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[Sweetwater]

Well as i'm sure you all know Warner Brothers has announced that they are creating an Elfquest movie, and i just wanted to know what you all thought.

Should it be:

yes or no?
animated or live action?
Books set to movie, or movie based on books? (umm for example Books set to movie would be "Elfquest: fire and flight." where as based on books would be same characters... different and new plot line.)


I think if done right the movie could be really good. Animated but good animation, less disney more final fantasy movie. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xKtWqGWmLc Just imagine, pointy ears and larger eyes...Cloud looks a bit like Cutter eh eh?)

My only worry is that it won't turn out good, for example it will not follow the characters real well! its totally possible it won't be good: we all have witnessed how movies can disgrace books.
Your thoughts?

[Foxeye]

Re: Format

I have to look at it from the standpoint are "what are the odds this method could end up in a disaster"?  Live action looks to me like a 95% disaster.  Whereas I give CG a 50/50 chance.  Some CG work has been marvelous and some has been horrific, but usually the latter ended up that way because it was the story that was terrible.  Just get some reasonable talent (artistic talent, not just technical talent) in your CG staff, and the elves could come out looking OK.  Go the extra mile of getting some of the best of the field, and it could be outright stunning.

2D animation could work too, but I personally fear that it might end up being very disney-esque, since that's what most US animators are trained for.  Not that Disney art is horrid. It just has a degree of "camp" to it that I'd rather not see in EQ.

Re: The Inevitable screw-up

It's not going to be like the books. Just isn't.  We all know this.  THe question is just what they violate and what they are true to.

I'm sort of assuming they'll render the character's personalities in such a way that they become depth-less archetypes.   But who knows, I can always be pleasantly surprised.

Re: What the story contains

This is the area where I still have a little bit of fight in me, so to speak. I still think that the first book can stand on its own as a movie, but I"m pretty sure that the movie will be either books 1-4 or 1-8.  Because the story in book 1 is, well, a love story and a story of culture clash and it's a subtler story in some ways. And Holly wood wants more action and drama than that. Nevermind that it's the subtler stories about people that get oscar's...we all know genre stories have no hope of Oscar's anyways, so might as well just pile on the action scenes.



...tho' if they add explosions, I'mna throw rotten eggs at the theatre screen.

[Nevaratoiel]

I'm just going to sit and wait what they have in store for us. I do have some ideas of how it could be, but I'll let myself be surprised. I just hope we don't have to wait years and years again.

[Foxeye]

Iiinteresting.... (cross-posted from official forums):

Just stumbled across a link to a new interview with Rawson Thurber! I thought it was just about one of his other flicks (Magnum P.I, heee), but they switch over to ElfQuest partway through!  :shock:

http://www.screenjunkies.com/movienews/exclusive-interview-rawson-marshall-thurber-magnum-pi-will-have-no-short-shorts-no-cameos-

Most of it old news, but this had a little meat to chew on:

that was a real part of the conversation between myself and Warner Brothers because I've always seen the film as animated. Frankly, i have a hard time seeing it any other way. I think Warner Brothers is a little more inclined to make it live action, or sort of a 300-style hybrid. We both agreed to shake hands that we don't quite see it the same way, but let's move down the road and write the script and see what it comes back as and do a test with it animated, and a test with a hybrid, and there's a lot of exciting technology that Warner Brothers has been working on, proprietary technology that they are very excited about, and I've had conversations with a couple of the big brains over there about a new way of giving me and the audience what we see on those comic book pages, so I'm excited to see what that means. I haven't seen the tests yet.  That's the incredibly long answer. The short one is we're not sure yet. Whatever it'll be, it's going to be the best way to tell a story.