Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
How many of you watched the Peanuts holiday specials over the last few months? For many of us, it’s an annual tradition of viewing the classic Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas shorts starring Charlie Brown and friends, but this was my first time introducing them to my son. Briefly, anyway. I quickly realized that they’re pretty damn depressing cartoons and not always entertaining for little kids. How have they been such a staple for almost half a century? At least my son liked the Snoopy and Woodstock bits in each. Maybe it’s for similar reason that Fox has been focusing on the little beagle and bird duo in their promotions for their upcoming The Peanuts Movie, which is due in November.
Then again, there’s not much that’s more depressing than World War I, and so far the primary sequence shown to us in teaser trailers is Snoopy as ace pilot of his doghouse – flying in the style of a Sopwith Camel – over Paris. Sure, it’s as light a tone as Snoopy fighter plane scenes ever are without evoking any reminders of the reality of the Great War. We’ll leave it to good ol’ Charlie Brown to make his most Charlie Brown-est entrance yet in the computer-animated feature talking of how he’s not happy or in the holiday spirit because of Ebola, terrorism, war and other suffering in the world.
Chuck and the other human Peanuts characters do show up in the latest teaser, Mr. Brown once again being laughed at cruelly for being a butterfingers with his popcorn at the movies (I find spillage of popcorn upsetting, not funny, both as a popcorn lover and a former cinema usher). You might notice that this is almost the same teaser we saw back in November, only the opening sequence with Snoopy and Woodstock is now just wintery themed rather than Christmas theme. Watch it after the jump if you’re interested in being only slightly less bummed than you were while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.
The Peanuts Movie hits theaters on November 6, 2015.
