Back off my nineties video games and step off my crappy Rankin/Bass-style animation.Įmerald City Productions, Ltd., is basically defunct now (sadly, there appear to have been legal difficulties near the end of its life), but when they were functioning, they put out an impressive array of titles, most of them drawn from classic literature - Les Miserables, Oliver Twist, Around the World in 80 Days, etc. I prefered the puppets of the original Star Wars to the computer-generated critters of the later ones, for example. I'm inclined to cut Emerald City Productions some slack here my love of old, moldy things is well-documented, and I've never had much patience for the argument that things with less-than-stellar graphics or technology aren't enjoyable.

Instead, they had seven animating guys and about that number more painting backgrounds. On one side, you have people who love it unrelentingly because it is without a doubt the closest adaptation to Leroux's original novel that you will find in film to date and on the other side, you have people who don't want to believe that animation and voice acting this flawed were ever inflicted on the general public.įor 1987, it's nothing mind-blowing, but it's pretty standard for a small production studio (Disney this is not) they didn't have computer rendering or a team of fifty animators working on character designs.

Phantom of the opera costume reference