Don’t act like you’re surprised. You knew this announcement was coming from the moment we first heard that director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) was making a sequel to his 1988 smash hit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It was just a matter of time, really. With three Mocap (that’s the new slang for “motion-capture”, FYI) films already under his belt – Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol – it was a natural leap of thought to assume Zemeckis would use his favorite new toy in a Roger Rabbit sequel.
However, it appears that the Toon characters (Roger, Jessica, Benny the Cab) will not be the ones making the leap into the 21st century. According to his interview with MTV, Zemeckis doesn’t plan on using Mocap for those characters, just the human ones (as if that makes it any better). Read what he had to say below:
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“I wouldn’t use it for the cartoon characters, because I think they should stay two-dimensional because that’s what — I wouldn’t dimensonalize Roger. And I couldn’t dimensonalize Jessica even if I wanted to because she doesn’t have a nose. We wouldn’t want to give her a nose.”
Wait, Jessica Rabbit didn’t a have nose? I honestly never noticed that before. I wonder why?
Why would Zemeckis feel it’s necessary to remove the only true human element from his movie? It was that interaction between the humans and the Toons that made Who Framed Roger Rabbit? so enjoyable in the first place. I hope he reconsiders and uses real humans in front of a camera, filming on a real set and with real life extras in the background. Although, to be fair, it could be that he is just tired of working in the traditional Hollywood movie setup.
After all, it has been 9 years since he filmed with a mutli-actor cast. The last three films he directed were all CGI Mocap and before that he did Cast Away, which basically only had one main actor. What Lies Beneath was his last multi-actor film in 2000 and then Contact back in 1997.
The good news is that the original writers, Jeffery Price (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) and Peter S. Seaman (Shrek the Third), are returning to pen the Roger Rabbit sequel. At least the story should be entertaining. There have been no announcements regarding the return of Bob Hoskins or any of the original cast members, but since Hoskins has done Mocap for Zemeckis in A Christmas Carol, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think he would reprise his role as gumshoe Eddie Valiant.
My standards for what films I watch are considerably lower than my standard for what films I find enjoyable. So regardless of how Zemeckis ultimately ends up filming Roger Rabbit 2, I’ll end up watching it. I just hope I find it to be as enjoyable as the first.
What do you think of Robert Zemekcis’ plan to use Mocap on the humans and not the Toons for Roger Rabbit 2?
Source: Cinema Blend
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10 Comments
If my excitement for this movie was a light switch, then I would have to say that Zemeckis just turned me off.
Total bummer too, seeing as the first movie is in my top 10 all time favorite film list…sigh…
Well, if you think about it, this could be a good thing. The characters he creates are almost photo-real. He could potentially do this sequel with the actors reprising their original roles and only looking a little older, rather than 20 years older. The only reason the characters haven’t looked real is because he’s given them strange features.
He’s gonna do what now?
It could just mean that the human characters will become Toons at some point in the story
Sick of all this CG crap. It’s ridiculous how the 1st movie could possibly be making such a leap in the other direction in terms of how it’s presented into the 2nd. I honestly think it’s stupid and doesn’t work.
Where the hell is the consistency and logic here? Real actors w/ cartoons in the first movie and flash forward to the proposed idea for the 2nd and the humans basically will be CG cartoons themselves? So how will this movie maintain the whole human/cartoon interaction if the humans themselves are animated? Doesn’t make sense. Sure Beowulf looked real but in the end it still was ANIMATED. What the hell this is so annoying. What? Are the toons slowly taking over the human world and is that supposed to explain the humans’ animated appearance?
So…”entertaining at least”? Really? Because it was written by the hack that did the nauseating Shrek 3(loved one, 2 was aight) and the Grinch(saved by fantastic direction by Ron Howard and a deliciously over-the-top Carrey)? Let me mention for a moment that, at no point has this motion capture ever appealed to me and I sincerely hope Zemeckis falls on his face with it soon, because its crappy. What happened to just making straight movies without tons of computer crap, or just old-school animating a film? This is terrible news.
I proposed an idea similar to this a while back. The plot of this movie should be set in the present (which means Hoskins wouldn’t reprise his role) and it should be about the 2D toons losing all their popularity and not getting any work because the 3D toons are now all the rage.
Real humans would still be present, but they’d be interacting with BOTH 2D and 3D cartoons.
I agree with what mark says.
Zemekis might just be thinking to use the motion capture technology for eddy valiant and his girlfriend so that they dont have to advance the story 20 years. The rest of the actors may even remain on film, and maybe we’ll get something like a bejermin button except with toons interacting with everyone.
I like this idea and I think it may be the only way to make a movie that would feel like a real sequel.
This might even be where they fouled up with Indiana Jones last year, imagine it, they could have used motion capture on harrison ford and left the story in the 1940’s.
I find the “humans” in Zemeckis’ films creepy.
Maybe I’m the only one but I was completely creeped out by Polar Express… the “not-quite-real” look of the characters was unnerving and unsettling. I thought of it as more of a horror film than anything else!
So, I’m a complete “uhuh, no, nada, zilch, never gonna happen” for seeing a motion capture film of Roger Rabbit. It defeats the entire PURPOSE of the original film.
As someone else said, UNLESS the whole idea behind the film is that somehow, all the humans are sucked into this void of 3-d animation, I see no point to it.
EPIC FAIL
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