Rumble
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 As it will be done later, what's the point of Hollywood trying to adapt a graphic novel if the producers knew nothing about it?
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Rumble is a 2021 American computer-animated sports comedy film directed by Hamish Grieve with a screenplay by Grieve and Matt Lieberman. Loosely based on Monster on the Hill, a graphic novel by Rob Harrell, the film stars the voices of Will Arnett, Geraldine Viswanathan, Terry Crews, Stephen A. Smith, Jimmy Tatro, Tony Danza, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tony Shalhoub, Bridget Everett, Sofìa Vergara, John DiMaggio, Greta Lee, Ben Schwartz, Roman Reigns and Becky Lynch.
The movie was produced by Paramount Animation, WWE Studios, Walden Media and Reel FX Animation Studios, the movie was released in the United States on December 15, 2021 on Paramount+.The film received mixed reviews from critics with criticism for its writing, characters, and pacing and poorly grossed only $37.6 million worldwide, barely recouping its $20 million budget making it a box-office bomb, although the animation and voice acting received some praise.
Bad Qualities
- The main issue with this movie is that most of the plot and writing comes off poorly written with a unoriginal storyline and faulty premise that stole elements from a good number of other previous movies, most notably The Rocky Franchsie, Real Steel, Surfs Up, The Cars franchise, and Planes.
- Although other animated movies such as Surfs Up 2: WaveMania was pretty weak at first glance, Rumble is no better, due to the fact that the main issue is that the movie is a standard "underdog wins the championship tournament" trope kind of movie with more focus put on action and comedy like most modern with very little of wresting, the story also suffers from a lot of clichés.
- Hypocrisy: The movie teaches children that they do not have to follow in the footsteps of other people and that they are free to carve their own path in life, which is what Rayburn “Steve” Jr did in the movie. However, Tentacular also tried to distance himself from Rayburn and carve his own path and the movie portrayed his attempt as bad as his decision to move from Stoker to Slitherpoole caused his own fans to turn on him.
- The hypocrisy goes even further with this moral as while Steve tried to distance himself from his dad and prove to stoker that he is his own person who does not need his dad to gain fame in life, the town of stoker including the news announcers treat him very badly as they berate and hate on him for using unconventional wrestling moves and they immediately go to liking him for being the son of Rayburn when they find out about his heritage.
- The world-building in this movie is almost non-existent as the movie begins with a massive exposition dump as to how monster wrestling came to be and does not fully elaborate on it.
- Similar to The Boss Baby, Neftlix’s Marmaduke, and the infamous 2005 Disney adaptation of Chicken Little, the movie did a weak job on adapting from its source material of the book, Monster On The Hill, as the film was more interested in telling it’s own story rather than adapting things from the novel, with the examples of how badly different and unrecognizable the film is from the graphic novel listed below:
- The biggest problem with this movie is that it miscast Tentacular into being the main antagonist when he did not have that kind of role in the graphic novel. It turned him from a kind old friend of Rayburn’s who was obsessed with giving hugs to people to a self-absorbed money-obsessed wrestler who wants to tear down a stadium for no thoroughly explained reason other than the fact that he does not want to follow in Rayburn’s footsteps. The book revealed that Tentacular’s real name is Noodles but the movie never refers to Tentacular as Noodles at all. Tentacular’s name is also spelled incorrectly as the graphic novel spells his name as “Tentaculor”.
- In addition Tentacular’s role as the antagonist in the movie is forced as the source material never portrayed the character as the antagonist as that role was given to a monster called The Murk but The Murk never appears in this movie at all.
- The town of Stoker On Avon is vastly different from how it is portrayed in the graphic novel. While the book portrayed it as a British Victorian-era town, the movie jumps it to the modern era. While that is not a bad thing, the Stoker that is seen in the movie does not have anything British in it at all. The only British reference the movie makes is through the wrestler King Gorge.
- Jimothy Brett-Chatley III is supposedly based on Timothy but in the graphic novel, Timothy is a kind young orphaned street urchin from Stoker who wants to be loved and adopted. Here Jimothy is just a spoiled rich boy from Slitherpoole who gets forgotten about near the end of the movie. It does not help that his name is wrong with the first letter.
- Charles Wilkie, the eccentric inventor and monster psychiatrist from the graphic novel does not make an appearance in this movie and he is the main protagonist of the graphic novel. He is haphazardly replaced by Winnie in the movie.
- Slitherpoole is never seen or mentioned in the graphic novel and in it, Tentaculor did not represent Stoker nor Slitherpoole even though he went to Stoker to save it from The Murk. Tentaculor was actually the monster who represented the town of Billingwood in the novel. Slitherpoole also sounds lazy as it sounds too much like Slytherin from the Harry Potter franchise.
- Winnie is an unlikable protagonist as she not only causes the events of the movie by interfering with a public match but she also fails to acknowledge her own faults and places Steve in a very bad situation. She never acknowledges her faults and is shown to be very bossy to Steve during his training, immediately placing him in a match when he slouches on his training. Winnie is also depicted as a Mary Sue as she is immediately shown to be good at coaching with the only mention of experience coming from her father and she turns Steve from a match thrower to a champion in just a couple of months. Winnie also does not have a counterpart character from the novel to be based on as she was made exclusively just for this movie.
- It tries way too hard to make Tentacular unlikable and despicable, but these attempts fail for several reasons. First off, the writers made Tentacular bioluminescent, which automatically made Tentacular look too cool. Secondly, Tentacular was shown to move from Stoker to pursue money and fame, yet Tentacular’s luxuries and living area aren't shown. Then, when Steve is set to fight King Gorge in a match, it is revealed that Gorge was traumatized from his match against Tentacular that he refuses to fight Steve. That scene was apparently put in to show Tentacular as vicious and bad, but instead, it makes King Gorge look pathetic as it was shown that Tentacular beat King Gorge only because Winnie helped him win by exploiting Gorge’s weakness and before that Tentacular was being pummelled by Gorge during the match. The bioluminescence of Tentacular was a selling point as shown. In the trailer but turning Tentacular into an antagonist made his bioluminescence pointless.
- Similar to other animated movies such as Escape from Planet Earth, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Hotel Transylvania 4, and The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, another main issue with the movie is that the pacing is way too fast, even for 95 minutes runtime. the pacing just feels like it’s more like 58 minutes runtime. the whole plot of the movie makes the pacing so hard to follow at times, which makes the pacing awful. The movie is in fact filled with unnecessary filler every now and then, making the whole plot of the movie rushed and minimal.
- The movie doesn’t teach you not just one, but two bad morals:
- The first moral claims that moving from your hometown is wrong, even if you are a sport player.
- The second moral claims that participating in illegal sport is a good thing, which is not true because you can get arrested and sent to prison if you participate in sports like that.
- Stunt casting: Even voice actor Tony Danza started as a voice role, he barely gives out a voice performance other than two lines for Siggy with a little screen time whatsoever, which is just another example of a miscast or stunt casting to get people to watch it, this backfired way back when the movie was planned to release in theaters, due to the COVID 19 pandemic, this made Danza a miscast instead.
- Similar to Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank and The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, while the animation looks colorful and not bad in general, it can feature animation errors at times such as lip syncing not matching a character who is saying something, making the animation somewhat resemble an Xbox 360, PlayStation, or Nintendo Wii game due to its textures.
- Plot hole: The beginning of the movie reveals that Winnie’s father and Rayburn Sr became lost at sea. The problem with this revelation is that Rayburn Sr is a giant monster and given his giant size he could have easily been seen in the water as shown through other kaiju movies. The movie also never explains how Winnie and Steve’s fathers became lost at sea.
- The living conditions of most of the monsters are never shown as the movie never explains how monsters could do basic things like spend money or be able to live in a house. The only monster whose living conditions were shown was King Gorge’s.
- Similar to The Emoji Movie, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Ice Age: Collision Course, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and Hotel Transylvania 4, the plot of the movie is significantly clichéd as it is derivative of many other sports movies including Rocky and Real Steel. Which makes the plot and character development very predictable for critics and viewers.
- The subplot where Steve’s life is put at risk unless he pays the owner of an illegal monster fighting slum a ton of money is highly unfocused and was almost forgotten until after Steve's first confrontation with Tentacular.
- The movie uses the overused "sharks are evil" cliche by having Tentacular look like a shark/squid hybrid and then portraying him as an antagonist. This cliche has been used excessively since the 1970s, which is unrealistic since in reality sharks are part of a healthy ecosystem yet they have been exploited more by humans. This movie uses it when movies today are starting to depict sharks as multidimensional beings as shown in The Suicide Squad, Shark Tale, and The Bad Guys with Nanaue, Lenny, and Mr. Shark respectively.
- There are several one-dimensional characters in this movie such as a tattoo-covered man whose only quirks are sulking over Tentacular’s departure and putting tattoos on himself. There is also a diner owner named Fred who is completely useless in the movie and does not contribute to anything in the plot, only seeming to exist just to be a friend of Winnie’s. There is also a financial agent who is unfunny with jokes surrounding her focusing on her use of bro speak and only serves as exposition for what is going to happen to Stoker stadium.
- By including a character covered in tattoos in a animated movie and having him get even more real tattoos throughout, the movie is basically encouraging kids to visit tattoo parlors to get real tattoos, which should be a huge concern for viewing parents.
- On the matter concerning the more fleshed-out characters, these characters experience a lot of half-baked and rushed character development that is predictable and many of them fail to acknowledge their own faults. Winnie does not acknowledge that the conflict in the movie is partially her fault because she interferes with Tentacular’s match and told him how to win. She even repeated this mistake again when she interferes with Steve’s staged match and accidentally caused him to win a fight he was supposed to lose, which puts his life at risk. Steve was shown as he lost his father, Rayburn but his grief is never fully elaborated, making his transition from a happy kid in flashbacks to a depressed man look very jarring.
- The other antagonists of the movie such as Jimothy and the people who convinced Tentacular to abandon Stoker are basically forgotten and get off scot-free with their actions while Tentacular receives full blame and loses his championship belt as karma.
- Similar to the humor in Ralph Breaks the Internet and Shark Tale, there are several scenes in the movie that are just very cringey or just plain moronic. Such scenes include the tattoo guy showing off his tattoos and later on having them removed painfully in laser surgery. There are also a couple of scenes that show Steve twerking (although not as bad as the twerking in Norm of the North).
- The antagonist scheme of tearing down Stoker stadium to make way for a parking lot is not only a cliched villain scheme but the scheme was lazily written due to juggling who was truly in charge of the scheme It was elaborated that Tentacular’s agent, Jimothy Brett-Chatley III orchestrated it, but the movie suddenly makes Tentacular look like the mastermind by having him make a bet to Steve where if Steve beats him then the stadium would be left alone. It was also said that the town of Stoker had 90 days to get enough money to pay Slitherpoole off and get a new monster to represent them but that plot point was suddenly dropped for the sake of having Steve face Tentacular for the first time.
- The movie has trouble deciding who the main antagonist of the movie is as it gives that role to the wrong character. Given that Jimothy was the one who masterminded the scheme of tearing down Stoker stadium, that basically makes Jimothy the main antagonist of the film but instead, that role is suddenly given to Tentacular
- There was an opportunity that the movie blew to teach kids a lesson on why hero worship is wrong and should not be done because it can lead to disappointment.
- This is done with the town of Stoker obsessing over Tentacular and then turning on him after his departure. The townsfolk never learn a lesson about hero worship and instead proceed to idolize Steve.
- There is a massive lack of backstory for the characters in this movie. First off, the movie failed to elaborate on the relationship Steve had with his father Rayburn and Tentacular’s backstory is never explored to explain why he hates Rayburn.
- Also, Steve's mother is never mentioned in the movie and it is never explained how the accident where Rayburn and his trainer got lost in sea occurred.
- False advertising: Speaking of backstories, the first trailer for the movie implied that Tentacular did have a backstory as the tattoo-covered guy had tattoos that told Tentacular’s life story all over him but the actual film never revealed Tentacular’s backstory. This indicates that the writers did have a backstory planned for Tentacular but for some reason opted not to show it and instead used it as part of a character design, which is the laziest way to do a character backstory that only serves to confuse the audience.
- Another example of false advertising occurs through many trailers that indicate the hat Steve will have a wrestling match against King Gorge. However, the movie shows Winnie trying to set Steve up for such a match only for King Gorge’s trainer to refuse to go along with it due to Gorge’s state of mind from his tentacular match.
- The movie relies too much on exposition with it initially beginning with the two-minute history info dump on monster wrestling and Stoker’s history and then having several characters voice out what is going on in the plot. We then have Tentacular admit that he wants to bring down Stoker stadium out of envy towards Rayburn Sr but we do not see any interactions between Tentacular and Rayburn Sr and Tentacular showed up out of the blue in the film, making his envy and motivations feel contrived and coming out of nowhere.
- Most of the jokes in the movie are stale and they mostly revolve around laziness and wrestling.
- One of the lamest jokes happens near the end of the movie in which Tentacular throws a human-sized folding chair (we kid you not) at Steve, only for the chair to miss and accidentally hit an audience member.
- For a movie that features kids losing their fathers, it lacks emotional and compelling moments due to having Winnie’s father and Rayburn appear only in flashbacks with only minimal and shorten scenes.
- There are a lot of unlikable characters in this movie. While it tries to depict Slitherpoole as a corrupt, greedy, and completely evil city, most of the citizens of Stoker On Avon are shown to be almost no better. Many of the townspeople of stoker, which include both humans and monsters are shown to be either self-centered, rude, hypocritical, annoying, corrupt, and/or having a complete lack of common sense and rationality and an inability to learn lessons and learn from their mistakes. They boo anybody who does not represent Stoker and put anyone who does on a pedestal to the point where they idolize them like gods
- Even worse is that the movie does not make any effort to indicate Slitherpoole as an evil city, only choosing to portray it as a gloomy and rainy dystopian style city with bland coloring all over it while Stoker is portrayed as shabby but sunny and positive all the time, which is just a very lazy way to indicate town morality.
- As the movie was produced by WWE, the whole movie feels like a desperate attempt by WWE to draw in more people especially children into their culture and turn them into fans of WWE. By being completely unfaithful to the original source material and turning many of its characters into examples of common WWE gimmicks (for example, adapting Tentacular by removing all of his positive traits and reducing him to the role of the “heel”). This makes the whole movie look like complete WWE propaganda, which also happened with Surf’s Up 2: WaveMania a few years back.
- This movie is very xenophobic and disrespect towards the country of England are seemingly promoted in this movie as when King Gorge is introduced in his match against Tentacular, he immediately gets booed by the audience while he displays stereotypical British behavior such as drinking tea and being snobbish. His name is also based on the king of England who ruled during the Revolutionary War and was unpopular to American citizens. This is not only offensive to British viewers of the movie but also disrespects the British roots and setting of "Monster On The Hill" as Stoker is shown to be a British Victorian-era town in the novel.
- The movie did not so great when it came to marketing, as it did not show many trailers between its first announcement and its release. While part of it can be attributed to the Covid 19 pandemic, the marketing was still bad as it was announced at the beginning of January 2021 that the movie would be delayed for a theatrical release in February 2022 but Paramount Pictures suddenly backtracks on this to have it released in December 2021 as a Paramount+ exclusive movie and dropping the planned theatrical release altogether. To make matters worse, the movie itself shows many souvenirs of Tentacular being purchased but real-life replicas of these souvenirs were never made aside from small plushies bought online alongside a few other characters.
- Development hell: Such development hell is very apparent in the final product of this movie. First, there is the initial decision to delay the film to February 2022 only for Paramount to take the delay back and pull the film from theatrical release to have it air on Paramount+ in time during December. Then there was the fact that WWE was involved in the movie with them apparently forcing writers to reduce the characters from the source material to wrestler archetypes, which is yet an example of corruption in test screening.
- It's overall no surprise that, just like other terrible animated movies such as Sausage Party, Shrek the Third, Cars 2, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Ice Age: Collision Course, The Boss Baby: Family Business, The Emoji Movie, Escape from Planet Earth, Free Birds, and Hotel Transylvania 4, this movie was absolutely notorious for ruining the reputations, and to a lesser extent, careers of people who were involved in the movie’s production.
- In conclusion, this movie also almost damaged the reputations of Paramount Animation, WWE Studios, Walden Media, and Reel FX Animation Studios as a whole after the amount of backlash this movie received prior to and after the release, kinda similar with Ralph Breaks the Internet destroying Walt Disney Animation Studios’s reputation, The Emoji Movie destroying SPA's reputation, and The Boss Baby duology destroying DreamWorks Animation’s reputation, which resulted in the four being disliked and permanently infamous for producing this movie as well as being unable to be taken seriously as a major studios.
Good Qualities
- The animation is colorful and beautiful to look at, considering that it was made by Reel FX Animation Studios.
- To be fair, the movie did go through a troubled production due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many of the writers and animators to work from home. That somewhat explains the low quality of the movie.
- The kaiju designs are quite impressive.
- The animation looks nothing but great, all thanks to Reel FX Animation Studios
- Good soundtrack by Lorne Balfe.
- Pretty good acting, especially from Will Arnett.
- Decent direction by Hamish Grieve.
- There are a few likable characters, including (ironically), Tentacular (despite his idiotic nature), and Steve.
Reception
After the movie’s digital release on Paramount+, Rumble was met with mixed reviews, who praised its acting, animation and soundtrack, but was criticized for its fasten pacing, characterization, and writing. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has an approval rating of 44% based on reviews from 16 critics, with an average rating of 5.20/10.
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100 based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
OMW rated the movie a 46% based on 233 reviews, with an average rating of 4.23/10. The website’s critical consensus reads: “Rumble squanders an interesting premise with an overly familiar storyline, stock characters, and humor that alternates between curious and potentially offensive.”
The Mysterious Mr. Enter gave the film a “D-”, saying, “The third worst animated film Will Arnett starred in after The Nut Job franchise, I hope Arnett learned his lesson after that atrocity.”
Saru91 gave the film a “D-” as well, saying “It isn’t that all bad, but compared to other bad films released around this time, it’s just okay for me.”
Trivia
- This will be Reel FX’s third animated movie to date, the first being Free Birds and the second being The Book of Life.
- Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Patrick Warburton, T.J. Miller, and Martin Lawrence were all considered for the role as Rayburn before Will Arnett was chosen.
- Margot Robbie, Anna Faris, Kristen Wiig, Anne Hathaway, and Rashida Jones were all considered for the role as Winnie Coyle before Geraldine Viswanathan was chosen.
- Jason Schwartzman, Chris Rock, Justin Long, Seann William Scott, and Josh Peck were all considered for the role as Tentacular before Terry Crews was chosen.
- Ray Romano, Max Greenfield, Ryan Reynolds, Ashton Kutcher, and Gary Sinise were all considered for the role as Siggy before Tony Danza was chosen.
- Will Arnett, Terry Crews, Sofìa Vergara, and Tony Danza will later appear in Urban Jungle as Lawrence, Rodger, Paula, and Samuel respectively. Lawrence and Rodger later reference and make a joke about the film in the said series’ episode “10 Minutes of Boredom”, when Lawrence says, “Hey, Rodger! Have you even heard they made a film called Rumble?”, with Rodger says, “Nah, we’re not gonna talk about that!”
- This will be one of the only animated movies not to have a cinematic release, similar to The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild and Hotel Transylvania 4.
- This was Walden Media’s second animated feature, their first being The Star in 2017, as the critical reception and massive box-office failure killed off all feature animated projects, making this and The Star the only animated films produced by the company.
- This is the second WWE centric computer animated movie, the first being Surfs Up 2: WaveMania.
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