Frank Oz Not Happy With The Muppets (from deadline)

For years, Frank Oz has been the voice (and hands) of Miss Piggy, but when he got the script for the new ‘Muppets’ film, he turned it down. “I wasn’t happy with the script. I don’t think they respected the characters,” he tells the British site Metro. “But I don’t want to go on about it like a sourpuss and hurt the movie.” Oz might remain somewhat diplomatic, but he’s not the only one concerned with the ‘Muppets’ script by star Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller (‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall,’ ‘Get Him to the Greek’): other longtime Muppeteers are also displeased that the beloved characters’ repertoire now includes fart jokes, and the fact that Kermit seems to have become a 1-percenter.

Per THR, “Muppet insiders” worry that Segel and director James Bobin (a writer on ‘Da Ali G Show’ and ‘Flight of the Conchords’) have sacrificed the characters’ integrity for easy laughs. “They’re looking at the script on a joke-by-joke basis, rather than as a construction of character and story,” one insider said to the trade magazine.

Take Fozzie’s fart-shoes joke featured in the trailer: “We wouldn’t do that; it’s too cheap,” another Muppets veteran says. “It may not seem like much in this world of [Judd] Apatow humor, but the characters don’t go to that place.”

They’re also worried that Kermit is now a fat cat who lives in a mansion and that the other Muppets now resent his wealth, leading to the “band” breaking up.

Not everyone involved with the beloved felt creations feels similarly.

“I’m very hopeful the characters are as warm and loving to each other as they were when Jim was directing,” says Bonnie Erickson, the executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy, who designed and built the original Miss Piggy. She says she’s “very excited” that Disney has brought the Muppets back to the big screen, but admits that she’s nervous. “I’m hoping the standard of excellence that Jim set is maintained,” she says.

This breaks my heart as the muppets are my favorite brand of family friendly subversion.
I should have known if you put Apatow regulars in anything it muddys the water.

…They actually put fart jokes in a Muppets movie? Really? Are there gay jokes too?

Remember that episode of South Park with the new Indiana Jones movie? Yeah, same deal.

Crossing my fingers. Henson was a major part of my childhood, and I’ve gone to all the recent Muppet movies. Yes, even “Muppets in Space.”

I think there are fart jokes in pixar movies. what I find more off putting about kids films these days is its rare to see a fairy tale played straight rather than being done with an ironic spin to it.

if they wanted to continue the henson legacy maybe they shouldnt have sold to disney?

Toy Story 3 had a fart joke.

I don’t like fart jokes, and I didn’t like the one in The Muppets, but it was still a good movie. It was clear that all involved were Muppets fans and wanted to make something worthy of the name.

if they wanted to continue the henson legacy maybe they shouldnt have sold to disney?

I read an EW article about the new movie the other day (someone brings old EWs to my office) and Henson’s daughter indicated that he (Jim) liked the idea of putting the Muppets with Disney.

The Disney merger began under Henson. If you’re a Muppet fan and want a treat, check out this Muppets at Disney World special, which was the last project Henson worked on before his death in 1990. Note these are the classic Muppets of old, full of irreverance and ready to make a mess out of the Magic Kingdom.

It sure hasn’t been the same since. The new film is a nice try, but more a Muppet tribute than the real thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTnc3eXJU_Q

Yoda said:

“Happy with the script, I was not. Respect the characters, they did not.”

A bit effing rich coming from the guy who trashed the legacy of The Stepford Wives.

He complains about (what seems to be, judging from the above) a few minor alterations to The Muppets legacy, yet has no problem with turning a great horror thriller into a crass comedy.

If it’s about integrity I guess all old Muppets fans should face the fact that after the original Henson run, and I mean the classic period were most of the main animators as Oz were actively involved, everything is somehow a tribute but will never be the same thing.

That’s because this is not like drawing animation were the character designer and the lead animators can set a standard and the working team can just follow key frames and get a seamless results without losing the original vibe, that imprinting given by the original author. I’m thinking about Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli here.

Animating puppets is more of a team work, were chemistry between people and timing can’t be simply controlled on a timeline. Is much more of a collective real time performance ,were the personality is brought to life by thousands of subtle details, even involountary or unconscious ones.

Back to Oz, Yoda is just a great example of this. It took huge efforts to ILM animators to make the CG version more lively than the puppet one. Sure the old one looks much more fake phisically compared to the CG one wich have better skin surfaces etc, though still today the work Oz did with that puppet is the reference for any Yoda representation past and future. And you can bet it will always be a challenge, no matter what advanced animation technologies will be involved, to mantain the same vibe of that old hand animated puppet. Only in part because that was the first one that set the standard for the character, but mainly because beside the great job Oz did, there’s his personal human subtle touch to it, that will always be hard to decode and reproduce.

Of course in the industry and in the crew of the new Muppets movie I’m sure there are big fans of the original work made by Henson and his crew. Beside certain screenplay decisions that can be arguable anytime, what I’m tryin to say is that all this contemporary muppets can only be taken as an homage to the past.
There’s no way we’re going to get back the muppets of our childhood days.

Sure the old one looks much more fake phisically compared to the CG one wich have better skin surfaces…

No way, the puppet Yoda is way better. There are certain things that a skilled puppeteer can do that some computer wizard shall never be able to achieve. A puppeteer makes the puppet “breathe”. The CGI is only ever a facsimile of what the puppetmaster can create.

And the skin surfaces of the old Yoda look better because they have real light hitting them. Real light does not hit a CGI creation.

Compare:

CGI YODA

PUPPET YODA

DOG YODA

Well I respect your opinion, though I didn’t meant to get into a discussion about CG effects against handmande effects. To me those are just two different tools, hence not very important itself, both with they peculiar pros and cons. What count is the result and how you use the tool. For instance I don’t see better lightning surfaces on the old Yoda, actually the contrary, radiosity, real skin and natural lightning can be simulated in CG to the point they can match reality. Artificial electric lights, rubber compounds, etc used on the old movie are quite far from a realistic rendering though the the overall result was and still is great in that given context.

The new Yoda is just different because he needed to match a whole different environment and movie design. They could have easily made a specular looking Yoda in the new movies, if that was the goal, but having the new star wars a different style and detailing the green guy would have just looked out of place. Patched on the screen image. That’s my opinion.

The bottom line is that the new muppet cannot match the old just because they are made by different people, and being the human performance in puppeteering..you know..very human hence unique in its own way, this is just normal and should be accepted like a characteristic of the tool itself. Plus with muppets often they had more than one person animating one muppet character..here’s that human chemistry I mentioned in the previous post, adding even more “personal colour” to the performance. You can watch, examine, decode a scene like that thousand times..still there’ll be something missing. Something that not even the original performers could explain. But it’s there. This is what ultimately led to motion capture with Andy Serkis and Gollum for instance. Since animators and performers can’t decode their own art to the level to make it something reproduceable anytime, let’s just track anything from of the human performing act. As a matter of fact it worked very well with Gollum.

New muppets, like new Yoda are just different. Sure you can like it or not, but on the other hand having these timeless character frozen in the past would mean losing them forever to new audiences. I think the moment you give birth to powerful creation, being a song, o story or whatever…you must face that your idea will overgrow you and take its own life, by others, even without you.

I guess Henson himsef knew it that “his” muppets would have survived after him, made by different people. That’s why he thought the Disney joint venture would have a been a good solution on the long run.

the last half hour came close to capturing the old muppet magic
the first hour could have matched it if they had bothered to write good songs, find decent actors and not write down to the audience and the wonderful characters that did not need tweeking.