Tybout: Zemeckis a Blue Meanie for Beatles fans

By Andy Tybout / Columnist

published: Sun, 31 Jan, 2010

Paul McCartney can relax — if any band can remain a cornerstone of popular culture fifty years after its formation, it’s The Beatles.

Whether it’s a testament to good taste or simple nostalgia, The Beatles’ legacy has latched itself onto modern pop culture — most recently in 2007’s “Across the Universe” and last year’s video game, “The Beatles: Rock Band.” But with the news that Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump,” “Contact”) will direct a remake of “Yellow Submarine,” contemporary Beatlemania threatens to cave in on itself. The question is, will the music follow suit?

Now, instead of going on a long tangent about my love of The Beatles, and reminiscing about the first time I slid The White Album into my computer, I’ll keep this short and to the point: I really like The Beatles. So in theory, I should be elated that another Beatles movie is coming out. But instead, I, like many fans, am conflicted — caught in that age-old predicament of wanting to preserve the band’s legacy without tarnishing it. Which is what I’m afraid Zemeckis might do.

“Yellow Submarine,” a remake of the trippy 1968 animated film that can easily double as an acid trip, is slated for release in 2012 by Walt Disney Pictures. The story, if I followed it at all, goes something like this: There’s this magical place called Pepperland, where everyone lives in a druggie paradise, until a gang of downers called the Blue Meanies attacks. The escaped captain of a yellow submarine must enlist the help of the Fab Four to bring music and happiness back to the land. Or something along those lines — you can watch the movie in its entirety on YouTube.

The original has an aesthetic very similar to Monty Python animations, but you can bet that’ll be lost in the glossy technology Zemeckis often employs. In particular, the new, millennial “Yellow Submarine” will feature the same performance-capture technology as some of the director’s other projects, like “A Christmas Carol” or “The Polar Express.”

Now this is all well and good from a technological standpoint, but think about it for a moment: a bunch of creepy, computer-animated Beatles look-alikes prancing about onscreen, in the midst of a nonsensical story. Aside from the music, the 1968 film’s biggest strength was its campy animation — a jarring blend of cartoon and random images pasted onto Pepperland’s delirious landscape. Without the loveably odd design, there might be little to enjoy in Zemeckis’s new edition.

Less than three years ago, in fact, Zemeckis took a treasured classic — “Beowulf” — and juiced it up with a horde of special effects, resulting in a convoluted, video-game-like mess. True, this is the same man that directed “Forrest Gump,” but I trust him considerably less after his recent string of movies.

So what will become of The Beatles if the movie turns out to be candy-colored garbage? Will their legacy be cheapened? Will their music be suffocated by a wave of commercial miasma?

Fortunately, I don’t think so. In the absence of new music, The Beatles are a commodity — something to be infinitely repackaged and sold to a nostalgic audience (many of whom weren’t even alive during the band’s advent). But that doesn’t mean it’ll be hard to separate the band’s music and its commercial offspring. Any fan with half a brain can distinguish The White Album from Kidz Bop Sings The Beatles.

Make no mistake: This new “Yellow Submarine” is a money grab. That doesn’t mean, however, that when the glossed-up new edition hits the screens I’m going to stop listening to “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Instead, I’m just going to turn the volume up.