More Zootopia, Animation Workshop, and the Obvious Gag

   It's May 17th today, the date on the day calendar on Bellwether's desk in Zootopia. I offered after Animation Workshop to take those who hadn't seen it yet to go see Zootopia, with me paying for tickets, and I managed to snag both who hadn't seen it, plus two more who just didn't mind watching it again. It's a Tuesday, which means that theaters are selling tickets for cheap today. (I thought it was just Paramount 5, but I saw in going to see Civil War the second time on Saturday that Fat Cats also offers discounts on Tuesday, so I figure maybe it's more of a generalized thing... I noticed on Box Office Mojo that there does seem to be a dropoff in ticket sales during the week, especially on Monday, so I figure that in its natural state Tuesdays would be even lower than Mondays are.)

   The way that came about was based off of the lesson for the workshop, which today was about critiquing versus just being a critic- in order to be able to successfully compare something to something else, specifically with media, they have to match in medium or genre or theme, preferably with more than one thing in common. As a random example of two things that would be difficult to compare, Taylor offered up a showdown of Zootopia and Back to the Future. And of course a couple of girls said they hadn't seen it (the former) yet, and so I had to offer to take them... or, tell, rather. Tell them. I'm taking you to the 9:00 showing.

   And so we did that.

   It was awesome. Such a good movie. I've lost track which viewing this was, 16 I think but really wish it had been seventeen only to match the fortuitous date, but pretty high up there anyway, and definitely covering ticket 17. 16th viewing; I still pick up loads of detail. Once I bother to get around to the write-up of the notes I took, you can read that on A Real Thing?

   Another great thing from the lesson, which we explicitly discussed: I no longer have to be apologetic about my genuine enjoyment of Teen Titans Go!, because as Taylor pointed out the comparison isn't really fair: the genre and medium are the same, but the style/theme is completely different, which makes the two shows apples and oranges. Grannies and, hand grenades, or whatever?

   None of that is really what I want to talk about, though, because the Chuck Jones video from two days ago is still on my mind, specifically regarding expectation and payoff. Every week in animation workshop there's an animation highlight where we showcase a favorite short animation; I'm next week and I'm seriously considering mine to be VivziePop's Die Young Fan Animation, but we'll see. This week's animation, chosen by Taylor hi'self I'm pretty sure, was the trailer for Sergio Pablos's Klaus.

 
Klaus teaser ©2015 Sergio Pablos Animation Studios, S.L. & ANTENA 3 FILMS, S.L.U. 
All rights reserved from The SPA Studios on Vimeo.

   There's a beautiful gag 1:35 into that where the obvious joke is set up, and then subverted in the best possible way. Just blows my mind.

   Sergio Pablos of course was also the guy who did the story for Despicable Me, as well as executive produced it. Which kind of confuses me, because Despicable Me is the exact film that I point to as an example of doing it wrong? But let me explain what I mean by that.

   Every gag is obvious. Right from the trailer, below, watching through that I thought, frig, I can see every "joke" coming a mile off. I hope that none of this is in the movie. The only thing I didn't expect is how ugly the character designs are. My goodness. Kind of harsh, but, let's walk through it: right from the bus pulling up, you know that the American tourists are going to be tacky and morbidly obese. You know the kind with his airplane is going to go straight up the ramp into the pyramid. You know that he won't come to harm, and possibly even bounce. And when he does bounce, you know he's going to keep flying that tiny little airplane, and be stupid ecstatic about the genuine air he's getting. Oh, look, his mother's going to catch him, with his father standing like a lard in the background. Wonder what's gonna happen.

   Seriously I wouldn't mind how obvious all the jokes are in the trailer, as long as they don't, I don't know, have that scene in the movie or anything. What's that, they open right up with it? Well forget that! The movie does get better from there, but... I know the scene's probably not yours, but why do we even put up with that, Sergio? I know you're better than that.