Red (Jason Sudeikis) is a bird with anger management issues. But when his island is visited by a fleet of mysterious green pigs, Red must hone his anger to help rescue a batch of stolen eggs. The Lego Movie proved that you could turn a potentially cynical cash-grab into something with depth, humour, and genuine craft. The Angry Birds Movie, on the other hand, proves that sometimes it’s easier just to make a cynical cash-grab. Addictive though it may be, the original Angry Birds mobile app hardly screamed with cinematic potential. There is no obviously compelling story bursting to escape from a cartoon bird being catapulted into a green pig. Almost inevitably, then, the transition from phone screen to cinema screen feels retrofitted and clumsy throughout. The story feels driven by marketing, rather than character. For starters, our Angry Birds aren’t really all that angry. Most of them are actually pretty chirpy. It’s only our protagonist Red (Sudeikis, on decent form but miscast) who has much of a temper, and even then, he’s fairly tame.
You get the sense that they intended for a sort of feathered Curb Your Enthusiasm route, but it all got heavily sanitised along the way. Occasionally, the film makes light of the strange parameters set by the game. (“I literally blow up", admits a character inventively named Bomb.) But even in this wacky universe, it makes no sense that these birds would willingly fling themselves, kamikaze style, into the paths of the villainous pigs, instead of using, say, rocks. The story feels driven by marketing, rather than character. Of course, internal logic matters not to the preschool target audience, who will lap up the cute animation (the pigs have more than a whiff of Minions about them) and slapstick comedy. Never mind that the game’s audience was mostly grown-ups: this is emphatically a kid’s movie. Given the roster of SNL comedians on the cast list (plus, improbably, Sean Penn) you might have hoped for a bit of comedic edge – but it’s cornier than birdseed, approaching Dad Joke territory.
"I'm retired,” offers one character. With lines like that, it’s hard not to be cynical. For recently-hatched members of the nest, it’s a bright and colourful distraction. For the rest of us, it’s about as entertaining as avian flu.LEGO and construction toys516/2596)LEGO£21.99*Credit options available find out moreCheck stockTell us where you are to check stock:123456789Add to TrolleyAbout this productUse the catapult to shoot Red and Stella into Pig City! Cause a chain reaction by firing the birds above the boulder and use the piggies' own TNT against them! Chase the piggies all over Pig City to get the eggs back, keep your eyes peeled for the sliding piggy in his umbrella! Will the birds even find their eggs in all this piggy-crashing excitement? LEGO® model number: 75824. Theme: LEGO Angry Birds. 16 reviewsOverall rating (4.4)QualityFunDesignQuestions & answersBe the first to ask a question!Ask a questionBoring but important info*Prices correct as displayed but are subject to change.
Please note item 5162596 has previously been on sale at the same price. Buy LEGO Angry Birds Piggy Plane Attack - Buy LEGO Angry Birds Piggy Pirate Ship - Your selection has produced 0 results 'From' value that is a number Please enter a 'From' value Choice of buying options 1 Offer - Quick look Did you find what you were looking for? Thank you for your feedbackIs “The Angry Birds Movie’ the best branded content of 2016 so far? To save you a read… in my view, yes. But looking more deeply into why “Angry Birds” succeeded could help other brands with their content strategies.“The Angry Birds Movie” was unexpectedly №1 at the box office in 50 countries. Just like “Transformers” and “The Lego Movie,” it’s a film that promises to revive a lagging consumer brand. Angry Birds’ merchandising sales and game interest had been down, forcing the franchises owner and creator, game developer Rovio, to cut a quarter of its work force.
The movie will likely turn that around, so it’s worth looking at the mechanics behind the Angry Birds’ success.Good Enough To Pay ForAs Mark Thompson of the New York Times recently said, “everything we do should be worth paying for.” In entertainment, quality often entails risk, and Rovio did that in the development and production of ‘The Angry Birds Movie.” Outside of cost, producing a feature film is a multi-year endeavor requiring a longer-term view and placement of audience enjoyment ahead of marketing goals. Games, with stories built into their value propositions, lend themselves to cinematic, long-form treatment, so it’s surprising that more game launches are not accompanied by films, even free to view, like “The Division” . Looking at the branded content Webby nominees this year, shows a dearth of long-form branded entertainment.Major Hollywood movies launches and hit TV franchises have multiple branded tie-ins and, with the launch of in-house branded content studios, we will see more branded content such as Jimmy Fallon’s hook up with GE.
But there is also a lot of opportunity for brands to act more like independent producers and search out valuable IP that is lesser-known, but still capable of getting massive traction. Not only is there a cost advantage, but there is a freshness to partnerships outside of the usual Avengers/X-Men/Pixar/NBA/Formula One deals. Fruit Ninja, the world’s No 2. mobile game, just announced a feature movie. “The Lego Movie” producers are developing “Serial” into a TV show, and, of course,” season two of “Serial” found a backer at Cannes Lions last year. Twitch stars are reminiscent of YouTube stars a few years back, and with ever-changing media there are always new and unusual platforms to host the IP. It doesn’t all have to be a risky theatrical movie. It will be interesting to see how Sony’s “The Emoji Movie” fares at the box office.Angry Birds isn’t just a game, it’s a movie, a series, a media platform (in-game, across its social platforms, and through a newly announced book publishing division).
It’s an ad agency with multiple brand relationships and it is, of cours,e a toy company. Similarly, brands are no longer just a checkbook, cutting sponsorship opportunities. In media, everybody’s role is changing and overlapping, and on the brand side that means brands are networks and platforms that bring value, experience, audience and data in their own right. Pepsi just announced a content studio, which will invest in entertainment as a means for underwriting marketing. This week, Mondelez did the same. Similarly, brands need think of branded content not only in terms of a campaign, but how that content can provide a range of benefits across the spectrum of their media interests and activities. The best branded content is a franchise rather than a one-off.We are in a world where everything is branded content, whether that’s on an individual level or on a corporate level. “The Angry Birds Movie” is a success, in-part, because they were able to get many other brands to back their vision and help push the film.
Sony’s promotional budget was estimated to be $400 million, and that was paid not just by Sony (the film studio), but by a range of promotional partners including McDonald’s (who launched a VR thing and multi-colored burger buns) and Microsoft, which launched branded emoji’s. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sony worked with “more than 100 companies to get the word out — from go-to kids brands like McDonald’s, to less obvious partners like the Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt chain, the Happy Egg Company and even French automaker Citroën.” Internationally, Angry Birds launched more than 1 billion “BirdCodes” that connect the physical and the digital world by helping unlock additional power-ups and characters. These codes are in the game, on a packet of Gems or outside the game, on a McDonald’s happy meal box, a Lego playset, or a pack of Kurkure, and apparently they are also to be found during the end credits of the movie. Like Google’s “Moon Shot” series or Intel’s maker movement reality series, “Angry Birds” is branded content that is big enough that other brands can live within and help propel.