Coppala's "Little Fat Girl in Ohio That Brings Down the Movie Business and Turns it into Art" is Kung Fury

[Ed_David]

Kung Fury is most creative and fun film I've seen since Napoleon Dynamite.  Here's the link -  a Swedish film funded by Kickstarter - here's a link to the full film.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg

Basically it came out of nowhere - made by David Sandberg for no money just with his friends and raised on Kickstarter up to $600k for a 30 minute film that beats pretty much every Hollywood action comedy I've seen in the past 20 years.  And all in 30 minutes.  It's just a pure idea that's hilarious and so well made and thought out.  He took his skills from music videos and created something more creative and brilliant than made by a much larger budget like Mad Max: Fury Road.  With a more realized world, better script, and more interesting characters.

Here's a behind the scenes look at the film - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYHl8SPVfM

It doesn't look like much to make it - just guys on a greenscreen - and it oozes personality and character.

You don't need hundreds of people and studios behind you to be creative - just a little idea.

“Suddenly one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart… and make a beautiful film with her father’s little camera-corder, and for once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever and it will become an art form.” – Francis Ford Coppola

That fat girl is David Sandberg.  He circumvented the whole world of Hollywood and made a better Hollywood movie than Hollywood could make.

You don't need hundreds of screenwriters and rewrites and famous actors and egos - just one vision - one idea - and a bunch of friends, and a little bit of money.

The internet allows this to happen.  The Internet allows anyone a fighting chance.  It is decentralized.  Gabe Newel, the CEO of Value talks about this - if you have a good idea, it will get out.  Word of mouth.  It just gets out.

So next time you make something, anything - just make it good.

Put all your money into making it good and the Internet will take care of the rest.

The film is a trojan horse - it seems silly but the message is simple - "Hollywood - with all your focus testing and test screenings and computers you can't overcome something simple - film is about storytelling and mood and following the vision of a director or small-knit group of friends. You have become lost and distant to what is possible in the modern era."  With more films like Kung Fury becoming successful, I now have renewed hope in the future of filmmaking.  Boring and unremarkable films like Ex Machina and Chappie and the Avengers 2 of the Hollywood machine can go far, far away and real passionate auteurs can make their films from anywhere just with going straight to the people, who are much more intelligent than Hollywood gives the world credit for.

[Zak Forsman]

I beg to differ. unless you're saying that a little fat girl + her daddy's video camera + a $630,019 budget for 30 minutes of content is somehow a game changer. I've seen better, made with fewer resources. we all have.

[Ed_David]

I found the film much more enjoyable in that 30 minutes than I did watching Ex Machina last night or Fury Road.  Both budgets were $150 million and $65 million, respectably.

$630k is more than I thought - I thought he said $5k initially.

Still $630k is remarkable for the look and feel of the film.  I would peg it at 5 million.

 

I'm so curious what camera they used and lenses and how they got the look - it looks so much better than most Hollywood films.

[AaronChicago]

I found the film much more enjoyable in that 30 minutes than I did watching Ex Machina last night or Fury Road.  Both budgets were $150 million and $65 million, respectably.

$630k is more than I thought - I thought he said $5k initially.

Still $630k is remarkable for the look and feel of the film.  I would peg it at 5 million.

 

I'm so curious what camera they used and lenses and how they got the look - it looks so much better than most Hollywood films.

​They used 5D's and FS700. Most of the film was shot in his house in front of a green screen

[Zak Forsman]

 

Still $630k is remarkable for the look and feel of the film.  I would peg it at 5 million.

​

well, considering they produced a 30 minute short, you could scale the budget to $2.52 million to produce a two hour feature-length film. But I think they were smart to do a short. This sort of thing, in my opinion, would get old fast. This film, "The Editor", took the 70s/80s Italian Horror & Dario Argento aesthetic and had a lot of fun with it. But an hour in, it stopped reinventing itself. Probably should have been a short too.

 

 

 

 

[Nick Hughes]

​

well, considering they produced a 30 minute short, you could scale the budget to $2.52 million to produce a two hour feature-length film. But I think they were smart to do a short. This sort of thing, in my opinion, would get old fast. This film, "The Editor", took the 70s/80s Italian Horror & Dario Argento aesthetic and had a lot of fun with it. But an hour in, it stopped reinventing itself. Probably should have been a short too.

 

​

Film budgets don't really scale that way. If they shot four separate 30-minute short films, then yes, that might be an accurate guess. 

[Chrad]

With the exception of the gun being fired down the phone (stolen from Danger 5, a much better low budget retro-genre inspired work about cheesy heroes fighting Hitler, and it has dinosaur-headed people too), all the best gags in Kung Fury fit in the initial 2 minute trailer. And they worked much better in that context.

Kung Fury is nothing more than a technical showpiece. The script is built on the premise that gore, swearing and pop-cultural pastiche is endlessly amusing. If you told me this was written by Seth MacFarlane, I'd have believed it.

I suppose Kung Fury could be thought to have a more realised world than Fury Road if by 'more realised' you mean, 'more locations', but that's about it. The attention to detail and art direction in that film brought a believable and genuinely original vision to the screen. Kung Fury is an amalgam of the last decade of 80s parodies, thrown into an ultra ironic 'anything can happen!' universe. There's no real narrative to ground the nonsense (unlike Danger 5), and genuine wit is almost entirely absent. Better characters? What characters? There is no humanity to anyone. The characters have so few distinguishing features that they aren't even clearly defined as comic archetypes. 

Kung Fury is lazy, coasting by on its concept. Fury Road is one of the most brilliant pieces of fantasy filmmaking to make it to the screen in the past decade. One is seeing a brief burst of viral interest, and the other is going to be talked about for many years to come.

[Fatalfury]

Yeah, but no. The music video and trailer is 1000x times better, was surprised by how soulless, unfunny and overlong the film felt by the end. Was promising and somewhat funny at first until the time travel sequence began, then it became tiresome and obvious that this is far from genius. Dat animation bit near the end was well done and a nice touch, some of the one liners by the main hero are quite epic but it's overall a mess. Worst of all, much of the humour comes from unimaginitive reference joke gags a la the Epic Movie series. Hitler as the main baddie is getting really tiresome, ok Kung Führer is a good villain name i give it that. The digital effects were well made and the soundtrack is quite cool but the overall look is too digital and nowhere near captures the trashy 80s vibe imo. 

 

7.5/10 for the first 8 minutes, 3/10 for the rest, so i give it 5/10 - pretty good for a crowd funded youtube clip. Appreciate the effort that was put in and i can see why the kids of the youtube generation might dig it.

 

[AaronChicago]

I already know how this thread will end. People will say it sucks. Someone fires back and says "let's see what you've done better...", another person says "we can critique all we want". Then the thread closes.

[HurtinMinorKey]

I laughed once during the entire thing, when the two German dudes were talking about each other's mustaches. It's a VFX tour de-force for sure, and has an interesting style. But i wish it was funnier. 

[Ed_David]

Man you guys are a tougher audience than reddit.  

Wow.  

Also I thought Tiny Furniture was whiney, boring, and petty bourgeois issues.  Just like my little film, "The Quiet Escape."

I think Kung Fury is touching, sweet, creative, and memorizing much like the first Matrix and had a sense of humor.  

But hey, I guess we all have opinions.

[johnnymossville]

It was pretty good.  It reminded me of The Beastie Boys.    Intergalactic and Sabotage.

 

 

[Chrad]

 

 

Danger 5, people. 

[Axel]

Man you guys are a tougher audience than reddit.  

Wow.  

Also I thought Tiny Furniture was whiney, boring, and petty bourgeois issues.  Just like my little film, "The Quiet Escape."

I think Kung Fury is touching, sweet, creative, and memorizing much like the first Matrix and had a sense of humor.  

But hey, I guess we all have opinions.

​Coppola also said (I think in the same feature) nothing is so terrible as a pretentious movie. 

What is a pretentious movie? For us ambitious filmmakers? 

All people are losers in one way or other. That's a fact. No one measures up to everybody's expectations. Some just manage better to pretend they do. The wiser I become, the more I learn to distinguish between right and wrong goals. If I try to impress others, if I try to prove something, I'm on the wrong path already. 

Interesting films, good films, can deal with serious subjects or just be big fun. Bad films are a waste of life-time, for the makers a well as for the audience. Nobody really cares if they were executed with expert skills or if they had slider-shots or the like. 

But once I really love a story (narrative) or I'm really intrigued by something I encounter in reality (doc), I will try to depict it in the best way possible. Never the other way around. Life is too short to pretend. People are worth to be met with (even blunt) honesty, passion and bravery. 

[silvertonesx24]

It is much more challenging to innovate rather than taking the screw it path, I don't have an original thought so I'll just go as dumb as possible and call it as satire/ironic/parody.

I don't see this as any anti-Hollywood statement, other than "more stupidity for your money"

[Miraud]

I laughed once during the entire thing, when the two German dudes were talking about each other's mustaches. It's a VFX tour de-force for sure, and has an interesting style. But i wish it was funnier. 

​Yeah that little scene was levels above the rest of the film. It felt like a snippet from a Roy Andersson or Ruben Östlund film. Very good indeed.

[hmcindie]

I did like Kung Fury, unfortunately most of the best gags were already in the trailer.

It has its moments. I don't think over analysing these kinds of comedies is all that. Either the humor works for you or it doesn't. It worked for me and the length was good.

Check out Italian Spiderman too.

[Chrad]

Check out Italian Spiderman too.

​From the creators of Danger 5!

[Tim McC]

I liked it a good deal.  Only some of the more obvious CGI work (like TriceraCop) looked out of place.  The dinosaurs in the "Viking Age" had more of a Harryhausen look to them somehow...

[j.f.r.]

Movie was great and much better than most will accomplish in their life. Nothing is for everyone, but no one can deny the creative art and hard work put into the digital film, anyone who says otherwise is basically a reflection of themselves "Hater"...........