Its been a while. The dust has settled on Thundercats Roar, the original Thundercats is hardly touched upon nowadays, everyone had their say and now I think we're at a point where we can look back at what we got with some fresh eyes. Maybe they just needed some time to settle, or something far worse came around to make you realize that you had something before it was gone.
It's important I bring up Thundercats Roar because it plays a role in the show I'm actually talking about. Around the time discourse surrounding Teen Titans Go was at a reasonable peak, any good faith I had in the original Teen Titans was reduced to nothing and the bean-smile bullshit began, I will not say Calarts, because I think John Kricfalusi has always been shit and he invented the deragatory term. With that in mind, Thundercats Roar was seen as a byproduct of a slowly growing tumor in the animation industry. If it was a comedic spin on an action series then it must be the worst thing in the entire world. That mentality had carried on for years, and the only exception to this was Be Cool Scooby Doo, then again with something like Velma I wouldn't be surprised if Get a Clue was gonna get another shot.
Now, where the hell am I going with this? There was another Thundercats cartoon that came out years prior, and only one person of note ever mentioned it. I had never seen anyone compare this to that cartoon, but then again by this point I deemed the entirety of the animation community to no longer be worth watching.
Title
The only two people I know who mentioned the existence of the cartoon were Guru Larry and Egoraptor. That's it. The latter was when he negatively compared Roar to it, and when Larry said that the 2011 version was superior to the 80s version in his opinion, that's it. Now that I fulfilled the title, let's move on.
Waxing
I was watching Cartoon Network around this time because I lacked any self-control. I managed to catch stuff like Mystery Incorporated, The Looney Tunes Show and stuff like that, and if you want my opinion on those back when I saw them with fresh eyes... I didn't really care about them. I watched them when they were on but I thought very little about them. For The Looney Tunes Show they had the worst portrayal of Lola Bunny by far, annoying as fuck. About the only thing that kinda interested me was the fact that Daffy Duck had a girlfriend in it.
As for Mystery Incorporated, it just so happened to be on and wasn't bad enough for me to change the channel, but it had very little impact on me. I wasn't begging for more when the last episode aired, and if anything it seems like the only reason it worked with so many people was because it played to their interests and just so happened to be the first Scooby Doo show to really try a darker format, complete with cliches.
I was never a fan of Thundercats, and any knowledge I had of it was fleeting, to say the very least. I didn't go into the 2011 series as a fan, it would be my first proper introduction to, well, just about everything. As with the previous two shows I mentioned I never felt too strongly about it. And after ten years... I barely remember anything about it.
About the only things I recall about the show that didn't come from scattered clips was part of a commercial that had Wiley Kit and Kat trying to convince Lion-O on his adventure, and parts of the fourth episode. That's it. So either I didn't really watch much of it, or perhaps, hear me out, while it has interesting ideas on the surface, they lend very little memorability. I don't like Avatar: The Last Airbender but I manage to remember a majority of it years later, it was just too big for its own good, and it set an impossible standard.
Something tells me when Cartoon Network took this show on they had Avatar fans in mind and wanted to get a similar turnout. They got a crew member from Avatar, Ethan Spaulding, to co-develop the show. He would also work on Legend of Korra, but perhaps I know him best for directing Scooby-Doo Return to Zombie Island. But you wanna know who also developed the 2011 Thundercats caroon? Michael Jelenic, who also co-developed Teen Titans Go, and of course he co-directed the Super Mario Bros Movie.
Hmmm I wonder, do I back the guy who managed to produce lucrative and successful films and cartoons, or do I back a guy who focused on toothless action shows and when he struck out he made a steaming turd...
Anyhow, regardless of fan reception, Thundercats 2011 bombed out after a single season of 26 episodes. While there isn't any concrete reason behind why, rather than just assume Cartoon Network didn't know any better, I can sum up my guess in a word...
BUDGET
Shows like Thundercats look to be quite expensive to make and manage, and if there's any indication that it's not getting the success its looking for, why sink any more money into it? When you take into account that the show's animation was outsourced to Japan, who wavers a higher price tag than Korean studios, along with managing a fairly wide cast and how prices for most animated series tend to go into the mid-high millions- fuck it, why explain business when people operate on feelings and parasocial relationships alone?
Whether it was because the show was essentially a money sink that wasn't able to get the support necessary to justify keeping it alive, or perhaps it was the schedule that people couldn't keep up with, Thundercats died out and only a small few even remember it exists. Way I see it, it's yet another example of a generic Cartoon Network action show, hitting many of the same notes as other shows like it. The ideas aren't terrible in and of themselves, but the problem is how often they're done, practically verbatim, and I feel Thundercats did not do anything new with ideas generally associated with shows like it.
I'm just saying, if they did more people would've remembered the show, well, outside of a dedicated fanbase of those who enjoy shows like it.
A lot of you may know by now that I'm not a big fan of dark action cartoons. The last one I still enjoy is Todd McFarlane's Spawn. It seems Cartoon Network, DC, Time Warner, whoever, have found a formula and milked it for all its worth, and people ate that shit up every single time. I get shows like these make up for cliches by having moments that strike a chord, but if the moments are played out verbatim to other shows like it, or you can predict what happens by the end of it, that's not good writing, I'm sorry, but it could be much better.
And it really fits into how I feel about Thundercats 2011. Once more it was either a byproduct of CN's toothless action shows, or they wanted to get Avatar fans to tune in, why else did it take so long for them to think "Huh, that's weird, I suddenly have this urge to reboot Thundercats."
They play their action scenes relatively straight, at least from what I've seen, and I assume they would do the same to everything else. For instance, let's refer to the fourth episode. The crux of that is that Lion-O and company encounter a species of people that rapidly age. When I first saw this, even back then I figured "Oh, this character is gonna die of old age.", and he does.
I get what they're going for, but there's a huge problem there. If you give any idea this character would progressively get older, you can expect them to die at any point. And unsurprisingly, they play this as a heart-wrenching moment, they took this more seriously than a keen-minded viewer would. It's honestly insulting. I hate to criticize a death scene because it's gross to comment on a tender moment, but the execution there left so much to be desired. Were they trying to make us feel bad in an earnest attempt that went wrong? Or did they do it because they were obligated to? If its the latter, it reaffirms why I really don't like shows like it, it's formulaic, and thus leads to a hollow experience. Not helping that many of these series existed to push toy-lines and get money, which not even generic animated sitcoms had that as their MO.
And I have a feeling the rest of the episodes have a checklist. Lion-O's dad is killed, we have those shipping moments, Lion-O learns to be a mature and proper warrior, drama, you get the point. If you can predict what a series would entail before you see it for yourself, it's a sign that the writing leaves much to be desired.
But you may be thinking, "You're being a dick, if the writing is at least engaging and entertaining enough you can forgive these so called overdone cliches right?" Of course, that's perfectly fine. Just because I don't see it that doesn't mean you can't. If you enjoy shows like these more power to you, I won't deny you that right just because I happen to disagree.
Not even referring to the show's overall reception, but regardless of how it's reviewed, few people ever brought it up since it aired, and the only time it saw any kind of spotlight since was when Thundercats Roar hit the scene. It didn't do anything new, which doesn't have to be a bad thing, and it'd be hypocritical for me to say that given I can forgive most adult animated sitcoms, but it's easy to see how Thundercats can be lost in the shuffle, especially given the density of other shows like it on Cartoon Network.
Maybe CN didn't do the best job at promoting it, maybe it just aired at a bad time, maybe they couldn't get it to sell toys, maybe it cost too much to manage, but by the end of it all, what does this show have that I can consider worth it, that no other show had done already?
Beyond a dedicated niche and a few reviews on YouTube, how much success did this show have? How many people are talking about it? I'll give it this, for as many times as people called everything underrated in spite of these things already being beloved, I guess it can apply to this show, if I was into the genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment