Clifford: The Big Red Dog’s Trailer Has People Freaking Out, And Not In A Good Way
The Clifford trailer has come out for the upcoming movie. No one expected it to look like this.
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There’s a Clifford: The Big Red Dog movie coming out soon. The beloved children’s book and PBS animated series have many adults signing up for a nostalgic experience with the beloved canine character. Today, we have our first look at the new live-action adaptation in the Clifford trailer, and it has many talking. Not in a good way.
See the Clifford trailer below.
In a little over two minutes, the Clifford trailer got Twitter fired up fast. There was the fact that this family-friendly movie is live-action, which maybe was a misstep on the production company’s part. There was the size of the dog, which isn’t books accurate and is making some fans too irritated to handle. And there’s, you know, some strange parts. Here’s what people are saying.
And, of course, there is discussion of that moment at the end of the Clifford trailer where he kind of tries to swallow a normal-sized dog? Yes, there’s already a gif of that.
In the Clifford trailer, you saw Darby Camp starring at the middle schooler who gets a dog, in large part to help her deal with having a hard time growing up and dealing with her classmates. John Cleese plays the pet shop owner who sounds like he has magical powers. He mysteriously promises the girl that the dog’s size will be reflective on how much she loves him. Apparently, Clifford matters to her a lot, because the dog grows very fast. Also, the family-friendly trailer suggests that possibly the magic of love lives in her tears. After she cries on the dog, we see that he has grown. A lot.
Comedian Jack Whitehall played the girl’s Uncle. The Clifford trailer doesn’t specifically show him trying to give the dog back to where it came from, or possibly away to other people, but we have to assume he at least considered that keeping a dog that size wasn’t the best idea in New York City. Still, he can’t give away the dog that has finally made the middle schooler happy, right? The veterinarian was played by Kenan Thompson from SNL.
The Clifford: The Big Red Dog director, Walt Becker, confessed to Cinema Blend that determining the dog’s look was very difficult. It was the studio, not the director, that decided the film would be live-action. Then, they had a big challenge ahead of them, particularly in how the dog should look. How big should he be? Should he look like a real-life dog, or like Scooby-Doo? These were all real questions Walt Becker had to ponder and work through with his team. They’re also decisions that Twitter users are now questioning as they’re getting a look at the Clifford trailer.
One question not being brought up much on social media, but that weighed heavily on the director and the rest of the team behind the movie, was the right shade of red for his fur. How red is too red? What is going to look right on the screen? How realistic should the shade be? The team apparently spent a long time on this decision. The shade of red, at least, didn’t appear to be a controversial note from the Clifford trailer. The dog’s size, however, definitely is. In other iterations, the main character was roughly the size of Clifford’s paw. She’s taller than his leg here. This is bothering nostalgic fans already. We’ll have to see how it sits when they’ve seen the whole movie, which releases in theaters on September 17th, 2021.
