Hey guys. Popping by to offer my thoughts on newfangled
Thundercats, while I've just watched the pilot and it's fresh in my head.
The problem for me and
Thundercats is I've given so much thought over the years to how
I would remake it, that the new show is never going to live up to that. That said, a year ago when I first heard the terms 4°C and Thundercats in the same sentence, it seemed like a guaranteed win. Kinda like Darabont/zombies/AMC, but I guess there are no certainties in life.
Thundercats (80s) was a really interesting show. Fashioned for an American audience and the
He-Man market, but animated by that unique Topcraft team assembled for the Rankin Bass fantasy movies. Those movies are unique, the (Tsuguyuki Kubo?) character designs make extraordinary use of line, fleshing out weird excesses of facial detail in what feels like a John Bauer or Edmund Dulac influence, tempered (but only slightly) to the mechanics of Japanese animation. Throw into that the Frazzeta-lite demands of a western toy franchise and you have something that is just plain weird looking, in a really good way. And the next thing those guys did was
Nausicaa, which proves how deliberate they were being.
So I thought 4°C, who are weird in a good way, would be the ideal studio. But the results, overall, are kinda meh.
I generally like the look of the Cat characters, especially the incidentals. The anatomy and spacial forms are all solid and nice to look at. I also appreciate their maintaining a version of the original pallete, but the bad guys are dreadful. The reptilians look like hastily designed cartoon geckos, like something off a cereal box, with big cartoon features that don't match the rest of the show. This is converse to the original show, where the 'big gay friends' that were the Thundercats were always the most risible element. It was the villains that were compelling, both aesthetically and in character.
The biggest disappointment though is Mumm-Ra. Not just because his entrance is premature and rushed, or that he still seems to be just the same vulnerable old trickster who's afraid of the light, but because his design is merely a predictable Deviant Art 'update' of the original design. The original is one of my favorite ever character designs, always drawn
fast and loose with expressive sketchy lines. I can see they're trying to allude to that, but this new design is just an excercise in that 'dynamic triangles' thing which American nerds think improves all character designs (because they never looked at a drawing their whole lives more than 50 years old). The 80s design was always strange and ambiguous too. Why does his mouth have that primate shape? Is it just an
overhang from Kubo's aesthetic preoccupations and the influence of European fantasy artists , or is he supposed be from the Monkian species of mutant? The 2011 version on the other hand, has a weird bum for a chin. No two ways about it. Bum chin.
There are great moments of animation in this show. Not necessarily in the action scenes unfortunately, but great character moments, particularly with Kit and Kat which recall all the great child and teen animation in Morimoto's films for the studio. But while I recognise that the 80s show nosedived after the pilot, there's nothing in this new pilot to match the best moments of that particular film. And goddamit but the backgrounds are dull.
I really wanted to like this show, because the original had so much compelling material in it yet ultimately was just a frustrating hodge-podge of freelance writing and inconsistent outsource animation. I'm sure I can trust this new one to offer a consistency and overall upping of production quality that its higher budget demands, but I was left without any reason to join it on that journey. The hero characters may have been greatly improved, but the villains are still muted and nonthreatening. I know that a lithe armored superhero can defeat a cartoon lizard, they've shown me that Mumm-Ra can still be defeated equally by pointing a sword at him or the sun coming up. They rammed in and resolved too much too fast, leaving no reason to suspect that the rest of the show will be anything other than episodic, but with bells on. And just like in my childhood, I'm going to be left trying to figure out how 'Mumm-Ra the ever living' can be 'ever living' when he can only appear temporarily, and surely it's 'regular Mumm-Ra' that is actually the ever living one (daylight notwithstanding).
Basically, it's on a par with the Mike Young He-Man reebot from ten years back. Which was fun for a bit, but stopped being interesting once the production quality tapered in the second hour, and I left it to trundle away on it's journey of revisionism.
Tony, your insight on new Thudercats and the old one is very interesting. I haven't watched the new show and the old show is still fuzzy to me.
There are something I don't understand about your statements. What's Dynamic triangle? Is it a design rule that has another definition?
You're so right about the background. When I watched the new clip, overall architecture and landscape feel underdeveloped and dull. I was disappointed when I saw the same Thundercat HQ building mixed with hastily assembled Greco-Roman architecture. I know it's iconic in a way, but I was expecting far better upgrade than blue headed cat monument. I was hoping for some excellent art directors like Shinji Kimura of Tekkon Kinkreet or folks at Studio Kusanagi who did the Guin Saga anime. I have a feeling that art directors are either inexperienced or American side provided poor concept arts which Japanese side wound up using them as reference.
)... Το ότι αυτόματα τα συγκρίνουμε και φυσιολογικότατα δεν θα μας προξενήσουν τα ίδια συναισθήματα (είτε λόγω ηλικίας είτε λόγω των ανωτέρω μνημών/"μαγείας" που λαμβάνονται ως σταθερά) το συμπεριλαμβάνουμε στην σκέψη μας πριν αρχίσουμε την κρητική;
