Head over here to watch the brand new trailer for Blue Sky Studios' upcoming animated epic, um ... - Epic! If you don't like visiting Apple's site, then watch the embed here.
The teaser released a few months back was quite spectacular but ended rather unconvincingly with the female protagonist exclaiming "Oh man!" on waking up and discovering that her dream was no dream at all. That line reminded me quite strongly of the same way Jake Long says "Oh man!" in the American Dragon TV series. And, since I'm not particularly enamoured with American Dragon, that association was not positive at all.
That particular shot and line is reused in the new, full trailer, but it seems less offensive now, especially as it appears that the rest of the film's dialogue is quite a bit more intelligent. The animation itself looks like a knockout. I've long thought that Blue Sky Studios create some of the most appealing and exhilarating CG animation around. With Epic they'll be tackling rather realistic humans. Their past efforts have generally featured cartoony characters (Sid in the Ice Age franchise, or Horton in Horton Hears a Who) that can squash and stretch liberally, as well as distort believably (have a look at Scrat in Continental Crackup). They'll need to be less broad here, but I think they'll pull it off well.
The film's none-too-interesting title is certainly a disappointment. This was originally to be titled The Leaf Men, but I suppose Fox executives are fans of the Walt Disney Company's newfound habit of destroying perfectly sensible titles. Such visionary leadership had films Rapunzel and The Bear and the Bow renamed Tangled and Brave respectively.
