Star Lord and Nick Fury team up in a new Garfield movie. I chuckled at the trailer so that's a good thing.
The trailer looks good, and I love Garfield, I just hate that it's Chris Pratt in his Chris Pratt voice. We had the great Lorenzo Music, and then the awesome Bill Murray. Now... Chris "I sound like a regular guy and am pretty much just reading the page" Pratt. Seriously, are there no voice actors left in Hollywood? Anywhere?
Garfield sucks. And has always sucked. The fact that Federal Farmer likes it proves my point. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Am I the only geezer here that remembers "Garfield: His 9 Lives"? It shows Garfield's re-incarnations, and they ain't all G-rated. There's a 40's noir one with murder. There's a Viking one with sex jokes. There's a horror one where a real-cat looking Garfield is possessed by his sabretooth cat ancestors, and kills his old lady owner. Jim Davis used to allow some crazy shit into his universe. I miss those days.
That's not saying much. The explosive diarrhea I had last month after eating at the Cracker Barrel in Kingman, AZ was more enjoyable than reading a Garfield comic.
A Garfield origen story without Lyman is just a lie. We still do not know what happened to him. Did Garfield kill and eat him for bringing Odie into the house? If he did, why didn't he kill Odie too?
I watched the premier of Garfield himself on TV. Chris Pratt is more like Gerfield the K-mart rip off.
I do not care for the new and friendly Garfield. The original Garfield was a true sarcastic sadist. They softened him up a bit for his TV specials, but abused the fuck out of Jon. Everyone abused Jon. That was the whole relationship. I am pretty sure Lyman was either killed for Bringing Odie into the house, or just escaped and left Odie behind because he knew Jon was Garfield's pet. I also think Jon was bisexual and Lyman was his gay lover until he got enamored with Liz. Oh, and little known fact I will argue until the day I die is Liz's actual name is Lizard because there is never a correction where she is called Elizibeth by anyone in at least the first 25 books. Yes, she probably said it sarcastically, but she is never referred to in the comic as elizibeth. Maybe after the 25th book, but I had moved on by then. I do not consider the modern movies cannon.
Oh, and yes Garfield was my first geeky love. Even before Trek I read and reread every garfield related work out there. In middle school I used to have loud arguments over garfield lore, and I would hunt down new Garfield books in waldenbooks every time I was taken to the mall by my parents. The original Garfield was pretty raw sarcasm for the time. Garfield wasn't even cute in his original form. There was none of this fluffy bullshit. Garfield was fat and generally mean. It was a huge amazing thing in the original Garfield animated special that he had enough heart to save Odie. That was way OOC nice for the comic garfield. It was a good change for the kids, but comic garfield would have taken whatever he wanted from Odie's belongings, celebrated his death, and had a lasagna while making a joke about it. Jon was not the nice likable loser owner of garfield. He was the abused target of the jokes. Even his family did not like him much. Davis had to calm down the Odie abuse because people liked the character who was really just a brainless idiot for garfield to hurt. Even Nermal was more a competative cute potential replacement who fought and often lost to Garfield. A recurring character on the strip was a fucking lemming who kept trying to kill himself. Garfield never tried to stop him, and the joke was lemmings were gerbils with suicidal tendencies. The old garfield would be cancelled as fuck today. It was dark and mean. It was made for adult readers of newspaper comics, not children.
I used to love heathcliff too. The Cadillac Cats were more fun than when Garfield came out with the farm animals for the afternoon cartoons. Wordsworth was always my favorite. I always figured Garfield would win in a battle with street cats because he would convince the humans to catch them and put them to sleep. He didn't fuck around with any fighting shit, he would just leave them to the killers at the pound and have a good laugh over it while getting a nap.
Hell, he was even a sadist in Garfield & Friends. Tried to ship Nermal to Abu Dhabi, repeatedly and constantly got Odie kicked off tables, lost, sent to strangers houses, all kinds of things. Garfield's love of Odie and Jon were begrudging, and his sarcasm and zero tolerance for stupidity was always fun.