Lol...I mean....Mario is a fucking children's franchise. To be clear I think that the Lego movie alone definitively proves that an animated children's movie made in the Hollywood system based on a children's toy can be not only good, but great (profound dare I say even)....but I also think its kind of silly to expect that as a default from a children's movie.
Nintendo didn't partner up with fucking early 00s Pixar to make a profound emotionally impactful family film. They partnered up with the minions studio and made a perfectly serviceable middling children's movie that I can assure you as the parent of an 8 year old satisfied its target demographic immensely.
imo mario isn't a children's franchise. it's a 'anybody who can buy it' franchise. it's just kid-friendly. and my criticism isn't that i expected an adult movie, it's that the movie had all those stars and references in it to draw in an older crowd, but they did nothing beyond that to keep the older crowd engaged. they did just the bare minimum. and i didn't expect anything pixar quality but i did expect at least despicable me quality. all i'm saying is the movie definitely could have been a lot better but nintendo obviously just wanted to make a cashgrab. and obviously that's not some new revelation to me, that nintendo would do something like that
Yes it is! Lol. Edit: I don't mean this as an insult. I enjoy plenty of children's media also like Avatar Last Air Bender, Disney, even the occasional marvel. But still..yeah...its children's media.
that's not children's media tho, you're conflating media that's kid friendly with media that's made for kids. the creators of avatar specifically said it's not for kids. it just happened to be on nickelodeon.
kid media would be something like bluey. it's made for kids, but adults can also watch it with their kids if they can tolerate it.
mario is something an adult can play just because they want to enjoy it for its merits
See I know people say that, but nah, they're fooling themselves. The only "difference" is that one of them is "good", and one of them is "bad".
Mario is a "kids" movie cause its dumb and middling kids movie. Lego movie is a "family picture" because it's actually a really fucking good kids movie. The truth is that they're both kids movies.
All the work studio ghibli puts out is also "for children," and every animation deals with deep themes. The only children's media I excuse on this front is stuff made for toddlers like peppa pig. Not to say, i expected the mario movie to have had deep themes or anything, i didn't, i expected it to be slop. I don't think it being children's media is an excuse for it being slop, tho. It being the mario franchise is excuse enough.
And to be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't advocate for children's media to be good or that you can't critique a movie on the grounds that it's for children.
I just think it's amusing how many people are upset or shocked that its dumb children's slop and a cash grab. If anything that should have been the default presumption, like you said.
Children's movies can and should be good, especially because children absorb so much in their formative years and should have good things to absorb.
"X is for babies" :brainworms: simultaneously dismiss those concerns as beneath them and also imply that there's some threshold where we all must consume exclusively :awooga: :libertarian-alert: :hypersus: to be accepted as proper adult consumers.
Yeah most kid animations in general suck. The cgi all feels so soulless too, Into the Spiderverse is one of the exceptions I can think of, but I'm honestly kind of bummed we're not really gonna getting much hand-drawn 2d animation stuff with actual character to it anymore
Lol...I mean....Mario is a fucking children's franchise. To be clear I think that the Lego movie alone definitively proves that an animated children's movie made in the Hollywood system based on a children's toy can be not only good, but great (profound dare I say even)....but I also think its kind of silly to expect that as a default from a children's movie.
Nintendo didn't partner up with fucking early 00s Pixar to make a profound emotionally impactful family film. They partnered up with the minions studio and made a perfectly serviceable middling children's movie that I can assure you as the parent of an 8 year old satisfied its target demographic immensely.
imo mario isn't a children's franchise. it's a 'anybody who can buy it' franchise. it's just kid-friendly. and my criticism isn't that i expected an adult movie, it's that the movie had all those stars and references in it to draw in an older crowd, but they did nothing beyond that to keep the older crowd engaged. they did just the bare minimum. and i didn't expect anything pixar quality but i did expect at least despicable me quality. all i'm saying is the movie definitely could have been a lot better but nintendo obviously just wanted to make a cashgrab. and obviously that's not some new revelation to me, that nintendo would do something like that
Yes it is! Lol. Edit: I don't mean this as an insult. I enjoy plenty of children's media also like Avatar Last Air Bender, Disney, even the occasional marvel. But still..yeah...its children's media.
that's not children's media tho, you're conflating media that's kid friendly with media that's made for kids. the creators of avatar specifically said it's not for kids. it just happened to be on nickelodeon.
kid media would be something like bluey. it's made for kids, but adults can also watch it with their kids if they can tolerate it.
mario is something an adult can play just because they want to enjoy it for its merits
...there's a difference between "for kids" and "family/all ages"
See I know people say that, but nah, they're fooling themselves. The only "difference" is that one of them is "good", and one of them is "bad".
Mario is a "kids" movie cause its dumb and middling kids movie. Lego movie is a "family picture" because it's actually a really fucking good kids movie. The truth is that they're both kids movies.
All the work studio ghibli puts out is also "for children," and every animation deals with deep themes. The only children's media I excuse on this front is stuff made for toddlers like peppa pig. Not to say, i expected the mario movie to have had deep themes or anything, i didn't, i expected it to be slop. I don't think it being children's media is an excuse for it being slop, tho. It being the mario franchise is excuse enough.
Love to show children Grave of the Fireflies right after My Neighbor Totoro :miyazaki-laugh:
And to be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't advocate for children's media to be good or that you can't critique a movie on the grounds that it's for children.
I just think it's amusing how many people are upset or shocked that its dumb children's slop and a cash grab. If anything that should have been the default presumption, like you said.
Children's movies can and should be good, especially because children absorb so much in their formative years and should have good things to absorb.
"X is for babies" :brainworms: simultaneously dismiss those concerns as beneath them and also imply that there's some threshold where we all must consume exclusively :awooga: :libertarian-alert: :hypersus: to be accepted as proper adult consumers.
Yeah most kid animations in general suck. The cgi all feels so soulless too, Into the Spiderverse is one of the exceptions I can think of, but I'm honestly kind of bummed we're not really gonna getting much hand-drawn 2d animation stuff with actual character to it anymore
100% with you on that, if nothing else the only thing that's shocking to me is that other people are shocked