/director/actors/ect. "No you have to have them, it's real fucking important they be there!". But Lucas pushed hard to not have them, for "cinematic vision" and all that. And as it turns out, it really wasn't all that important they be there after all, and it shifted the whole industry paradigm. Movies today have absolutely no intro credits.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I understand the difficulty of showing an example of the work ("I did the physics on Wile E.'s fur"), but I don't understand the lack of proof of work.
I hire people IRL. Their resume claimed they worked at some company (e.g., Siemens). There's no movie with credits at the end proving they worked there. That doesn't mean I just assume that they're lying.
"Why should I hire you over Sally, when I can see Sally's work and I can't see yours."
This doesn't translate perfectly because work on this level is a collaboration. Sally isn't going in with a copy of Lord of the Rings and going "Ok pause at 1:24:56. See that orc in the top middle of the screen? I animated that.".
I get that somebody would absolutely say that. But that doesn't mean what they said is right.
If you're an employer and you say that to Sally, while also knowing full well the situation regarding WB and this movie... do you see yourself as the good guy here?
Animators absolutely do that. Like I've seen discussions about who animated the "laughing on the balcony" scene for Hazbin Hotel, and they were able to identify the individual.
When I first got started in my career (Video Game Animation) the only stuff on my reel was my student work. I eventually got an internship at a small animation boutique that turned into a freelance gig with them. While their business practices were shady as shit, I was finally working on my first video game. The big problem came up when my contract ended with them, but the game was months away from releasing. I couldn’t use any assets that were made in house, so I would literally send recruiters trailers with time stamps telling them what I did in each of my shots. This didn’t work out at all for me. Eventually when the game did come out the company gave me a free copy and I was able to screen record my work and put it on my reel properly. Shortly after this I was able to get my next job.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Imdb is a contributor based website, basically a wiki.
Who do you think posts the credits, and where do you think they get them?
Considering credit lists for yet-unreleased movies will have full credit listings up, I assume they just get them directly from the studios because it's an easy email these days and not hours of somebody typing up a list, mailing it, etc.
The point is not that IMDB exists, the point is that the info is easy to get these days compared to a century ago.
Important to keep in mind that credits are something that have had to be fought for, and come up now and again to this day, rather frequently in the games industry.
+9
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Video games at least get to cheat a bit since they're inherently interactive, so they can slap down a "credits" button somewhere when the game loads so anybody who wants to see them can see them ASAP and everybody else just skips the end credits.
It's a lot worse than you think for anyone with a name you dont recognize in the industry, because if you go somewhere and want to show your experience, if your name isnt on a credit on a released project, you basically never did the work. Imagine being an animator out of college and this movie was your first project. Suddenly 3-4 years out of school you are applying for jobs and you just have a giant employment gap, worse if you have to say that time was spent on a movie that noone thought was worth putting out.
I'm kind of curious what exactly is the sequence of events and worry here. Let me go full-on naive mode and assume the best in both people and situation. You work on this movie. This movie does not release, and this news is very public and known. So now you're at another job with this on your resume. The employer is going to see that and say "Oh yeah, that's the movie they never bothered to release for a tax credit". Moreso, I would have to assume there must exist some form of concrete proof that you worked on this movie and were paid salary for it. I'd also assume this for no other reason that if the company is trying to claim tax credit for this move, they'd need some damn receipts, with your work/employment as one of those.
I don't know, people just talk with this air like you would go into an interview, say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme", and the interviewer would just do a search on IMDB and go "Hmm, this movie doesn't exist, guess I caught you lying on your resume!". Or that the way people verify one's work on a movie is to literally plug the DVD in and start scanning the credits for your name? The idea that anybody in the industry would hear you say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme" and go "...Huh?" and think you otherwise just did jack squat for 3 years sounds asinine to me.
...That being said. I know how the world actually works, and it can be a real piece of shit. I can absolutely believe an employer seeing that on your resume and saying "Well that movie never came out and I never got to see it, so for all I know maybe you're a shit animator. Pass.". But that's also a level of bullshit I'd put on that employer, and one that is also kind of a related but also separate issue to the shit WB is pulling.
To my feeling, it’d be a combo of all those things. There’s no proof if there’s no comprehensive credits. Also, no scenes a person can point to and say “yeah, I did that” or “I cleaned up this sequence by this or that technique.” It’s just a shit situation all around for everyone except the out-of-touch management people that seem to have made this decision utterly capriciously.
"Comprehensive credits" I think is where I raise an eyebrow then. I've always kind of mulled over how important the credits roll at the end of a movie/game really are. On the one hand it is obviously important. Of course. At the same time it's not the sole primary record. Like I said, companies aren't literally punching up the credits and blind searching for your name. This record exists elsewhere. And they get this information elsewhere. The credit roll at the end of a movie/game serves almost no purpose except for the audience. And the audience isn't paying any damn attention outside producer/director/actors. So tell me you couldn't just... get rid of them and nothing would functionally matter at all. I'm not really arguing we should get rid of them. And if anything they probably serve as final concrete proof of work. ...Except in cases where companies literally remove people from credits, but that's its own can of worms. I've just sat through credits of games where they're 20 minutes long. And in the middle of this American produced game, when they're crediting the financial department of their Korean branch, I wonder... surely this vital information is recorded elsewhere and more reliably accessed from there. Nobody is seriously looking specifically at this specific instance of it... except me because I'm an idiot. So does it *need* to be here?
To maybe put it another way, I remember how when Star Wars first came out, it was apparently a *big fucking deal* that it did not have opening credits listing the producer/director/actors/ect. "No you have to have them, it's real fucking important they be there!". But Lucas pushed hard to not have them, for "cinematic vision" and all that. And as it turns out, it really wasn't all that important they be there after all, and it shifted the whole industry paradigm. Movies today have absolutely no intro credits.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I understand the difficulty of showing an example of the work ("I did the physics on Wile E.'s fur"), but I don't understand the lack of proof of work.
I hire people IRL. Their resume claimed they worked at some company (e.g., Siemens). There's no movie with credits at the end proving they worked there. That doesn't mean I just assume that they're lying.
This is actively how the movie/TV and games industry works. If you show someone a resume saying you worked at EA for 3 years, you are going to be asked "On a shipped product?" and if the answer is none, your resume goes to the bottom of the stack under anyone who does have a finished product under their belt. A bad released product that is a sales failure, is better than time spent somewhere without your name on the credits of anything. The first thing that gets looked at is "did you finish a project". It's becoming a huge issue in the gaming industry about including people on the credits, and sometimes being told they will be and then arent.
+6
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The existence of credits is certainly important if only to prevent studios from screwing over people at every opportunity (which they absolutely do anyway), as indicated by game development. Shit like that is a penny the publisher doesn't have to pay out to somebody who worked on a game and is a penny the publisher can keep. All that infinity growth has to come from somewhere, after all.
Whether it's necessary to include credits at the end of a movie or not is the questionable bit, but I'm willing to tolerate them since they don't get in the way anyway and it's a fuckload harder for a studio to dispute you worked on a movie when it's right there in the theatrical credits edited together with the movie.
It's a lot worse than you think for anyone with a name you dont recognize in the industry, because if you go somewhere and want to show your experience, if your name isnt on a credit on a released project, you basically never did the work. Imagine being an animator out of college and this movie was your first project. Suddenly 3-4 years out of school you are applying for jobs and you just have a giant employment gap, worse if you have to say that time was spent on a movie that noone thought was worth putting out.
I'm kind of curious what exactly is the sequence of events and worry here. Let me go full-on naive mode and assume the best in both people and situation. You work on this movie. This movie does not release, and this news is very public and known. So now you're at another job with this on your resume. The employer is going to see that and say "Oh yeah, that's the movie they never bothered to release for a tax credit". Moreso, I would have to assume there must exist some form of concrete proof that you worked on this movie and were paid salary for it. I'd also assume this for no other reason that if the company is trying to claim tax credit for this move, they'd need some damn receipts, with your work/employment as one of those.
I don't know, people just talk with this air like you would go into an interview, say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme", and the interviewer would just do a search on IMDB and go "Hmm, this movie doesn't exist, guess I caught you lying on your resume!". Or that the way people verify one's work on a movie is to literally plug the DVD in and start scanning the credits for your name? The idea that anybody in the industry would hear you say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme" and go "...Huh?" and think you otherwise just did jack squat for 3 years sounds asinine to me.
...That being said. I know how the world actually works, and it can be a real piece of shit. I can absolutely believe an employer seeing that on your resume and saying "Well that movie never came out and I never got to see it, so for all I know maybe you're a shit animator. Pass.". But that's also a level of bullshit I'd put on that employer, and one that is also kind of a related but also separate issue to the shit WB is pulling.
To my feeling, it’d be a combo of all those things. There’s no proof if there’s no comprehensive credits. Also, no scenes a person can point to and say “yeah, I did that” or “I cleaned up this sequence by this or that technique.” It’s just a shit situation all around for everyone except the out-of-touch management people that seem to have made this decision utterly capriciously.
"Comprehensive credits" I think is where I raise an eyebrow then. I've always kind of mulled over how important the credits roll at the end of a movie/game really are. On the one hand it is obviously important. Of course. At the same time it's not the sole primary record. Like I said, companies aren't literally punching up the credits and blind searching for your name. This record exists elsewhere. And they get this information elsewhere. The credit roll at the end of a movie/game serves almost no purpose except for the audience. And the audience isn't paying any damn attention outside producer/director/actors. So tell me you couldn't just... get rid of them and nothing would functionally matter at all. I'm not really arguing we should get rid of them. And if anything they probably serve as final concrete proof of work. ...Except in cases where companies literally remove people from credits, but that's its own can of worms. I've just sat through credits of games where they're 20 minutes long. And in the middle of this American produced game, when they're crediting the financial department of their Korean branch, I wonder... surely this vital information is recorded elsewhere and more reliably accessed from there. Nobody is seriously looking specifically at this specific instance of it... except me because I'm an idiot. So does it *need* to be here?
To maybe put it another way, I remember how when Star Wars first came out, it was apparently a *big fucking deal* that it did not have opening credits listing the producer/director/actors/ect. "No you have to have them, it's real fucking important they be there!". But Lucas pushed hard to not have them, for "cinematic vision" and all that. And as it turns out, it really wasn't all that important they be there after all, and it shifted the whole industry paradigm. Movies today have absolutely no intro credits.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I understand the difficulty of showing an example of the work ("I did the physics on Wile E.'s fur"), but I don't understand the lack of proof of work.
I hire people IRL. Their resume claimed they worked at some company (e.g., Siemens). There's no movie with credits at the end proving they worked there. That doesn't mean I just assume that they're lying.
This is actively how the movie/TV and games industry works. If you show someone a resume saying you worked at EA for 3 years, you are going to be asked "On a shipped product?" and if the answer is none, your resume goes to the bottom of the stack under anyone who does have a finished product under their belt. A bad released product that is a sales failure, is better than time spent somewhere without your name on the credits of anything. The first thing that gets looked at is "did you finish a project". It's becoming a huge issue in the gaming industry about including people on the credits, and sometimes being told they will be and then arent.
The existence of credits is certainly important if only to prevent studios from screwing over people at every opportunity (which they absolutely do anyway), as indicated by game development. Shit like that is a penny the publisher doesn't have to pay out to somebody who worked on a game and is a penny the publisher can keep. All that infinity growth has to come from somewhere, after all.
Whether it's necessary to include credits at the end of a movie or not is the questionable bit, but I'm willing to tolerate them since they don't get in the way anyway and it's a fuckload harder for a studio to dispute you worked on a movie when it's right there in the theatrical credits edited together with the movie.
Credits were a much much bigger deal back when the only effective way for people to see what you worked on was to have your name in the credits. Back at the start of cinema, there was obviously no IMDB with an extensive list of the material Key Grip #3 worked on in Summer Blockbuster: Part Pants. So the guilds/unions got together to force credits as the standard because that's how you could make sure people knew what you worked on. That goes for the leading credits as well; Peter Jackson actually had to fight to get the LotR movies to begin without credits because he felt they interfered with the start of the films.
Nowadays they're pretty worthless and just eat budget and runtime because anybody can hop on the internet and see everybody involved, plus their history and details. But the union rules hold, so we still have credits.
No it's actually good that the workers who worked on a thing get credit and can use it to further more work.
How are you to verify something if the primary source doesn't list them in the credits?
Credits were a much much bigger deal back when the only effective way for people to see what you worked on was to have your name in the credits. Back at the start of cinema, there was obviously no IMDB with an extensive list of the material Key Grip #3 worked on in Summer Blockbuster: Part Pants. So the guilds/unions got together to force credits as the standard because that's how you could make sure people knew what you worked on. That goes for the leading credits as well; Peter Jackson actually had to fight to get the LotR movies to begin without credits because he felt they interfered with the start of the films.
Nowadays they're pretty worthless and just eat budget and runtime because anybody can hop on the internet and see everybody involved, plus their history and details. But the union rules hold, so we still have credits.
No it's actually good that the workers who worked on a thing get credit and can use it to further more work.
How are you to verify something if the primary source doesn't list them in the credits?
How does one verify that someone has done work in a non-creative field?
Credits were a much much bigger deal back when the only effective way for people to see what you worked on was to have your name in the credits. Back at the start of cinema, there was obviously no IMDB with an extensive list of the material Key Grip #3 worked on in Summer Blockbuster: Part Pants. So the guilds/unions got together to force credits as the standard because that's how you could make sure people knew what you worked on. That goes for the leading credits as well; Peter Jackson actually had to fight to get the LotR movies to begin without credits because he felt they interfered with the start of the films.
Nowadays they're pretty worthless and just eat budget and runtime because anybody can hop on the internet and see everybody involved, plus their history and details. But the union rules hold, so we still have credits.
No it's actually good that the workers who worked on a thing get credit and can use it to further more work.
How are you to verify something if the primary source doesn't list them in the credits?
How does one verify that someone has done work in a non-creative field?
Yes it is bad that you are beholden to your ex boss corroborating you. It is good that credits make sure you aren't.
It's a lot worse than you think for anyone with a name you dont recognize in the industry, because if you go somewhere and want to show your experience, if your name isnt on a credit on a released project, you basically never did the work. Imagine being an animator out of college and this movie was your first project. Suddenly 3-4 years out of school you are applying for jobs and you just have a giant employment gap, worse if you have to say that time was spent on a movie that noone thought was worth putting out.
I'm kind of curious what exactly is the sequence of events and worry here. Let me go full-on naive mode and assume the best in both people and situation. You work on this movie. This movie does not release, and this news is very public and known. So now you're at another job with this on your resume. The employer is going to see that and say "Oh yeah, that's the movie they never bothered to release for a tax credit". Moreso, I would have to assume there must exist some form of concrete proof that you worked on this movie and were paid salary for it. I'd also assume this for no other reason that if the company is trying to claim tax credit for this move, they'd need some damn receipts, with your work/employment as one of those.
I don't know, people just talk with this air like you would go into an interview, say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme", and the interviewer would just do a search on IMDB and go "Hmm, this movie doesn't exist, guess I caught you lying on your resume!". Or that the way people verify one's work on a movie is to literally plug the DVD in and start scanning the credits for your name? The idea that anybody in the industry would hear you say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme" and go "...Huh?" and think you otherwise just did jack squat for 3 years sounds asinine to me.
...That being said. I know how the world actually works, and it can be a real piece of shit. I can absolutely believe an employer seeing that on your resume and saying "Well that movie never came out and I never got to see it, so for all I know maybe you're a shit animator. Pass.". But that's also a level of bullshit I'd put on that employer, and one that is also kind of a related but also separate issue to the shit WB is pulling.
To my feeling, it’d be a combo of all those things. There’s no proof if there’s no comprehensive credits. Also, no scenes a person can point to and say “yeah, I did that” or “I cleaned up this sequence by this or that technique.” It’s just a shit situation all around for everyone except the out-of-touch management people that seem to have made this decision utterly capriciously.
"Comprehensive credits" I think is where I raise an eyebrow then. I've always kind of mulled over how important the credits roll at the end of a movie/game really are. On the one hand it is obviously important. Of course. At the same time it's not the sole primary record. Like I said, companies aren't literally punching up the credits and blind searching for your name. This record exists elsewhere. And they get this information elsewhere. The credit roll at the end of a movie/game serves almost no purpose except for the audience. And the audience isn't paying any damn attention outside producer/director/actors. So tell me you couldn't just... get rid of them and nothing would functionally matter at all. I'm not really arguing we should get rid of them. And if anything they probably serve as final concrete proof of work. ...Except in cases where companies literally remove people from credits, but that's its own can of worms. I've just sat through credits of games where they're 20 minutes long. And in the middle of this American produced game, when they're crediting the financial department of their Korean branch, I wonder... surely this vital information is recorded elsewhere and more reliably accessed from there. Nobody is seriously looking specifically at this specific instance of it... except me because I'm an idiot. So does it *need* to be here?
To maybe put it another way, I remember how when Star Wars first came out, it was apparently a *big fucking deal* that it did not have opening credits listing the producer/director/actors/ect. "No you have to have them, it's real fucking important they be there!". But Lucas pushed hard to not have them, for "cinematic vision" and all that. And as it turns out, it really wasn't all that important they be there after all, and it shifted the whole industry paradigm. Movies today have absolutely no intro credits.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I understand the difficulty of showing an example of the work ("I did the physics on Wile E.'s fur"), but I don't understand the lack of proof of work.
I hire people IRL. Their resume claimed they worked at some company (e.g., Siemens). There's no movie with credits at the end proving they worked there. That doesn't mean I just assume that they're lying.
"Why should I hire you over Sally, when I can see Sally's work and I can't see yours."
This.
The issue is that when an employer is looking at multiple resumes for a project and that project costs a shit ton of money and takes a long fucking time. It matters a fucking lot to be able to show one's work and show that it is good. In the above example, you are fucked because I as the guy doing the hiring have to look at you being an unknown, even if you had work before Wiley Coyote Vs ACME because nothing is a constant. For all I know you didn't adapt well to changes in technology and your work product has either stagnated or gotten worse. I as the person doing hiring, will not want to be in a position where I get shit canned months down the line because the project ends up being bad and it will be harder for me to recover if it turns out that I opted to pick unknowns; especially, if I had access to known factors like Sally, who could show they were still producing solid work.
That's the rub here for people that need this for a resume. They have no way to prove they have good skills and in fact someone could see that they worked on Wiley Coyote Vs ACME. See that it got shit canned and if they don't do their research, they might conclude that "Hey, maybe the people that worked on this film, we really bad at their job. Hiring them is a bad idea." So this actually creates an incentive for those people that got fucked over by this deal, to opt to leave "worked on Wiley Coyote Vs ACM" of their resume and try to explain the gap in history without ever bringing up the film.
Also I'm sure AngelHedgie could give you a good run down on how there was a huge fucking fight in the past to force the movie industry to properly credit their people and not be able to weaponize the credits section against those they didn't like. He might even give you a run down of just how shitty that practice is currently in the gaming industry.
Like trying to find work fucking sucks and most people need to be able to list every bit they can on their resume to maybe get through that bullshit; especially, if they don't have unique skills that are coveted, have a bit well known name or a well established name.
Yep, credits are Serious Business in Hollywood - there are all sorts of rules hammered out by the studios and the unions as to when people can be put on the credits, and when people can be removed. For example, when the first Sin City movie came out, they wanted to give Frank Miller a directorial credit - but they couldn't because the DGA has a number of rules for such, one of the biggest being that movies only have one directorial credit. It's also worth noting that one of the reasons Nimona has end credits with a double digit runtime is because they wanted to give all of the Blue Sky animators credit for their work, which is a huge sign of respect and gave all those animators backing on their resumes.
And yeah, the games industry in comparison sucks at this, with credits routinely weaponized against workers (which is why all those rules exist in Hollywood) - probably the most infamous example of this is L.A. Noire, where the bullshit pulled with the credits by the tyrannical head of Team Bondi got so fucked up that a group of ex-Bondi staff literally set up a website to lay out what the game's actual credits should have been.
They're certainly not actually looking through the film credits and pausing at the right spot. I would like to assume the industry at large does not just use Wikipedia or IMDB for this kind of shit, seeing how anybody can edit these pages. They're not phoning up the dang Russo's as references ("Oh yeah I remember him, he was a great grip!"). I assume when you work for a major production, under a major label, and hopefully under some form of union, this kind of shit gets properly paper trailed and stored somewhere.
There is no damn way anybody who worked on Coyote vs Acme doesn't have a proper paper trail of their work on the movie. And if they don't... well not only is that another major knock against WB, I would hopefully like to say that one of the requirements if you want to do this stupid tax write-off should be that this paper trail must exist. And when it comes to getting work somewhere else in the industry, that they have ways of accessing and verifying this paper trail.
...Whether they choose to honor that paper trail is a whole other can of worms. Shitty companies don't, and they fucking suck for not doing so.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Businesses do not use good practices. You're trying to apply reasonable actions to a world where you can make money by destroying art.
also apparently a field that heavily prioritizes and values resumes with released projects. I'll admit I hadn't much thought about it, but it makes sense. People that make the decisions of hiring on new people would tend to look for people with released projects over those that haven't done that much or have smaller scale. It isn't right, but that's the reality of the situation.
In any case, there's absolutely no defensible reason to delete an entire finished film without release except corporate accounting. Speaking as a person that greatly enjoys animation, it feels perverse.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Credits as the sole arbiter of what you worked on is a bizarre idea, I dunno where anybody is getting that notion. If you're good at position X when making movies, that's going to be verified through references regardless of your name being in the credits. And if that's a struggle, they're going to check the extensive and detailed employment records required to track who worked on a movie.
Credits make it harder for a studio to fuck with workers, but that is not where people in the industry are going to go to verify your credentials. And it should never be easier for studios, in any media environment, to fuck with the people doing the work because studios would gladly let those people starve to death and walk over their dead bodies to pick up a fat paycheck for the work.
Well, the Coyote vs. Acme situation just got shittier. It turns out they already took the tax writeoff for the thing, and they're pretty much just pretending to shop the movie around to try to save face.
“No one is doing anything at Warners to push this film for a sale,” says a source close to production.
So unless someone's willing to cough up $70 million, Warner will lose money on this.
Good. You shouldn't be able to shit can a finished movie and then claim you deserve free money from the government.
It's a lot worse than you think for anyone with a name you dont recognize in the industry, because if you go somewhere and want to show your experience, if your name isnt on a credit on a released project, you basically never did the work. Imagine being an animator out of college and this movie was your first project. Suddenly 3-4 years out of school you are applying for jobs and you just have a giant employment gap, worse if you have to say that time was spent on a movie that noone thought was worth putting out.
I'm kind of curious what exactly is the sequence of events and worry here. Let me go full-on naive mode and assume the best in both people and situation. You work on this movie. This movie does not release, and this news is very public and known. So now you're at another job with this on your resume. The employer is going to see that and say "Oh yeah, that's the movie they never bothered to release for a tax credit". Moreso, I would have to assume there must exist some form of concrete proof that you worked on this movie and were paid salary for it. I'd also assume this for no other reason that if the company is trying to claim tax credit for this move, they'd need some damn receipts, with your work/employment as one of those.
I don't know, people just talk with this air like you would go into an interview, say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme", and the interviewer would just do a search on IMDB and go "Hmm, this movie doesn't exist, guess I caught you lying on your resume!". Or that the way people verify one's work on a movie is to literally plug the DVD in and start scanning the credits for your name? The idea that anybody in the industry would hear you say "I worked on Coyote vs Acme" and go "...Huh?" and think you otherwise just did jack squat for 3 years sounds asinine to me.
...That being said. I know how the world actually works, and it can be a real piece of shit. I can absolutely believe an employer seeing that on your resume and saying "Well that movie never came out and I never got to see it, so for all I know maybe you're a shit animator. Pass.". But that's also a level of bullshit I'd put on that employer, and one that is also kind of a related but also separate issue to the shit WB is pulling.
To my feeling, it’d be a combo of all those things. There’s no proof if there’s no comprehensive credits. Also, no scenes a person can point to and say “yeah, I did that” or “I cleaned up this sequence by this or that technique.” It’s just a shit situation all around for everyone except the out-of-touch management people that seem to have made this decision utterly capriciously.
"Comprehensive credits" I think is where I raise an eyebrow then. I've always kind of mulled over how important the credits roll at the end of a movie/game really are. On the one hand it is obviously important. Of course. At the same time it's not the sole primary record. Like I said, companies aren't literally punching up the credits and blind searching for your name. This record exists elsewhere. And they get this information elsewhere. The credit roll at the end of a movie/game serves almost no purpose except for the audience. And the audience isn't paying any damn attention outside producer/director/actors. So tell me you couldn't just... get rid of them and nothing would functionally matter at all. I'm not really arguing we should get rid of them. And if anything they probably serve as final concrete proof of work. ...Except in cases where companies literally remove people from credits, but that's its own can of worms. I've just sat through credits of games where they're 20 minutes long. And in the middle of this American produced game, when they're crediting the financial department of their Korean branch, I wonder... surely this vital information is recorded elsewhere and more reliably accessed from there. Nobody is seriously looking specifically at this specific instance of it... except me because I'm an idiot. So does it *need* to be here?
To maybe put it another way, I remember how when Star Wars first came out, it was apparently a *big fucking deal* that it did not have opening credits listing the producer/director/actors/ect. "No you have to have them, it's real fucking important they be there!". But Lucas pushed hard to not have them, for "cinematic vision" and all that. And as it turns out, it really wasn't all that important they be there after all, and it shifted the whole industry paradigm. Movies today have absolutely no intro credits.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I understand the difficulty of showing an example of the work ("I did the physics on Wile E.'s fur"), but I don't understand the lack of proof of work.
I hire people IRL. Their resume claimed they worked at some company (e.g., Siemens). There's no movie with credits at the end proving they worked there. That doesn't mean I just assume that they're lying.
"Why should I hire you over Sally, when I can see Sally's work and I can't see yours."
This.
The issue is that when an employer is looking at multiple resumes for a project and that project costs a shit ton of money and takes a long fucking time. It matters a fucking lot to be able to show one's work and show that it is good. In the above example, you are fucked because I as the guy doing the hiring have to look at you being an unknown, even if you had work before Wiley Coyote Vs ACME because nothing is a constant. For all I know you didn't adapt well to changes in technology and your work product has either stagnated or gotten worse. I as the person doing hiring, will not want to be in a position where I get shit canned months down the line because the project ends up being bad and it will be harder for me to recover if it turns out that I opted to pick unknowns; especially, if I had access to known factors like Sally, who could show they were still producing solid work.
That's the rub here for people that need this for a resume. They have no way to prove they have good skills and in fact someone could see that they worked on Wiley Coyote Vs ACME. See that it got shit canned and if they don't do their research, they might conclude that "Hey, maybe the people that worked on this film, we really bad at their job. Hiring them is a bad idea." So this actually creates an incentive for those people that got fucked over by this deal, to opt to leave "worked on Wiley Coyote Vs ACM" of their resume and try to explain the gap in history without ever bringing up the film.
Also I'm sure @AngelHedgie could give you a good run down on how there was a huge fucking fight in the past to force the movie industry to properly credit their people and not be able to weaponize the credits section against those they didn't like. He might even give you a run down of just how shitty that practice is currently in the gaming industry.
Like trying to find work fucking sucks and most people need to be able to list every bit they can on their resume to maybe get through that bullshit; especially, if they don't have unique skills that are coveted, have a bit well known name or a well established name.
Also not releasing this shit makes it harder too to build a reel, which is another thing you’re going to be passing around to prospective employers and/or clients when you’re trying to get a new job in your field.
EDIT: See JMan’s first hand account up this page for example
In other news: I sat down and watched He-man revolutions to it's conclusion and ~putting aside how they raided sheera's drawer for idea's~ this is what I wanted from the original show; a story about some characters from the original series doing the kinds of things that they would have done if the writers hadn't been constrained by a need to sell toys to 7 year old boys.
In other news: I sat down and watched He-man revolutions to it's conclusion and ~putting aside how they raided sheera's drawer for idea's~ this is what I wanted from the original show; a story about some characters from the original series doing the kinds of things that they would have done if the writers hadn't been constrained by a need to sell toys to 7 year old boys.
Kevin Smith has a great take on this material. Tons of deep cuts (both in Revelations and Revolutions), and a surprisingly coherent and satisfying storyline. I actually liked Revelations a lot for shaking up the status quo; I don't think Revolutions would have worked nearly as well without the first season's allowance for other characters to take center stage for a few episodes.
I could have done without the internet CHUDs getting very concerned about a female character driving the storyline on her own merits, though. For all their grumbling, He-Man was in nearly all (or all, can't remember) episodes, whether in present or flashbacks, so they don't even have a point about He-Man no longer being in his own show.
In other news: I sat down and watched He-man revolutions to it's conclusion and ~putting aside how they raided sheera's drawer for idea's~ this is what I wanted from the original show; a story about some characters from the original series doing the kinds of things that they would have done if the writers hadn't been constrained by a need to sell toys to 7 year old boys.
Kevin Smith has a great take on this material. Tons of deep cuts (both in Revelations and Revolutions), and a surprisingly coherent and satisfying storyline. I actually liked Revelations a lot for shaking up the status quo; I don't think Revolutions would have worked nearly as well without the first season's allowance for other characters to take center stage for a few episodes.
I could have done without the internet CHUDs getting very concerned about a female character driving the storyline on her own merits, though. For all their grumbling, He-Man was in nearly all (or all, can't remember) episodes, whether in present or flashbacks, so they don't even have a point about He-Man no longer being in his own show.
My issue was that Revelations felt like a really dumb bait and switch done by a guy who was incredibly spiteful of the original fan base.
Revolutions by comparison feels like it walked that back to what folks actually *wanted* revolutions to be.
I don't think the first season was spiteful to the fan base, really. The first half was pretty good! My problem is that the show kept playing Calvinball with the world's rules and undoing all the big events.
In other news: I sat down and watched He-man revolutions to it's conclusion and ~putting aside how they raided sheera's drawer for idea's~ this is what I wanted from the original show; a story about some characters from the original series doing the kinds of things that they would have done if the writers hadn't been constrained by a need to sell toys to 7 year old boys.
Kevin Smith has a great take on this material. Tons of deep cuts (both in Revelations and Revolutions), and a surprisingly coherent and satisfying storyline. I actually liked Revelations a lot for shaking up the status quo; I don't think Revolutions would have worked nearly as well without the first season's allowance for other characters to take center stage for a few episodes.
I could have done without the internet CHUDs getting very concerned about a female character driving the storyline on her own merits, though. For all their grumbling, He-Man was in nearly all (or all, can't remember) episodes, whether in present or flashbacks, so they don't even have a point about He-Man no longer being in his own show.
My issue was that Revelations felt like a really dumb bait and switch done by a guy who was incredibly spiteful of the original fan base.
Revolutions by comparison feels like it walked that back to what folks actually *wanted* revolutions to be.
Kevin Smith doesn't strike me as a guy who is motivated by spite of a cartoon fanbase.
Like, why would he even take that job if that was his motivation? Kevin is an ultimate fanboy in basically the goofiest and most harmless way imaginable. I 100% think that he wanted to tell a story about He-Man being briefly absent from the saga, and what a devastating blow that is to those he left behind.
In other news: I sat down and watched He-man revolutions to it's conclusion and ~putting aside how they raided sheera's drawer for idea's~ this is what I wanted from the original show; a story about some characters from the original series doing the kinds of things that they would have done if the writers hadn't been constrained by a need to sell toys to 7 year old boys.
Kevin Smith has a great take on this material. Tons of deep cuts (both in Revelations and Revolutions), and a surprisingly coherent and satisfying storyline. I actually liked Revelations a lot for shaking up the status quo; I don't think Revolutions would have worked nearly as well without the first season's allowance for other characters to take center stage for a few episodes.
I could have done without the internet CHUDs getting very concerned about a female character driving the storyline on her own merits, though. For all their grumbling, He-Man was in nearly all (or all, can't remember) episodes, whether in present or flashbacks, so they don't even have a point about He-Man no longer being in his own show.
My issue was that Revelations felt like a really dumb bait and switch done by a guy who was incredibly spiteful of the original fan base.
Revolutions by comparison feels like it walked that back to what folks actually *wanted* revolutions to be.
Kevin Smith doesn't strike me as a guy who is motivated by spite of a cartoon fanbase.
Like, why would he even take that job if that was his motivation? Kevin is an ultimate fanboy in basically the goofiest and most harmless way imaginable. I 100% think that he wanted to tell a story about He-Man being briefly absent from the saga, and what a devastating blow that is to those he left behind.
Nobody who hates the fans puts
Battle Damage He-Man or Gwildor
in their show.
By his own admission he didn't actually like the show when he was younger (which would make sense; he was aged out of it by the time it came out) and the use of obscure lore and such (Like they had a character that was a tie in for frikkin wonderbread) struck me as being more a case of writers and/or lore nuts giving him greater resources to draw upon as opposed to what he would have personally knwon.
Regardless, this series was really great and managed to snag the "Commercial to sell action figures/toys masquerading as a cartoon" 80's vibe really, really well.
In other news: I sat down and watched He-man revolutions to it's conclusion and ~putting aside how they raided sheera's drawer for idea's~ this is what I wanted from the original show; a story about some characters from the original series doing the kinds of things that they would have done if the writers hadn't been constrained by a need to sell toys to 7 year old boys.
Kevin Smith has a great take on this material. Tons of deep cuts (both in Revelations and Revolutions), and a surprisingly coherent and satisfying storyline. I actually liked Revelations a lot for shaking up the status quo; I don't think Revolutions would have worked nearly as well without the first season's allowance for other characters to take center stage for a few episodes.
I could have done without the internet CHUDs getting very concerned about a female character driving the storyline on her own merits, though. For all their grumbling, He-Man was in nearly all (or all, can't remember) episodes, whether in present or flashbacks, so they don't even have a point about He-Man no longer being in his own show.
My issue was that Revelations felt like a really dumb bait and switch done by a guy who was incredibly spiteful of the original fan base.
Revolutions by comparison feels like it walked that back to what folks actually *wanted* revolutions to be.
Kevin Smith doesn't strike me as a guy who is motivated by spite of a cartoon fanbase.
Like, why would he even take that job if that was his motivation? Kevin is an ultimate fanboy in basically the goofiest and most harmless way imaginable. I 100% think that he wanted to tell a story about He-Man being briefly absent from the saga, and what a devastating blow that is to those he left behind.
Nobody who hates the fans puts
Battle Damage He-Man or Gwildor
in their show.
By his own admission he didn't actually like the show when he was younger (which would make sense; he was aged out of it by the time it came out) and the use of obscure lore and such (Like they had a character that was a tie in for frikkin wonderbread) struck me as being more a case of writers and/or lore nuts giving him greater resources to draw upon as opposed to what he would have personally knwon.
Regardless, this series was really great and managed to snag the "Commercial to sell action figures/toys masquerading as a cartoon" 80's vibe really, really well.
He could not personally have nostalgia for the show and also not want to stick it to the fans.
"I know there are people that went after Revelation for putting Teela first or whatever, but we didn't. Teela was as much a part of the story as she's always been a part of the story.
I thought it would be a cool aspect of storytelling to remove the center of our universe for a few episodes and then bring him back. That wasn't me going, 'Let's break this franchise!' by any stretch of the imagination. People who wanted to attack the show were like, 'They killed He-Man', but it wasn't as if Mattel or Netflix were saying, 'Here man, go kill a franchise for us. That's why we brought you here!' Naturally, He-Man was always going to come back.
Everything we did in He-Man's absence and when we brought him back still tied in heavily with the lore. I'm a person who has enjoyed a franchise or two in his lifetime, and naturally I enjoy it when they respect the things that have gone before. We really went out of our way to honor what it was that people loved about MOTU. Everybody involved had skin in the game as to whether this would be a reinvention of the franchise or a spiritual continuation of the franchise. We were all in the latter camp."
So yeah, again, He-Man was in like 90% of the Revelation episodes AS He-Man, and everything everybody did in that show was because of him. It isn't a "bait and switch."
The CHUDS got out of sorts because the obligatory girlfriend action figure got some agency and saved the muscle dude for once. Does Teela need a "Just Ken" song to get a little understanding, here?
Dracomicron on
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
If we don't get He-Man cereal that's made up of tiny frosted microchips,, I'm going to riot.
So, I've been watching a number of critical videos about Wish, and they're all leaving me wanting to scream "Do you all not fucking understand what the language of domestic abuse looks like?"
I mean, Disney is not being subtle here. Magnifico is very clearly framed through a lens of domestic abuse (and it turns out that a lot of the complaints about his villain song wind up being around that, not realizing that the lyrical and musical choices are meant to reflect the actual fucking language of domestic abusers.) The fact that this point seems to be missed just...look, if you're going to criticize what the movie's putting down, you have to pick it up first. To be fair, "Mother Knows Best" did this better, but at the same time Gothiel and Magnifico represent two different versions of domestic abuse - and I don't think it's coincidence that the male version, which is routinely ignored and excused to a greater degree in our society, is the one that people aren't keying on.
So, I've been watching a number of critical videos about Wish, and they're all leaving me wanting to scream "Do you all not fucking understand what the language of domestic abuse looks like?"
I mean, Disney is not being subtle here. Magnifico is very clearly framed through a lens of domestic abuse (and it turns out that a lot of the complaints about his villain song wind up being around that, not realizing that the lyrical and musical choices are meant to reflect the actual fucking language of domestic abusers.) The fact that this point seems to be missed just...look, if you're going to criticize what the movie's putting down, you have to pick it up first. To be fair, "Mother Knows Best" did this better, but at the same time Gothiel and Magnifico represent two different versions of domestic abuse - and I don't think it's coincidence that the male version, which is routinely ignored and excused to a greater degree in our society, is the one that people aren't keying on.
I am somewhat worried the term 'cartoon logic' is going to go extinct since modern cartoons rarely use visual gags anymore. No more falling anvils flattening heads, no more sliding off cliffs and leaving a perfect coyote-shaped hole deep in the ground. Even the mighty Adventure Time is ten years old now.
So, I've been watching a number of critical videos about Wish, and they're all leaving me wanting to scream "Do you all not fucking understand what the language of domestic abuse looks like?"
I mean, Disney is not being subtle here. Magnifico is very clearly framed through a lens of domestic abuse (and it turns out that a lot of the complaints about his villain song wind up being around that, not realizing that the lyrical and musical choices are meant to reflect the actual fucking language of domestic abusers.) The fact that this point seems to be missed just...look, if you're going to criticize what the movie's putting down, you have to pick it up first. To be fair, "Mother Knows Best" did this better, but at the same time Gothiel and Magnifico represent two different versions of domestic abuse - and I don't think it's coincidence that the male version, which is routinely ignored and excused to a greater degree in our society, is the one that people aren't keying on.
(exasperated hedgie noises)
THANK YOU! I had an exhausting argument with people who think Magnifico is actually the hero of the movie and Asha's biggest problem is he won't grant every wish. It was one of my "media literacy really is suffering" moments. I know, I know, I shouldn't have engaged in the comments in the first place, but still.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Definitely some early-90s weekend-morning flailing for ideas there. They threw a loooot of terrible ideas at the wall in that timeframe and very few landed in any way.
A dollar says that's the same studio that did Exosquad. They even have the same guy voicing He-Man as voiced JT Marsh, who is generally the main character for Exosquad.
I don't think it's a "media literacy is suffering" problem, I just think they did a bad job of making a Disney musical, which is the lens people are viewing it through.
Definitely some early-90s weekend-morning flailing for ideas there. They threw a loooot of terrible ideas at the wall in that timeframe and very few landed in any way.
A dollar says that's the same studio that did Exosquad. They even have the same guy voicing He-Man as voiced JT Marsh, who is generally the main character for Exosquad.
Nah, Marsh is Robby Benson; Adam and He-Man are Doug Parker (you might remember him best as Terrorsaur on Beast Wars) and Gary Chalk (Optimus Primal and Unicron Trilogy Optimus Prime)
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Definitely mixed up the Benson and the Chalk, they've got some extremely similar inflections going on but yeah, definitely a different guy than Marsh's voice actor.
I feel I did not watch enough things with Campbell Lane growing up. That or he didn’t get nearly as much work as he should have in animation; he is just a joy to listen to, even as corny as some of that Skeleton dialog is, he makes it work so well.
EDIT: Scott McNeill and Alec Willows reminiscing about Lane, including McNeill noting that New Adventures was his first gig and where he met Lane: https://youtu.be/ocCemTd5vB0?feature=shared
Posts
Who do you think posts the credits, and where do you think they get them?
Animators absolutely do that. Like I've seen discussions about who animated the "laughing on the balcony" scene for Hazbin Hotel, and they were able to identify the individual.
Considering credit lists for yet-unreleased movies will have full credit listings up, I assume they just get them directly from the studios because it's an easy email these days and not hours of somebody typing up a list, mailing it, etc.
The point is not that IMDB exists, the point is that the info is easy to get these days compared to a century ago.
This is actively how the movie/TV and games industry works. If you show someone a resume saying you worked at EA for 3 years, you are going to be asked "On a shipped product?" and if the answer is none, your resume goes to the bottom of the stack under anyone who does have a finished product under their belt. A bad released product that is a sales failure, is better than time spent somewhere without your name on the credits of anything. The first thing that gets looked at is "did you finish a project". It's becoming a huge issue in the gaming industry about including people on the credits, and sometimes being told they will be and then arent.
Whether it's necessary to include credits at the end of a movie or not is the questionable bit, but I'm willing to tolerate them since they don't get in the way anyway and it's a fuckload harder for a studio to dispute you worked on a movie when it's right there in the theatrical credits edited together with the movie.
What an absurd way of doing business.
Post-credit scenes must be purged.
No it's actually good that the workers who worked on a thing get credit and can use it to further more work.
How are you to verify something if the primary source doesn't list them in the credits?
How does one verify that someone has done work in a non-creative field?
Yes it is bad that you are beholden to your ex boss corroborating you. It is good that credits make sure you aren't.
Yep, credits are Serious Business in Hollywood - there are all sorts of rules hammered out by the studios and the unions as to when people can be put on the credits, and when people can be removed. For example, when the first Sin City movie came out, they wanted to give Frank Miller a directorial credit - but they couldn't because the DGA has a number of rules for such, one of the biggest being that movies only have one directorial credit. It's also worth noting that one of the reasons Nimona has end credits with a double digit runtime is because they wanted to give all of the Blue Sky animators credit for their work, which is a huge sign of respect and gave all those animators backing on their resumes.
And yeah, the games industry in comparison sucks at this, with credits routinely weaponized against workers (which is why all those rules exist in Hollywood) - probably the most infamous example of this is L.A. Noire, where the bullshit pulled with the credits by the tyrannical head of Team Bondi got so fucked up that a group of ex-Bondi staff literally set up a website to lay out what the game's actual credits should have been.
Ok. Now verify that.
They're certainly not actually looking through the film credits and pausing at the right spot. I would like to assume the industry at large does not just use Wikipedia or IMDB for this kind of shit, seeing how anybody can edit these pages. They're not phoning up the dang Russo's as references ("Oh yeah I remember him, he was a great grip!"). I assume when you work for a major production, under a major label, and hopefully under some form of union, this kind of shit gets properly paper trailed and stored somewhere.
There is no damn way anybody who worked on Coyote vs Acme doesn't have a proper paper trail of their work on the movie. And if they don't... well not only is that another major knock against WB, I would hopefully like to say that one of the requirements if you want to do this stupid tax write-off should be that this paper trail must exist. And when it comes to getting work somewhere else in the industry, that they have ways of accessing and verifying this paper trail.
...Whether they choose to honor that paper trail is a whole other can of worms. Shitty companies don't, and they fucking suck for not doing so.
also apparently a field that heavily prioritizes and values resumes with released projects. I'll admit I hadn't much thought about it, but it makes sense. People that make the decisions of hiring on new people would tend to look for people with released projects over those that haven't done that much or have smaller scale. It isn't right, but that's the reality of the situation.
In any case, there's absolutely no defensible reason to delete an entire finished film without release except corporate accounting. Speaking as a person that greatly enjoys animation, it feels perverse.
Credits make it harder for a studio to fuck with workers, but that is not where people in the industry are going to go to verify your credentials. And it should never be easier for studios, in any media environment, to fuck with the people doing the work because studios would gladly let those people starve to death and walk over their dead bodies to pick up a fat paycheck for the work.
Good. You shouldn't be able to shit can a finished movie and then claim you deserve free money from the government.
Also not releasing this shit makes it harder too to build a reel, which is another thing you’re going to be passing around to prospective employers and/or clients when you’re trying to get a new job in your field.
EDIT: See JMan’s first hand account up this page for example
Kevin Smith has a great take on this material. Tons of deep cuts (both in Revelations and Revolutions), and a surprisingly coherent and satisfying storyline. I actually liked Revelations a lot for shaking up the status quo; I don't think Revolutions would have worked nearly as well without the first season's allowance for other characters to take center stage for a few episodes.
I could have done without the internet CHUDs getting very concerned about a female character driving the storyline on her own merits, though. For all their grumbling, He-Man was in nearly all (or all, can't remember) episodes, whether in present or flashbacks, so they don't even have a point about He-Man no longer being in his own show.
My issue was that Revelations felt like a really dumb bait and switch done by a guy who was incredibly spiteful of the original fan base.
Revolutions by comparison feels like it walked that back to what folks actually *wanted* revolutions to be.
Kevin Smith doesn't strike me as a guy who is motivated by spite of a cartoon fanbase.
Like, why would he even take that job if that was his motivation? Kevin is an ultimate fanboy in basically the goofiest and most harmless way imaginable. I 100% think that he wanted to tell a story about He-Man being briefly absent from the saga, and what a devastating blow that is to those he left behind.
Nobody who hates the fans puts
By his own admission he didn't actually like the show when he was younger (which would make sense; he was aged out of it by the time it came out) and the use of obscure lore and such (Like they had a character that was a tie in for frikkin wonderbread) struck me as being more a case of writers and/or lore nuts giving him greater resources to draw upon as opposed to what he would have personally knwon.
Regardless, this series was really great and managed to snag the "Commercial to sell action figures/toys masquerading as a cartoon" 80's vibe really, really well.
He could not personally have nostalgia for the show and also not want to stick it to the fans.
So yeah, again, He-Man was in like 90% of the Revelation episodes AS He-Man, and everything everybody did in that show was because of him. It isn't a "bait and switch."
The CHUDS got out of sorts because the obligatory girlfriend action figure got some agency and saved the muscle dude for once. Does Teela need a "Just Ken" song to get a little understanding, here?
I mean, Disney is not being subtle here. Magnifico is very clearly framed through a lens of domestic abuse (and it turns out that a lot of the complaints about his villain song wind up being around that, not realizing that the lyrical and musical choices are meant to reflect the actual fucking language of domestic abusers.) The fact that this point seems to be missed just...look, if you're going to criticize what the movie's putting down, you have to pick it up first. To be fair, "Mother Knows Best" did this better, but at the same time Gothiel and Magnifico represent two different versions of domestic abuse - and I don't think it's coincidence that the male version, which is routinely ignored and excused to a greater degree in our society, is the one that people aren't keying on.
(exasperated hedgie noises)
Wait somebody watched Wish?
Also I am dumb and want that team to tackle a version of this He-Man:
THE POWER OF GOOD AND THE WAY OF THE MAGIC
I am somewhat worried the term 'cartoon logic' is going to go extinct since modern cartoons rarely use visual gags anymore. No more falling anvils flattening heads, no more sliding off cliffs and leaving a perfect coyote-shaped hole deep in the ground. Even the mighty Adventure Time is ten years old now.
THANK YOU! I had an exhausting argument with people who think Magnifico is actually the hero of the movie and Asha's biggest problem is he won't grant every wish. It was one of my "media literacy really is suffering" moments. I know, I know, I shouldn't have engaged in the comments in the first place, but still.
Definitely some early-90s weekend-morning flailing for ideas there. They threw a loooot of terrible ideas at the wall in that timeframe and very few landed in any way.
A dollar says that's the same studio that did Exosquad. They even have the same guy voicing He-Man as voiced JT Marsh, who is generally the main character for Exosquad.
Nah, Marsh is Robby Benson; Adam and He-Man are Doug Parker (you might remember him best as Terrorsaur on Beast Wars) and Gary Chalk (Optimus Primal and Unicron Trilogy Optimus Prime)
Fun fact: that incarnation of Skeleton is voiced by Campbell Lane, who many folks may best remember for his narration in the dub of Gundam Wing:
EDIT: Scott McNeill and Alec Willows reminiscing about Lane, including McNeill noting that New Adventures was his first gig and where he met Lane:
EDIT:
OH RIGHT he was Rampage!