Will the 3D Popeye preserve its cartoon-like look?

By Sarah Sluis

Variety brought news today that Popeye, the upcoming animated adaptation from Sony, will release in 3D. What struck me was the accompanying image, which showed a black-outlined, cartoon Popeye. Would it be possible to preserve that kind of look and pop it out in 3D? Most likely--but would the filmmakers choose that visual look?

The 3D movies I've seen over the past year have had astounding visuals. Up had a wonderful, softly rendered look with a unifying color palette. Avatar created luminous CG forests and floating mountains that looked more real in 3D than they did in the 2D images or clips that often accompanied news pieces about the story. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, while having a more traditional look, had Muppets-inspired characters and visuals that tried to include power lines and machinery and the other things most animated towns leave out of their cities. The best of them all, How to Train Your Dragon (coming out this Friday), has a stunning chiaroscuro look. Fire-lit viking dwellings and caves give the movie a medieval feel.

3D and CG animation are a natural fit. Together, they've elevated animation and even allowed it to become more stylized. Famed live-action cinematographer Roger Deakins helped create the cinematography in How to Train Your Dragon, even warranting a profile at the New York Times. As I wrote a couple of months ago, lighting and animation departments typically don't talk to each other, something Deakins changed when he came in as a supervisor, to considerable effect. Dragon is setting a high standard for animated films that others will surely follow.

I hope Popeye preserves its cartoon look while bumping it out into three dimensions--giving it the feel of a pop-up book, perhaps. While it may be tempting to give the character smooth corners and a CG look, I would welcome the opportunity to see something more retro, much in the same way Disney's Lilo & Stitch brought back the watercolor backgrounds of Disney films fifty years before. (It's worth mentioning that Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon share the same directing team--Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois are animation directors to watch)

Right now Popeye has a producer (Avi Arad of Spider-Man) and a screenwriter (Mike Jones, a former trade reporter and self-proclaimed Popeye fan). It's far too soon to tell how Popeye will look, but hopefully it will join my list of animated films with an unusual, non-CG look--like Pixar's The Bear and the Bow , the next animated film I have my eye on.