Raja Gosnell, director of the upcoming sequel film Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, told SCI FI Wire that he brings a surer hand to the film franchise after learning things from the first one. "I think we learned a lot on the first movie, and we learned where our strike zones are," Gosnell said in an interview. "And it seemed like the nostalgic stuff worked the best, when the gang was together doing what the gang does. So we designed this movie around the classic monsters, bringing the classic monsters back, bringing them alive."
In Scooby 2, the Mystery Inc. gang finds themselves fighting some of the old ghosts and creatures from the classic animated TV series. That's a marked contrast to the first movie, in which the gang found itself splintered and at odds, Gosnell said. "[It] seemed like when the gang was fighting in the first movie, it was not necessarily how it wanted to be. So it feels better in this movie. The gang's all working together. They have their own personal issues they have to deal with, but they're still a gang, it's a mystery, we're going to solve this thing. And it just generally has a more positive tone, I'd say, than the first movie."
At the same time, Scooby 2 has found its balance, unlike the first one, which seemed at times to struggle between straight homage and tongue-in-cheek satirization. "I would say that was again one of our big learning curves on the first movie, and I think that we've found just the right balance in this movie," Gosnell said. "I think there's enough of that to satisfy the hard-core Scooby fans. There are some winks. There is some innuendo. But overall, the tone of the movie is much more of a mainstream, all-audience type of a movie. I'd say there's been a tonal shift, but there's still those little nuggets in there that we tried to save for fans." Scooby-Doo 2, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Linda Cardellini and Matthew Lillard, opens March 26.
Courtesy of SCI FI Wire |
