Animated Theatre films based on shows!

[Daniel]

Luke, smell like a Jedi tonight!

[Ben]

[gaastra]

Next two--

No shock this one only got a limited release.



Made it to American theatres at last! Only took 35 years! Better late than never!

[Daniel]

I know I've seen that Arthur movie, but aside from the obvious I don't remember much of it!

[gaastra]

Called the great american chase than renamed later.



Renamed--

[Ben]

You’ve crossed that line again!

Full title in some markets was The Great American Chase: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which I guess covers both bases! But it’s not a television cartoon crossover (even if, yes, okay, it’s basically a feature clipshow of the kind Warners had been doing on the small screen at the time), being mostly Chuck Jones' reply to Freleng's Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie from three or so years earlier.

Looking at that poster (also the front of the VHS I had), I’ve now got the specially composed theme music rattling around my head! "Ooh, goodie!"

[gaastra]

Well looney movie came after this film in 1981 and road runner was 1979.

[Ben]

Oops! Always get those mixed up! Must have been Bugs Superstar that I’m getting mixed up with as the earlier film. I know there was rivalry between Chuck and Friz that spilled into what Bugs says in both films (Chase and Looney), one hinting at being his father, and the other suggesting the cartoons were the results of many. Of course these both came after Clampett essentially laid claim in Superstar. Also loved how the cartoon Oscar in Looney was named the Oswald, which I took as both a nod to Walt's first character, and a nudge to Chuck that he wasn’t the first one to come up with a wabbit!

[gaastra]

[Ben]

Loved DuckTales! Loved The Movie! Loved Drew Struzan art! Loved that DuckTales' Indiana Jones pastiche poster got its Indiana Jones pastiche poster from the guy that did all* the Indiana Jones official posters!

(*most of, after Raiders)

Bit cheeky of Disney to remove the trademark "drew…" signature though. Usually it was buried deep in some detail on the lower right hand side of a painting but here it should be where those two little dots are under the scorched paper, to the right of Lamp.

I remember what a big deal this was here — a rarity that we didn’t have to wait a whole year for a Disney feature (we wouldn’t get Rescuers Down Under until October '91!), and they made a big deal about MovieToons and how this was going to be this shiny new label for classic characters features and was going to contribute to their "two a year" animated film strategy. It wouldn’t be until five years later that we got A Goofy Movie, by which time MovieToons was gone and replaced with the direct-to-video craze.

DuckTales did pretty okay for them, I think, and using an established IP and a team in place to make it was a bonus that kept cost down, but it obviously didn’t turn out to change things. The animation has some nice things in it (the hyper opening remains flashy and fun) and some clunky things in it that aren’t even as good as the TV show, and it seems audiences weren’t ultimately sure what it actually was supposed to be: a classic Disney feature, a TV cartoon or, as Disney wanted us to believe, something new, although even their marketing didn’t really know either and they kind of fumbled it.

Even though it still got promotion and specials and all the merchandising, it still felt like it got a second-tier release, which I guess they couldn’t escape from, and I didn’t think it did as well as it could have done. That special didn’t really help: I remember seeing it and being all interested in what MovieToons was as a fan and not learning a thing. They don’t seem to have recorded any EPK type stuff or cast/crew interviews, so it felt undercooked from that angle too: DuckTales The Movie flew under the radar and just kind of appeared.

I’m glad it’s fairly well regarded today, even if as a bit of a footnote or curio (which I kind of guess it is), even if I’ve seen it play as part of a run of the series, once as the series finale, which I kind of guess it also is. Whatever, it’s still a fun little odd duck of a movie (see what I did there?)!

[James]

...Made it to American theatres at last! Only took 35 years! Better late than never!

Last year I went to a special anniversary theatrical screening of GI Joe: The Movie from 1987. I was a big fan of the TV show as a kid! Obviously I didn't know any of this back then, but apparently Hasbro's previous theatrical releases of The Transformers: The Movie and My Little Pony: The Movie did so poorly that GI Joe was pulled and went direct-to-video until 2022!

[James]

Loved DuckTales! Loved The Movie! Loved Drew Struzan art! Loved that DuckTales' Indiana Jones pastiche poster got its Indiana Jones pastiche poster from the guy that did all* the Indiana Jones official posters...

This was a good one! I've tried to be very particular about what I'm collecting on VHS so I don't just buy everything... but I did grab this tape just for nostalgic purposes even though it doesn't fit in any of the categories I'm collecting.

[Ben]

How does it not fit into Disney Animation!? I keep all my DA tapes together, though split into categories consecutively, so shorts, features, additional features…

[gaastra]

Last year I went to a special anniversary theatrical screening of GI Joe: The Movie from 1987. I was a big fan of the TV show as a kid! Obviously I didn't know any of this back then, but apparently Hasbro's previous theatrical releases of The Transformers: The Movie and My Little Pony: The Movie did so poorly that GI Joe was pulled and went direct-to-video until 2022!

Yup. It killed the jem movie that would have been next also. My little pony would get 3 more theatre films decades later however!

[Ben]

Gosh, Jem The Movie. My sister had that on VHS for about five minutes. Even she thought it was terrible enough that we taped over the non-record indent on the cassette and used it as a blank!