Working with toy companies is very restrictive. When you have an entity with veto power over everything it is hard to tell a story.

This just happened on a thing I am working on. It was cool and now it's not.

The director gets to take the fall for branding decisions that restrict and ruin stories because people don't understand how often the director has very little control.

The idea of a director as an auteur doesn't apply to most films simply because of how they are financed.

Counterpoint: Friendship is Magic.

an exec could get fired and then suddenly everything could change.

the writers and directors have no control over it.

Looks like the director hung it up after MotU, understandably so, but did some theme park rides is is co-directing an upcoming Broadway revue with Bryan Singer (?)

>>an exec could get fired and then suddenly everything could change.

Idle conjecture. *If* and *when* that happens, then maybe we can talk. In the meantime, Friendship is Magic continues to prove your theory wrong.

Also the Lego Movie

It's ironic that they once had J. Michael Straczynski writing for both He-Man and She-Ra, yet this is the script they wound up with. Had they only known...

Well, no it doesn't.

The decisions you like on Friendship is Magic, story, design, et cetera still move through Hasbro's Consumer Products division. It's not like some no-name writer is making a stand and making it that way against the wishes of Hasbro.

If attitudes were to change in Consumer Products, say, someone gets fired or someone new gets hired (a great thing execs like to do when they first get a job is just change things arbitrarily to put their stink on a thing) the things you like about that show would change instantly. Who would you blame? The writers? They don't decide what gets approves and what doesn't.

Just because you personally like a show doesn't mean the creative choices you like are being made by the creative team.

So it actually proves my point.

RE: The Lego Movie.

It was great. It was also directed by name directors proven to make money in animation. That isn't usually the case with toy properties. When you have star directors, it makes sense to give them creative control so they can make money like they've made money in the past. Again, this is usually not the case with toy properties.

Lego seems easier to do, since they license out their product to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Hobbit, hell, there might have even been a He-Man set at one point. I didn't mind playing with my "regular" Legos when I was a kid, but if Lego forced the studio to make a "regular" Lego Movie without all the themes and self-referential humor, it'd be boring and hard to do.

I haven't seen Lego movie; I was turned off by the trailer. After it came out I found out that one of my old band's songs is used in it.

I would say MLP succeeded because Lauren Faust had worked on Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab, etc. and Hasbro probably didn't really give a shit about the show beyond getting a 22 minute toy commercial. Given that the popularity of it took them by surprise and they tried to take over the whole Brony culture 2-3 years after it exploded kind of shows they had no idea what was being made.

The Lego movie was likely given to the Robot Chicken guys because they'd been funny before and it's a February release so who cares so long as it packs the kids in?

What's telling is what comes after the initial success. Suits love to attach themselves to successful franchises and often fuck them up (see the humanoid MLP show), so Lego 2 will show if the weasels at the studio will let the writers keep on keepin' on or if they'll require marketing-oriented BS to poison the production.

Such a royal fuck up. I was the target audience for this and I didn't even see it in theaters. Almost to connection to the cartoon, set on earth, they must think kids are stupid. A cartoon movie with some plot would have been better.

also one single thing that bucks the trend doesn't mean that the trend doesn't exist

Dolph as the street preacher is the best part of that movie.

Yeah. I never saw the theatrical cut, but the one I found on a torrent said that pretty much all of Lundgren's scenes are cut in the original, as well as Takeshi Kitano's. Gibson's probably my favorite author, especially science fiction author, and it's a shame that he hasn't received the same cross-media praise as Philip K. Dick and others, but I liked JM for what it was. Can't say the same about New Rose Hotel though..

Thanks for reminding me the extended cut of Johny Mnemonic has been sitting on my hard drive unwatched for a few months now!

I still haven't gotten around to seeing it. My impression is that, quality-wise, it falls in the middle ground between Deathstalker and Deathstalker 2, is that a fair assessment?


I'll leave it up to you to decide which Deathstalker is the better.

Either Deathstalker movie is more enjoyable than this, IMO.

I saw it in theater as a kid too and didn't like it for the same reasons. The opening 10 minutes in Eternia were cool. Skeletor's army sneakily takes over Castle Greyskull, scattering Eternia's armies into tiny bands to be hunted down? Skeletor gets the evil soldiers from Krull for an army? He-man's friends get swords AND lasers? Awesome! The idea that there were armies instead of He-man's 3 friends was a cool idea I was psyched for.

Then they throw it all away and go straight to Beastmaster 2 transporting them away from awesome reimagined Eternia to...modern day Los Angeles? The only thing I remember about the Los Angeles bits, which made up 80% of the movie, is them sitting around stranded and moping for half an hour then hooking their dimensional teleporter up to a OF COURSE a keytar because it's the 80s.

They should have just made He-man Krull :\

Yeah. I've still got this on VHS in storage, but I don't think I'll watch it again. I was super stoked because I found He Man, Krull, Beetlejuice, I can't remember what else in a freebox a couple of summers ago. So we got drunk and watched it and yeah once it goes into the city it's just another fish out of water story. That always (ok mostly) works with Star Trek films, and for all of its shortcomings, kind of worked for Super Mario Bros. But it makes no sense with He-Man!

Yes.

That was from the recent He-Man reboot.

It IS today's youth!

It was probably considered easier than explaining the whole concept of "undeath" and keeping a Y7 rating.

Skeletor had great abs especially considering he was lich