The Bad Guys is the latest Dreamworks film and their first non-sequel since
2019. Now one could even say it’s been their only good film in quite the period,
but we won’t go into that now. With a big movie, especially an animated one that has
recently dropped, a lot of opinions have been formed on the internet. Obviously,
we have our own opinions, so which of these opinions do we agree with and which do we despise?
I’m _____ with WickedBinge and this is The Bad Guys: Opinions That We Love and Hate!
Quick spoiler warning, please go see the film if you’re interested because we will be discussing a
lot of the film, including the big twists.
The first opinion we wanted to tackle was that It’s the first good Dreamworks Movie since
blank. Now, we say “blank” because almost any film could be inserted into
that spot, personally, for the writer, the last movie they enjoyed was 2017’s Captain Underpants,
while other’s haven’t liked a Dreamworks movie since 2014’s How to Train Your Dragon 2, or even
2004’s Shrek 2. Now the problems with recent Dreamworks films we’ll get into in a moment,
but it comes down to “to each their own”. We really enjoyed the film,
evidenced by the fact that we have made quite a few videos already on this movie. So we have mixed
feelings on this topic because it completely depends on what movie you put in the blank.
The next take we wanted to talk about is It’s good to break from the Dreamworks Sequel Train.
This was a take from CellSpex’s “The Bad Guys is GREAT” video,
and we brought it up briefly as well. Since April of 2020, the only Dreamworks Movies have
been sequels to previous ones, in order, those are “Trolls: World Tour”, “The Croods: The New Age”,
“Spirit Untamed”, and “The Boss Baby: Family Business”. All of these films have been bashed
at best and dragged at worst for being bad films, most of which being sequels to films most people
didn’t like or coming far too late in the case of Spirit Untamed. So, in our eyes, it definitely is
nice to see a whole new property from Dreamworks, especially one based on a children’s book series
that they’ve been trying to make a movie about for a while. Especially with how good this movie was,
we definitely love this take because it’s honestly a relief to see new stuff.
A very quick thing to discuss is The Pulp Fiction homage was a good place to start the film.
This has been talked about in a few different reviews but this specific
take is from the aforementioned CellSpex video. The opening few shots of the film
mimic the opening of the classic film Pulp Fiction, to which many films pay homage.
Obviously, it’s not the same, but it’s close and it’s a fun reference,
so we have to love this take because we think the opening of the film is one of the best parts.
One we saw a lot of was that The movie is similar to Zootopia. Much like comparing it to Megamind
which we did a video on, The Bad Guys shares a lot of similarities with the film Zootopia. This is
beyond the anthropomorphic furry animals as main characters, it comes from a variety of things,
including its theme. It shares a very similar theme to Zootopia, the idea that carnivorous
creatures are frowned upon and racially profiled as being dangerous, limiting them from being
good people. It even nails the same twist for a villain, with the cutesy harmless fluffy creature
either a sheep in Bellweather’s case or a Guinea Pig in Marmalade’s being massively evil creatures.
Honestly, we could very well discuss the two movies and their similarities for a while,
which is better isn’t something we’ll get into here, but we do have to agree with this take.
The Next idea on our list is Marmalade is a fun villain, but the twist was dumb and/or
predictable. Now, a lot of films recently have tried to hit the twist villain idea,
some succeed, like Turbo in Wreck-it-Ralph or Charles Muntz in Up and some just don’t
like Evelyn Devor in The Incredibles II or Bellweather in Zootopia. Now, not every twist
villain needs to be perfect to work, and it was pretty easy to see Marmalade become the villain,
he was one of like seven animal characters and he says some things early in the movie
that are obviously villainous when you think about it. Now, much like the opinion states,
he is still a fun villain, however, he wasn’t a particularly good twist villain,
which we definitely have to knock points on. We do agree with this take because
it was kind of obvious, where even on our first watch we picked out it would happen.
Another take we want to discuss is that Pierre Perifel, the director, knocked it out of the
park for his directorial debut. This take comes from LS Mark in his Youtube video “The Bad Guys
Isn’t Bad” but we want to make one little caveat. This is not technically his directorial debut,
because he’s been directing short films since 2005, however, this is his first cinematic
directorial debut after working in the animation department of many Dreamworks films. But, that’s
beside the point honestly, because we do have to heavily agree here because we even agree with the
wording, he definitely knocked it straight out of the park. There are some little things we could
pick apart, but that can be said for most movies. And The Bad Guys was a pretty awesome movie.
Another take from a lot of places, but specifically, LS Mark’s video was that The plot
was predictable. This is a pretty quick thing to discuss because we’ve made mention of it already.
The plot of the film is very simple, a bunch of bad guys pretends to be good guys to perform
a heist and then realize they actually want to be good guys. Then of course there is the twist
villain in Marmalade and the twist that Governor Foxington is actually known criminal Crimson Paw.
Now, this plot is very simple, there’s no getting around it, and it is a kid's movie which is
definitely part of it. Not to say kids wouldn’t pick up on the plot, but it’s still designed for
children so we can’t pretend that its plot needs to be breaking new ground. However, we do agree
with this take, because this is indeed quite true for anyone who watches movies regularly.
The Final take from LS Mark is that Shark, Tarantula, and Pirahana don’t leave a strong
impression. This stems from the fact that these characters aren’t as front and center
as Snake and Wolf are for the film. However, we think the three of them are fun characters
and honestly some of our favorites from the film. We heavily disagree with this take,
because we think the three of them for better or worse leave a long-lasting impact,
even if they’re not as important as Snake or Wolf. Shark is probably our favorite character
and Tarantula’s a very fun character too, however, they’re not very important, which is sort of sad.
One take mentioned by YouTuber Saberspark is Crimson Paw shouldn’t have been Governor.
Now we need to mention, that Saberspark does not hold this opinion, he instead mentions it
as a “nitpick” from other people. Now, we just don’t understand this, we don’t know how long
it’s been since The Crimson Paw gave up to become part of politics and throw off the stereotypes,
but it can be assumed it took her a while. Sure, she still has all of her skills so that implies it
hasn’t been that long, but we don’t understand how it “hasn’t been long enough” for her to
become Governor. In fact, this is probably one of the best twists in modern animated
movies, at least as far as we can think of because we didn’t see it coming in the slightest. So yes,
we heavily disagree with this take as well, for the reasons listed above.
A take a lot of people had was that The characters are the best part of the film. In almost every
review of the film, it’s almost universally agreed that the characters are the best part,
they’re well-written and well thought out characters who honestly are some of
Dreamworks’ best since the How to Train Your Dragon Films. We fully agree with
this take because it’s honestly true, besides the animation which we’ll get to in a moment,
it’s honestly one of the highlights and we’re glad that Dreamworks is making good characters again.
Speaking of good, we also wanted to talk about that The animation is amazing. Yes, like a lot of
films nowadays it is a 3D animated film, however, they mix in plenty of 2D elements that make the
film so much better, such as action lines taken from animes. The animation is uniquely stylized
in such a way you couldn’t mix it up easily with another film. In fact, almost every review cites
the animation as a reason to see the film, and some like LS Mark say that even if the film was
bad he would recommend people to see the movie because of the animation. This shows that the
animation must be great, and we fully agree that this is one of the movie’s strong points.
A fun one to talk about is that this movie is A breath of new life for Dreamworks.
This is another point from the CellSpex video and basically points out that this movie is so
different yet so perfect for a Dreamworks movie that it breathes new life into the studio. This
plays off of the aforementioned fact that this isn’t a sequel, also coming from the parody of
the heist genre, as well as its striking art style and severe uniqueness among its brethren.
The sheer fact of how unique the film feels definitely lends to its freshness in our eyes,
leading us to absolutely love this take.
The next thing we wanted to speak on is quite short, that being Pirahana’s Fart Jokes are
bad. Now, this is something we notice in a lot of children’s films, potty humor is something
we see in a lot of things, Shrek did it, some Disney movies even do it, and it comes down to
the target audience. Children love these kinds of jokes and we can’t blame them we did too when we
were younger, however as an adult, watching these films, they tend to be kind of annoying. Now, we
can’t blame the film for using these jokes and they are important to the plot. But
we have to agree that the movie would be better without them for us, probably not
as much for children though which is why we won’t say the movie is ruined by them.
The final opinion we wanted to talk about comes from the director of the film himself,
Pierre Perifel, that being The race for realism is on the way out. Now,
this is another animation thing and is a bit more wide scope than the movie itself,
but it does pertain to the film. When talking about the stylization of the film he mentions
that the race for realistic films in animation is on the way out. One of the biggest issues
with more modern animation is trying to make it look realistic, films from all of the different
studios shoot for reality, including The Toy Story Series, Frozen, Encanto, and Shrek,
just to name a few, of course, they still look cartoony and have cartoonish moments,
but the designs are still meant to be realistic. After Spider-Man Into The Spiderverse came out,
animated movies started to work more on style than realism, which has made more modern movies
even better. This movie obviously fits into the vein, and we can’t wait to see more of this style
in Puss In Boots II, which also seems to have a very stylized art style in it. So, we absolutely
love this take and hope it stays true. But let us know in the comment section
if you agree with our ranking. And tell us what we should cover next. Remember to hit
that notification bell and binge more of our videos. But most importantly, stay wicked.