Strange Magic is a 2015 animated film by Lucasfilm, directed by Gary Rydstrom and distributed by Touchstone Pictures. The realm is divided between the Fairy Kingdom and the Dark Forest, with fairy princess Marianne vowing never to fall in love. The film is essentially a jukebox musical, with songs that are so song-laden as to practically be an operetta. The Bog King (Alan Cumming), leader of the Dark Forest, hates the notion of love and has ordered the destruction of all primroses, which are essential ingredients of love potions.
The film is set in a world of fairies, elves, fairies, and imps, and their hilarious misadventures. Popular songs from the past six decades help tell the tale of a colorful cast of goblins, elves, fairies, and imps, and their hilarious misadventures sparked by the battle over a powerful potion. The film is inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and uses popular songs from the past six decades to help tell the tale of a colorful cast.
In Strange Magic, pop music offers a storytelling, character clarifying device, similar to American Graffiti. The film weaves together popular songs from the past six decades into a story about elves, fairies, goblins, and a powerful potion that is at the center of the story. The film has a lot to say about not judging people by their appearance and about the true nature of love.
📹 What the HELL is Strange Magic? (A Box Office DISASTER)
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📹 Ever HEARD of Strange Magic?
I hope someone makes an instrumental of C’mon Marianne / Stronger, because it is SUCH a banger and has been stuck in my …
As a character designer, I really like the way the fairies’ wings are animated, most people just have the wings flap and otherwise stay still, the way they bend and flex in this film looks so natural. Really they shouldn’t have gone with such hyper realistic designs, but I really like the visuals besides that.
What pisses me off about this movie is that the world building and premise have potential. Not only that, Marianne and Bog’s chemistry is absolutely brilliant. It absolutely feels 100% earned when they end up together in the end. The story should have been about them not everything else. George has good ideas but can never execute them well on his own.
I loved Marianne and Bogs chemistry but the constant songs were definitely tiring and the fact that they were covers didn’t help. The only singing scene I didn’t mind was when they sang Strange Magic since I thought it was really cute. I also don’t think Dawn and Sunny should have ended up together but if they had to at least have Sunny apologize for trying to use the potion on her. I wish they focused more on marianne and bogs relationship and how they feel like they can’t be together since they’re from different kingdoms. Overall it’s not the worst movie ever it definitely had good moments and I even laughed at some parts but the tropes and covers made me like it less
I just want to mention that the fairies/elves kingdom had something i had never seen before. female fairies with butterfly, shimmery gossamer, wings. While the males had moth wings, while still beautiful, they were dusty, fluffy and more dull in comparison. Also, I hate Roland, but everything to do with his character felt perfect for the person he was meant to be. I was very happy that he wasn’t a villian with just another redemption arc, glad he sucked from start to finish.
Here’s the thing about ‘Strange Magic’, it is solidly in the ‘Cult Classic’ category. It’s not good enough to have done well with a mainstream audience, but it is good enough to have ‘AN’ audience. I know people who LOVE this movie, but it’s not for everyone. It’s definitely one of those where you have to watch it yourself and make your own judgement on it.
From 17:26 to 17:42, you mentioned that Roland’s design look like Prince Charming and sounds like Gaston. I’m glad you mentioned both Prince Charming and Gaston. Because there’s fun fact about the two of them(Gaston and Prince Charming), the thing is, Rupert Everett(the voice actor for Charming) auditioned for role of Gaston, but the directors said he didn’t sound arrogant enough. He remembered this when he was voicing Charming in Shrek 2. I should also mentioned the inspiration of Roland comes from Prince Hans of the Southern Isles(another Disney villain), he’s the guy who apparently love Anna but left her to freeze to death. Anyways, I feel like Roland reminds me of Prince Charming from Shrek 2 than Gaston and Hans altogether. In contrast, they’re both narcissistic, conceited, selfish, and think they can get what they wanted. Roland wanted to get marry with Marianne so he can have his free armies while Charming wanted to get marry with Fiona so he can become king. They both have sinister motives. The only differences is that Prince Charming is “mommy’s boy” while Roland is not. However, they’re still similar. Speaking of which, I see Marianne reminds of me of Princess Fiona from Shrek because they’re both strong, tough, and know how to put up a fight. Meanwhile, I see the Bog King as Shrek a little. They’re both single at the beginning and are grumpy at first sight. However, the differences the Bog King have servants and a mother who cares about the Bog King while Shrek doesn’t have anybody in the beginning.
I remember perusal this in my 3rd grade class because the teacher couldn’t get access to a Rio dvd and thought “Hey! This movie has nature in it and it’s for kids! Just like Rio!” After that, all of the kids in my class felt so awkward after the movie and didn’t really speak for the rest of the day.
Remember kids, drugging somebody against their will in order to get them obsessed with you is a-okay, just as long as you’re truly “in love” with them! 🤔 Edit:) I haven’t seen much of this movie, and it seems that I didn’t pay much attention to the message the plot could have been trying to send. I apologize for that. Also, thanks for all of the likes and replies! 😁
I may be a minority on this. I love this movie a lot! I thoureghly enjoy this interesting romantic movie so much!☺️💖 I think it is super interesting and a nice fresh breath of air from those becoming stale beauty and the beasts type of movies. I think one big reason I liked the movie was how they handled making King Bog and Marianne’s blooming relationship feel so real, at least to me. They felt like real characters, with real legitimate issues that they both faced. They felt, to me at least, very relatable. Bog King felt that because of the way he looked to others that he could never be loved, he had crippling low self esteem. He so desperately wanted love from anyone that he made the horribly selfish decision to force a person to love him. Marianne thought the man she had been with for who knows how long truly loved her, she was blinded by rose tinted glasses only to be heavily let down by someone she truly loved. Which not only left her with trust issues, but also wounded her self esteem a bit as well. As goofy as this movie can be at times, Marianne and Bogs relationship feels really real. To me at least. I enjoyed it a lot.☺️💖
The hero falling in love with the villain is legit my shit. That was the subplot I was waiting for my entire life! And the fact that the villain actually didn’t have that much characteristics that majority would consider “handsome/beautiful” was great. Heck, he only had baby blue eyes! Otherwise he was very lanky, rough at the edges with a long crooked nose… Needless to say, I really liked Bog King’s character design. It works so well for the villain, but once we get to know him better and get past that… what’s not to love?! The jukebox music I find problematic especially if a movie wants to aim to the international market, because those are songs everyone already knows in the original language which is English. It’s so hard trying to translate and dub that into different languages without the song starting to sound odd and forced. The only time I’ve heard a famous song being used in a movie which was also translated and dubbed to country X’s own language, was Shrek 2 when the fairy godmother sings I Need a Hero. And somehow it worked. No other jukebox songs from any Shrek movies were translated and dubbed, at least if I remember right. Surely most animated movies are produced in the USA and are mainly aimed for English speaking audiences, but if there is a possibility a movie could make it internationally, especially an animated family one, using jukebox music isn’t the best idea. If the songs are not translated, many people will miss the meaning which connects the used song and a scene from the movie and if you try to translate it.
Personally I’d fix this movie’s weird handle of romance. Instead of Sunny being a simp and drugging Dawn to love him, Sunny and Dawn are in a sweet, cute relationship with one another. But because Dawn is a princess and Sunny is a lowly elf, they cannot go public with their affections. Instead of Roland giving Sunny the idea of the love potion, Roland uses Sunny and Dawn’s relationship as leverage to blackmail him into getting the love potion to use on whatever the main character’s name is. And another reviewer came up with this rewrite, but instead of Bog hating love because his love potion didn’t work, he hates it because he was potioned into a relationship he did not consent to. And therefore keeps the sugar plum fairy hostage as to not allow anyone else to suffer the same way.
Strange magic was about as inspired by A Midsummer’s Night Dream as West Side Story was inspired by Romeo and Juliet. In Sunny’s defense he got tricked by Roland . Roland needed the love potion more than Sunny did.. The issue with the imp is that in the play he was a main character, Puck and an important part of the story plus my favorite character. He caused chaos with the love potion and he never really lost the potion like the imp did in the movie. I think it was never really consider that when you change the humans in the play into fairies and bog creatures you had to change Puck who was a fairy in the play into something else or he need to be an outsider to either kingdom. So when they made Puck an imp who only chittered and made others more responsible for the love potion. They took a bit of the reasoning behind the chaos of the love potion away and you miss Puck laughing at making people fall in love with those they dislike or making the “Roland” character falling in love with a donkey .
My roommates and I have seen this movie at least 20 times. I can quote the lines word-for-word, pitch and all, just from the silent clips you put up. I love this movie the way one loves an f’d-up plushie that somehow made it to store shelves. Assessment: accurate. (Also I can say first hand that there is TONS of AO3 content for this movie, mostly about Bog and Marianne.) Edit: Roland’s “GO!!” face is an established meme in our house and was briefly the image for our roomie discord server
God, this movie is such a guilty pleasure for me—I love the animation on the wings and the style of the characters is so interesting to me because unlike most fairy movies, they don’t just look like humans with wings. Marianne and Bog King’s relationship is also pretty good, I like the villain falling in love trope and I love the fact that both of them look weird to each other, (as opposed to those movies where even though the main characters are different species, they both have the same standards of beauty and thus one feels like they’re hideous.) Sunny and Dawn though…definitely made me a little uncomfortable and made Sunny hard to sympathize with—which made him ending up with Dawn feel really really undeserving.
“Movie made for girls” Is a funny quote, since perusal the movie feels like it had so much low effort in the writing I like tropes, but this fell into a bad pit of them where nothing was made to twist those tropes around, and all of the good and interesting designs was reserved to the dark forest, not the fairies (something that is stereotyped as “girly”). Which feels like a drawn out grind to the teeth cause it made caring for any of the plot dull. (Also it was a missed opportunity to make Sunny be the real villain of the story, that would have made his character far more interesting)
i think Strange Magic is absolutely worth perusal. It has some weird and experimental animation sequences in it that are interesting to watch, no matter if they turned out ‘bad’ or good. It’s unique. And the blonde sister falling in love with the Bog King was such an unexpected twist that led to really weird and funny interactions. Also, the Bog King was SO fun to watch and see him fly and move and fight, ugh. His design is REALLY COOL to me, and he reminds me a bit of Cell from DragonBallZ with his human-insect body. I definitely recommend seeing the movie, for what it tried to do and for what it succeeded in. The movie does get kinda horny at the end though, which was awkward to watch with friends lmao.
Funnily enough, George’s motivation and process for making this movie was somewhat similar to the on used by Miyazaki when he made Spirited Away. Miyazaki said he wanted a movie that would appeal to pre-adolescent girls, more specifically, the apathetic daughter of one of his friends. Miyazaki stated he read many shoujo (teenage girls) manga, and spent a lot of time with said girl to build the character of Chihiro. Of course, we all know Spirited Away turned out to be a lot better movie than this one.
One of my most vivid memories is perusal this movie at my aunts house on a rainy day while we were celebrating either new year or some relatives birthday and having to sit on my creepy uncles lap. I at the time, and still now enjoy the romance between the main 2 characters it felt refreshing for my 9 year old mind
Wait, is it the movie with amazing animation where a fairy sees her bf cheating and turns goth and later on sings what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Then a villain tries to make someone love them and they sing sugar pie honeybun you know that I love you and deck them? I WATCHED THAT WHEN I WAS A KID AND LOVED IT! I’VE BEEN SEARCHING SO LONG THANK YOU SO MUCH OH MY GOD IT IS!!!!!!!
I loved this movie we had a goth fairy that realized that she was worth more than staying with some a*shat that cheated on her and swore to never love again. And she devoted her life to making sure her family was safe, and then she slowly falls in love with THE VILLAIN! who really wasn’t a bad guy at all
This is my mom’s favorite movie. I introduced the movie to her because it has most of her favorite songs in it, but I was looking forward to hearing one of my favorite actors sing in this movie. But the character (Fairy King) doesn’t sing in this film, and I’ve heard the actor sing in a bunch of Broadway soundtracks. I just wanted to hear a cover song, but it doesn’t happen. I was PO’d, but I got over it because I saw how happy my mom was perusal the movie.
I was put on anesthetics once while I was 12, as I was having dental surgery done. I remember going in and out of consciousness and there was a tv screen overhead that had this movie playing, and all I could remember thinking was “damn, these character designs feel pretty Eurocentric”, I think the movie was just unaware of it’s expiration date
Mr Enter reviewed this movie recently and he said sword fighting + fairies was a match made in heaven (agree as this is a concept with a lot of potential) Honestly, there are many ways the movie could have worked such as: reducing the pop songs to a decent quantity, do medieval-Celtic music covers of said songs to fit the fairy kingdom theme, have Marianne be a sword fighter who is unsure about love and not loving Roland since the start, change the dark forest to something less “blatantly evil” such as night forest, rework the characters to make them more likable, reduce the uncanny valley in the animation and have Marianne and the Bog King know each other at the start and then develop feelings for each other. See? This movie could’ve been better but it turned out to be a fever dream mess.
I feel like this movie had potential, I wish they went with a more Romeo Juliet at war feel and I kinda didn’t like how fast they fell in love and I understand it’s a fairytale themed movie but it would’ve been nice to know more about their homelands especially the fairy kingdom, like it would be nice to know more about why they’re separated and Roland or whatever could be like a noble who has a facade of being good and Marianne would only discover it or something in the middle of the movie, it could be the reason she started training is just to save her sister or she already knew how to fight because she’s the eldest child of the royal family and they were at war, then she has conflicting feelings about the bog king and Roland and she eventually finds out Roland’s planning a coup or forcing her father to abdicate. The what would be interesting is her asking the Bog king to help her plan to take down Roland and this cooperation between them is what sparks their love, then the people are angry at the princess for cooperating with the enemy and this pans on till Roland’s true face is revealed, and the Fairies realising how the Bog kingdom helped them would end the war and that could be a resolution that would make more sense and since the Bog king and Marianne are in love they may be able to unite through marriage.
The only time I watched this movie was when I was really young and my cousin passed away and I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral same with my siblings so we pretty much had a babysitter and we went to a different house for the day and I distinctly remember perusal this movie and really enjoy it when I was younger it helped to keep my mind off of what happened that day so seeing this article lifted my spirits today thank you
God, I LOVE this movie in a so-bad-it’s-good way!!! I saw it when it came out in 2015 and it made a huge impression on me. There’d been promos pretty often on Disney website for a while and it really piqued my interest – I was a 12 year old girl, obsessed with Beauty and the Beast, super interested in creepy fairy tales and fantasy, etc. So it seemed like it was made for me! That winter we went on a Disney cruise and they had an all-costs-included movie theater on-board, so my little brother and I were able to go by ourselves unsupervised without paying for tickets. But we were getting more and more confused by it as it went on, we didn’t really get the concept of a jukebox musical, and hated the songs. The bog king kaleidoscope kiss is when we finally walked out. It is the first and only movie that we have ever done so. My #1 reason for thinking it was so bad as a kid was the Bog King / Marianne plotline – She looked young and he looked like a grown-up to me, and the weirdly heavy sexual tension between them creeped me the hell out as a child. I /think/ the fact that the fairy’s the character girls perusal the film are intended to project on/relate to might’ve been why I was so unsettled when the romance plotline with Adult Bugman Alan Cumming came up? My brother also thought he was just as creepy. I don’t know – In my opinion the tension and the weird incel roofie gnome are just kinda… weird things to put in an animated movie for the preteen girl demographic anyway. I do think the /concept/ for the movie is good – On paper it sounds like something I would absolutely love, (minus the jukebox music,) and the teasers got me to the theater.
I watched it recently because of this article, and this movie had the potential to be amazing but they really hammered several nails in it’s coffin. I know it’s a complete pipe dream but i wish that they’d remake it and fix everything they did wrong one day. Especially the cgi, Griselda and sunny will haunt my nightmares. The bog creatures dont have to be inherently beautiful but i would have liked to see more unique and intricate designs like the bog king’s.
“Strange Magic” was the first English movie I ever watched, and it sparked my love for animation. It’s a unique and weird movie with clever puns and cringe-worthy scenes that, as a ten-year-old, I found incredibly funny. The music in the movie was also quite fitting for the animation, and I loved how roughly it all looked. I know that it’s not a fan favorite, but I still go back to this movie as it gives me the same nostalgic feeling as “The Last Unicorn” and “Labyrinth”
so, my partner and i found this movie last year completely by accident while searching up terrible movies to watch. initially, we got to the first musical sequence and nearly turned it off then and there. but, we kept perusal and genuinely came to enjoy it. is the music jarring and terrible, and come almost entirely out of nowhere? yes. are some of the character designs kinda ugly and gross to look at? yes. the sheer amount of campiness made it perfect. especially roland. it’s near the top of our watch list now, for whenever we need a stupid pick-me-up movie. my personal favorite scene was dawn trying to sing at the bog king who was just n o t having it.
I kind of have a love-nothatebutit’sokay thing with Strange Magic. I will say that I do absolutely LOVE the attention to detail with the character designs (though not with most of the faces). For me, it’s the attention to detail on the WINGS. How they move, how they bend when not outstretched, how the light filters through them, the COLORS and patterns on them, ESPECIALLY on the faeries butterfly wings. I studied the DAYLIGHTS out of Marianne’s wings for a painting I started a while back… girl has some absolutely gorgeous wings. If a movie can win me over with just the wings alone (LEGION! THAT is how you do angel wings!), then I will gladly watch said movie over and over and over again. And that includes Strange Magic, because of the faeries butterfly wings. 💜
Quick Note: The music was difficult to choose as Lucas explicitly wanted the Beatles music for this. ALL Beatles music. But they refused to sell the rights, resulting in a change of scenes and strange pop song replacements. This movie is comparable to a fanfiction, and that’s kind of the appeal. I love it so much despite how terrible it is. It’s…racist cuz of Sonny and his race hoo boy. But the fanfiction is so hard. The generic split of good and evil, the split of good and bad characters. The singing while walking towards your enemy to kick them out of the areas. The evil guy with a heart you want to fall in with but he hates everything, the tropes, etc. I was surprised the two lackeys were both girls, that was refreshing, even if they were blond as fuck (they had some good moments). The King is so George Lucas. I think the thing Roland’s choice of voice and everything was just to accentuate just how ugly and unlikable he was. STILL, fantastic review. I understand your dislike and criticisms (like always honestly). I’d love to see a reaction article of you to this. I showed every single friend of mine just to hear their thoughts and how they managed to make it through the 15 minutes before it got relatively good. I also love you’re mixed. I feel that’s the best thing to take out of the film. Just be split.
I remember seeing this movie in the theaters when I was younger, I absolutely loved when the Mc fell in love with the villain, even though this movie has a few rough spots I still love it to this day but I can point out a few flaws in this movie, if there were more movies like this with the hero and the villain falling in love would be awesome.
The sad thing is that this movie not only came out after the Disney/lucasfilm merger and after clone wars was cancelled on Cartoon Network, thank god for Netflix. But this was probably the last movie from touchstone pictures who made bangers like Lost, The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Rock, etc. what a way to go 😢
Saberspark: Today I’m gonna talk about the movie Strange Magic… Me: Well, I’ve never heard of it. What no-name studio made it? Saberspark: …made by George Lucas… Me: Yikes, how come I haven’t heard of it? I suppose I’ve been living under a rock for a year or two. Saberspark: …about 5 years ago. Me: (leaves the chat)
10:10 You know, it only just hit me, but the IDEAS behind Strange Magic are actually really awesome, and the hijinks with the Love Potion itself in the movie aren’t a horrible idea. But as usual, George really needed writers and people with talents in turning ideas into stories to make it actually good. What is it with George having the best ideas ever, but always screwing over the execution? Sister and Bog King in conflict then realizing “Oh frick, we got chemistry” and ceasing combat is actually pretty interesting.
i think the problem with George is that he has very interesting concepts that subvert tropes, that are executed really poorly, take Anakin for example, he’s the subversion of the whole “Chosen one” trope, but the execution wasn’t the best (until the clone wars saved it’s ass) Strange Magic has a great idea of the Hero and Vilian falling in love and growing together, and not to mention the Vilian doesn’t change his appearance! that is pretty neat (i might even add that the butterfly wings is also amazing, dunno if it was george who suggested it or the animation director but none the less still deserves to be mentioned) but the whole movie overshadows their relationship. Also George is more of a world building guy as much as people love to shit on prequels the worldbuilding really expanded the lore and makes all the planets and galaxies look interesting and richer, same with strange magic it has really solid lore, its just he isn’t the best when it comes to writing he either needs to hire better writers or just accept the fact that he has very strong ideas that he cannot flesh execute by himself
Honestly, i saw this movie with my dad a few years ago and found it pretty ok. My biggest praise for it is the wing physics. Like, god, i live for that, both the texture, colors and movement, those just took the cake in my books. The rest was kinda ok? Like, not memorable but just okay ALSO THANKS FOR THIS article MAN, I HAD FORGOTTEN THE NAME XD
It honestly doesn’t seem too bad, almost like Lucas was trying to do his own Frozen or something. The problem is the uncanny valley realistic faces for the humanoid fairies and elves and whatnot. Way too off-putting, and is always the kiss of death for animated movies like this. Looks great other than that. I even kind of like the subplot about the villain becoming the love interest.
i honestly love strange magic, it has so many glaring massive issues, and i hope one day somebody redoes it better because the premise is such an interesting and decent idea. And i genuinely love the character designs for the bogs, probably make the fairies and elves less human cause that uncanny valley is confusin. it’s also one of the few movies that have actually made me laugh out loud at points. it has decent comedic timing. i think it could have been a decent kids movie if it wasnt so problematic and weird at points and georgie boy wasnt involved, also like the majority of the plot happens over like….an entire night which is wild. i hated sunny more than rowland tho, god in my head i would have written it like so have marianne start off as this tough, warrior princess girl who still genuinely likes rowland, then when he betrays her for someone else, this causes deep rooted insecurities and she lashes out a lot because of it. Dawn and sunny have a dubious friendship, aka they clearly like each other but there’s a stigma with relationships between the 2 races (the elves see fairies as being too flighty, and fairies see elves as being boring, or something like that), so even their friendship is judged so they don’t want to rock the boat even more. sunny doesnt know most of whats happening with marianne and rowland since he lives and works outside the palace, and dawn doesnt want to bring it up, because she feels like she has to be positive around him show more scenes of mariannes refusal, and rowland being increasingly pushy until the ball scene the ball scene goes as before, but possibly with marianne being forced to wear a dress she’s uncomfortable with wearing, and dawn being introduced to a lot of potential partners, and marianne having to intervene, and not being taken as seriously since she’s in a skirt for once.
Rewatched the movie. And I had some ideas to improve the movie. At least, to my personal tastes. When the Sugar Plum fairy first came on screen, she had a very malicious air, then kinda transitioned through chaotic neutral to chaotic good. Why not make her the villain? And the imp was working for/with her. She uses the potion to make everyone in love like the imp was doing. Maybe she was pulling an Aphrodite, shipping people who probably shouldn’t be together, and Bog King was trying to stop that. Or, once she’d been imprisoned, she starts doing that, she’s crazy. Another idea, only have the fairies sing. At all. Bog King put emphasis on not liking singing, but he does it multiple times. It kept making these self-aware jokes without really being self-aware. Also, give Bog King a real name. Or at least address why he’s named after his position, like 3PS did: “I don’t mean to be rude, but your name is Thief?” “My parents had very specific goals.” Something simple like that, or “Call me Bog King” then he reveals his real name to Marianne. Maybe his mom would call him by his real name all the time. Maybe it’s something embarrassing. And Sunny definitely didn’t deserve Dawn at the end. He’s not cool. But, perhaps to make him cooler, is make him rethink using the potion when the fairy tells him it’s dangerous. He doesn’t use it, tries to throw it away, imp gets it, et cetera. I, personally, think the movie would be much better with these adjustments.
I remember perusal this movie with my dad, and we both really enjoyed it. Sure, I had some of the same complaints you did (and I do remember hating Sunny or whatever his name was), but the stuff you pointed out that you liked was enough to overshadow it for me (at the time; I’m a bit more critical as a viewer now, though I still think I’d like it far more than the average person seemed to). And Marianne and the Bog King’s dynamic was delightful. Honestly, even though I’m well aware of its flaws, I’m kinda tempted to go get my dad and rewatch it again.
I actually like this movie a lot. But yeah, I wish there was a bit more tension between the two areas. Also the ending, the Kaleidoscope deal, I think it’s a reference to what a group of butterflies is called? someone told me it was a reference to the original music article but I can’t find that. I do agree that was weird. Still though. Despite all that I friggen love Strange Magic.
i remember this movie, i was really young in a childrens hospital because i was really sick. it was night time and the hospital tvs had cable and a special movie website, movies would come on at certain times. This movie came on next and i could barely read anything in weird fonts so i didnt know what the name was, i enjoyed the movie and after a long time i finally find it again, and now know the name too lol
I genuinely loved this movie when I was younger, and I kinda like the jukebox musical style because I was like “Hey I know that song!” and I could sing along with the characters. I really did like this movie, haven’t seen it in a while though. After perusal this though I now realize how much of a simp Sunny is
I feel like this movie had a lot of interesting concepts and it would have been cool to see a morality story about the love potions and therein, how wrong it is to try and make someone love you when they just don’t and the world seems interesting enough. If only they didn’t butcher this, it coulda been awesome and to also see a sort of moral that, frankly, a lot of movies could learn from.
This movie could of been so so so much better if they just had gotten rid of the songs and had the characters just talk in those scenes, replace the songs with emotional scenes and boom a actually watchable film that would definitely be very enjoyable to watch with a pretty good story and character designs.
I’ve only just watched the movie and, in my opinion, the story line was abit crazy but it was absolutely lovely. Loved the songs and the beauty falling for the ugly, it was refreshing that the main characters didn’t turn Into a ‘dainty’ fairy or the ugly didn’t turn beautiful. The fairy turned stronge and the ugly showed beauty through actions, story line was a muddle but it was a good movie for ‘lovey dovey’ and showed kids that not everything is about looking beautiful but showing that even the ugly and weak can become beautiful and strong.
All the “boy” aspects of the movie seem cool and all the “girl” aspects seem lacking ugly. If he wanted to make this a cool “girl” movie then make those gendered aspect equal to each other. Or…. Just don’t make a gender specific movie and just just make a movie. Turning into a “girl” movie seems to have … Hurt the outcome by a lot.
First time I heard about this movie, so I checked out some songs. And there’s something from this and other movies that kinda annoys me, not sure how many people agrees on this. Good guys: We obviously beautiful and relatable to our audience, so we all MUST be small humans with wings and magic powers. All our background characters share the same 2 models with palette swaps, except for the protagonists. Also, FLAWLESS skin so perfect they look like plastic at times, unnaturally smooth at all times. Bad guys: We’re supposed to be ugly, so here you have 6-7 models for the background characters alone, where the creative process shines, because we’re allowed to be as uncanny or unfamiliar as possible. The main villain must be ragged and brutal, his design has so many textures to play with under different lights and circumstances that it near hyperrealism, so cool! I end up liking the bad guys better in these movies because since they’re not confined to a single ideal (human-looking), you end up with infinite possibilities to play with. So, it looks like a fun movie to watch, and I already ship MarianneXBog King XD
Here’s a few easy ways this movie could’ve been fixed: – take out the first part with the wedding, Roland cheating and Marianne’s transformation. It is not needed. If the movie started right after those events, nothing would change. – reduce the amount of songs. Please. So many of them don’t even fit in with the tone of the rest of the movie – strange magic (the actual song) was a really nice touch. But songs like “crazy in love” and “don’t worry about a thing” should’ve been cut. The average Broadway musical doesn’t feel as jam-packed with songs as this movie did, especially since barely any of them helped to progress the story. Every time a character sung, it completely paused everything that was happening in the story, and the plot awkwardly resumed after the song was finished. This is why using mainstream pop songs to tell a story isn’t a good idea. – remove characters like that white rat creature who kept stealing the love potion, Marianne’s father and the Bog king’s mother. Please for the love of god. – change the Bog king’s origin story. It makes him a more creepy and unsympathetic character since it’s revealed he tried to use the love potion himself. What instead should’ve happened is that he could’ve been revealed as a victim to the potion instead, and someone wanted to use it on him. After this, he could’ve felt ashamed and violated, and this would’ve made his hate for the sugar plum fairy and the love potion more justifiable. – just remove so many unneeded scenes in general.
Oh I burst out laughing at the “GOOO!” meme. I’ve been a part of the fandom since it came out, that was definitely a common running joke. You absolutely hit the nail on the head on most of its issues. (Except about it being a jukebox musical. Hey, maybe if it had original music and it was good I wouldn’t miss the pop songs, but I personally love it for what it is. But its certainly a hit and miss point with viewers) I love the movie so I’ve either gotten used to or over look its faults. Because if I think about it too much I get frustrated at the wasted potential. It could’ve been so good. But it certainly suffered from development hell. Honestly I blame Disney. They promised to make Strange Magic as part of the deal to buy Star Wars, but then shunted it off to a side studio and barely fulfilled their end of the bargain. They pulled the same stunt they did with Atlantis and Treasure Planet. They don’t think it will be good, just because some executive had his pants in a wad. So they stunt the development and barely advertise and then have the audacity to go “See, we knew it wouldn’t do well at the box office.” THATS BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T GIVE IT ANY ADVERTISING, AND YOU RELEASED IT IN FREAKING JANUARY! Luckily Atlantis and Treasure Planet didn’t suffer too much from low budgets and Disney attempting to hamstring their movie. Unfortunately Strange Magic didn’t make it out quite as intact. And it pisses me off because the basic plot is there, its a great idea for a girl powered “princess” film.
I really love the designs for the fairies for the most part the wings look really pretty. The other creatures they had I also really like there really cool looking. Though its shame that this movie failed like it did, it look like it had some really cool ideas. My guess there was probably some executive meddling involve with this movie. I feel bad for George Lucas because of planning this movie for 15 years all for it to fail miserably, it sucks really. If it was planned right it could of been done good. Also it being a jukebox musical just doesn’t work and it would of being better for original music like they could of done folk music maybe some acoustic music too. To make it feel like your in there world. But that’s all I have to say about this.
I don’t know why people are comparing “Epic” and “Strange Magic”, Yes there is little humanoid creatures, but the plot is totally different. I have seen in other articles, people who said that “Strange Magic” stole “Epic” and “Arthur and the Invisibles” ‘s creatures, that made me so angry, LIKE HOW CAN YOU STOLE A MAGIC CREATURE, it’s like saying that “Shrek” stole a “Disney” princess like Rapunzel, Disney don’t even create these characters, they just took the already written stories by others people and make it more childish and even change the plot and just leave some characters ( like Frozen).
I just watched this movie yesterday, so I’m late to the party, but whatever. Thing is, that I actually liked the movie, but I have to agree, that the music is all over the place and I really had moments where I screamed when I had to hear another song. For the story, tho, I really enjoyed it. The chemistry between the bog king and Marianne was so cute. I really liked these characters and their story. I wasn’t really a fan of the rest, the mother of the king was nice I guess, but the rest, except for also Dawn I found either boring or just disgusting (prince charming with the boat lips), hated the father of Marianne and Dawn, cause he actually tried to have his daughter back together with a cheater. The design was fine, the butterfly wings were better than the typical fairy wings and yeah, like someone mentioned already, the way they kept the bog king the way he is nice, usually cause the ugly character turns pretty for some reason, falsifying the moral of the story
I don’t ever comment but, this is my all time favorite movie. I was 15 when this came out and went and watched it in theaters 2-3 times. The reason I personally love it so much is the beauty and the beast kind of story with it, I love fairy tales but I always wanted a story where the beast character doesn’t turn beautiful in the end, and this movie gave it to me. I LOVE strange romances with odd characters or opposites attract kind of stories and I finally got both a beautiful fairy falling for a bog king AND a fairy falling for a cute little elf. I may be a typical little girly girl, but this movie since it came out has been my favorite. I never once cared about who made the movie or what they said, i didn’t know about any of that stuff when I watched it, and I fell in love with it. even now I say give this movie a fair chance, and at least try it. Forget about who made it, and look at the movie by itself, go in with an expectation of a corny and cute romance and you won’t be disappointed. Thank you lol.
I’m surprised by how many people disliked the movie, since I personally thought that it was a comedic gem, like, the tropes were executed very well to me. Even the songs in it, although looking back it’s quite cheesy, it’s still rather well for me. I guess if they’d just make some scenes more sentimental than be blasted with music it could’ve done better, but I genuinely still enjoyed it nonetheless – Like, really, the main characters were quite likeable and consistent, the side characters like that elf and imp was charmingly funny (And I know the elf was a simp, but he was still funny as hell) and the ex was actually handled not so bad to be the villain. The settings and plot as well, it was a really fantastical story. It really seemed more charming and unique that made me think it was a great comedy. Also regarding the animation – I wasn’t all too bothered by their faces lol, since it kind of made the world-building and blending with the monsters even more real to me. Maybe if they toned it down a bit like in Megamind it would’ve appealed better than making awkwardly realistic faces, though other than that I don’t mind it altogether
Kinda looks like everything feminine-coded, ie: simply made because he was trying to make a movie for “girls” was completely uninspired and done in that way solely because it was girly, not because it looked good or was interesting, but because it’s what Lucas thought girls liked Then for the rest of the film, like with the bog creatures, he actually put effort and thought into, because he wasn’t just trying to make pretty fairies for girls to love, if that makes any sense It’s like he was pandering to that demographic as a checkmark, and it’s what he thought girls would like, so that’s the whole reason it was there. Just because fairies and pretty, that’s what girls like so it’s what they like. Kinda shows his mindset in my opinion towards the division of media made towards a target audience. He didn’t seem to have any passion or creativity himself towards the fairies, and they were nothing but meh cliche’s, but he clearly cared about creating a unique, new image for the bog creatures and put thought into their presentation. It wasn’t just copypaste gross monster, troll things. But the fairies in that irish dancing scene were just ctrl-v models of existing fairy designs A lot of flaws in Lucas’s movies seem to come down to him failing to pander to specific target audience unecessarily, and ruining what good ideas were there by adding extra awful shit. Stop trying to make things for kids or for family friendly audiences. Just make something good, and the audiences will come and enjoy.
So, I’m not sure where or who this person is, but I had been scrolling around in the comments for a article about this movie, and someone made a really interesting idea about the bog king and how his backstory could be better. This was like, a while ago, so if you’re the one I saw, please claim your idea because it’s great! So basically, instead of making the bog king one of the users of the potion, make him a victim of it instead. Someone in the kingdom wanted to get with him, either because they wanted his power or it was some misguided attempt at love, but! Anyway, they did it, and he managed to break out of it somehow later down the road. And so, in his anger, he started telling his subjects to get rid of the flowers, because he hated the reminder of them, along with the fact that he never wanted the potion to get into the wrong hands ever again. And maybe he took Marian’s sister in a misguided attempt to get the potion back and to also reverse the affects of it. And, if you must have his mother, maybe have her still dismiss her son’s feelings like she does in the original, because I feel like that could bring up the topic of male survivors of abuse, and how their stories of abuse are also important. I just feel like this would put Bog in a better, more sympathetic light instead of him being a sad bro because the potion didn’t work for for him. You can still have him cage the love genie up, because maybe he’s like, “You’re too reckless with your magic, and it’s partly because of you this happened to me.
I never watched this movie as a kid. I saw an edit of this movie on YouTube shorts, i got curious and went to watch this movie!! And I AM OBSESSED, I HAVE WATCHED THIS MOVIE MORE THEN 10 TIMES!! I love the chemistry between the Bog king and Marianne, I kept squealing and kept saying ”Just KISS ALREADY!!!” 🥺🥺🥺🥺 This is such a great movie, The whole idea ” Its not about the outside,but what’s inside” I am so happy to find someone who talks about this movie!! Ahhhh, I want to rent about this movie!!
I got to see this movie on a day where my private school had an off day and other schools didn’t. It was Tuesday, there was one other group in the theatre. I have never been more in love with the characters in my entire life than I was perusal it. It was such a thrilling movie to watch as a young child wanting to learn more about the world and more about people’s emotions and worldviews. So it was nice seeing something so beautiful.