(minimalistic piano tune)

SpongeBob is crossing over into the real world.

What is the place?

That could be great!

Or terrible!

I explain why on this week's episode of Angry Nerd.

(train whistle blows)

The second SpongeBob movie sets computer-generated versions

of the cartoon sea creatures loose among real people.

[Squidward] Ew, this place smells awful.

There's a rich history here.

Daffy and Donald duck did it.

So did Jerry the Mouse.

And then there was the masterpiece,

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I'm a toon to make people laugh.

Now, mixing cartoon characters with real-life settings

is deceptively tricky to pull off.

Human actors have to react to characters

that haven't been added in yet.

How do they know where to look?

Animators also have to make the characters

fit into the world around them.

It takes a lot of talent

and a lot of money to pull that off.

Why, just ask my new sidekick,

Gary the Wisecracking Honey Badger.

Sup, Gary? High-five.

Yeah.

See how Gary casts a realistic shadow here?

That takes thousands of man-hours to pull off.

So we definitely have the budget

to add in a CG character, right?

'Cause I'm gonna look really stupid if we don't.

Promise?

Okay.

Hey Gary, stop break dancing and pay attention to my rant,

you purple-furred rascal.

Anyway, toons-in-the-real-world films

can go terribly wrong like in the 1977 Disney flick,

Pete's Dragon.

(Groans) Who did the compositing of this?

What's that Gary?

Oh, burn!

You said it Gary, not me!

Now, you'd think this sort of crossover would get easier

in the era of sophisticated computer animation,

but the track record is terrible.

I can't think of a single computer-generated

cartoon crossover that's half as good as Space Jam.

I mean, you have the early attempts like Casper

when the CG tech was new.

How did they manage to make an ethereal translucent flob

look phony?

You have The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

The charm of the original cartoons

was that they were so rough and sketchy.

The 3D CG versions totally lost its charm.

Wassup?

The characters look less appealing

than the parade float versions.

Zoinks!

Scooby-Doo sucked.

Sorry.

The design of this iconic character just feels off,

from facial structure to fur texture.

Matt Willard does a better job

of becoming a cartoon character

than the animators do with making Scoob seem tangible.

(groans) The Chipmunks, Yogi Bear, Garfield,

I hated these, but that was because they were poorly written

and insipid, not because the CG was particularly terrible.

What worries me now is that more movies

will do what the new Ninja Turtles did.

Try to make comic book characters look as detailed

and realistic as God.

(groans) Look at those faces!

It's like they hit the bottom of the uncanny valley

and started digging.

So, how will the new SpongeBob fare?

Well, the character design is fun.

Not too phony, not creepily realistic.

I like that they're in the real world,

but they can still do cartoony, physics-defying tricks.

Good writing helps a lot,

and the SpongeBob series definitely has that.

I guess I'm cautiously optimistic.

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments,

and let me know if you buy merchandise

featuring my animated sidekick Gary.

What?

No, you don't earn a percentage of sales, Gary.

You know, you really need to read contracts

before you sign 'em.

(train whistle blows)

Hey, The SpongeBob Movie has gotta be better than

The Smurfs, ain't that right, Gary?

(laughs) Testify.

Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah.

Don't use that kind of language on my show, Gary.

What, it's true what they say.

You just don't care, do you?

Disney is actually prepping a remake of Pete's Dragon.

What do you think? Do you want to see that?

Let me know in the comments.

Oh, and click on these other Wired videos over here

for more of my rants.

(synthetic woosh)