| Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Matt Maiellaro Dave Willis |
| Produced by | Matt Maiellaro Dave Willis Jay Edwards |
| Written by | Matt Maiellaro Dave Willis |
| Starring | Dana Snyder Carey Means Dave Willis Andy Merrill Mike Schatz Matt Maiellaro C. Martin Croker |
| Studio | Radical Axis Williams Street Adult Swim |
| Distributed by | First Look Studios (Theatrical) Warner Bros. Pictures (DVD) |
| Release date(s) | April 13, 2007 |
| Running time | 86 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $750,000[1] |
| Box office | $5,520,368[1] |
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters[Note 1] is a traditionally animated comedy film based on the Adult Swim animated series Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The film was written and directed by the show's creators, Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, and was released on April 13, 2007, by First Look Pictures. The film's poster was illustrated by Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo, and parodies the "King of the Mountain" design.[2] Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters is notable for marking the first time an Adult Swim original series was made into a movie.
This movie made its official television debut on March 30, 2008 on Adult Swim.
Contents |
The movie begins with a song by a virtual unusual band—consisting of a bag of popcorn, a hot dog, a chocolate Popsicle and a cup of soda—in a parody of the 1953 short film Let's All Go to the Lobby, only to be interrupted by heavy metal band Mastodon—animated as a gum drop, a pretzel, a box of Ice Caps, and a box of nachos—who warn the audience that bad movie etiquette will result in severe bodily harm or death.
The movie proper begins in Egypt, where Master Shake, Frylock and Meatwad escape from the Sphinx, and are attacked by an oversized Poodle who kills Frylock before being destroyed by Shake. Shake and Meatwad flee with Frylock's corpse and meet Time Lincoln, who revives Frylock; however, when government agents break into his house, the Aqua Teens flee in his wooden rocket ship, and Time Lincoln is shot, changing the timeline and effectively resulting in white people being enslaved by black people. This, however, is all revealed to be an elaborate story concocted by Shake to explain their origin to Meatwad and Frylock. An animated music video then follows.
Shake heads off to work out on his new exercise machine, the Insanoflex. Upon discovering that the machine is not assembled correctly (and the instructions are nowhere to be found), Frylock searches online for them. He finds a website written in a rare robot dialect with the only words in English warning not to assemble it...ever. The site then lists a phone number which Frylock calls.
The film cuts to outer space on board the Plutonians Emory and Oglethorpe's ship. Before they even bother to answer the phone (the number on Frylock's computer was theirs), the Plutonians discover the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future onboard with them. The Cybernetic Ghost begins explaining to the two aliens the story of the Insanoflex: the machine, when assembled, will exercise a man into a super-being, who will attract all the women on Earth leading to massive inbreeding and the eventual extinction of mankind. To prevent this, the Ghost has traveled into the past and stolen a single screw that holds all the parts together. The Plutonians point out to him that to get it assembled, someone could just buy another screw or shove a pencil in the screw hole.
Back on Earth, Frylock finishes building the machine (somehow having obtained the instructions), having just shoved a pencil in the screw hole. Before Shake can work out however, they discover a missing M-shaped circuit board on the back panel. The trio visit Carl, from whom Shake had stolen the machine, to see if he has the missing piece. After he refuses to tell them, Meatwad finds the address in the Insanoflex's box. Meanwhile, a triangular slice of watermelon named "Walter Melon", is flying about in a space ship made from a hollowed-out watermelon, observing the events unfolding according to his plan - Walter Melon is joined in the ship by Neil Peart from Rush, sitting at his drums.
Dr. Weird, whose abandoned insane asylum has been purchased and is being turned into condominiums around them, are visited by Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad, who retrieve the missing piece and head home. Frylock installs the missing circuit board, but Carl insists that as the rightful owner he should be the first to test out the machine. The machine straps him in and elaborately transforms itself into a huge one-eyed robot. The robot plays dance/techno music and begins stomping around, crushing houses and heading toward downtown, all while Carl's strapped-in form is forced to exercise. Eventually, the robot begins laying large metallic eggs, which hatch into smaller versions of the machine. The Aqua Teens, aided by an instructional workout video, find a way to destroy the machine. Meatwad gets MC Pee Pants (who is now a fly) to help. But he is hit with a fly swatter by Shake while giving a demonstration. With little time, the Aqua Teens have no choice but to have Shake play a new song with his guitar. Shake plays his original song "Nude Love" on acoustic guitar, forcing the machine to commit suicide because Shake's song is so bad. Carl (now bulging with so much muscle that he is rendered unable to move) leaves with his date, a muscular woman named Linda, and they head back to her condo while the Aqua Teens try to figure out a way to stop the newly-hatched smaller robots from destroying the city.
Meanwhile, Frylock begins to tell the origin story of the Aqua Teens: they were created by Dr. Weird, along with a chicken nugget who had gone by the name of Chicken Bittle. In the flashback, Dr. Weird proclaims that the Aqua Teens were created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to crash a jet into a brick wall. Realizing the pointlessness of this mission, Frylock simply diverted the jet (after a struggle with Bittle) and set a course to Africa, where they would try to use their intelligence to solve world hunger. While parachuting down to the earth, Bittle was attacked and eaten by a lion. The remaining three then tried to help a small village, but the natives feared them and ran away. After realizing they couldn't be much help, they hopped back in the jet and rented out what is now their house in New Jersey. Shake and Meatwad state that they cannot remember any of this, but Frylock explains it was because they were too busy playing their Game Boy to pay any attention.
Meanwhile, Carl and the muscular woman Linda recline in her room, where she reveals "herself" to be Dr. Weird in disguise. He cuts off Carl's muscles with a hunting knife and grafts them onto his own body. Frylock and Dr. Weird do battle, and the struggle continues while they argue back and forth about who created whom. Dr. Weird claims that it was Frylock who created him, not the other way around. Dr. Weird then reveals that the blue diamond on Frylock's back hides a VCR, in which a video with false memories of Dr. Weird creating Frylock had been playing in Frylock's head. Frylock also admits that he is transsexual lesbian trapped in a man's body. Just then, Walter Melon arrives in his ship and explains he created the Aqua Teens and all the other characters so that they would eventually kill each other, after which Walter would inherit all their real estate in order to create the "Insano-Gym." The other characters, however, inform Walter that they all rent and do not own any property, not only rendering Walter's plan completely useless, but proving that everyone's existence is completely pointless. Walter storms off in his ship, threatening to tell their mother about their failures. Just then, the Teens' see their alleged mother standing before him, revealed to be a 9-layer bean burrito. The Soda Dog Refreshment comes onscreen once again and dismisses the audience.
After the credits, there is a quick scene of the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future humping the television in the Aqua Teen's living room. The camera then pans left to Frylock who now has large breasts, primped hair, and is dressed in feminine clothing, indicating that Frylock got a sex change.
In an interview at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, Dana Snyder and Matt Maiellaro confirmed rumors that there would be a feature-length movie of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. More details were revealed at the 2005 Paley Television Festival,[3] such as a possible cameo by 80s funk group Cameo, and Maiellaro described it as "an action piece that leads into an origin story that unfolds in a very 'Aqua Teen' way."
The creators revealed much more information in an interview with Wizard Entertainment. While they dodged many questions, they confirmed that the movie would run 80 minutes, was filmed on a meager $750,000 budget, and features a plot detail about a "lost Aqua Teen", who is a large chicken nugget named "Chicken Bittle" (voiced by Bruce Campbell).[4] They also confirmed more cameos, with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, voice actor H. Jon Benjamin and his comedy partner Jon Glaser, and Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen to make appearances. Heavy metal band Mastodon stated in a Decibel article that they would be performing during the opening, and that the band would be animated as a bucket of popcorn, a soda, a hot dog, and a candy bar. They were actually animated as a pretzel, a pile of nachos, an "Icecaps" box, and a gumdrop.[5]
Regarding the film's rating, Maiellaro commented that "I think if [the movie is rated] R, it won't get the audience that watches it. But we don't know yet. We're still waiting to find out." Since then, the trailer released has advertised the film as rated R. The movie is mostly uncensored; is never censored, and while the movie is censored it is occasionally accompanied by a censoring beep that does not obscure the word, and is censored once during a flashback. As explained in the production feature, the inconsistency was an editing mistake, but left untouched for comic effect.
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters Colon the Soundtrack, which features skits and sound bites from the movie as well as original recordings from other artists, was released on April 10, 2007. It contains music such as heavy metal, rock, hard rock, and rap.
On January 31, 2007, police in Boston, Massachusetts received reports of devices resembling bombs in various places around the city. The devices turned out to be electronic signs similar to a Lite-Brite that displayed images of the Mooninites Ignignokt and Err giving the finger, and were designed to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force television show as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign authorized by Cartoon Network, the cartoon's parent company. The boards were present in several cities for weeks before the ones in Boston were reported.[6]
The Boston City Government sought a reimbursement for the money spent responding to the incident. The amount quoted was $500,000 initially, and then was increased to $750,000.[7] On February 5 it was announced that Turner Broadcasting and the city of Boston have reached an agreement to pay $2 million to offset the cost of removing the devices: $1 million to cover the cost of the agencies involved and an additional $1 million in goodwill funding to homeland security.[8]
An episode from season five, entitled "Boston" was produced as the series creators' response to the scare, but Adult Swim pulled it to avoid further controversy surrounding the events of the bomb scare.[9] "Boston" has never aired, and has never been released to the public.
Adult Swim began running advertisements on March 25, 2007, advertising the television premiere of the movie the following Sunday, April 1, 2007. Their only reasoning behind this stunt, as stated in the advertisement, was, "because we're so crazy". While Adult Swim's TV listings on their website stated the movie would be shown, other TV listings reported the same Sunday block. It was an April Fools' prank: though the first few minutes of the movie were shown normally, the remainder was shown in a small picture-in-picture box in the bottom left-hand corner, with no sound over the normal programming and occasional giant pop-ups alerting viewers of its presence, as well as advertising the actual premiere. The advertising was shown again on one episode of the Family Guy marathon on July 6, 2007. Adult Swim has made similar pranks during its run, including placing fart sounds intercut with anime shows and using Engrish VHS fansubs for the first season of Perfect Hair Forever, airing entire blocks of programming with mustaches drawn on all the major characters of the shows, and even showing the live-action movie The Room (albeit with all the sexual scenes smashed by a big black box). The movie eventually was shown on Sunday, March 30, 2008.
In yet another promotional stunt, the "ending" to the movie was posted in various places including You Tube, KingColon.com (in the Worst Game Ever game), and fansite "Aqua Teen Central", all of which were completely different.
Eventually, Adultswim.com let it be known that none of the "endings" were real and presented seven more clips (which were fake as well) throughout the weeks following the release of the movie.
These endings, now called the "fake.com endings," are available on the film's "Extras" DVD on the 2-Disc Collector's Edition. These endings are parodies of other movies. For example, one of the endings spoofs The Terminator, featuring Meatwad as "The Determinator".
With twenty-eight reviews compiled, Metacritic reported that Movie Film for Theaters has received "mixed reviews" with an average rating of 54.[10] Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a "Rotten" rating of 48% and a consensus stating [that] "The non sequitur humor of Aqua Teen Hunger Force will surely appeal to its built-in fanbase, but for the uninitiated, the premise wears thin." Reviews ranged from Glenn Kenny at Premiere magazine who stated that he was tempted to refer to the movie as "the most successful full-on surrealist film since Buñuel and Dalí's 1930 L'Âge d'Or" to Ty Burr with the Boston Globe who called it "an act of terrorism against entertainment."
In response to such reviews, a commercial featuring the Mooninites began airing during the Adult Swim block. The two characters spend the entire commercial insulting a supposedly typical reviewer, "Lionel" of lionellovesmovies.com (the site merely leads back to the movie page). Other movie commercials recommend people see the movie two or three more times to push the box office numbers up. Adult Swim also mentioned in one of its commercial bumpers that the review situation highlights the generation gap, and that most negative reviews came from much older critics.
Warner Home Video released Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for two-disc DVD on August 14, 2007. For the DVD release, the studio changed the title of the eighty-seven minute full length movie to Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters for DVD, just like the film soundtrack's title. The DVD's features include the 10 fake endings as shown on the internet, a "making of" featurette, promos, the "Deleted Scenes" episode, a music video, and an eighty minute animatic (rough cut) of the movie made out of the deleted scenes from the film and scenes from the "Deleted Scenes" episode as well as a commentary. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Patti Smith is featured on the DVD Commentary. The scene after the credits was removed in the UK DVD release. There is also a hidden easter egg where you can watch every death or painful act ever experienced throughout the series or movie so far in a compilation called painful acts. It can be activated by clicking on play deleted movie(disk two) and then around 23-24 minutes in press pause and stop on your remote then press play, it will play the video then restart the movie from where you last started watching it.
"Deleted Scenes" (also known as "Star-Studded Xmas Spectacular"), the first twenty-two-minute episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, is a collection of deleted scenes from the film. It premiered on December 18, 2005. It was also included in full on the DVD itself. Additionally, early versions of the scenes used in the special can be found in the Deleted Movie on Disc 2.
A sequel to Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters called Death Fighter is planned for release in summer 2012.[11] Unlike the first film, the sequel may be released straight to DVD rather than theatrically.[12] An Adult Swim bump addressed the status of the film, referencing Wikipedia's claim that it "is happening", followed by a statement from Adult Swim that it is not.[13]
In a 2010 interview staff members of Radical Axis confirmed that a sequel was indeed in production, and mentioned the possibility that the film might be made in 3-D. When asked if the film was designed for a theatrical release, a Radical Axis staff member said responded yes, but stated "We're not sure if we have a distributor yet". This was then followed by the statement "Adult Swim will never make another movie ever again".[14]
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