“There was definitely a point where I was going, ‘I don't know if I can do this.’”īyrkit also recalls those early days of frustrations. “The first designs I started on, I was trying to act and design like an animation guy, and they were just horrible,” he remembers. I think that's why I've avoided it for so long.”Įarly on, McCreery didn’t think he could make the transition. However, working on Rango did place him in a world he had always been hesitant to join: “I know my niche, I know what I'm good at, and I have such a deep respect for animation because it's a whole other discipline. “Anything he’s a part of, I want to be part of it,” McCreery says. McCreery, who had the most Hollywood experience didn’t hesitate to work with Verbinski on this new venture. Shannon, unlike everyone else brought in (including Verbinski), was the only person with any experience working in feature animation, having done character designs for Disney on Recess: School’s Out. Carls in 2003 when the idea for what would become Rango was first mentioned, shared over Zoom an early motto the director and everyone in the house followed: “Symmetry is not our friend.” Shannon, a children's book author and illustrator who was in the room with Verbinski and producer John B. The plan from day one was to approach the movie more like a live-action film and to make all of the characters look unusual and distinct. “He told me by the end of Pirates 3 that he was dreaming of a plan to escape with a handful of artists and creating a whole world on our own,” Byrkt told SYFY WIRE over email. The idea of assembling a collection of creatives to work freely, away from the gaze of a Hollywood studio, was, according to Byrkit - who had worked with Verbinski on his debut Mouse Hunt and all three Pirates films - in the works for some time. Verbinski had known all four artists for years, either during his time directing Hollywood features or in his early years working behind the camera on commercials and music videos. He brought in screenwriter John Logan ( Gladiator, The Aviator), line producer and sculptor Adam Cramer ( Lee), and four artists who would be responsible for giving the film’s animated stars their unique look: Eugene Yelchin ( Rome), David Shannon ( Recess), Mark “Crash” McCreery ( Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Jurassic Park), and James Ward Byrkit ( Mouse Hunt, Pirates of the Caribbean). More importantly, he didn’t want to make it in a traditional way.Īfter acquiring some funding from producer Graham King to make a showreel, Verbinski set up shop at his old home in Pasadena where he would spend the next 18 months working, shaping, and crafting Rango into the film we see today. Verbinski, who had just come off directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films - successfully turning a decades-old Walt Disney theme park ride into one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood - did not want to direct just another animated feature. There's Doc (Stephen Root), a jackrabbit with shaggy fur and his right ear missing there's also Sergeant Turley (Verbinski), a wild turkey with an arrow impaled through his skull. Even Rango himself, with his crooked neck, pot-bellied physique, and disproportionate eyes, is not something audiences would expect from an animated cartoon attached to Nickelodeon Movies. Early in the film, we watch as Rango, a stranger in a strange new town, not yet adopting his new name and identity, passes by creatures who have certainly seen better days. Rango (Depp), a chameleon who discovers himself while saving the lawless town of Dirt, and the other anthropomorphic desert animals featured were wholly unlike the cute and easily marketable creatures found in other 3D animated films released that year, such as Puss in Boots and Kung-Fu Panda 2. Despite having a roster of A-listers providing their voices (Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Timothy Olyphant, Alfred Molina), what truly made Rango unique among all of the other animated films at the time was the film’s unique visual style, especially when it came to the film's star and his supporting cast. Director Gore Verbinski’s first animated feature successfully parodied and paid homage to the Western genre - both the Hollywood classics directed by John Ford and Fred Zinneman, as well as the spaghetti Westerns made famous by Italian director Sergio Leone - and wrapped it all together in a story straight out of a New Hollywood neo-noir. There was nothing in cinemas that looked like Rango when it released a decade ago this month.
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