The movie(s) bored me to death. I find them rather soulless. The pacing is off. The score way too pathetic. The animation mediocre. The movie playing in my mind while reading the book was way more glorious. They shouldn't have tried to make it so damn close to the book. It can never live up to peoples mind-flics. Why not add some twists, take some risks and just keep the basic structure of the story and create something fresh around it. Or maybe the movie version is intended for those too lazy to read the comic?
In short : this movie is to the comic like a audiobook to a ...well.....book - no pressing reasons to consume both.
I'd love to know what the budget for animation was. Obviously its not the same type of money that gets spent on a big budget live action move, and obviously not the same as a big Pixar type movie. But I'd love to know how much they spent vs. how much an average hour of a TV cartoon costs. The animation was just kinda bleh.
I'm not sure how things are now, but as few as ten years ago, studios had a lot less say as to who animated their boards than you might think. A lot depends on who happens to be available, and even if you get the studio you want, you might not get their A team. Most animation studios have A, B, and C teams, and you’re not usually guaranteed their best animators when you sign on, unless you’ve got the money to back it up. And with longer features like these movies, you’re likely to have three different teams working on it concurrently, which can lead to inconsistencies if the studio talent isn’t very deep.
My educated guess is that they have the same budget for these movies as they would have for three TV episodes—perhaps a slight bit more, but nothing significantly more than that. And as for the pacing, WB dictates the feature length, not the story. The creative team has to hit the mark, even if the story calls for a little more time, or a little less. These guys are pros, so they can usually work around this, but sometimes the pacing can feel forced no matter what tricks they use.
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My educated guess is that they have the same budget for these movies as they would have for three TV episodes—perhaps a slight bit more, but nothing significantly more than that. And as for the pacing, WB dictates the feature length, not the story. The creative team has to hit the mark, even if the story calls for a little more time, or a little less. These guys are pros, so they can usually work around this, but sometimes the pacing can feel forced no matter what tricks they use.