What the HELL is Delgo? (An Uncanny Valley DISASTER)

[Music] hey yeah you come over here do you like action fantasy sci fi channel have a war based on racism then I have perfect movie for you yeah don't go remember now go no no you don't of course you don't I mean how could you forget these sexy turtle lips no how could you forget these beautiful eyes accompanied by tasteful yoga pants oh yeah look at that crevice and of course foofa's as far as the eyes can see I never thought I'd say this but I don't think I can finish my beer that's right folks welcome back to the uncanny valley and you all thought that let's go Abe would be the worst we ever see you know look at this monstrosity like with most of these uncanny valley characters they look like sleep paralysis demons just standing in the corner with their turtle lips wanting to press up against your fleshy body they want to become full flesh but they haven't made it yet they need your body to complete the transaction transaction welcome to the bank of uncanny characters somebody needs a serious timeout so yeah this movie is a disaster when it comes to character designs they are very off-putting but there was something that it did even worse at box office performance this movie lost 46 million dollars it is one of the worst performing movies of all time and if the uncanny valley visuals and horrible box office reception weren't enough delgo apparently had a very difficult production hell two of its voice actors before the movie was even released which might I add took 10 years to complete but is delgo as bad as it sounds is it possible that this film just stumbled on its feet towards the finish line and actually has some kind of redeeming quality to it doubtful but let's find out [Music] allow me to tell you all of the tragic story of Jason Malwa and Mark F Adler these two gentle men were the directors behind delgo both of them have a dream of making their own feature-length animated film to maintain their artistic integrity and to accomplish their goal outside of the traditional system of Hollywood with very little filmography experience the two set forth and began development Fidel go back in 1999 they even had a website that posted updates and allowed people to give feedback on the progress from the team there were two animation studios involved with this movie fathom studios and electric I entertainment corporation it would be their first mainstream project and their last the years went on but Mark and Jason never lost faith in their film they saw delgo as their magnum opus a movie that would break the mold for animation since it was not a comedy that del goes inspiration was quote came from all of the unrest we have in society today prejudice discrimination hate crimes violence all of those things there was no doubt children were going to enjoy this film an animator for the movie is even on record saying that quote Dogo would be his finest creation and would outperform Shrek at the box office there was no denying it delgo was going to be unlike anything else around that time and was going to break records just not in the direction the staff was hoping for on December 12 2008 the Magnificent hard working piece of art was released and two movie theaters and was a complete disaster oh brother this guy stinks all right no more fancy voice despite raising over 40 million dollars to fund the movie delgo only made around a half a million back it's the second worst opening ever for a film playing in over 2,000 theaters with number one being the Louie loves and the big balloon adventure okay Jason mark and their team had passion and gumption for their movie but it just wasn't enough they even had hopes of delgo being the first of a trilogy but after seeing these results yeah that wasn't gonna happen there were even toyed deals made before the release of the movie a press release from playmates toys back in 2004 expressed how excited they were to make delgo merchandise but let's just say they never followed through regardless of their efforts and years of work and investments Doug Oh had become one of the greatest animated failures of all time also it was ugly as hell why is she wearing yoga pants wait a second she was wearing yoga pants before it became popular now just give a parent of Joshua Moses and we're good to go [Music] so the movie was a financial disaster and got blasted by critics but what about the film itself what's it even about well strap in y'all are about to get a face full of fictional fantasy names our story takes place in the world of I forget the names in this movie are so over-the-top and forgettable then I can't even recall it by memory and I've watched this movie twice before recording one could say that this story is bloated you know what I'm just gonna read the plot description from Wikipedia yes I am going to make fun of it I'm gonna do my fantasy narrate her voice like Galadriel because obviously this movie was trying to mimic that itself so here we go after having left their own world due to a loss of Natural Resources the Wingert humanoid Noren settle on jhamora with the permission of the ground Welling lockni would-be Conqueror sedessa leads those Noren that believe in its own racial superiority and try to take land away from the lockni the parents of delgo a lockni are killed in the resulting conflict Norn King zan is horrified by the war and admonishes sedessa then the Hebrew Hawks allied with the by booze and United for the most power of her kodoku of all time with the United armies of the Hebrews and GUP coups they macho the tower of Jilla fluff and you see I'm making those names up that was all made up by the last part but you wouldn't have known that unless I told you these names are so over the top that go in one ear and out the other there's nothing wrong with having long or complicated or non-traditional names with characters that's okay Lord of the Rings does this starwars does this that's okay but here's the catch these characters have to be interesting if not it's just a bunch of word vomit and that's like throwing gasoline on the fire I'm already not interested so I'm definitely not interested in remembering these names it's like I need a freakin dictionary or something you know what reading the plot description isn't helping I'll just cut to the bare bones here so things don't get too out of hand this is about to get very basic the story is about fairy people and turtle people fairy people have this evil queen who wants to kill all the turtle people fairy mom I'm gonna call her that for now on fairy mom the bad guy gets kicked out of the kingdom because she's crazy but the fairy people and the turtle people look at their faces look at their faces they are still at not at war they've got like this somewhat cease fire you know we'll stop killing each other but tensions are still running high we've got main character ugly turtle man his comic relief's eye buddy annoying turtle man and then you got fairy girl with yoga pants because she's a girl with pink pants she's got a facial tattoo long story short the boy and the girl hit it off like right off the bat they're like in frame with each other they they they want to make turtle fairy babies and they discover that this dude the colonel of course the colonel he wants to get a war going between the turtle people and the fairy people like a real strong crazy hard for real war this time that would wipe each side out but he's working in secret for the Queen mom fairy queen who has an army of Orcs that she wants to bring in and then wipe out or enslave both people so adventures that aren't interesting with characters who are not interesting leads to a climactic battle that is not interesting just a bunch of vomit on the screen you poor computer's who had a rendered and it ends with the Queen mom getting killed I say mom she's not the mother of the girl she's like the aunt I believe the Queen mom that's good call it anyway comes to the castle with her orc army from avatar land and she attacks them and then she falls off a cliff and dies and then both societies come to peace with one another oh yeah and the force is in this movie they're like the force with magic hi guys I really don't know and this movie was hard to sludge through oh also as I said I watched the movie twice once with the theatrical cuts and once with the DVD commentary they even have a behind the scenes thing that was interesting they made my character look very very handsome he's a modified after myself in fact they took a clay model of my head in my body and made a older Marlee very has this movie is ultimately a hard lesson to learn for those who worked on it and here's the lesson just because you're passionate and worked hard on a project does not mean it's guaranteed to succeed in actuality it might crash and burn and that's exactly what happened to delgo I truly believe in this movie it's gonna be great alright let's go over my five points first the story I actually had an optimistic point of view while going into this movie I thought it looks ugly but maybe the story might be good maybe it will be better than the sum of its fear that's the wrong phrase but I want to keep it in this video anyway because that's how I feel about this movie after watching it the sum of all fears but legit I thought the story would at least elevate the film I was wrong delgo wanted to be serious it didn't want to be a comedy it did not want to be laughed at which it did ultimately but it wanted to be sci-fi and fantasy and action with serious tones and themes and I'm okay with that I like things like primal like avatar not that one we'll talk about that one later that's actually relevant to the topic just wait you'll see what I'm getting at is I can appreciate movies and shows an especially animated content with a more serious tone to it that's perfectly fine again animation is a medium not a genre doesn't mean it has to be specifically for kids that all being said though delgo wanted to be serious it failed instead we have a story that is bloated we've got characters who are not interesting you have a confusing setting and backstory that is just overwhelming and hard to follow in the first few minutes of the film they lay down the groundwork of what was happening and it failed to hook me in and I spent the rest of the film just not being interested in it at all for the story for the conflict for the characters nothing none of it was interesting you can tell that this movie was heavily inspired by Lord of the Rings Star Wars you got that semi Fantasy / - going on here and massive battles to match who look at the giant army clashing with the other giant army that I don't care about also it doesn't look that good even the beginning of the movie has a Fellowship of the Ring style narration like how you have Galadriel being like it began with the forging of the great rings I get that vibe from delgo with its narration and again once more all of the characters are just boring so insanely boring I didn't care about any of their plights the only one who was halfway decent was the villain she actually had a goal she was intimidating not like visually well I guess you can say visually but as an eye at least was somewhat invested to see what would happen to her everybody else didn't care come you know me if there's one thing I can't stand its hearing a chorus of water ridden freaks pleading for mercy also delgo has horrible tonal cohesion this Phil wants to be big and epic and taken seriously with its story and characters and the way behind its plot this is war racism prejudice people murdering each other over petty differences then the comic relief character interrupts and just derails everything yeah this guy screw this guy whenever he was on the screen the movie would go from super serious to slapstick humor and it was way too jarring now I understand the importance of levity in order to give your audience a break so it's not just doom and gloom the entire way through especially for a movie that might have kids in the audience but here well just add it on top of the pile of failures next there's the voice-acting oh boy this was logistical mess now the voice cast for delgo is quite stacked you got some big-name actors who are involved and even some of them have Academy Awards like props to the team for delgo for actually going out and getting good voice actors people of reputable character and experience these are some big named actors if it was the late 1990s too bad it's 2008 you got Jennifer Love Hewitt and Bancroft Val Kilmer Burt Reynolds Michael Clarke Duncan Kelly Ripa okay Louis Gossett jr. John Vernon and then quite a few more again some of these actors are prolific they're well-known and they've got good movies backing them off but just because you have high profile voice actors does not guarantee that they'll be great in their roles nor does it guarantee that the voice actors will live to see the end of the movie yep this movie took so long to finish that two of the voice actors died before I was even released and Bancroft and John Vernon and was the voice of the main villain and she died before her lines were even complete Jason one of the directors is on record saying quote the passing of Anne Bancroft was a major blow for us not only from a human standpoint but from a production standpoint it really set us back because she's the antagonist in the movie she had recorded about 75% of her lines at that time to be fair folks it's kind of hard to schedule around death so I don't fault mark or Jason for that I mean it's not like they screw it up with Anne while she was still alive oh wait no they absolutely did according to Jason quote some of the lines we had to try and clean up because the recording quality wasn't at its best we recorded her at a not-so-great studio that's now defunct where she lived we flew up to New York and then drove to Bridgehampton to record in this little cabin they're recording booth was extremely small like the size of a phone booth and she did not like the small and closed spaces so we left the door open and we could hear toilets flushing in the background some of the liens we couldn't use but we cleaned it up to do the best we could because we really wanted to get her voice that's incredibly bad if your voice actor can't deliver lines properly on a technical level you should probably rethink things I mean toilet sounds that there's the dialogue oh this dialogue it did not help you've got these war councils and throne room talks and people discussing war we're marching to war assemble the forces for war and we don't heed the lockni whatever they're called will march to war war war war I don't care and I'm a person who likes war room talk again the Lord of the Rings has some good moments where you're building tension and raising the stakes with your dialogue but here because the story is boring and bloated and just hard to follow having these moments where it should be packed full of drama in the throne room and the War Room no impact whatsoever if anything had happened to you everything was fine until Bogardus beat this poor post goddess was protecting you from harmless boys from lovely boys consorting with the fallen ones is heresy enough then there's the editing the music was boring except for the parts were they from the sounds of it we're ripping off Pirates of the Caribbean like listen [Music] [Applause] [Applause] again I was already struggling with the story the characters the animation so it came to the editing like my eyes were glossed over I just didn't care but I'll tell you this there are some scenes that are building up and then they just end it's like what happened we were building up to something there was legitimately a riot with an angry mob and they attack this village and then they're like what can you do and just cut it off what the hell and finally there's the animation what can I say it looks like a nightmare and falls right into the uncanny valley some characters more than others your brains wrestling with these characters going they look human but something's off something's way off all right the character designs I can appreciate that they were trying to do something different that they wanted to do a story that is more serious and with characters that look a bit more humanoid and not as cartoony you want legit aliens you want a village of turtle people and a fairy people and of orcs but when you see these designs come to life because I've seen the concept art at the credits of the movie and they look ok but when they make their transition over into computer animation mmm no this does not work these faces these bodies they're just way too off-putting they don't look cute they don't look charming and the way that you all are peddling your movie cuz again I know that these guys didn't want to make just a kids movie but it's almost like a step down version of avatar for kids like here's our version of avatar but with turtle people and kids can watch it too kids are gonna love it it's like no I what kids are gonna see this poster and go I want to see that when they can go see something else around this time so yes these designs are such a cornerstone problem for delgo because it basically set the board for failure well outside of the story to be fair again on a technical level they tried took him a long time and these characters and the textures look like they belong in the early 2000s not the late 2000s but there is effort the old characters have wrinkles when you zoom into them which when you zoom out you don't really see it but when you're close to their face unfortunately have to get close to the face you can see wrinkles and the skin has texture where it's like oh it's like coarse rough skin okay cool but again you zoom out from the skin textures and it's like oh that face is wet attached to get it out of here the lighting and the backgrounds and the setting you know again it's like I'm looking at Spore or something or some kind of mid-2000s PlayStation game and as far as the movement goes I just didn't really care it felt like the physics weren't there at times but you have a scene with this one orc swinging a giant mace and there was some weight behind it but then they moved to another scene where he's swinging his mace around and if there's like the weights gone where is the physics where is the weight behind the swings and the movement it was inconsistent now there were some scenes there's a moment where they are in a cave being chased by a monster that looked cool it was well animated they threw in some extra action scenes to make it seem like okay there's effort that looks good there's a duel at the end that looks good there are moments in this movie where the talent shines through but not nearly enough to justify you to watch this movie let alone enjoy it so overall the animation isn't garbage it's not like they just phoned it in they actually tried they had ideas for the character designs what direction they wanted to go how to render it how it looks it's just that the idea itself it wasn't a lack of effort it was just the wrong direction and it was a direction that folks general audiences aren't going to enjoy myself included also it has not aged well like it looks rough when it came out in 2008 and now it's 2020 so it looks really bad now so how would I improve the movie well surprise surprise the story needs the most attention I thought that the uncanny visuals would be the worst part of the movie but no I was wrong the story by some sort of miracle was actually worse in my opinion all right so what I would do is cut down on the bloated lore and setting and story this film needs to be more focused like it wanted to be Lord of the Rings with its epic scale but for a film that's not based on one of the greatest works of literature ever one where you're winging it with your own story you need to narrow it down especially when you have kids in the audience they're not going to know anything about your lore setting at the start it's too much so to scale it down and then you can work your way up to an epic scale you can work your way up to a more high stakes high profile bigger world then as far as the characters go you need to make them much more interesting and I'll tell you how first off funny guy who's not funny cut them call them from the movie don't care goodbye then as far as the main guy character and the main girl character instead of having them instantly fall in love have them work their way up to it the directors and the writers for the movie said that their film is about prejudice and racism and how it divides people okay instead of having the guy the girl character instantly fall in love how about they get thrown into a situation where they are stuck with one another and that if they want to survive or get back home they need to work together that despite their differences they have to set them aside and by doing so they grow closer they learn how to form bonds that all of this racist stuff is just their cultures and not actually real and it's just dumb I like that direction better it's kind of a story arc that's been done before but that's totally fine as it's much better than what this movie actually has the guy in the girl character get back to the village the villages are like you stole the boy the other ones like you stole the girl give them back Wow we're gonna go to war that seems better to me that it makes more sense and it's more intimate but works its way up to a larger scale at the end this orc army cut them why do you have an orc army you have two armies already focus on that why bring a third one in a battle of three armies this way we get a micro-level of discussing the culture and the hate and the reason why there's such historical differences when it comes to these two tribes and that on a micro scale once again these two characters cross that gap and become one as in they understand each other and then you can work your way up to a macro level where the different societies maybe have folks who are the villains in each society trying to cause war that they come to terms where it's like wait we don't have to fight we can find peace so that's my suggestion as far as the story goes it seems that you can simplify the story that way and if you want a comic relief character throw in some animal some some no talking animal not this diarrhea of the mouth side character who just derails everything this guy was worthless get rid of them and with a little animal sidekick guess what merchandise boom you're welcome where their real body from their movie is made also as far as the dialogue goes with like these different warring parties and war rooms that's okay but you need to simplify it just a bit can you imagine kids watching this scene and keeping interest like seriously they would be bored to tears what do you propose we do stand idly by is the Noren attack our villages as they take our children the truce has been broken war is inevitable as far as the animation goes I would just overhaul everything if it were up to me I would have this movie be in 2d and not 3d when it comes to the uncanny valley I find it personally to be more of a problem when it comes to CGI and I can respect that the folks who made this movie again wanted to do something different wanted to tell a serious story with CGI it doesn't work especially with characters who look like that and took two of our boys it doesn't matter who's at the helm what passion you have and how bad you want it they were doomed to fail with the direction they were going so instead make it 2d you can get rid of the uncanny valley problem basically by doing that by doing traditional animation maybe don't do a feature-length movie maybe lower your scope and do a direct-to-video movie instead in 2d or something I don't know if they have that ability I know it's a lot to put on them because CGI 3d animation and 2d animation are quite the different animal but again if it was up to me I would go with 2d that way the uncanny valley isn't nearly as much of a problem as it was in delgo also they went for a serious story about war and racism like the creators for this movie straight up say that and the DVD commentary and that they wanted semi-realistic characters to match that tone but dear God it does not work once more 2d that would have worked better but that's just my personal opinion this movies about action vengeance courage honesty romance comedy friendship family unity what more could you possibly want you better not this movie handsome it's like this movie wanted to be avatar wait a second oh my god it came out before avatar so a quick side story the folks who made delgo were actually considering suing James Cameron for avatar they claimed that avatar stole from delgo that some of the assets and ideas and visuals and concepts that avatar stole from it I mean I can see kind of what they're saying but I would chalk this one up to coincidence and as far as I know they did not go to court they dropped their case and probably for the best because I would not want to take Fox or James Cameron to court you would lose even if you're in the right which is kind of twisted but again there was no case here to begin with so you know let sleeping dogs lie is that great though one of the lowest grossing movies of all time wanted to sue one of the highest-grossing movies of all time in conclusion despite all of my issues with this movie I give delgo props for trying to do the impossible it came from a genuine place of passion and creativity and I'll never fault someone for that they wanted to do something different and tell their story and I find that admirable I don't agree with the direction of the movie and what they did but I can at least appreciate that they took the high road the team behind delgo drummed up financial support as an independent studio and tried to do it without hollywood's help that way they could remain in control over their own creation but the path they took was risky and difficult there's a reason why so many people go to Hollywood for financial backing there's less of a chance that it will ruin your career if you fail to succeed when you do all of the investing on your own and you lose you pay the price for delgo it took that leap of faith but ultimately lost when I was researching this topic I actually stumbled across Jason's website again one of the directors for the movie according to him he went to the movie theater to see how many folks would show up to watch the delgo and he said that nobody showed up well there was one family that showed up and they enjoyed it so he was like okay I feel like I've been validated that it was worth it but could you imagine making something that took over ten years was your perceived magnum opus was something that you thought would unlock the doors and break down barriers and be truly fantastic and then no one shows up to watch it that is soul-crushing again I admire the team for delgo they tried and they failed and there's no shame in that the food list no arrests but despite all of the downsides despite all of the failures despite all of the things they did wrong there is one crucial thing they did right aliens and yoga pants also why does delgo have such a massive cuff [Music] [Music]

Channel: Saberspark

Views: 1,337,433

Rating: 4.9575438 out of 5

Keywords: saberspark, saber, what the hell is delgo, delgo, uncanny valley, failed movie, uncanny valley disaster, worst movie, worst, let's go ape, uncanny, what the hell is

Id: cR8zNCF9nG8

Length: 35min 4sec (2104 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Civexian]

This was a great video! Totally unrelated to the post, but in your Trolland video, there is a song that goes along the lines of “Let’s do something fun”. Where did you get that from and where can I listen to it?

[u/kandikidraver]

Big oof for that movie. It really is too bad when someone's passion project crashes and burns. But passion alone does not guarantee greatness.

[u/spicepudding]

i didnt know how else to tell you but could you maybe sometime look into: once upon a time in the west: Cinderella (2012) ... i loved it as a kid but i was 11 so i was definitely just biased... love your videos !! :)

[u/cicada_faith]

This movie cost all the employees at the director's father's business their bonuses in 2008.