BenPaddon.co.uk

When people watch The Simpsons these days, poised over their computer to type the immortal words “Worst… episode… ever!” on their blogs or forums of choice, they tend to focus on the quality of the writing rather than the quality of the animation. I’ve been of the opinion that the animation has become very stale - it’s flat, lifeless, soulless, and lacks all of the charm and character that the show had during the early-to-mid 90s. In fact I put forward the supposition that if you took a classic sequence from vintage Simpsons and got the current team to reanimate it, it would look horrible.

When The Simpsons Game came out and my Dad picked me up a copy as an early Yule present, my “Crap animation” hypothesis was finally realised and proven to be solid theory. Fans of the show may recall the “land of chocolate” sequence from the season 3 episode “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk”, later seen in season 4’s “So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show”. Now unfortunately I can’t find a clip of the original version from the show, but below is a clip from the same sequence re-animated by the current animation team.

What you are about to see… may shock you.

Isn’t that just terrible? I mean, really, really bad. If anyone finds a clip of the original version of this sequence, please let me know. I’d love to see a side-by-side comparison.