A couple more came to me after I made the post.
--THE OSAMU TETZUKA ESTATE DECIDES NOT TO SUE DISNEY
When The Lion King came out, fanboys were stunned that it wasn't advertised as some kind of remake of Kimba. It was a huge hit and everywhere you went, kids and adults were talking about how "wildly original" it was. When you'd bring up how similar the whole thing was to the famous Tetzuka property and people looked at you like you were just some nitpicky geek. Finally, a few articles popped up and those of us who were upset began to feel vindicated. Things really got crazy when creators of The Lion King started making public comments they'd never heard of Kimba or Tetzuka. My attitude was "Well, if you don't know about this classic show as well as the overall great works of Tetzuka, then you have no business being in animation." It was really maddening. It was an open and shut case. It reminded me of when the Furby came out. It obviously looked like Gizmo from Gremlins and the second Warner's brought up a suit, the Furby creators faced the music and settled. With the Kimba/Simba thing however, because Osamu Tetzuka was such a fan of the works of Walt Disney, his surviving relatives decided not to take legal action out of respect for their deceased relative.
Let's face it, fanboys get very few "Wow, you were right about that thing you were spouting off about" comments from non-geeks. Had Disney been made to take it on the chin like they should have, fanboys across the nation would have seemed to make sense to regular people for once.
--DINOSAUR STRENGTH REVISIONISM IN JURASSIC PARK III.
A common technique in storytelling is to spend time showing how tough one force is and then have it instantly wiped out by a second force. You see it all the time. One of my favorite examples is in Once Were Warriors. Jake Heke (Temeura Morrison) watches a tough guy win a bar fight easily and then beats the crap out of him himself. We then learn that Jake is a wifebeater - and what's great about it is that it's been already set up that he's so damn tough, there's no way that his wife, Beth (Rena Owen) can physically do anything to stop him. (Interestingly, I'm not the only person who seems to like this film. George Lucas cast Temuera Morrison as JANGO FETT and also put Rena Owen in AOTC as the voice of Taun We. Moreover, it looks like she's got an actual part in Episode III).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, for Jurassic Park III, Joe Johnson and co., decided they needed a dinosaur tougher than a T-Rex. This is pretty silly, considering how beloved the Tyrannosaurus is. The problems with the first two movies -- and trust me the first two movies had problems -- were in no way T-Rex related. In fact, they were the best things in the movies. But early on in III, we see a T-Rex and it loses in a fight to a Spinosaurus.
A great number of fanboys start out with a fascination of dinosaurs at the earliest of ages. Most move on to other things, but few outright turn their back on what they learned when it was all they could think about. The notion that a Spinosaurus would not get annihilated every single time by a Tyrannosaur was crazy. I remember reading bulletin board posts about comparative jaw strength and whatnot. There are plenty of dinosaur nuts who know way more than I do. When I saw it, I didn't know exactly how outrageous it was, but I applaud all who outraged. If it was that important to the filmmakers to have something tougher than a T-Rex, they should have made up a dinosaur.
--THE OSAMU TETZUKA ESTATE DECIDES NOT TO SUE DISNEY
When The Lion King came out, fanboys were stunned that it wasn't advertised as some kind of remake of Kimba. It was a huge hit and everywhere you went, kids and adults were talking about how "wildly original" it was. When you'd bring up how similar the whole thing was to the famous Tetzuka property and people looked at you like you were just some nitpicky geek. Finally, a few articles popped up and those of us who were upset began to feel vindicated. Things really got crazy when creators of The Lion King started making public comments they'd never heard of Kimba or Tetzuka. My attitude was "Well, if you don't know about this classic show as well as the overall great works of Tetzuka, then you have no business being in animation." It was really maddening. It was an open and shut case. It reminded me of when the Furby came out. It obviously looked like Gizmo from Gremlins and the second Warner's brought up a suit, the Furby creators faced the music and settled. With the Kimba/Simba thing however, because Osamu Tetzuka was such a fan of the works of Walt Disney, his surviving relatives decided not to take legal action out of respect for their deceased relative.
Let's face it, fanboys get very few "Wow, you were right about that thing you were spouting off about" comments from non-geeks. Had Disney been made to take it on the chin like they should have, fanboys across the nation would have seemed to make sense to regular people for once.
--DINOSAUR STRENGTH REVISIONISM IN JURASSIC PARK III.
A common technique in storytelling is to spend time showing how tough one force is and then have it instantly wiped out by a second force. You see it all the time. One of my favorite examples is in Once Were Warriors. Jake Heke (Temeura Morrison) watches a tough guy win a bar fight easily and then beats the crap out of him himself. We then learn that Jake is a wifebeater - and what's great about it is that it's been already set up that he's so damn tough, there's no way that his wife, Beth (Rena Owen) can physically do anything to stop him. (Interestingly, I'm not the only person who seems to like this film. George Lucas cast Temuera Morrison as JANGO FETT and also put Rena Owen in AOTC as the voice of Taun We. Moreover, it looks like she's got an actual part in Episode III).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, for Jurassic Park III, Joe Johnson and co., decided they needed a dinosaur tougher than a T-Rex. This is pretty silly, considering how beloved the Tyrannosaurus is. The problems with the first two movies -- and trust me the first two movies had problems -- were in no way T-Rex related. In fact, they were the best things in the movies. But early on in III, we see a T-Rex and it loses in a fight to a Spinosaurus.
A great number of fanboys start out with a fascination of dinosaurs at the earliest of ages. Most move on to other things, but few outright turn their back on what they learned when it was all they could think about. The notion that a Spinosaurus would not get annihilated every single time by a Tyrannosaur was crazy. I remember reading bulletin board posts about comparative jaw strength and whatnot. There are plenty of dinosaur nuts who know way more than I do. When I saw it, I didn't know exactly how outrageous it was, but I applaud all who outraged. If it was that important to the filmmakers to have something tougher than a T-Rex, they should have made up a dinosaur.