For any that haven't seen it, the opening track goes unreasonably and unfathomably hard.
https://youtu.be/V6MqiPM_i3Y
Showed it to my girlfriend's 4 year old tonight. He had as a big of a smile as I did at his age. The jokes are still land perfectly, and the references are fantastic.
After not seeing it in 15+ years, i was blown away by the Blu-ray. The Muppets aside, the majority of the practical effects are on par with Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Sails. For a "kids" movie, they really put a lot of effort in the set design and costumes.
My girlfriend and I loved all of the adult jokes as well.
This is all ignoring the glorious on screen presence of Tim Curry.
I absolutely loved the retelling of classic stories with Muppets Christmas Carol and Muppets Treasure Island.
Why didn't we get a 3rd one? Instead we got Muppets in Space.
I like Muppets in Space but its just kind of forgettable.
It would have been awesome to have gotten one more Muppet movie in the style of Carol/Treasure Island :)
The Muppets seem to be once again fading into obscurity.
The 2011 revival with The Muppets returned them to the spotlight briefly but Muppets Most Wanted, while good, didn't seem to draw audiences and the momentum started to putter out. The ABC show was cancelled before it could really find its footing, and then the Henson Company spent an exorbitant amount of time and energy on The Happytime Murders which was just a train wreck.
So where do the Muppets go from here if they want to stay relevant? I say they need to go back to the 90s.
The audiences that grew up with the original Muppet Trilogy and the Muppet Show are not the only audiences anymore. Millennials are more likely to have fond memories of Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island because those were the Muppet movies we were familiar with.
Also, one of the best things about the Muppets to me has always been the way they get billed as themselves. The Muppet Christmas Carol marketing lists "Micheal Cain, Kermit the Frog, Gonzo the Great" etc. I always thought that was such a neat idea. These aren't just characters, the Henson Company goes out of the way to make them feel consistently real off-camera. They appear as guests on talk shows, they show up as themselves on SNL, everyone speaks of them as if they are any other celebrity. I think they should lean into that more.
So start doing more adaptations again. Have a star as the main character, another as the main antagonist, then use the Muppets "as actors" to fill out the rest of the cast and "Muppetize" the story. I feel like that sort of sillyness is something audiences will be more receptive too right now than attempts to tell more modern day Muppet stories.
What did you guys think?
Kermit as Ichabod Crane and Buster as his horse Gunpowder, Miss Piggy as Katrina Von Tassel, daughter of Sam the Eagle as Baltus Van Tassel. Pepe as Brom Bones (the bad guy kind of, with some of the seedier muppets as henchmen, or a human actor as Brom) and Gonzo and Rizzo reprising their roles as narrators. You could write plenty of townspeople parts for other muppets and there’s a party scene very similar to the one in Christmas Carol, with Dr Teeth etc. as the band. And you could change the story around a good bit like the Johnny Depp one did but of course it would be eerie more than violent or truly scary.
It would fit in so well with those beautiful sets and the period of literature that the first two movies drew from. And the dark edge and genuine creepy factor that they were able to achieve would obviously benefit the story. Then you’d have the ultimate muppet trio with Summer, Halloween, and Christmas....
I wish it were true.
I'm watching "Muppet Treasure Island" and I've noticed the man doesn't blink. So far, I've seen him in entire songs, singing full songs, speaking fairly long amounts and it appears he remains wide-eyed and permanently stunned throughout the whole movie. I can't find any reference saying this is intentional. Does anyone have any insight as to anecdotal reference why this is?
