MetaChat - All You Need Is Awesome!

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03 June 2009

All You Need Is Awesome! Good god.. the animated trailer for "The Beatles: Rock Band" is so amazing, there's no way the game can live up to it. Watch it fullscreen with your speakers way loud.→[More:]

I've watched this at least twenty times today, and it still makes me break out in chill bumps. Watch it before you read the rest of this, if you're a Beatles fan at all.

Not only is the animation gorgeous from the beginning (when it looks like a comic book) to the end, but it compresses their entire career into 2 and a half minutes. From the grunginess of the Cavern (which was in Germany, though the trailer makes it looks like a Liverpool club) through the stadium years in America to the psychedelic breakdown to the end. It goes from flat 2D to crazy 3D as the trailer moves along. (I think the very beginning is a riff on the Thames Television logo from the 60s... any Brits agree?)

Ironically, I have no interest in the game, because I don't think these songs will work well in a Rock Band/Guitar Hero setting. But HOLY SHIT! This trailer is the best thing I've seen in ages.

post by: BoringPostcards at: 21:19 | 18 comments

I was prepared to be disappointed after your effusive introduction, but...holy crap. That was all kinds of amazing.

And, like you, I have no interest in this game, but I'll forward this commercial to dozens of people, because it's that astounding.

posted by ColdChef 03 June | 21:46

Here's the Youtube version (the ign.com one took forever to load and crashed Firefox for me). The good stuff starts after about 10 seconds.

posted by hangashore 03 June | 21:55

That was way cool. It is beautiful. We're going to get the game. The songs may not be that great but we're excited to get it.

posted by LoriFLA 03 June | 22:01

That YouTube version is so fuzzy and low-saturation, I can see why animators hate it when their stuff shows up there.

posted by BoringPostcards 03 June | 22:05

I love all the little bits of Beatles history strewn through the animation! Ironically one of the parts that doesn't work all that well is still one of my favorites: the reference to their stage set when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, with all the arrows.

That was a cool piece of pop art at the time that became part of history, but the way they did it in the trailer (out on an open airport runway) kinda lost the impact, to me. I think that was my only real beef with the trailer, though.

posted by BoringPostcards 03 June | 22:17

It is all kinds of amazing! I love the progression (BP described it much better than I can) from the beginning to end. It should win awards.

Gonna go watch it again.

posted by deborah 03 June | 22:29

That's beautiful. The Beatles played some club in Hamburg that had a cavern-y sounding name. I'm thinking something bierkeller, but that doesn't sound quite right. The Cavern was definitely in Liverpool though. I don't know about the Thames thing, it's church bells ringing like at the start of the Thames "logo", and the Port of Liverpool Building looks like St Paul's, but I'd think it's coincidence. On the other hand there are quite a few jokey references in there. I noticed Maxwell's Silver Supplies (next to a doctor's surgery), so perhaps it is a sly reference to Thames?

posted by GeckoDundee 03 June | 22:32

Oh, man, the animation gets amazing when they move into I Am the Walrus. Just fucking awesome.

posted by middleclasstool 03 June | 22:33

Yes, its awesome.

From the grunginess of the Cavern (which was in Germany, though the trailer makes it looks like a Liverpool club)

The Cavern was, indeed, in Liverpool. Its gone now, paved over to make way for a car park, but it was in Liverpool.

The Beatles played some club in Hamburg that had a cavern-y sounding name. I'm thinking something bierkeller, but that doesn't sound quite right.

The first club they played at in Hamburg was the Indra Club, later moving to the Kaiserkeller, and finally the Top Ten Club.

Wikipeida covers all this in detail

To me, more than anything, the opening of the trailer reminded me of the opening of the Anthology series, and also echoed the Free as a Bird video both in terms of the chimes and also the view of the Liverpool skyline.

Oh, and ... you kids get off my lawn. :-)

posted by anastasiav 03 June | 22:56

Ah, I see I've confused the Cavern with their original German gig. What can I say, I born in the middle of Beatlemania. :)

posted by BoringPostcards 03 June | 23:02

I would have never given that video a first look without your recommendation.

posted by Ardiril 03 June | 23:03

It is gorgeous -- so fun to see! Thanks! I loved the little insider references strewn throughout the animation as well -- like the "1 and 1 is 2" on the blackboard outside the pub. My only objection is that they didn't show them turning left at Greenland in the airplane from England to America.

posted by scody 03 June | 23:04

It was so ...Venture Brothers. I approve.

posted by The Whelk 03 June | 23:37

I am in awe of this. I'm going to listen to all my Beatles music today in honor of this video. Thanks, Beeps.

oh, and p.s: that sitting in the English garden portion totally makes me long for my hallucinogenic youth. Wherever land they shot this video in, I'm getting my passport out for pronto.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 04 June | 08:51

Do you ever feel like you've made up the universe because something that has been going on in your head suddenly gets mentioned? Say you could be talking about some obscure drink with your husband which you've never even mentioned before and then suddenly, a day later, you see it in a window display?

After a couple of years avoiding Beatles music (mostly because I basically overplayed the entire catalog on my own) I finally came around again and have had the Beatles Anthology as background noise on youtube today. Then this post.

Stuff like this always makes me wonder.

posted by eatdonuts 04 June | 13:59

The English garden portion was my favourite even though I've never taken a hallucinogenic. I really liked it when it turned in to the elephant (oliphant?) head.

posted by deborah 04 June | 14:04

I loved the "sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun" part, too! Those high-backed chairs that they're having tea in... and the sun all LOOK AT ME I'M PSYCHEDELIC in the background. Ahhhhhhhh, Beatles. I shall love you forever and ever and ever.

posted by scody 04 June | 14:37

deborah, that moment when they "reveal" the rhino-elephant thing blows my mind. I love that you hear it walking in time to the song before you see it. (The edit with the guitars kicking in right as the jet's wheels hit the runway in America is super-sweet, too.)

posted by BoringPostcards 04 June | 15:00

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