There is a movie called Tough Guys Don't Dance, though I haven't seen it. Not sure of even where I heard of it.
I watched this DTV in prep for my interview with Evan Baily, and as I've said elsewhere, I didn't have a very positive impression of it at first, but grew to appreciate it more on repeat viewings. It's not really aiming for incredible depth, but for the kind of pulp depth that you can mine out of stuff like the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories or the early Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan novels. For the most part, I think it gets there.
I appreciate the fact that an animated production can take a risk that Hollywood live-action probably still can't, in putting an entire cast of non-white people on the screen. I also thought they did a great job in making the setting feel real -- it has the same authenticity that I like in stuff like Avatar and the new Battlestar Galactica series. It's obviously made up, but they sweated the details enough to make it FEEL like it's real.
Plus, you know, dinosaurs. Cool ones. Mostly getting their butts kicked by the baddest bad-ass Indian anywhere ever in some pretty thrilling animated action sequences. Really, you just have to love the simplicity of concept. I think the only place where someone's done more intense, adrenaline-pumped action stuff was in Hellboy Animated: Blood & Iron. Ain't much likelihood this is going to air on Cartoon Network, though, or even Adult Swim. They are genuinely not kidding when they say there's a lot of graphic violence in this, and the way so much of it ties directly into the plot means that watching an edited version is just going to be a complete waste of time.
I do have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed with Adam Beach's Turok. I understand that he's supposed to be stoic and emotionally dead, but there's too many times early in the movie where that just sounds "wooden" instead. I was hoping that we'd get to see the angry young man that I saw in Smoke Signals; sometimes that guy peeks through, but not often enough. I'll chalk that up to his relative inexperience as a voice-actor, though. I also wish that Graham Greene had a more substantial and more interesting role -- his shaman is the kind of thing that they probably could have spliced together from all his older movies. Again, I was hoping for the same kind of sly wit that he had in movies like Thunderheart or Maverick. Everyone else was fine, though, especially Irene Bedard as Catori and Cree Summer as Sapinta.
Speaking of Catori, didn't she figure out that her hair clip is the only common element to whenever something really horrible happens to someone close to her? I kind of wished Turok handed it back to her and said, "Keep it. Hasn't been much luck to anybody yet."
I'm a bit concerned over the fact that it was as successful as it was in such a hurry. If it does well, then rather than letting them do the next one (whether Turok or not) properly, I'm worried that they'll say, "OK, now we can crank 'em out in a shorter time frame!" and maybe even accelerate the process.
One thing's for sure, though -- I hope the future of animated DTVs looks a lot more like this (flaws and all) than Dragonlance (which is just flaws and no "and all").
-- Ed
