Making Sense of Muppets

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http://www.lebeauleblog.com/2021/02/...se-of-muppets/

How you feel about the Muppets might tell us a bit about you. If you remember them fondly, odds are are you’re a Gen X’er. If you thinks of the Muppets as animated babies, you’re probably younger than I am. If you think of them as a lesser Disney intellectual property, you’re probably quite a bit younger.

The Muppet Show debuted in 1976 although the origins of Jim Henson’s creations go much farther back than that. Three years later, the Muppets starred in their first movie. Several sequels, a cartoon, a reboot and countless TV series followed spanning nearly five decades.

The Muppet movie franchise is especially unique. There is virtually no continuity from one movie to the next. The lead characters are puppets with consistent personality traits and wildly different situations. Sometimes they even play other characters. How do we make sense of these Muppet movies?

Before he created the Muppets, Jim Henson spent years working in television. There are lots of appearances you can point to as being proto-Muppets. Henson was a regular on the late night talk show circuit and a primitive Kermit the Frog was his alter ego long before the debut of The Muppet Show.

In those early days, Henson was specifically spoofing television. Later, when he created the Sesame Street characters, the concept was to structure the segments like commercials for letters and numbers. Before creating his own show, Henson and the Muppet performers took a more adult approach with appearances on the first season of Saturday Night Live.



A through line to most of Henson’s Muppet work was that it was geared around the medium of television. Not only was he making content for television, a lot of it was commenting on television. When he finally got his own show to play with, Henson assumed the structure of a popular TV format of the seventies; a variety show.

If you go back and watch the first season of The Muppet Show, a lot of it feels “off”. For example, Miss Piggy looks and sounds very different. Henson and company were still finding just the right tone for the Muppets even as they were starring in their own TV show.

I worked through this brief history of the Muppets to make two points. First, the Muppets were created for television. And it’s possible that’s where they work best. Secondly, the tone of the Muppets is really difficult to nail down. Despite years of experimentation, it still took the characters’ creators a full season before they hit their stride.

I am not going to pretend to know exactly what makes the Muppets work. I know when they don’t work. It helps to have the original performers involved, but it is possible to do good work with the Muppets without their participation.

For my money, the Muppets need to be funny. If Kermit isn’t funny, he’s Mickey Mouse. Henson’s Muppets were irreverent and subversive. However, they weren’t the Looney Tunes either. There’s a sweet spot somewhere between Bugs Bunny and Mickey and Friends which is where the Muppets live.

The Muppet Show was still popular when it ended. But Jim Henson was ready to move on to bigger and better things. He wanted to make movies. The Muppets were a way to make that happen.



Henson produced the first Muppet movie (appropriately titled The Muppet Movie), but it was directed by James Frawley. That title doesn’t exactly suggest there will be sequels. It wasn’t A Muppet Movie or The First Muppet Movie. It was THE Muppet Movie.

The story is pretty meta. The Muppet Movie tells a simplified version of Henson’s path to creating the Muppets with Kermit and Fozie filling in for Henson and Frank Oz. But we’re not just watching a movie about the Muppets. Instead, we’re watching a movie made by the Muppets about how they came to Hollywood to make movies which is actually inspired by the real life story of how a guy came to Hollywood to make movies.

There are running gags and characters who break the fourth wall. And one point, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem just read the movie’s script to get caught up. And the whole thing is bookended with scenes of the Muppets attending the premiere of the movie that they made. For most of the runtime, we’re not actually watching Kermit. We’re watching Kermit play Kermit.



Two years later, Jim Henson got a chance to direct a sequel. Things get interesting with The Great Muppet Caper. In this one, Kermit, Fozie and Gonzo are investigative reporters for reasons that are never explained. (As a running gag, Kermit and Fozie are also supposed to be identical twins despite being different species).

The sequel is basically a heist movie starring the familiar Muppet characters as we have never seen them before. Are we watching another movie created by Muppets? Was Kermit contractually obligated to star in The Great Muppet Caper when he signed his Rich and Famous Contract for Orson Welles?

You could drive yourself crazy asking these kinds of questions. If Kermit and Fozzie are supposed to be brothers, clearly they are playing other characters. But then why are their names still the same? Most audiences just went with it.



Frank Oz took over helming duties for The Muppets Take Manhattan. Like the first movie, this one sees the Muppets trying to fulfill a dream. They are no longer investigative reporters nor are they rich and famous. Instead, as the title implies, the Muppets are trying to make it on Broadway. It even ends with a wedding for Kermit and Miss Piggy.

WHAT?!?

That seems like a pretty big deal, right? Much was made of the nuptials in the movie’s marketing. But it was understood that this wasn’t a real wedding for the Muppets. It was part of the movie in which they played characters who tied the knot. What most people remember about The Muppets Take Manhattan if they remember anything at all is that it inspired The Muppet Babies cartoon.

Unfortunately, Jim Henson passed away in 1990. The Muppets have never really been the same since his passing. Before he died, Henson signed a deal to sell his characters to Disney, but things got complicated. I won’t try to iron out the years of legal wrangling over the rights to The Muppets. Instead, I want to stick with the movies.



The Henson family tried to take control of their father’s legacy with mixed results. Brian Henson directed the next two Muppet features which cast the characters in classic stories. In The Muppet Christmas Carol, we see Kermit playing Bob Cratchit in an adaptation of the Dickens story. Kermit portrayed Captain Abraham Smollett in Muppet Treasure Island.

It’s an odd conceit that would carry over into TV movies like The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz. But it was dropped for the next feature film. Muppets from Space is a story in which we learn the origin of Gonzo. After several movies in which the Muppets were playing other characters, this was a movie about the Muppets themselves. And it wasn’t well-received.

Then there was a dark stretch during which time the rights to the Muppets were fought over and Disney emerged victorious. But Disney didn’t seem to know what to do with the characters once they had finally purchased them. They made multiple efforts to reintroduce audiences to the Muppets, but none of them were especially successful.



In 2011, the Muppets returned to the big screen in their first movie for Disney. The Muppets was a big hit at the time despite criticism from Frank Oz. Among other things, Oz said The Muppets was less of a Muppet movie than a vehicle for Jason Segel featuring the Muppets. I know The Muppets was popular, but I am inclined to agree with Yoda on this one.

Once again, the premise is very meta. Jason Segel and his brother, who is a new Muppet, have to reunite the original Muppets. In this show, The Muppet Show was a real thing that Segel and his brother were fans of. The reboot was followed up with a less successful sequel, Muppets Most Wanted, which had a lot in common with The Great Muppet Caper.

Following the disappointing box office of Muppets Most Wanted, Disney has returned Kermit and company to television. A 2015 TV series also called The Muppets attempted to give the characters The Office treatment. As was so often the case, the tone wasn’t right and the show failed.

Most recently, the Muppets have been featured on the Disney+ streaming service with a new series, Muppets Now. From what I have seen of the show, it brings the franchise back to its roots in spoofing television. Although this time, it’s unscripted series and YouTube instead of variety shows.



One of the reasons Henson sold his characters to the Disney corporation is that he wanted to make sure they would outlive him. He had no idea at the time what a pressing concern that actually was. At the time, Henson was looking for ways to move beyond the Muppets. He wanted to expand into more mature fare like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, both of which were box office disappointments. The deal with Disney would eventually allow Henson more creative and financial freedom.

It turned out to be a Faustian bargain for Henson in some ways. Then CEO Michael Eisner demanded direct involvement from Henson on Disney’s Muppet projects. His last project was the Muppetvision 3-D show at Walt Disney World. Henson was said to be frustrated with his obligations to Disney and Eisner’s attempts to acquire the Sesame Street characters which were not for sale.

Of course the reason Eisner demanded Henson remained tied to the Muppets was that the Muppets weren’t really the Muppets without their creator. Henson and his collaborators had spent decades fine-tuning the tone of the Muppets. It was a difficult balancing act that no one has ever fully replicated.

The Muppets are technically a movie franchise with eight theatrical releases. But it’s an odd one. With almost no internal continuity and a frequently meta approach that sees puppets as movie stars playing other characters in movies and invites audiences to imagine them also working behind the scenes, the Muppets are a unique brand.

They are much larger than a movie franchise. Most Muppet entertainment has been based on TV in one form or another and that’s always been the medium they were best suited-for. But if I had to guess, I’d say their greatest value has been as an IP for merchandise. I bet Disney makes more money off of Kermit plushes than any of the movies or shows.

The Muppets have outlived their creator just as Jim Henson wanted. They aren’t the same, but they can still entertain us from time to time. It’s unlikely the characters will ever be as popular as they were in the late seventies and they will never be the crown jewel of the Disney empire. But as long as kids buy toys, the Muppets will live on.