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tyrantisterror · 3 months

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You Don't Remember Muncher

Sony, as a film-making company, has reeked of desperation for at least a decade at this point. They have IPs that they know SHOULD be making them more money but they just. Can't. Get them to. And sometimes this results in them taking some big creative swings, to be completely fair - I love the Spider-Verse movies, and you don't get movies that expensive and conceptually heavy with a studio executive who's playing it safe. And I think the fact that they keep taking these big swings even when some of them end up duds like Sausage Party is commendable.

But I do think one of their big problems is this inability to understand that 1. films are a form of art and 2. what art is. They're good enough to understand that artists know what art is, which is more than a lot of studio leadership can say, and those big creative swings they take come from trusting artists to do their art thing. And even their misfires tend to have laudable stuff - Sausage Party may be an SNL gag that someone decided to stuff full of the most dated racism and bigoted jokes imaginable to get up to movie feature runtime, but the animation in it is oddly beautiful, even when depicting things that are repulsive. Like a protestant on the way to Dracula's castle, the heads at Sony seem to treat their artists with respect despite not understanding why they gave them a rosary and other primitive superstitious charms to protect them from vampires.

But when they have to make choices themselves, hoo boy, those poor bastards. They don't know what they're doing.

So Ghostbusters is one of those valuable IPs Sony is desperate to monetize, right? They just know they can have a huge hit on their hands with Ghostbusters. It was popular in the 80's, and things that were popular in the 80's are HUGE now! Look at that Stranger Things, baby!

Now, the heads at Sony may not be able to understand art, but they try. They are at the very least good at picking apart a piece of art and sussing out what ingredients made it, like Claire Saffitz trying to recreate an oreo. For their 2016 reboot, they correctly deduced that the original Ghostbusters was 1. a comedy 2. starring at least two actors from SNL and using their star power for promotion and 3. was liked by nerds because the heroes are out-of-shape nerds rather than chiseled Rambo/Arnie types. Also it has ghosts in it, probably.

Now, the problem is, the SNL actor-led comedy was taken out into a dark alley and slowly beaten to death by Adam Sandler and his cadre of goblin men starting somewhere around the time Little Nicky was made. It gave way to the era of cringe comedies like The Hangover and Judd Apatow bromances, which were led less by SNL stars and more by actors and actresses who'd gotten their start on NBC thursday night sitcoms - a minor difference, perhaps, but notable I think. And, like, even then, by 2016, that era was also pretty much over. The cringe comedy was a dying genre. Comedy itself, at least pure comedies, was kind of losing its place in film, being supplanted by action movies with more quips than they used to have. We were three years deep into THE WHEDONING.

But being three years behind the curve has never been a problem Sony worried about. I mean, historically it should be, but they never do. So Sony tried to assemble the best Ghostbusters they could make from the ingredients they could suss out, using the closest equivalents they could make. Grab some of the actresses from Bridesmaids, and an SNL star or two if you can. Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy have a pretty good banter going on ala Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, really put them front and center. Oh, and we sussed out another ingredient! The original Ghostbusters had Sigourney Weaver as a love interest, and she was the star of Alien, which our Sony genre determining bot claims is an action movie, so let's get a hot action star as a love interest. Chris Hemsworth! Oh, we can make him be a silly goober like we did with John Hamm in Bridesmaids! People love handsome guys being silly goobers! (in this, Sony is correct)

The result was... fine, I think, if missing a few crucial ingredients. You know the ghosts in Ghostbusters? First syllable of the title? Most of the ones in the 2016 movie are just, you know, transparent humans, maybe a bit bluer than normal, making maniacal faces. Whereas in the original:

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Well, they got some fucked up freaks in the original.

A lot of fans didn't like the 2016 movie, some for stupid sexism reasons, some for "I don't see why you need to remake Ghostbusters at all really" reasons, and some for, like, just personal taste reasons. It did not provide the big box office hit Sony wanted. Their first attempt to recreate the oreo was a failure.

So they go back to the drawing board, listening to the loudest, angriest criticism and looking to what's working outside of their influence for answers. Fans thought the 2016 movie was too different, not reverent towards the original as the perfect golden calf of Bill Murray comedies that it is. So this new reboot would be oozing with reverence. Fans didn't like the cast of ladies, so, yes, got it, scrap the lady-led ghostbusters.

Star Wars Fans loved that J.J. Abrams Star Wars reboot, The Force Awakens, for being a sequel rather than a full reboot, but also for just telling the same story they already love but slightly different. And nerds in general still fucking love that Stranger Things show - they even had an episode where the Stranger Things kids wore ghostbusters costumes! Hey, there's a million dollar idea, Stranger Things kids... as ghostbusters...

Now, the one thing they can't take from The Force Awakens is copying the tone of their original movie, because they tried copying the irreverent tone of the original Ghostbusters and fans did not like it. They need to be reverent to the original, because that's what The Force Awakens, even if showing reverence at all is antithetical to the tone of the original movie itself (which it is, because Ghostbusters is an irreverent Bill Murray comedy, like that's its whole schtick). But if they can drape this new-found reverence in 80's nostalgia, maybe, just maybe, nostalgic fans will be too dumb to notice.

And hey, they love that Stranger Things, which is a big homage to The Goonies and E.T. and Steven Spielberg-esque stories about pubescent kids going on perilous adventures where they face bad guys and learn life lessons in the process, reverent but dated in the same time period as Ghostbusters. And what an idea... Stranger Things kids... as ghostbusters...

This was admittedly a lot of preamble to get to the actual topic: Muncher. See, in that Force Awakens style, they needed to not only bring old characters from Ghostbusters back, but also make new characters who are really just the old characters but slightly different. For example, The Force Awakens brings us BB-8, who's basically just R2-D2, but visually different enough to feel new, and maybe a little cuter. Instead of moving on treads, he moves on this big ball, which is more complicated from a puppetry aspect and thus looks a lot more impressive and just a bit more "modern" while still basically being R2-D2 again.

Such was the genesis of Muncher.

Slimer (originally called Onionhead by the production staff and John Belushi's Ghost by Bill Murray) wasn't intended to be the franchise mascot, in part because Ghostbusters was never meant to be a franchise. He was a one off ghost who's iconic design and role as the first ghost to be busted made him a fan favorite, and eventually became, like, the ghostbusters' dog in the cartoon series. We love that for him, but the fact remains that Slimer's success was accidental.

Muncher, by contrast, was an attempt to recreate Slimer. But different! He's a gross gluttonous monster, because that's what Slimer is, but there's a lot less focus on wet goo when he eats and more solid chunks. See, it's different? And you know what's popular now thanks to, like, a cracked article or something? Tardigrades! They're these cool little microscopic things that everyone's making into monster designs now, they're even on a Star Trek! Why, if we made Slimer 2 - err, that is, Muncher have some tardigrade elements, he'd look weird and, like, modern - but not too modern! Like Slimer, but different!

Before Ghostbusters: Afterlife came out, there was a LOT of Muncher merchandise. A lot. Which makes sense, Slimer had so much goddamn merch in the heyday of the original Ghostbusters. There was fucking Slimer toothpaste. Toothpaste! From Slimer's teats!

It looked identical to Slimer bubblegum.

But, for whatever reason, Muncher did not connect like Slimer did, and so Sony did a last minute trend-chasing pivot and tried to focus on the new hotness: cute baby versions of characters who were old and not cute in the original movie.

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I don't know if this scene was planned to be in the movie before The Mandalorian was a big success, or if it was a hasty addition to it, but it doesn't matter, because what does matter is the late marketing shift to focus on these little fuckers, and giving them lots of toys. They're already in the marketing for the sequel, where Muncher is nowhere to be found.

Because you don't remember Muncher, do you?

Muncher didn't connect. They took a swing with Muncher and they fucking whiffed. They made a shitload of Muncher toys and all those little blue fuckers ended up clearanced to Hell. Muncher is a failure, a loser.

You don't remember Muncher.

And you never will.

#Muncher #You Don't Remember Muncher #covid brain #Did You Remember Muncher?

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ilomilo · 1 year

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(Disclaimer: This post is not my own. This is a repost from the official ilomilo developers on blog.ilomilo.com (only accessible on the wayback machine)!)

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Kotaku and Giant bomb plays some ilomilo

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Another ilomilo article from Pax! This time from Kotaku.

“Giant Bomb’s Brad Shoemaker and I each took an Xbox 360 controller in hand at the Microsoft booth at PAX East and tried our best to understand Ilomilo, a puzzle game involving two characters who need to walk across tricky terrain in order to stand next to each other.”

[Pasting below for easy reading!]

Ilomilo (first letter is an "i", second an "L") is great to look at. But how do you play this game about two cube-people needing to meet? Maybe let a Kotaku guy and a Giant Bomb guy play, sans directions.

On second thought, maybe that's not how you do it.

Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker and I each took an Xbox 360 controller in hand at the Microsoft booth at PAX East and tried our best to understand Ilomilo, a puzzle game involving two characters who need to walk across tricky terrain in order to stand next to each other.

Brad and I were bravely trying this new upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game. Our first discovery: we would be taking turns. We could each move one of the cube people, but when I had control and could move, he could not. It seemed that we were playing a cooperative game, but we could not move at the same time. When I had control, my cube guy was front and center. Brad could only control a cursor version of his guy. With that cursor he could highlight areas of interest, but not control his guy. When I pressed a button, Brad had control.

We figured out that we needed to get our cube people to stand on adjacent cubes in each of Ilomilo's dreamy floating environments. In the early levels, this was too easy. My guy trotted over. His guy hit a switch to pull my guy over. They met. We won.

Ilomilo has many tutorial levels. These levels teach you that some blocks can be picked up from the game world and transported on your back until you put them down again. This important action allows you to create bridges where there once were gaps. You can also walk on small ramps that rotate the world and turn what were the sides of the game's floating platforms into the new bottom of the terrain. Brad would do this, flipping the camera view, while my cube guy waited, dangling but not falling off. Without much effort, we met again.

The game was too easy, so Brad and I backed out to the game's level selection screen and skipped a couple dozen levels ahead. Mistake. On this new level, our guys were very far apart. There were bubbles coming out of vents on some of the blocks. One of the blocks I picked up and placed back down became three cubes long when I put it down. Except sometimes it was back to being just one cube long. I bridged a couple of gaps and wound up with my guy on a high perch. He was stuck. Brad spun the level by walking his guy up some ramps. He was spinning the camera enough to make me feel unwell. It no longer seemed wise to have skipped the rest of the tutorial levels.

I beckoned an official who was working the PAX Microsoft booth. He explained the expanding blocks to us. We asked him about the whole taking-turns thing and wondered whether the second player really could only control a cursor while the other player moved around. The man looked confused. Cursor? I guess he skipped most of the tutorial as well.

Brad and I each had other games to play. So we dissolved our brief partnership. He went off to play other games. I stood behind one last second to ponder Ilomilo. Looks great. Doesn't seem like it needs to be played by two people to be enjoyed. Probably ramps up in difficulty better if you, well, ride up that ramp and don't jump ahead. It's a puzzle game at its core, for people who like staring at a complicated game level and figuring out which switches need to be pushed, which gaps spanned in order to be solved. Give me and Brad more than a few minutes of Ilomilo play time sans directions and I'm sure we could be masters.

#LMAOOOOO they learned the hard way 😭#ilomilo devblog #first adventure #fa chapter 3 #milo #muncher

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