Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Movies, of the Cartoons, of Our Youth

I am a child of the mid-eighties - early nineties, which means a couple of things.
  1. I played Sesame Street video games on my Commodore 64.
  2. I am, and forever will be, in debt to Lavar Burton for helping me learn to read.
  3. Me and the Mario brothers could do just about anything (wrangle monkeys, clean pipes, save damsels in distress)
  4. I grew up on great cartoons
As far as number four goes. I can remember coming home and plopping myself down and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, HeMan, Thundercats, Voltron and Transformers like they were my religion. These things were great and cheesy all at the same time. Having recently watched a couple episodes of Voltron I need to honestly ask, what the hell was I thinking? Don't get me wrong, when I was a kid, these things were great. But watching them know you get a sense that it was all about the moving pictures and not the content of what was happening.... enter Hollywood.

Recently there has been a major push by studios to recreate some of that childhood magic in the form of Cartoon Remake Movies. I am not talking about the Batmans and Spidermans of the world, both of which I consider to be pretty good comic book adaptations. I am talking about the new Transformers and TMNT (Couldn't they have spelled it out). With these films, I only ask one thing... Don't Mess it Up. This is my childhood we are talking about here. While I lack the knowledge of what was actually being presented on that little screen, it is still important to me. The images are important. Please Hollywood, please... don't steal my childhood.

1 comment:

Matsie said...

You are forgetting some of the best cartoons ever --

Duck Tales, Chip and Dale, Tale Spin, Gummi Bears. The Disney afternoon was a staple of our generation.


To get to your point, the recreation of these in big Hollywood style is destroying the legacy of what we enjoyed as children. If you watch a HeMan cartoon now, you'd probably be shocked at how low budget it seems, and completely ridiculous, but the memory we have is much different.

The new movies however put a nice visual impression on us, yet they completely ruin our memories. TMNT was terrible. While there is no doubt it looks better than the original cartoon, visually it is inferior to today's CGI standards set by studios such as Pixar. The content of the film is even worse. Total lack of plot or character development makes this movie a flop.

No doubt Transformers, under the direction of Michael Bay, will suck just as much, but we will find out soon enough...