What the HELL is Strange Magic? (A Box Office DISASTER)

picture my booty up in 3d i'll shake my booty in my own movie [Music] george lucas one of the most famous creators in the history of cinema and also one of the most infamous director writer producer what can't this guy do well actually a lot but that was not going to stop george from creating his own animated film not that one yes that one strange magic hell george started developing this movie 15 years before it even began production so it was on his mind for quite a while and with that much time i'm sure that he made something that everybody loved oh my god what the actual hell is that this movie ladies and gentlemen had the lowest ticket sales of any animated film released in over 3 000 theaters and an only made back ready for this guys aren't ready for this here we go it only made back 13.6 million dollars it was an absolute disaster and it made cinematic history just none a good way and the reviews from critics weren't too kind either it has a 17 from critics on rotten tomatoes and a 52 percent from the audience score that's bad though reviews from other sites are a lot less harsh that all being said is strange magic as bad as what people make it out to be as of today it has been over five years since it was released so maybe just maybe it has aged gracefully like a bottle of wine sadly now's the time for me to go or not alright so what's the origin behind this movie well like i said george lucas was brainstorming on this one for quite some time according to sources george said that star wars was made for 12 year old boys and that he wanted to make something for little girls since he had two young daughters around that time yeah you heard it here folks star wars is only for 12 year old boys so all of you adults all of you men children all of you women in general yeah there's the door get out of here this demographic is only for 12 year old man like george what the hell sources also say that george was inspired by shakespeare's a midsummer night's dream and that he'd been saving up a massive collection of pop songs over the years which helped him to make this movie oh by the way this movie is a jukebox musical yay you all ready for this so apparently george and his music supervisor for the film steven last name spent five years picking the right songs for the film the task was described as arduous and quote from george here it was like a rubik's cube when i went through it i had a million songs and had to narrow it down then as the years went on we kept narrowing it down end quote that means that george spent five years making a soundtrack that sounds yeah not that good seriously george is such a weird guy we all know him for star wars and indiana jones but he's had his thumbs and multiple pies the labyrinth the lamb before time twice upon a time and he also played a key role in the creation of pixar hell the director for strange magic gary riddstrom was a director from pixar and was supposed to be in charge of newt but that project got canned that means there's some timeline or multiverse out there where instead of strange magic they got newt and i'll be real i'm kind of envious of that as far as studio and production stuff goes strange magic was created by you guessed it lucasfilm and industrial light magic actually this was the last movie released by lucasfilm to have any involvement from george and was also the first lucasfilm released by disney after their big purchase also as if strange magic wasn't strange enough the movie was announced two months before its release that is a very small window so yeah a movie created by george lucas by a production company that was sold to disney that was then released under touchstone because disney did not want people to think it was made by them because they were embarrassed and you know what they were right on the money with that assessment the last thing they wanted was another mcclunky on their hands okay so what's the movie about well the story takes place in a magical forest of fairies and goblins well not really goblins they're like bog creatures trademarked the land is divided between light and dark fairies and those guys and the bog creatures are obsessed with destroying primrose flowers an important ingredient in the creation of love potions we are then introduced to marianne a fairy princess who was engaged to a guy named roland and he sucks his voice his character his his his everything especially especially his stupid lips what's going on here what's wrong with your mouth what's wrong with your face well roland here is caught cheating on marianne which then breaks her heart and she swears off love forever she also becomes a warrior woman with an awesome outfit so honestly i don't see the problem here [Music] oh wait no i see it now marianne has a younger sister named dawn who is a boy crazy teenager but she has this little elf friend i'm gonna laugh but she has this little elf friend i'm sorry i'm laughing because like when you see his face you're gonna be like what all right so her elf friend is named sunny and let's just say he's like one of the biggest sims i've ever seen in animation he's like i want to hug you and hold you and oh man this feels so right and she's like you're the best friend i've ever had and he's like so so of course being the simp that he is he's like well if i can't win her love i'll just force it so he runs off to go make a love potion well not make it himself but get the ingredients and take it to a person who can make the potion this is when all hell breaks loose the main antagonist of the film the bog king hates love and holds the fairy who can create love potions hostage but of course sunny by some miracle gets his hands on the potion and in typical love potion tropiness by the way this movie is full of tropes yeah he gets the potion and of course it hits dawn but she falls in love with the bog king i'm going to rip your wings off my pretty little fairy princess flirt the rest of the story mainly focuses on marianne trying to save her sister but and this was a bit of a twist falling in love with the bog king along the way it's kind of a beauty and the beast thing going on so it turns out that bog here isn't that bad of a guy but let me tell you he's pretty stupid wanna know why well homeboy here had a crush back in the day used a love potion on the girl it didn't work and then he thought the reason why it did not work was because he was ugly geez and i thought that this guy was a simp in reality and i use that term lightly it's because the person he loved was already in love with somebody else which therefore nullifies the potion can i get a big old f in the chat at the end marianne and bogg fall in love they stop evil elvis fairy from using the love potions on the princesses so he could marry them and then everybody becomes friends and the two kingdoms are united and these two go get out in the back of a car from american graffiti no honest to god uh some people become more than just friends um these two in particular oh my god that is awful i i i did not want to see that alright let's go over my five points first the story so the setting of the film was fine with me with the world of the fairies and the bog creatures you also got some hyper realistic animals along for the ride that worked i like that and the plot point of the two kingdoms being divided that was fine too though i wish the movie would have drilled a bit more when it comes to the division between the two kingdoms it feels more like it was hey you stay on your side of the tracks when i think it would have been more effective if it was like an all-out war where there's truly a real threat by being in their territory versus just being captured and being like yeah you shouldn't be here you you shouldn't be here now the core theme of this movie is of course love for marianne and the bog king it was learning how to love again they had their emotional baggage they had some bad relationships but for them it was learning how to open up and learning how to love to which in that regard i liked it for roland the main villain it's faking love and trying to use it to get what you want and then for dawn and sunny it's uh it's about the dangers of roofies and how sonny is a terrible character and i hate him as i mentioned before this movie is a jukebox musical and i did not care for that let's just say that this film didn't have the same impact as american graffiti sorry george but what did you expect the music to me was all over the place and the tone shifts were just too drastic it was legit jarring also the tone of the movie felt more like an adventure fantasy at the start but throughout the movie it shifted to fantasy comedy which was a tonal shift i wasn't expecting it felt weird to me did not really care for it overall the character arcs are pretty predictable again i i did say that it was a pleasant surprise seeing marianne and bogg hook up but as soon as they had any kind of remote feeling of being like hi my name is marianne oh i'm the bog king i was like oh there we go that's that's where they're going with it and by the way when they get together when they're flirting that sexual tension well let's just say you can cut it with a knife and if recent memes are to dictate anything they're probably cake next there's the voice acting it was good he got some pretty big names in this film alan [ __ ] evan rachel wood kristen chenoweth all in all good casting except for this guy i don't know who was responsible for the direction of roland but his voice was awful it legit sounds like a person trying to do an impersonation of nicholas cage and elvis at the same time like listen for yourself my armor it's too shiny i'd be spotted for sure if only i was little like you then there's the dialogue there's a good chunk of it that is awkward and wonky but there were also some genuine exchanges that i liked again roland here sucks and his lines are pretty dumb but then you have the sugarplum fairy who is very much so channeling her inner robin williams genie she even looks a bit like him he was so in love but bob he had no patience editing again i did not care for the music i wish it was all an original composition but oh well there's also these very bizarre moments where there's a split screen where on one side you got one character's face and then on the other you've got another character mainly at the start with marianne and roland now when it's just their faces going around i don't really care for that but there was one scene where they're both spinning on the stalk of a flower but they were blended in where it looks like it's one person doing it that was cool i like that shot but then they hit you with a kaleidoscope at the very end of the film and it's like what's going on this is weird this film gets experimental it tries some weird things and i like some of it but then there are moments where they play it safe or basic or it's predictable or tropey and it completely loses me god talk about a film why it feels so hot and cold for it and finally there's the animation it's good and it's not good i guess i should explain the monster designs for example i enjoyed they looked creative and cool especially this one guy with his squid beak that was neat but then you got the fairies and the elves and i wasn't nearly as impressed some of their designs and their facial movement kind of fell into the uncanny valley oh and please look me in the eye and tell me that isn't george lucas instead of destroying the death star he destroys the ship that controls the robots again it's like poetry so if they rhyme as far as action goes there's some decent choreography there was this one duel with marianne and the bog king that i liked but during the exact same duel there's this weird like spinning tasmanian devil animation and it felt super cartoony out of nowhere and i was like where'd that come from what was that about felt weird and out of place for what it's worth though i thought the lighting and the textures were amazing for the monsters the hair on the fairies though looks like it's cosplay for dragon ball z characters for the world building it was okay for the fairies kingdom it was like eh you know boring suffices whatever the goblins though have this cool like throne room with a skull they live in a giant stump i thought that looked much better god the more i talk about it the more i realize everything with the bog creatures the monsters i like it's pretty cool for the most part but when it comes to the fairies and the elves yeah that's where my faults with the movie come in overall though the visuals were this strange mixture of both good and bad like you've got some competent artists here working and they know what they're doing it's just that in execution and direction i see some issues i don't like looking at the faces of the fairies it just throws me off but when i see like the bog king talking to his subjects that's cool that looks good god i am so divided over this movie okay so how would i improve the film well i'll tell you this the jukebox musical drop it don't need it never did waste of time just do an original composition instead these songs take me out of the movie any kind of immersion i could have had is instantly broken when i hear barracuda or or some other lady gaga song or whatever jukebox stuff that george pulled out of his butt i can see how a jukebox musical can work but not here not not for this film it feels too far out of place this entire exchange between roland and marianne and the throne room going back and forth with their song battle weird did not like it did not care for it outside of that i would change roland's character and his voice his character and his voice just seems so weird and out there and it kind of again takes me out of the movie it's jarring he's like oh mama i'm a nicholas cage you know we gotta go save the princess and it's like that voice that personality is coming out of that body because his design looks like prince charming from shrek a bit but then like his personality doesn't really fit his body it just did not work for me so you i would overhaul maybe more of like a gaston but a bit more i don't know prim improper also there are some plot points that could be tightened or completely wiped out for example there's this character called the m it's like this weird mouse creature and it's obsessed with getting the love potion even the sugarplum fairies like don't let that imp get the potion chaos will happen and i thought oh maybe the imp is a character who was transformed and cursed because of the potion and trying to use it and is now seeking like atonement or something or redemption maybe there's something to this character nope it was just some creature wanting the potion wanting to go out into the forest and dump it on other characters and that's it as soon as sunny gets the potion back from the amp that plot line essentially stops it's done the imp is not important for the rest of the movie and that felt like a dead end it was it was very weird it's like i thought that this would be a lot more important but no it's just a joke and that's it george lucas what's your problem with side characters who are pointless star jar is a key to wallace if we get jar jar working because he's a funnier character than we've ever had in the movies in conclusion strange magic has its faults as a movie and really it's far from perfect but here's the thing i don't think it's as bad as what people make it out to be when i saw the box office numbers and the ratings i truly thought that this film would be a nightmare like truly truly awful but it was okay not good not bad just okay like i'd put it in like the maybe upper d lower seat here now films like arctic dogs or mars needs moms those films to me are much more deserving of their spots on like the infamous list when it comes to bad box office numbers or having low ratings online but for strange magic no i don't think it deserves a 17 on rotten tomatoes that score is way too harsh if it was like 65 or lower i could see that maybe even 60 percent but 17 that's a bit much if anything strange magic fell victim to bad advertising having a two-month window to work with before its release that's suicide like what are you thinking also this poster was the first thing i ever saw for the film and i'll be real with you did not care for it it didn't grab me and the trailer was even worse also it was released in january and as we all know that month is cursed when it comes to movie releases that all being said would i personally recommend strange magic not really there are much better films out there and i would suggest them first before strange magic but this film to its credit is watchable sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad and dear god sometimes it is ugly [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Saberspark

Views: 1,205,660

Rating: 4.9495945 out of 5

Keywords: strange magic, strange magic review, review, what the hell is, saberspark, saber, george lucas, box office, box office disaster, what the hell is strange magic

Id: cYK_Kr3Q5gA

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SebasCatell]

If you look at George Lucas’ filmography, you’ll see a bunch of weird projects that he produced and some of them are bad like this and Howard the Duck but you’ll also find some hidden gems like Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and Kagemusha. Seriously, watch Mishima. It’s fantastic.