Why are live-action movies based upon animated series so hated much...?

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get over it

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Why are live-action movies based upon animated series so hated much, unlike those based on comics? I liked The Flintstones and Inspector Gadget. Why are they considered so bad than Spider-Man, Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, etc.?:confused: :confused: :confused:
 
I didn't care for Inspector Gadget beyond a few moments here and there, but I also thought The Flintstones was pretty good. Heck, wasn't it one of the Top 10 movies of that year?

I'm totally jazzed for G.I. Joe next year, though I've prepared myself for it not being as much like the original series I would prefer. But as long as the spirit of the characters and the style are still there, I'll be happy. :)
 
I liked The Flinstones.

What was great about The Flinstones is that the characters and props actually felt like they came straight out of the cartoon. But now, it's just like watching a regular live-action comedy movie with CGI animals thrown in.
 
I didn't hate any of the movies you mentioned, but I didn't like any of them very much, either. I think that most of them tried to rush through plots in two hours that took the comic books a long time to develop. In the case of Inspector Gadget, they never should have shown the face of The Claw, either.
 
I liked The Flinstones, and Inspector Gadget (which is odd considering how much I hate the cartoon it's based on).

Spidey (despite the slight corn) and Batman Begins are awesome films.

But I thought Fantastic Four was a horrible, badly written and badly acted pile of trash. How it managed to spawn a sequel is beyond me...
 
Guys, we're starting to drift off-point a little. The OP is asking why so many live-action adaptations of cartoons get spewed with venomous bile, not which specific live-action cartoon adaptations you like and dislike.

My 2 cents:

The reason most 'cartoon to live-action' projects receive so much hate is because most cartoons feature characters and elements which simply can't be accurately reproduced in a live-action format, and so most Hollywood producers feel the need to take liberties with the shows' universe and alter things (sometimes to the point where it ends up looking like a completely different entity) in order for them to work in a non-animated universe. Then the purists automatically accuse the filmmakers of "messing with things" too much; so 4 times out of 5, you end up with a project that fans of said show hate because it bears little resemblance to the cartoon show it alleges to celebrate, and novices who are new to said cartoon would never recognize the live-action adaptation as being this said cartoon if they saw the 2 projects side-by-side.
 
Very few live action versions of animated cartoons work simply because live action is literal. When a cartoon concept is made as a live action film, it looks like grown ups parading around in Halloween costumes. While the addition of digital special effects has enabled live action to emulate cartoon animation in films such as THE MASK, which was later adapted as an animated series, the process is simply self-defeating. A live action version of the FLINTSTONES has less merit than a live action version of JONNY QUEST since QUEST is already based on naturalistic concepts. A few comic adaptations to live action have succeeded because of this. These include SUPERMAN, BATMAN, SPIDERMAN, THE FANTASTIC FOUR, as well as TERRY AND THE PIRATES and the BLONDIE movie series. It's really all about a realization of the medium and what each form does best.
 
Flintstones is a fun movie, the casting was really good and everyone did a good job playing the characters, the sequel however had a different cast and it was awful. Scooby Doo was alright too, but had too much fart and burp jokes, I enjoyed the ending with SPOILER........ Scrappy Doo, but it was overall a kids only movie. I even saw Fat Albert and the less said about that the better.
DC and Marvel movies are usually good, because they understand their fans and don't just wan't to make cheesy movies for kids.
 
Again, I think it's worth mentioning that what the OP is asking is 'why live action adaptations of animated series are generally looked upon with disdain', not which specific live action movies based on cartoons that you personally liked or disliked.
 
Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Batman Begins and so on are not truly movies based on an animated series. They're movies based on the comic books that the animated series were based on.

For example, there were some nods to B:TAS in Batman Begins (the ski mask from "Mask of the Phantasm", the train fight from "Never Fear"), but overall the movie was grounded in comic works like "Batman: Year One" and "The Man Who Falls."

Transformers wasn't based on a single animated series either, but on 20+ years of shows, comics, novels and toy packages. More of the Transformers mythos in the movie came from the comics than the show. The main plot was basically borrowed from the 2005 comic arc, "Infiltration." Other concepts (like Sparks in their chests and the word "Allspark") came from Beast Wars and Beast Machines.

And for the record, while Fantastic Four was a dissapointing movie, it was better than ANY of the animated incarnations of their origin. Watch the pilot of the 1990s series to see what I mean. Horrible. The 70s series had its moments, but it was hindered by the gosh-awful production qualities of its era. Season 2 of the 90s series was the closest thing we've ever gotten to a good, comic-based series. The modern show just looks terrible, though I haven't seen enough to judge its story content.
 
The Flintstones was good because they didn't change the formula of the series too much, and even incorporated elements that weren't in the original series, such as Barney working at the quarry which was in a different series.
 
I think when you watch a cartoon for any amount of time, you get accustomed to its visual style, and that style becomes part of the total experience of watching the show. When a live-action movie is made out of a cartoon, it's an entirely different visual style on display, and to the viewer who was a fan of the cartoon, it doesn't look "right". The Flintstones was an example of this.

Another reason that I've noticed is the fact that, no matter how advanced special effects have become in the post-Star Wars era, there are still some types of visual imagery that don't look convincing in live-action. Many films with very high budgets were hampered by CGI effects that looked phony and cartoony next to the live action footage into which they were blended. Garfield and Inspector Gadget looked that way to me.

Then there's the problem of the people who have taken on the task of adapting the cartoon to live-action. Often these are people who have no particular loyalty to the source material, and no real understanding of what makes them popular (and this malaise is certainly not limited to movies based on cartoons, but has examples from every type of source material that Hollywood has strip-mined). So instead of making a faithful adaptation, or acknowledge that something like a "cartoon" can have artistic integrity that should be respected, they fall back on trying to be self-consciously hip and turn it into a spoof that alienates the fan base they were trying to court. The Scooby-Doo films and Rocky and Bullwinkle failed for this reason.
 
Good to know, but what does that have to do with why live-action movies based on animated movies are hated so much?

'Cause that Underdog movie is a prime example of what I was talking about in my initial post. Underdog was crell, because it was almost nothing like the cartoon that it was allegedly based on, save for one or two of the characters having the same names. But the mythos was completely different: Underdog was not owned and he did not receive his powers through scientific experimentation.

Mind you, it might have been hard to portray 2 anthropomorphic dogs (Shoeshine Boy/Underdog and Sweet Polly Purebread) walking around amongst human beings with no explanation of why or how.
 
Not if they were willing to spend some extra cash on CGI. Using a real dog as Underdog? That was reason alone why the film got trashed.

Part of the reason people hate on a lot of live-action toon adaptations is because, as you pointed out earlier, some elements can't be completely used properly due to the transition. Part, too, is the fact the writers can't get out of the box, shall we say, and the film plays as if it was meant to be animated in the first place (i.e. The Advs. of Rocky & Bullwinkle, and maybe also Underdog, I don't know. Didn't see either film.). The critics pick this up and have all the ammo they need. 'Nuff said.
 
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