Trailer Review: Rango

On second thought I'm not sure if the above video counts as a "trailer" because it's more of a mini behind-the-scenes featurette commercial. Still it fulfills the duties of a trailer in introducing the story, characters and talent.

So many thing about this make me happy. I think this'll look more organized if I make a numbered list:

1. The animation. The quality of the animation-- the detail in textures of skin and hair and lighting in particular-- are so exciting and well conceived. The movement of the characters is so believable and comically done in the way that can only be brought to fruition by animation. Studios are much better at deciding what aspect to make as realistic as possible and what should be exaggerated and elaborated to keep the characters buoyant.
2. The staging/blocking of scenes. Wes Anderson kind of did this with "Fantastic Mr. Fox", where he took George Clooney and Friends to a farm and recorded their voices as they acted out the scenes by rolling around on the grass and scurrying across the field. Gore Verbinski's approach here is a lot more choreographed, not so organic, but it still yields the same results and helps the animators determine the movement of the characters in tandem with the camera.
3. The voice talent. The actors who lend their voices to this production have a lot more input on their characters than most animated films today. The actors actually get to interact with each other and give performances that are more...authetic? Reactive? As opposed to recording each person individually and piecing the sound bits together in post-production. But I'm straying from what I originally intended to write. Johnny Depp as our plucky protagonist! Why isn't this man in more animated films? He's such a great character himself, so animated and genial. And I love Bill Nighy's craggy, curmudgeony voice for the rattlesnake character. And Isla Fisher switching her native Aussie accent for a Southerner's one.

Nickelodeon Studios has obviously put a lot of work into this movie. It not only looks great but seems to have a lot of heart; it doesn't have the feel of a selfish money-grabbing endeavor to suck in the kid krowd and toss a few bones to the hapless adult chaperones. Plus it's an original story, not something based on a popular children's book, and that's really refreshing. I'm really excited to see this.