The Angry Birds Movie - Another Garbage Video Game Adaptation

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Rooster Teeth did it better, in 2011.

 

[jklinders]

I saw this movie earlier in the week. It was the worst film I've seen in cinemas all year, and that, let me assure you, is some impressive company in the bottom 10 list. What's a shame is that unlike some of those films, I actually had high hopes for this.

Few things:

-Something that bugs me a lot is the notion of a film being too late to cash in on something, i.e. people saying that the Warcraft movie should have come out years ago. And to that, I say, why? Was Lord of the Rings too late for the novel? Was The Chronicles of Narnia? Was Jumanji too late (i.e. the film came out 15 years after the book was published). I'd say, no. A good film is a good film, regardless of when its source material was created. Not that Angry Birds is a good film by any means, but yeah.

-Something I noticed, and I know I'm not the only one who did...is this a commentary on the War on Terror? Let me explain:

You have a society of birds that love peace, freedom, and everything else. They're a nation that looks up to a bald eagle. Pigs come, one of them bearing a big black beard, and are welcomed into their society. The pigs then destroy their society using explosives. The bald eagle is looked to, but he's incompetent. The birds then launch total war on the pigs, reducing their nation to rubble, and leaving said nation in ruins after pulling out.

...Am I the only one who got a vibe of anti-immigration, pro-war in this? Or am I giving the film way too much credit?

Edit: Yep, definately not the only one.

Well, if they were doing that on purpose, it's one of the weirder platforms for such an agenda I have seen. Weirder even than 80s cartoons which were rife with marketing scams and the entire GI Joe franchise which was a thinly veiled recruitment propaganda piece.

A local "newspaper" out here gave pretty good billing to this shit fest. I still don't know why, even in the piece that their critic wrote on it, he was only saying why studios would greenlight such a thing (ready made huge audience for a wildly popular existing app) but nothing about why it was actually good. I remember thinking he was paid to say nice things because he was only saying nice things about why it was made but nothing about the movie proper.

I agree 100% with you that there does not need to be a time limit on the relevance to an adaptation. But you kinda need something to work with in order to make it work. Lord of the Rings and Warcraft have an established lore and setting that make them good ground for movies. Angry Birds, not so much.

 

[MeatMachine]

The Angry Birds Movie had all the potential in the world.

...what?
How exactly do you rationalize that statement? Angry Birds, as a feature-length movie, had basically 0 source material to work with. At best, it was a frustrating F2P mobile game with easily-recognizable (if undeveloped) character designs. So yeah... coasting off of familiarity and brand power alone, basically.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

-Something that bugs me a lot is the notion of a film being too late to cash in on something, i.e. people saying that the Warcraft movie should have come out years ago. And to that, I say, why? Was Lord of the Rings too late for the novel? Was The Chronicles of Narnia? Was Jumanji too late (i.e. the film came out 15 years after the book was published). I'd say, no. A good film is a good film, regardless of when its source material was created. Not that Angry Birds is a good film by any means, but yeah.

The Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia are greatly respected classics that have been read and referenced and debated for pretty much their entire published history. Jumanji probably had an advantage that few would know it was a book (I certainly didn't, so thanks for that ) and thus were able to let the film raise or fall on the merits of it's cast and content rather than expectations.

Angry Birds isn't in the same ballpark: it's certainly not a cultural bedrock the way Tolkien or Lewis' works were and it doesn't even have Jumanji's obscurity to allow it wiggle room to do it's own thing.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

The Angry Birds Movie had all the potential in the world.

...what?
How exactly do you rationalize that statement? Angry Birds, as a feature-length movie, had basically 0 source material to work with. At best, it was a frustrating F2P mobile game with easily-recognizable (if undeveloped) character designs. So yeah... coasting off of familiarity and brand power alone, basically.

And that's precisely why it had such potential. When the only previously established elements in the film are the setup and visual design, you have unlimited freedom in everything else. Lord of the Rings, Assassin's Creed and Warcraft all have years of established characters, lore, plot elements, villains that are inextricably linked to the franchises. This limits the storytelling potential, when there are elements people expect to be like they are in the source material. But when such expectations aren't in place, you can basically make the central plot about anything, as long as it features birds thrown from slingshots to bring down buildings at some point.

OT: Hmm, quite the mixed reception this one's getting. Quite sad that it seems like it won't be the success Rovio are hoping it to be (I'm finnish, by the way, so I'm quite biased in wanting this to succeed). One thing to note about this is that it's been funded completely in-house: Rovio paid for it all by themselves, and not even by taking loans. This means that if they fail, they have few others to blame than themselves. This looks like a break it or make it -scenario for them, and so far it doesn't look all that good. Oh well, the Smurfs movies made money despite getting terrible reviews by appealing to kids, though they had much more brand recognition than Angry Birds.

 

[WindKnight]

The Angry Birds Movie had all the potential in the world.

...what?
How exactly do you rationalize that statement? Angry Birds, as a feature-length movie, had basically 0 source material to work with. At best, it was a frustrating F2P mobile game with easily-recognizable (if undeveloped) character designs. So yeah... coasting off of familiarity and brand power alone, basically.

The lego movie was pretty much in the same position, and look how that turned out. Creativity and effort can wring a lot out of nothing.

 

[RJ 17]

Can't wait for the Tetris movie...

...


...

... yes I am stoned.

You're in luck, my friend, for the Tetris movie is actually planned to be an epic sci-fi trilogy.

 

[Parasondox]

Can't wait for the Tetris movie...

...


...

... yes I am stoned.

You're in luck, my friend, for the Tetris movie is actually planned to be an epic sci-fi trilogy.

Well... I need stronger drugs.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Watching an obese eagle urinate into a pond for 15 seconds....

That... that's not even how birds work.

 

[Vigormortis]

Don't know what you're on about, Marter. Angry Birds is this years The LEGO Movie! It's so funny and colorful! And that scene with the bird taking a piss? Hilarious! Truly smart and imaginative writing! Can't wait for the sequel!

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go post several hundred Angry Bird related meme pics on Facebook.

 

[Callate]

-Something that bugs me a lot is the notion of a film being too late to cash in on something, i.e. people saying that the Warcraft movie should have come out years ago. And to that, I say, why? Was Lord of the Rings too late for the novel? Was The Chronicles of Narnia? Was Jumanji too late (i.e. the film came out 15 years after the book was published). I'd say, no. A good film is a good film, regardless of when its source material was created. Not that Angry Birds is a good film by any means, but yeah.

The thing is, The Lord of the Rings kept coming back into popular culture. The counterculture movement of the 60s empathized with Bilbo and Frodo and saw echoes of anti-war and environmentalist ideas in the books. The 70s saw Gygax et. al. do a thin coat of paint over large parts of the setting and turn it into Dungeons and Dragons. The 80s had a pair of animated movies. Even without the Peter Jackson movies, people would still probably be discussing LoTR today.

And literature has been around for thousands of years- long enough for a book that re-emerges for fifty or more to have made a case for a significant and lasting cultural impact.

Video games haven't been around for that long. Phone and tablet games, based on touch controls, an even briefer time. I will be highly surprised if anyone is talking about Angry Birds in ten years; it was created to be just recognizable enough to be a brand. In and of itself, the games don't have the depth of Bugs Bunny; they're more like Huckleberry Hound or one of the other dozens of near-interchangable, assembly-line characters Hanna-Barbera churned through in the sixties and seventies.

And then there's the Internet as a whole, which has a habit of turning even important issues into yesterday's news in an eyeblink.

Warcraft has some benefit of having been around for a while, drawing on many of the same themes that have been expanded by Tolkein and Dungeons and Dragons (and all the books, films, and movies the pair of those have influenced, as well as possibly a majority of video games.) But at one point, World of Warcraft enjoyed over twelve million subscribers, and estimates now suggest it has something south of seven million. There's something to be said to tapping into an active and involved fanbase, rather than one that has moved on and possibly even burned out with regard to your property. Five million strong candidates for ticket sales is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a big-budget movie with a lot on the line.

You're quite right that it's never too late to be a great film. But a lot of great films falter at the box office, or at least fail to reach their full potential. Having a built-in audience and word of mouth may not be everything, but it isn't something a movie maker can afford to simply ignore.

 

[RobAlister]

I don't understand what people were expecting. It's based off of a game where you fling birds at pigs. Did people really expect the movie adaptation to be up there with Casablanca?

 

[Hawki]

I don't understand what people were expecting. It's based off of a game where you fling birds at pigs. Did people really expect the movie adaptation to be up there with Casablanca?

Casablanca? No. The Lego Movie, or any other decent animated movie in recent times? I think that's reasonable.

Which is a shame, because I've Zootopia, The Peanuts Movie, and even Kung Fu Panda 3 are examples of decent, to good, to great animated movies that were released this year. And then we have stuff like this on the other end of the scale.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I think the biggest offender here is they actually dared to use MJ's music for the trailer. This shit used such a great song. Unbelievable.
As for the review, you don't say? Did anyone actually expect anything from this? I'm surprised anyone has actually seen the movie. Why would you pay money to torture yourself? Can't wait for Fruit Ninja to come out. It's gonna be just as bad if not even worse.

 

[9tailedflame]

Angry birds was a cheap knock-off of an already done-to-death game archetype even when it was released. The whole, i guess franchise, even though it's disgusting to have to call it that, is a marketing exercise, it's a game to see how much you can hype something and create a brand when your foundation is essentially lacking in any redeeming quality, and it would have been truly surprising to see the movie be anything but garbage.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

Lets say a pig had been the protagonist and helped the birds get the eggs back, with the overwhelming majority of pigs still being evil. What would have been different? Pigs are still mostly evil, violence is still the solution. Just this time pigs are clearly white people, so that makes it okay?

I have some problems seeing the difference, just as I have a problem with people being able to declare European colonization and cultural replacement as bad while declaring nearly the same thing happening in Germany as good (that is not some conspiracy theory, at current rates the entire young adult age bracket will become majority Muslim in a few years, which will eventually work it's way throughout the entire age pyramid obviously).

PS. one of the bumper stickers in the movie was a pig version of the Coexist bumper stickers ... it definitely is a thinly veiled parable for what is happening in Europe. Its message is desperately needed. Either the Geneva convention on refugees gets a massive work over soon or western Europe will become Islamic within little more than a single generation (and probably suffer economic collapse from white flight and/or civil wars).

 

[camazotz]

All I know is: I would never see this movie for myself (being an adult, and all that) and got lucky, as my kid's grandmother took him to see it. He loved it (he's almost 5). So....win for everyone! (except grandma)

 

[Leg End]

Spoiler: Marter, brudduh, allow me to TL;DR this one for you.

 

[Hawki]

Lets say a pig had been the protagonist and helped the birds get the eggs back, with the overwhelming majority of pigs still being evil. What would have been different? Pigs are still mostly evil, violence is still the solution. Just this time pigs are clearly white people, so that makes it okay?

I have some problems seeing the difference, just as I have a problem with people being able to declare European colonization and cultural replacement as bad while declaring nearly the same thing happening in Germany as good (that is not some conspiracy theory, at current rates the entire young adult age bracket will become majority Muslim in a few years, which will eventually work it's way throughout the entire age pyramid obviously).

PS. one of the bumper stickers in the movie was a pig version of the Coexist bumper stickers ... it definitely is a thinly veiled parable for what is happening in Europe. Its message is desperately needed. Either the Geneva convention on refugees gets a massive work over soon or western Europe will become Islamic within little more than a single generation (and probably suffer economic collapse from white flight and/or civil wars).

Europe is at an interesting crossroads, I agree there. However, few problems with this analogy:

-I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that Muslims pouring into Europe is part of an intentional conspiracy. In contrast, the pigs integrating themselves into the birds' society is entirely pre-meditated, a ruse that comes from the top. The pigs aren't refuges, and never even present themselves as refuges (they pose as explorers).

-I actually see the birds as being more analogous to the United States, but that's down to interpretation.

-Back to point 1, the birds destroy the pigs' entire civilization by the end of the movie, said civilization being presented as uniformly violent (e.g. obsessed with explosives), decadent (monarchy, the excesses that Chuck briefly flies through), and morally repugnant (that they intend to feast on the eggs of creatures which, in this setting, are sapient beings).

If the Europe analogy is correct, then the film is basically saying that all Muslims/people of the Middle-east are barbaric, that any Muslim entering Europe is part of a conspiracy, and that it is morally justified to wipe them and their civilization out without a second thought. I'm not saying that a film with an anti-imigration message is bad. But it doesn't help that even without those themes, the film is still lacklustre, and with them, it presents a distorted view of what's really going on in the world in regards to refugee situations, and the cultures those people come from.

 

[Naldan]

I've also seen people making the refugee-crisis-analogy. Haven't seen the movie myself, I don't know how much of it is made-up.


I admit that I found the trailer more funny than the first Ghostbusters 2016 trailer.