Monsters Inc + Nightmare Before Christmas + retro Japanese videogame = …
February 4, 2022 11:09 AM Subscribe
"Once upon a time there was a game that nobody ever played, sitting on the floor in the back room of an empty arcade. The game was full of life and strife, mega-monsters and robot fights. We Are The Strange was the title. Now meet the players who live inside, idle." Fifteen years on, revisit the improbable story of outsider filmmaker M dot Strange and his solo indie fever dream, We Are The Strange.
When the trailer hit the web in October of 2006, it was an instant sensation. The video depicted a surreal digital dystopia full of bizarre characters and an absurdist plot, all set to rockin' chiptune music.
Soon the eccentric creator of the film, M dot Strange (a.k.a. Michael Belmont), opened up his production process to the web. Through use of an official blog, making-of videos, and a "film skool" ethos, Belmont gave viewers insight into the innovative animation process he calls "Str8nime" ("strange plus 8-bit plus anime"). By collating disparate techniques such as CGI, greenscreen, stop-motion, papercraft, and even Mario Paint, he had perfected a striking, overstimulating visual style that was not quite like anything seen before.
The premise of the film unfolded, too -- a mute "dollboy" named eMMM and a cursed woman named Blue meet, forlorn, in the Forest of Still Life. Together they sojourn into the sinister Stop-Mo City in search of the perfect ice cream parlor. Meanwhile, the chain-slinging superhero Rain and his psychotic origami sidekick, Ori, do battle with the monsters inhabiting Stop-Mo in pursuit of their ectoplasmic archnemesis, Him (based on classic videogame baddie Sinistar). But, like the 8-bit games that inspired it, the plot of the film was incoherent and juvenile -- the focus was on the action and the cinematography.
By the end of the year, Belmont completed the film and even snagged a spot at the Sundance Midnight Movie Festival, which led to favorable write-ups in Wired, Variety, and the New York Times. (Not all the buzz was good, however -- several of the Sundance critics reportedly walked out in bewilderment halfway through the film).
While followed up with another film and even a run of bizarre video games, Belmont's continued lack of mainstream success eventually led him down the forsaken path of chasing NFT/blockchain BS. Despite that ignoble end, WATS continues to stand as a unique exercise in grit, inventiveness, and sheer joyful WTF-ery.
When the trailer hit the web in October of 2006, it was an instant sensation. The video depicted a surreal digital dystopia full of bizarre characters and an absurdist plot, all set to rockin' chiptune music.
Soon the eccentric creator of the film, M dot Strange (a.k.a. Michael Belmont), opened up his production process to the web. Through use of an official blog, making-of videos, and a "film skool" ethos, Belmont gave viewers insight into the innovative animation process he calls "Str8nime" ("strange plus 8-bit plus anime"). By collating disparate techniques such as CGI, greenscreen, stop-motion, papercraft, and even Mario Paint, he had perfected a striking, overstimulating visual style that was not quite like anything seen before.
The premise of the film unfolded, too -- a mute "dollboy" named eMMM and a cursed woman named Blue meet, forlorn, in the Forest of Still Life. Together they sojourn into the sinister Stop-Mo City in search of the perfect ice cream parlor. Meanwhile, the chain-slinging superhero Rain and his psychotic origami sidekick, Ori, do battle with the monsters inhabiting Stop-Mo in pursuit of their ectoplasmic archnemesis, Him (based on classic videogame baddie Sinistar). But, like the 8-bit games that inspired it, the plot of the film was incoherent and juvenile -- the focus was on the action and the cinematography.
By the end of the year, Belmont completed the film and even snagged a spot at the Sundance Midnight Movie Festival, which led to favorable write-ups in Wired, Variety, and the New York Times. (Not all the buzz was good, however -- several of the Sundance critics reportedly walked out in bewilderment halfway through the film).
While followed up with another film and even a run of bizarre video games, Belmont's continued lack of mainstream success eventually led him down the forsaken path of chasing NFT/blockchain BS. Despite that ignoble end, WATS continues to stand as a unique exercise in grit, inventiveness, and sheer joyful WTF-ery.
what did i just watch
No, but seriously, outsider art is fascinating. Would this have been half as hypnotic and unsettling if the creator had studied "real" pacing and editing and cinematography and screenwriting? This doesn't have broad appeal, but looking at the Youtube comments, this really struck a chord for a small subset of viewers.
While I was watching, Youtube helpfully alerted me to the fact that the creator was livestreaming a playthrough/postmortem of a failed video game project. I watched with about 5 other viewers. The gameplay was inscrutable to the degree that the creator himself was having trouble figuring out what to do or where to go (he described it as "getting lost in my own dev maze"), but the character design and artwork represented a compelling and singular vision which I can only compare to Knytt Underground or LSD: Dream Emulator for the Playstation.
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 10:53 PM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
No, but seriously, outsider art is fascinating. Would this have been half as hypnotic and unsettling if the creator had studied "real" pacing and editing and cinematography and screenwriting? This doesn't have broad appeal, but looking at the Youtube comments, this really struck a chord for a small subset of viewers.
While I was watching, Youtube helpfully alerted me to the fact that the creator was livestreaming a playthrough/postmortem of a failed video game project. I watched with about 5 other viewers. The gameplay was inscrutable to the degree that the creator himself was having trouble figuring out what to do or where to go (he described it as "getting lost in my own dev maze"), but the character design and artwork represented a compelling and singular vision which I can only compare to Knytt Underground or LSD: Dream Emulator for the Playstation.
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 10:53 PM on February 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
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