I’ve got a soft spot in me heart for Popeye. This is a character that has been around for decades, using legal growth hormone spinach to get out of sticky situations and save the day. There’s something about the early cartoons from the Fleischer series that are still watchable to this day, a certain magic that subsequent adaptations have been unable to bottle. But the latest attempt, might just be able to.
And that’s because it has Genndy Tartakovsky attached to it. The guy behind Dexter’s Lab, Star Wars: Clone Wars and who rescued the train wreck Hotel Transylvania, turning it into a damn good film. There’s a certain level of physical slapstick comedy that makes the older Popeye cartoons work so well, and that’s something that Tartakovsky understands all too well. Check the test reel footage out for yourself:
That works on so many levels. The big problem with CG transfers of beloved cartoon characters, is that more often than not they come off as stiff plastic dolls instead of vibrant new-gen overhauls. They’re stiff, rigid and lose some of that physical character along the way, something that has happened to several Popeye direct-to-video films in the past.
But this, this works beautifully. That sharp, fluid sense of movement. Olive Oyl having bizarre contortionist movements. Yes, this is what I want to see in a Popeye movie! The film will eventually be out in 2015. Hopefully, the end result is just as polished as this test footage.
Last Updated: September 19, 2014
James Francis
September 20, 2014 at 10:10
This is so incredibly awesome.