Hey guys, long time no see. I've recently bought The Exorcist III, and at the same time I was almost at the end of the complete G1 series. I saw The Rebirth first, and then I watched Exorcist III. And I was very entertained by both flicks, the plot was excellent, the characters were fascinating and I really got carried away by the stories. But if you take a good look at their respective development anecdotes, you will find more similarities. The Exorcist III (originally called Legion) had a lot of studio interference. Morgan Creek forced William Peter Blatty (one of my favorite writers) to add an exorcism. Blatty had to create the character of Father Morning, played by Nicol Williamson, and add a somewhat odd subplot which leads to the exorcism. Now it's not that bad, in fact, Williamson's performance is quite powerful and the interaction between George C. Scott and Jason Miller during that scene is pretty neat. The only thing that drag it down are the special effects, although they don't bother me, I thought they were unnecessary and really out of place. The Rebirth was originally going to be a five-parter, and David Wise wrote it as such. But Hasbro decided to dissect it and make it a three-parter, which seems to have left Wise struggling to introduce characters in such a short time-span. But in a somewhat inverse of what would happen to Blatty two years later, Wise deliberately added the recently revived Optimus Prime to the plot, but the character didn't really seem to fit in the story. AKOM animated this saga, but it's animation is suprisingly better than before, especially during the battles. It still has it's errors but not so much as previous episodes, although it doesn't bother me that much, I think Toei should have animated this one. So here's the pattern: Original vision Exorcist III: Originally called Legion Rebirth: Five-Parter Interference Exorcist III: Add Exorcism scene Rebirth: Make it a Three Parter Drastic decision: Exorcist III: Father Morning Rebirth: Optimus Prime Letdown: Exorcist III: Special Effects Rebirth: Animation So here it is. Two underrated projects and their history. I would love to know what you think. Please, don't be afraid to reply, I will read your opinions with a lot of interest. Take care Guillermo
While it's true that it's AKOM's strongest TF effort, even their best work can't hold a candle to Toei's worst. It's always so stiff, flat, dull, and boring.
Hmmm. I seem to agree, because although the errors in Rebirth are not much, they are really notorious (i.e.: Vorath and Monzo with switched character models).
Yeah, notorious animation errors aside, their work always lacks intensity and dynamics. Their color work is always dingy looking, too.
Yeah, that kinda ruined the Rebirth for me. The color work is very dull. But the animation is not as bad as in "Five Faces of Darkness". XP
I've been wanting to read both books for a loooooooong time now (is there a book for Heretic?) especially now that there's the revised 40th Anniversary edition. As far as the films go, I honestly love both equally. Heretic just feels like insult to injury, not that it's completely horrible, just has that "Would this really happen again to the same person?" stigma. Legion is an extremely underrated film, so many great shots in that movie.
Wow, a connection between The Exorcist III and the Transformers! Heh, who woulda thunk it? EIII wasn't that bad, but yes, the now infamous excorcism scene seemed fairly forced indeed. The strangest part of EIII was having Patrick Ewing in there! In reality though, many, many hollywood movies get interfered with and taken off-track, usually to its detriment. So that formula can be used with many movies indeed.
There is no Heretic book. And yeah Exorcist III is quite good. Yeah, that's right. But watching Patrick Ewing and Fabio as angels was quite hilarious for me.
Ah, so you're not the only one who thinks that? But I think you give Toei a bit too much credit - I thought "Child's Play" had animation on par with, if not worse than, that of AKOM's typical work.
Whoa, now that you mention it, that's probably the worst Toei-animated episode. But unlike AKOM's infamous error prone animation, Toei's animation in that particular episode feels unfinished. But the animation quality is a lot better in this episode than in the japanese Headmasters series (which had a lot of episodes in which it seems that they were trying to imitate AKOM's clunky style, which is not a good idea. Only few episodes are saved from this problem). Off-Topic question: Have any of you ever had that strange feeling with the AKOM animated episodes looking as if it was an animated version of the Marvel comic books???
Not really. It'd need to look more like José Delbo's art and have only four colors for everything before that happens.
With some of the early season 2 AKOM eps like "The Core" or "City of Steel", they looked to me like they were trying to emulate 'Challenge of the Gobots', at least in movement style.
I think you have a point there. But remember the constant use of character models for standing poses. Both the early Perlin and Delbo Marvel comics and the AKOM animated episodes have this tendency. I really didn't think about that. But yeah, GoBots and the AKOM animated episodes have a very similar style in terms of character movement.
