I very much enjoyed this!
… except the flying thru the buildings in the beginning part (are my eyes gettin weird, and did those buildings feel flat?)

too bad the show itself stopped being funny ages ago ;_; polishing silverwear on the Titanic, are we, FOX?

Wow… People still watch this show?

Great job! Keeps the spirit of the original and adds just enough new-ness to make it unique.

I hope THE SIMPSONS keeps going for another 25 years :}

The original was so much better. This is indicative of the drop in quality of the show. The episode was equally lackluster – about nothing.

I really wish they’d stop this show already. I can’t bare to watch episodes these days, they’re like an empty shell. I wasn’t impressed by the intro, it’s the same lame jokes and cliche setups that make the show unbearable.

The original was so charming, but I guess they might as well change it after all these years.

I still regard characters like the cat lady and the Texas oilman like stepparents who think they can replace my real parents: “but you’re not real Simpsons characters!”

“Now, now. Just because Matt Groening let go quality control, doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love you.”

>>I’m not sure the sound effects/dialogue in the intro were necessary. It felt too much like “who cares about the Simpsons family? Look at all these other wacky people!” Which, coincidentally, is how the show is now too. So it’s very appropriate.>>

Not that this criticism is entirely wrong, cause the show can be pretty wacky now and they use random secondary appearances quite a bit, but I think one of the problems in seasons 14-17 or so was that they were focussing way too much in the family. And there are only a number of conflicts you can do with the family, hence the overusing of Homer and Marge marriage crisis. In more recent episodes after the movie they are using the secondaries a little more and frankly I liked it better that way.

Of course they sometimes don’t use the right ones, there is a lot of Lenny and Carl and very little of Mr. Burns, Smithers or Barney, and some of the already mentioned new additions like Crazy Cat Lady or Rich Texan can be very obnoxious. But when they use funny secondary characters like Moe or Groundskeeper Willie is more entertaining than seeing Homer’s marriage crisis number 32.

What happened to the old, snappy timing (aside from that which is still seen in the re-used pieces)? Also, there used to be a common understanding among filmmakers that if you added a gag to a gag that was already funny by itself, then the two gags canceled each other out. The term for this was, “Bananas on bananas”. I see a lot of that in this new title piece. I still enjoy the Simpsons, but there was definitely a glory day which has passed for the series. Maybe they need more Producers!

Yeah, the Simpsons haven’t been funny in a while. The comedy is way too stale and all the characters have lost all their, well, character. Love it or hate it, it’s pretty cool that one of the longest running series on tv is an animated show.

Maybe I am not with the times, but I tried to watched the show on my non-HD TV from 2000 and this show is far from TV safe. Someone really screwed up.

There were quite a few times when a character was talking and at least half of their body was off-screen. The one I noticed the most was at the end when Bart was delivering his final line. 3/4 of his body OFF THE SCREEN! I heard his voice and saw a hand moving.

Now this maybe my fault for not updating with technology, but I can’t be the only person in america that doesn’t have an HD TV. Can I?

I’ve noticed that problem with HDTV too. Are they putting up a wide image that’s being cut off by regular TVs? I watch KCET in L.A. and the E and the T are cut off. Last night’s Simpsons wasn’t bad, but let’s face it, it’s played out.

Some of the gags are funny, but the animation is the pits!

I love the Simpsons, and while it’s become harder for the troupe to make new jokes and cover new ground, I’m amazed at how well they’ve been doing these last few years. Each season gets off to a rocky start, but there are good jokes every week, and the characters are as appealing as they ever were.

Some of the comments here can be read in the voice of the Comic Book Guy, but added hilarity.

I wonder if there will ever be a day where people can legitimately criticize the Simpsons without getting a “har har you’re comic book guy” retort. I’m convinced there’s some sort of generational gap going in both directions that prevents us all from reaching a consensus.

Anyway, the new intro is busy and lazy all at once. It’s a remarkable combination. They couldn’t be bothered to just reshoot the entire thing? They even left in the quick pan across the town before Marge pulls into the driveway– is this even needed anymore, now that they’ve crammed every B-character into all of the other shots of the intro? Weird decisions.

Because of its eternal lifespan, The Simpsons may be the only animated program still airing new episodes that (until the advent of this new title sequence) contained animation done by a studio no longer in existence. That right there should win somebody a donut.

The fact that Homer is whacked by the car rather than being chased by it sums up everything that makes me sad about the direction the show has taken. Ralph getting hit by the head of a giant stone statue does the same job – these characters used to be believeble as human beings in an alternate universe. The day they became ‘cartoon characters’ ruined everything to be honest.

PS. I just watched it again, and realised that Jebidiah Springfield was made out of metal, but it still doesn’t change the first impression it made for me. It’s sad not to see any funny drawings in there either, and gags shoehorned in on top of other gags spoil the flow rather effortlessly (but I guess if the aim was to represent the episode content that follows afterwards, then…)

What’s almost scary is that is probably not the longest or most elaborate couch gag ever.

Not a lot of sense of history, because an early episode had Bart sawing the head off that statue and the hoodlum characters here were appalled by it.

OTOH, I liked Otto eating the fuel rod.

well, any heart the show had left is now gone.

uggghhh, guys? Are you not getting the main premise of the joke, that its an HD intro, and you now “see more” of the intro? Of course, theres no more to see of the intro, as it was animation, tightly constrained. But its a joke. About HD. and seeing more. Its not supposed to be “we added stuff that wasnt there” its “HD allows you to see stuff that ‘was always there’”.

Well, I enjoyed it. I don’t really understand the complaints about “gags on top of gags” and being “too busy.” Obviously it’s intentionally dense with detail because 1. it’s an intro, you watch it over and over again and hopefully will still be able to notice new things 2. it’s a revamp of an intro that has been on for 20 years and that most of the viewers have seen literally thousands of times and 3. it’s The Simpsons, the show that invented the idea of putting in jokes you could only find by recording and pausing (long before the notion of “easter eggs”).

Man, it looks so stiff and cold compared to the old one. Less cartoony, even.

Bet a year or two from now in syndication this is edited in as the de facto opening for all 20 seasons worth of episodes, when they re-do the syndicated prints (and crop off the top and/or bottom of the image) for the HDTV aspect ratio.

the change its ok, no problem with that.

I kind of like it, it has more of the movie feel. Some of the layouts and sequences in the show itself were pretty well done too. A tad more cartoony. Im glad that at least they are trying, these fox animations have a huge budget and they should try to push there medium more since they have the means to do so. Im glad 2-d animation is meetin the digital age and i have watched it every sunday since i was a kid.

HD gag aside, as someone who has skipped most of the newest episodes, I have one question:

Are the citizens of Springfield still unaware of Jebediah Springfield’s dark side?

The biggest thing I didn’t like was some actions were out of character for some people. Like the twins playing video games in band practice, and Otto eating the inanimate carbon rod.

I did like the tv at the end.

What was the couch gag in reference to?

Its all about the gags. There is no chase or destination in this. There is no more punchline.

Also, it looks like they just moved around cardboard characters. There is no more softness. I miss soft animation. I don’t like this.

Regarding all of the “stuff is cut off on my 4:3 screen” comments, the producers probably assumed that by now all of the show’s viewers would have either an HDTV or a DTV converter box, since analog signals were originally supposed to have ceased by now.

You should be able to push the zoom button on your DTV box and set it to 16:9 mode to see the whole image.

Great job!

Now the intro perfectly matches the unfunny, bland, pointless, unoriginal, effortless, blithering stupidity and overwhelming pointlessness of the Simpsons today and of the last nearly 10 years.

This intro is supurb….

…that is, if their intent was self-parody on the virtual unwatchability of the “still-beating-a-dead-horse” and eternally dry and withered up Simpsons still utterly wasting a half hour slot that could be used for actually worthwhile programming.

But hey, on the bright side.. it’s STILL better than any part of Family Guy.