There's a classic "Popeye the Sailor Man" cartoon every Saturday morning on Turner Classic Movies, in glorious black & white.
Even the movie with Robin Williams as Popeye with Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl is better than this cleaned-up, sanitized version.
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Is nothing sacred?
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I am very concerned about Popeye being deprived of his voice, which, between the accent, the muttering, and the malapropisms, was half the fun.
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as good as a few of the animated remakes have been (and this doesn't look like it's even close to as good as one of those) readers ought to seek out the original newspaper masterworks by Segar
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So...he can't smoke, he probably can't hit people, he's not older, Bluto doesn't have a beard (which shocks me the most in this day and age), they don't fight over Olive. I'm guessing that we never learn how he lost his eye! How is this, in any way, Popeye? If you're going to neuter a property so much as to render it unrecognizable, why bother? What are you leveraging other than the name?
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Wewonder: If Bluto is now more interested in Popeye's spinach, what does that say about spinach ... is it an androgen inhibitor? Just wondering ...
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If this retread of a popular character bombs they have only themselves to blame. I shudder to think what they will do with Alley Oop. I haven't seen great American animation since the first season of Jonny Quest by Hanna-Barbera. Everything nowadays is so simplified. I expected more from digital.
Awww, gee. They took away his pipe and gave him a whistle.
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the new drawings look like popeye & co are on botox. terrible!
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Seriously...he walks around with a whistle in his mouth? Who does that? And the reason for that stupidity is...? I get the “bad” image we would be scolded about in regards to his late pipe, but this is ridiculous PC nonsense.
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As author Leslie Cabarga said in his book on the Fleischer Studios, "The Fleischer Story", "If a Popeye cartoon does not begin with opening doors, don't watch it". Sounds like that would go triple for this PC tripe. King Features bought the rights and thoroughly emasculated the character.
The Fleischer cartoons were rough, gritty, urban and hilarious; some of the dialogue that passed between Popeye and Bluto in the black and white cartoons would give these new animators the vapors and some of the violence, which was still semi-realistic, would send them running to the therapist. Do yourself a favor and watch a few Popeye's from the "Golden Age" 1936-37 to see how far we've fallen.
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A travesty. Is nothing sacred?
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Too bad about the age...we elders have a lot to offer like stability which is this unsettling world, children may find comforting.
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Is that a whistle in Popeye's mouth? How's he going to pour his spinach from the can through such a small aperture?
The old Max Fleischer shorts are, happily, still within easy reach - even the later King Features shorts, one of which finds Olive Oyl gone finger-snapping crop-haired beatnik, are worth digging out. And for classic Popeye's overseas reach, it turns out that the Alice the Goon character inspired Spike Milligan in naming The Goon Show, the seminal madcap 1950s BBC radio series he made with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe.
Speaking of Olive Oyl (voiced in her Max Fleischer dawn, along with Betty Boop, by Mae Questel), the 1930s movie comedian Zasu Pitts, in her trademark waifish fretfulness, was often compared to her, all the more reason for fans to note the 2018 DVD release of the old Hal Roach shorts teaming Pitts and Thelma Todd seeking their fortunes in the big city.
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If Popeye doesn't speak in these reboots they are missing a huge part of his appeal. As a child I thought the old Popeye cartoons were inane but I loved the way he spoke.
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@Paulie It was his fast almost silent musings under his breath that really peaked my interest in my later years, not so much in my early childhood as I was almost oblivious to them.
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Speaking as a millennial: Why do media people seeking millennial audiences always have to destroy everything? Only a media creative room could think rebooting Popeye seemed like a good idea. C.J. Kettler ought to be fed to the sharks. Can't these people think of a single original idea?
Andrew Farago is even worse. His stated motivation is to reuse characters because reboots are easier, and therefore more profitable, than developing new characters. The artists are getting piece work as well. What a rip off.
Even if we place creative laziness and profit motivations aside, the venture is still entirely inappropriate. The value in artistic pop-culture is cultural rather than commercial. You are explaining something about the values of a culture during a certain place and time.
I love old cartoons for exactly this reason. If you watch old Popeye cartoons, or any other old cartoon, everyone is like "Wow! How was that joke appropriate back then?" Old cartoons are historically informative as well as entertaining. White washing these epic classics for entertainment purposes is a disservice to the creator and the audience.
Does anyone really need to reboot Charlie Brown Christmas? Even the animation is telling a story about America in the 1960s.
Think of it this way: My protest to these continuing artistic obscenities would be a Warhol knock off where I replaced Campbell Soup with an Amazon logo. Watch, a marketer somewhere just stole my idea.
Popeye doesn't even have a pipe...
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They are out of ideas. Why do you think they keep remaking old movies? Everything is retro. Clothes, music, movies. People are out of ideas and nobody wants to risk investing money into something that is not yet a proven commodity.
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@Andy Don't look now but there's a horrifyingly bad looking Grinch reboot coming to a theater near you...
@David
I skipped the Jim Carrey reboot in 2000. If ever I feel compelled to watch a Dr. Seuss story, the originals suit me just fine. I'd probably start with the books first though.
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