The Playmobil Movie Exists For Some Reason

this video is brought to you by squarespace when it comes to websites online stores etc there's no place to build a beautiful online presence like squarespace for years warner brothers tossed around the possibility of an animated film centered around legos the iconic children's toy this idea on paper definitely left a lot of moviegoers a bit skeptical when the news of this movie started circulating fans of both the movies and of the toy all collectively went okay but then we got the trailer and everyone was like oh maybe this will be good it does look pretty great and then we got the movie and people loved it i am not quiet about my love for the lego movie in fact i'd go as far to say it's my favorite animated film of the last decade inching just a little ahead of spider-verse i have a lego tattoo i mean give me a break there didn't really seem like there was an animated film out there that really embraced the potential the subject had while also making it clear that you can go so much further than this the possibilities that come with this toy are just one overpriced 60 dollar spaceship set away from being in your hands aside from getting a snub at the oscars that nobody can make sense of still it was pretty hard to not accept the fact that the lego movie looked and felt overwhelmingly fun as a cinematic experience it's so good they should have called it the lego film you know what i mean while i do think the lego movie is fantastic on its own i think part of why the initial praise for this thing was so overwhelming was because expectations were overwhelmingly low anytime hollywood adapts a successful piece of content meant for children into a movie it usually turns out kinda because most of the time that thing isn't meant to be adapted into a movie it's just a very easy win financially because hey if my kids love brats you bet your ass they're gonna force me to take them to that movie and the thing about movies for families is it's never just one ticket cha-ching so on the outside the lego movie looked like another one of these studio cash grabs because you know it's lego but because it's lego this was actually an idea that could be amazing if done right which it was the downside to all of this is that obviously when something is pretty successful you bet your ass they'll try to do it again a toy brand being both a hit with critics and at the box office means more toy brand movies whether that be making an ugly dolls movie or a few more lego movies or even god forbid making a playmobil movie i'll never forget the day i was going through amc a-list looking for a movie to watch when at the very bottom i saw a single 11 a.m show time for the playmobil movie i similar to everyone who first came across this movie went wait this exists the playmobil movie is more than just a bad movie it's actually a pretty fascinating thing that exists because when you realize you haven't heard of it you think oh well maybe it's just one of those shitty bootleg movies you know what i mean like ratatouille a movie that is just kind of a meme at this point and not meant to be a blockbuster thing but as you'll come to learn this was not that this is a 75 million dollar movie it's it's it's like a movie you know what i mean it's hard to talk about this without getting into the juicy deets so i'll kick this off sooner rather than later i'm going to talk about how this movie came to be the disaster of making it happen and try to make sense of what this movie is this isn't necessarily me answering why the playmobil movie exists it's more like me answering how the playmobil movie exists just a year after the release of the lego movie it was announced in a variety article that production for a playmobil movie had launched with us distribution in place what was interesting about this was that there weren't any particularly big names behind the project at this point and by big names i mean big studios in fact the studio behind it was on animation the company behind little prince an animated film that premiered earlier that year at cannes and was well received this article also announced that open road films acquired distribution for the film and bob persiceti was set to direct now bob is an interesting part of this whole deal because as we know now he didn't end up directing this movie in fact if his face looks familiar it's probably because you recognize him from this what's that you ask that's him on stage accepting the academy award for best animated feature for spider-verse the film he directed how he got that position is pretty hilarious he initially went to sony to pitch the playmobil movie with on with a treatment and a script and everything sony was interested at first but eventually it all just kind of fell apart naturally not only with on but with sony as well but that pitch must have been pretty damn good because they did offer him spiderverse which phil lore and chris miller were working on and if those names sound familiar they're the minds behind the lego movie funny how things work like that but everybody calm down the film did eventually find its director lino di salvo who worked at walt disney for 17 years he was actually a pretty big part of frozen from what i know from the interviews i've seen i really don't have a lot against disalvo if anything i do like what he wanted to do with this project disalvo wanted to pay tribute to toys specifically playmobil and what it means to have that freeing feeling of playing with a toy as a kid he wanted to embrace the role playing aspect of playing with toys and made it so the hero is whoever the players want it to be he even interviewed over 200 playmobil fans to get an idea of what people love about the game in short he wanted to make a movie for playmobil fans and i respect that in june of 2018 at the annecy film festival it was announced that this film would be stacked out the ass by that i mean a lot of big names were attached through deadline it was announced that anya taylor joy from the witch jim gaffigan and daniel radcliffe would all lead the voice cast for the film it was also noted that adam lambert and megan traynor would write music for it guys how could you not be hooked so from 2016 to 2019 the film was made and in june of 2019 it not only premiered it opened for the 2019 annecy film festival how'd it go uh could have been better as noted on cartoon brew it caused large numbers of the audience to leave in the middle of the film i mean you gotta be really disturbing to make that happen either that or just be really bad for a film festival that is home to films like the breadwinner and loving vincent and paranorman it makes sense for something that feels like a waste of animation talent to not go over well for a lot of people but then again i don't know if this movie would have gone over well anywhere unless it premiered at like playmobil fest point is things are already off to a rocky start as far as the quality of the film goes but that's only half of why this thing tanked you see in september 2018 just a year before this premiere open road films the studio that planned on distributing this filed for bankruptcy because of that they dropped this film as well as arctic dogs which is an entirely separate video altogether jesus christ so styx picked it up you know styx also known for ugly dolls there are a few factors in why this movie went unknown and i think styx is behind a lot of it first the film planned on premiering august 30th that's when i discovered it i saw it on a-list and was like okay sweet i'll have to see it and then all of a sudden it was september and i realized i never saw it nor do i remember it coming out at all and that's because styx delayed the film to december 6th so that it doesn't have to compete against angry birds too and december 6 is the first week of december historically a box office dead zone and also frozen 2 opens around the same time surely it has a better chance against frozen 2 than it has against angry birds 2 right the crazy thing is i only became aware of its december release upon researching for this video after giving up in september i gave up entirely and without paying attention i never knew this thing hit theaters a lot of this makes sense though according to forbes most of the advertising for the film happened in theaters probably before kids movies but seeing as though abominable was the only film around the same place where you could have seen a trailer not a lot of people knew about it the trailers apparently were also kind of a disaster in that the first one and the second one pitched completely different movies like not slightly different i mean completely different according to slashfilm.com the first had a synopsis that suggested it was more of a family-oriented film about a brother and sister who accidentally end up in the playmobil world and need to make their way home that is what the movie is it's there's nothing wrong with it that's just what it is but the second trailer completely gets rid of that idea doesn't acknowledge that there is a brother and sister thing and makes daniel radcliffe's character out to be the main protagonist like he's the star of the damn thing which he is not he partners with the girl who is the sister the actual main character and this driver to try and rescue a bunch of disappearing people that's not what the movie is it's literally click bait on a 75 million dollar scale that might not seem that crazy to anybody who hasn't seen the movie but if you've seen the film and you've seen that second trailer it's hilarious styx only spent three million dollars on marketing for the film and even encouraged theaters to offer five dollar tickets to see it what i'm trying to say is it was it was just really sad it all boiled down to being one of the bigger financial failures in recent years and kind of a shitty film too apparently it was supposed to be a trilogy now i watched the movie because to make this video you kinda have to and it really is as bad as everyone makes it seem while i do feel bad for it because it's pretty harmless i i also don't because it makes total sense for why something like this sucks so hard well first off it's a musical so yeah right like come on but the thing is there are only like six songs two of which are written by adam lambert and meghan trainor as i noted earlier this has been pointed out a few times already but i'll say it again obviously this musical aspect of the film is completely unnecessary and only exists because everything is awesome was a successful thing but yet again that song was self-aware kind of funny set the tone for the film this music has nothing to do with it it's about as generic as it gets oh we got the goofy quirky song for the film oh we got the inspiring song for right before the climax go figure i mean what were they expecting anya taylor joy has done too much good and has too bright of a future for me to say anything remotely bad about her so i'm really just not even gonna touch her contribution to this all i'm saying is she deserves a lot better daniel radcliffe is barely in this especially for what the trailer leads you to believe keenan thompson is also in this and i fully believe it took him half an hour to do all the voice work for his character it's like one of the worst pirate voices i've ever heard i've never heard someone more confused with what voice they're trying to pull off sounds like a different guy every time he says something and then there's the actual plot of the film it starts off with the parents of these kids uh dying like super mysteriously and also you're like oh i guess we're taking a darker tone with the film even though two seconds ago we were listening to anya taylor joy hopping around on some furniture but no they just kind of kill off the parents and then they never speak of it again they do that as a way of setting up some sort of emotional moment in the end but like they barely touch on it so it doesn't work at all it feels like this really pointless part of the movie that barely serves a purpose they just kill off parents for no reason then after that things are pretty standard she loses her brother and she has to go find him but she meets up with this guy in a van with crazy hay they go to a western town sounds very familiar then they meet up with this big job of the hutt like character they find daniel radcliffe then they duke it out in a stadium it's like the most generic plot possible it's not bad it works as a story but i think because of how little personality it has it really just comes across like a box of stale cheez-its the real issues with this film lie deeper in the concept of it for one we gotta look at why the lego movie can pull off the toy thing in movie form it's because the appeal of lego is the creative aspect of it that you can use these toys to make an idea of yours come to life that anything you want to have happen can theoretically happen in your own little lego universe playmobil first of all doesn't have that aspect to their toy playmobil was fun as a kid i did have a few sets i don't have a playmobil tattoo but they had a specific setting you could play with i had the farm set i could only do farm stories can't go past that you can't make a weird red building with one window in playmobil only in legos but second of all the movie doesn't embrace anything playmobil has going for it this movie could be about any toy all it's saying is yeah playmobil has a wide variety of sets and characters to play with because playmobil is mostly already built sets it isn't saying look at what you can create it's saying look at what we created whereas the lego movie is saying honestly just buy a pail full of bricks and knock yourself out so then there's the characters how how do i put this no toy is more iconic than a lego minifigure the little yellow body and the thing on the head even the face it's all instantly recognizable the playmobil minifigure on the other hand i personally like them i think they kind of look hilarious simple and kind of cute but there isn't a ton to work with there which is why in the movie they end up looking like this which is to be honest so far from what they look like in real life you got the head and you got the arms and the legs kinda nice like props to disalvo for really trying to capture the childhood innocence of playing with toys but through that he completely forgot what toy he was making a movie about the man didn't even figure out the hand thing right away in this interview what you get in the movie is just a bunch of characters who have round heads navigating a bunch of different locations that's all this movie has to say about playmobil i'd love to come up with a better way of using this toy in a movie but i can't really because it's playmobil which is me saying it shouldn't have been a movie to begin with there is something kind of nice about this whole thing though so often it feels like we get frustrated and upset over remakes and unnecessary sequels and adaptations that didn't need to exist but the thing is those films most of the time seem to do pretty well they feed into the system and give the industry reason to be lazy whereas this film on the other hand is living proof that there's a film trend that shouldn't have been a trend to begin with it's ironic for me to talk about this because videos where i typically bash a movie that exists only to make money off of are typically my best videos and most of the time while they are fun i have a great time with these videos my biggest takeaway is often oh hey that got a lot of views which is to say i'm ranting about the very thing i am also doing and i bring that up because while there is a profound sense of guilt whenever i hit that realization i also think it's human to crank out something fun and easy out of necessity for tangible gratification rather than pride in short sell out but have some fun with it you know the playmobil movie is desperately trying to have fun and it just can't while i think playmobil works better as a movie compared to tom hooper's cats i think cats is more interesting as a film which is crazy to say because cats doesn't work as a narrative at all and is very boring to watch and playmobil is a story we've seen hundreds of times before it should work i'm not saying be the next cats i'm saying try to be something new cats is different it's an awful kind of different but it's different it tried playmobil the movie should be and probably was a wake-up call to a ton of people that you can't always plug a successful brand into film and automatically make a hit out of it between ugly dolls the underwhelming performance of the lego movie 2 and obviously this i think everyone is on board with not making movies out of toys anymore at least for a while i think it's kind of funny how this movie was initially pitched because of the success of the lego movie and it also tanked because of the failure of the second lego movie phil lord and chris miller not only did something so good they sparked what is essentially a 75 million dollar bootleg but they also just stole the original director to make the second best animated film of the decade the lego movie said i brought you into this world and i will take you out i think the moral of the story here is just because it worked once does not mean it always will so i guess that's all i have to say thanks for watching go watch the lego movie not the playmobil movie form your own opinion and before you head out i want to give a quick thank you to this week's sponsor squarespace if you have an idea or a brand and you need to push that idea further by turning it into a website there's no better place to start than with squarespace thanks to a wide selection of award-winning designer templates squarespace will make whatever that thing is look amazing they have 24-hour customer service to help you with any problems you encounter my dad is actually using it to build a website right now and not only does the website look amazing but he said the process could not have been any simpler and if my dad is saying something like that you know it's true the best part about the whole thing is that if you go to squarespace.com carsten you can get 10 off of your first purchase once again thanks so much for watching make sure to check out squarespace and i'll see you guys in the next one [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Karsten Runquist

Views: 397,167

Keywords: Playmobil, Lego, Playmobil The Movie, The Lego Movie, The Lego MOvie 2, Daniel Radcliffe, Anya Taylor Joy, Jim Gaffigan, Avril Lavigne, Adam Lambert, Why, How, Who, What, Movie, Film, FIlmmaking, Animation, Weird, Odd, Explained, Exist, Nostalgia, Commentary, Review, Analysis, Rant, Ranked, List, Children, DIsney, new, 2019, 2020, clip, trailer, ending, karsten runquist, youtube

Id: BfMVJRHCqkw

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2020