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Movies that feel like their studio


Unlucky Bastard

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I don't have that. Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979) are both 20th Century Fox movies, with only 2 years between them, and yet miles apart from one another.

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3 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

I don't have that. Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979) are both 20th Century Fox movies, only 2 years between them, and yet miles apart from one another.

 

Yeah but they still have "that Fox" feel to them. Hell watching Alien these days, I still can't shake off those 1991 MasterCard ads and Meet the Press promos from my taped from TV video tape copy.

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I’ve never felt anything studio-ish when watching a movie but I’m curious about what these hallmarks are. What kind of clues or feels make a movie “Universal” or “Fox”?

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Always is very Universal. Even the poster. You can just see the Universal globe making the rounds to the tune of JH's fanfare. Or tranquil woodland ambiance. Whatever.

 

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5 hours ago, Iron_Giant said:

I’ve never felt anything studio-ish when watching a movie but I’m curious about what these hallmarks are. What kind of clues or feels make a movie “Universal” or “Fox”?

 

I can't explain it. There's more to it. Fox movies from 1985 to 1992 all that a certain kind of Fox feel to them that's different to other periods. Might be that CBS/Fox logo at the beginning of the video tapes, but ones like The Fly, Aliens, Predator, Die Hard, The Abyss, The Fly II, Predator 2, Edward Scissorhands and Alien 3 all have that.... that particular Fox feel to them that's unique to their time.

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Dunno how others think, but I feel the opening logo at the beginning of a movie, whether it be the Disney castle or the Paramount mountain, sort of sets the tone for the rest of the movie. 

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And when you see a movie with the Paramount logo that actually has the Paramount theme, it feels like you just unlocked a rare item in a video game. A visitation that comes only once every 500 years.

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It all sounds like some kind of classical conditioning situation to me. If Jurassic Park feels “Universal” to some, could it just be because its logo was the first thing you saw as a kid when the lights dropped and the jungley sounds came up? Not to mention JP theming at Universal Studios later on? Most of the movies mentioned so far are of the kind that stay in the memory if watched at the right, impressionable age, which might mean something, I dunno.

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Well you can often tell an old 30s/40s Warner Bros flick from an MGM counterpart. The actors are the first giveaway because very rarely would they ever crossover between studios. WB films were kind of gritty and manufactured, whereas MGM films were lavish and showy. Plus the RKO/Selznick films from the time looked like nothing else that was being made at the bigger studios. And the emerging Fox and Paramount were doing shit well into the 1950s that the others wouldn't dare touch, like science fiction (usually always starring Michael Rennie!), horror, and an endless stream of westerns, which you could always tell were shot on the Fox lot (or the Paramount lot of course). It wasn't until those successes that WB/MGM decided to do their own like Forbidden Planet and The Time Machine.

 

And Iron_Giant, just watch the Problem Child movies, Casper and The Flintstones and tell me those don't feel like Universal movies. Actually Casper is an interesting case where the movie was Universal, but the direct to video sequels were distributed by Fox - how weird!

 

And Bette Davis played Elizabeth II twice, once in a 30s WB film, the next in a 50s Fox film... and they both feel completely different! The WB one feels more elaborate, whereas the Fox one feels more... I dunno, the lighting feels more TVish and the sets look more phony, like it was build for The Time Tunnel.

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7 minutes ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

Disney Star Wars without the FOX logo is just wrong.

 

And yet TFA still feels Fox-like to me. Funny that!

 

9 hours ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

Titanic feels more Paramount.

 

This is another interesting anomaly in studio feels in movies. I mean to me, it's always been a 20th Century Fox picture, plus Paramount mentioned at the beginning. The home video releases were always Fox in Australia, I went on the Titanic ride/exhibit at Fox Studios Australia in 2001, and Cameron seems to feel at home there. And yet Americans just accept it as a Paramount picture.

 

And then there are other weird cases where a movie that was made by one studio suddenly changes hands and then it's re-released by another studio! Like JFK, you wouldn't question it being a WB film, but its blu-ray release on Australia was done by Fox - that just blows my brains away!!

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13 minutes ago, Norma's Corpse said:

Well you can often tell an old 30s/40s Warner Bros flick from an MGM counterpart. The actors are the first giveaway because very rarely would they ever crossover between studios. WB films were kind of gritty and manufactured, whereas MGM films were lavish and showy. Plus the RKO/Selznick films from the time looked like nothing else that was being made at the bigger studios. And the emerging Fox and Paramount were doing shit well into the 1950s that the others wouldn't dare touch, like science fiction (usually always starring Michael Rennie!), horror, and an endless stream of westerns, which you could always tell were shot on the Fox lot (or the Paramount lot of course). It wasn't until those successes that WB/MGM decided to do their own like Forbidden Planet and The Time Machine.

 

And Iron_Giant, just watch the Problem Child movies, Casper and The Flintstones and tell me those don't feel like Universal movies. Actually Casper is an interesting case where the movie was Universal, but the direct to video sequels were distributed by Fox - how weird!

 

And Bette Davis played Elizabeth II twice, once in a 30s WB film, the next in a 50s Fox film... and they both feel completely different! The WB one feels more elaborate, whereas the Fox one feels more... I dunno, the lighting feels more TVish and the sets look more phony, like it was build for The Time Tunnel.

I’ll take your word about the look and feel of films from the earlier decades, since I (am loathe to admit) I’ve seen so few of them. I’ll also give those ‘90s movies a careful look if I ever watch them again. There could be something there I just never noticed before. 

 

On that note, I always felt Jumanji (1995) was very... 1995 to me. Was that a Universal picture?

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1 minute ago, Iron_Giant said:

On that note, I always felt Jumanji (1995) was very... 1995 to me. Was that a Universal picture?

 

Jumanji was TriStar. Movies from Sony are just weird. Many of them don't really have a feel, per se. I mean the late 50s/early 60s WWI and WWII flicks have that distinct Columbia feel. But TriStar... god, I don't know. Supergirl was initially made through WB, but ended up being released through TriStar, but still retains that distinctive Salkind feel.

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5 minutes ago, kaseykockroach said:

-Disney right now

 

As usual, I keep forgetting about Disney. Those Touchstone films of the late 80s have a feel, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Dick Tracy. You can sort of tell they were made on the same lot or have the same... thing about them.

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1 hour ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

Disney Star Wars without the FOX logo is just wrong.

Eh, it's much worse that they took it out of the old ones and substituted a terrible hodgepodge edit.

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Because it's utterly iconic?

At least they should have it before the unaltered versions. If they don't, then it's already not unaltered because a part of the archived strip has been cut out, and it's a very slippery slope from there.

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Everyone who has ever seen the original six knows they begin with the Fox and Lucasfilm logos over the Fox fanfare. Even the Anthology and the SE albums have the Fox Fanfare.

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George Lucas specifically wanted the movies to open with the extended FOX logo. It's a part of the movie. I remember watching movies that opened with the logo after seeing the SW movies and thinking it might be a SW until the fanfare suddenly ended and it was Home Alone or Alien or something. That logo in front of SW left a huge impact.

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1 hour ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

George Lucas specifically wanted the movies to open with the extended FOX logo. It's a part of the movie. 

 

The extended Fox Logo theme is for when the CinemaScope technique is used, which Star Wars did.

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41 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

 

The extended Fox Logo theme is for when the CinemaScope technique is used, which Star Wars did.

 

CinemaScope was discontinued as a cinematographic process in 1967 with its final film being In Like Flint. All other subsequent films using anamorphic formats were from Panavision or other variants, like J-D-C Scope in ROTJ. SW and ESB were just vanilla Panavision anamorphic, not CinemaScope.

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