The next 80s & early 90s cartoon that deserve a movie deal
- Thread starter EmoBorg
- Start date
I hope the same person who did that Thundercats live action trailer, takes a crack at a Thundarr one!
If they do Thundarr they should still have the runaway comet hitting in 1994.
A write in vote for another Filmation series, ''Blackstarr''. Another one season wonder-Filmation had the worst luck getting networks to order second seasons of their shows that did well. And why they never revived it after jump starting the first run syndication craze with He-Man is mystifying.
Deep love for StarCom, an actual science fiction animated series. Again, a show that I wished had continued beyond it's single season.
Deep love for StarCom, an actual science fiction animated series. Again, a show that I wished had continued beyond it's single season.
They'll probably just make it a nuclear war or something. The comet didn't even *hit* Earth, it just passed between it and the Moon. I always wondered how that would have resulted in the waste that we saw.
And I'd definitely like to see how they handle Gemini in live-action...
Wow, I'm sure Catwoman will be surprised to learn she's actually a cat. Not to mention Batman, Spider-Man, Maggie the Cat, the Reservoir Dogs, Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, the cast of Animal House, etc. Audiences are not as literal-minded as you assume they are.
Yes, the Thundercats were cat-themed characters, but they looked mostly human. See for yourself. There's nothing there that would be difficult to achieve with prosthetic makeup. Indeed, here's a piece of fan art someone did that shows what a literal translation of the cartoon characters to live action might look like:
http://smhttp.14409.nexcesscdn.net/806D5E/wordpress-live/images/thundercats-movie-poster.jpg
But -- and this is the point -- they still look basically human. We're not talking about what they're alleged to be in the abstract. This is not an ontological debate. We're talking about the specific question of whether it would be technically feasible to do a Thundercats film in live action. So the only thing that matters to that discussion is what they look like.
Well, given that Blackstar was essentially a prototype for He-Man, it would've been kind of redundant. They both starred a bare-chested hero who wielded a magic power sword, rode on the back of a fantasy creature, and fought to defend a world of magic in an alien dimension from an evil conqueror played by Alan Oppenheimer. They even used the same trope of an Earth astronaut falling into that other dimension, John Blackstar in the former case, Queen Marlena in the latter.
But it would be cool to see Blackstar's gorgeously animated dragon Warlock brought authentically to life in live action. And it would be nice if a reboot did what Filmation originally wanted to do but wasn't allowed to at the time, which was to make the lead character black (hence the name, though it would probably be a little too on-the-nose to modern ears).
Other media have muddled the property, but I think the most successful translation to film would be the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfif5DiGMYc
I've also always had a soft spot for Thundarr the Barbarian; Jack Kirby's involvement certainly didn't hurt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAobPugvsk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfif5DiGMYc
I've also always had a soft spot for Thundarr the Barbarian; Jack Kirby's involvement certainly didn't hurt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAobPugvsk
Please... Not Captain Planet... unless it's the Robot Chicken version.
VENOM had better vehicles, but MASK had Boulder Hill, which was hands-down one of the most awesome Christmas presents I ever received.
Count me in with those who'd like to see a Defenders movie, with separate movies for the major characters leading up to it (the recent Phantom miniseries wasn't even that bad an attempt at a modern version).
As for other shows,
- David de Kabouter is a Dutch cartoon that would make a nice movie for kids, but I'm afraid they'd turn it into a mere shadow of itself like they did with the Smurfs.
- Heathcliff is sadly another show where the suits would try to make the humans more than mere background characters.
- Dennis the Menace could make a hillarious movie if they actually managed to turn it into something as crazy as the cartoon instead of the hopelessly toned-down movie we ended up with.
- Bubblegum Crisis is an anime classic that would look amazing on the big screen, but it's another case where today's entertainment industry would just ruin the project (especially considering how brutal the original was at times).
- Area 88 is another classic about a group of mercenary pilots fighting a border war in the middle of nowhere. Would look great, but considering how deep Hollywood's involvement with the military has become ...
As for other shows,
- David de Kabouter is a Dutch cartoon that would make a nice movie for kids, but I'm afraid they'd turn it into a mere shadow of itself like they did with the Smurfs.
- Heathcliff is sadly another show where the suits would try to make the humans more than mere background characters.
- Dennis the Menace could make a hillarious movie if they actually managed to turn it into something as crazy as the cartoon instead of the hopelessly toned-down movie we ended up with.
- Bubblegum Crisis is an anime classic that would look amazing on the big screen, but it's another case where today's entertainment industry would just ruin the project (especially considering how brutal the original was at times).
- Area 88 is another classic about a group of mercenary pilots fighting a border war in the middle of nowhere. Would look great, but considering how deep Hollywood's involvement with the military has become ...
All this fondness for Defenders of the Earth is startling to me. I never cared for it. It wasn't a fraction as good as Filmation's Flash Gordon from a few years earlier. It was just a generic '80s adventure cartoon, and it disappeared after just a year, so I'm surprised it's even remembered. I guess we all have nostalgia for what we grew up with. But I really don't see any chance that Hearst/King Features Syndicate would choose to revive that particular short-lived incarnation of their classic comic-strip heroes. (Particularly since it was a co-production with Marvel, so I wonder if there might be rights issues.)
Depends on how you look at it.
In my case it's not the show itself, but the main characters (Flash, Mandrake, Phantom) and Jedda (it's interesting that a woman might continue the legacy) that made it interesting. The rest of the show was pretty much 80's eye candy (lots of kids to cater to the cartoon's target audience).
In my case it's not the show itself, but the main characters (Flash, Mandrake, Phantom) and Jedda (it's interesting that a woman might continue the legacy) that made it interesting. The rest of the show was pretty much 80's eye candy (lots of kids to cater to the cartoon's target audience).
Gravity did most of the work. Check out the opening and look closely at the "comet" (actually a "runaway planet"):
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYyRtkqsV6c[/yt]
It's something the size of the moon passing at high speed through a space only 300,000 kilometers wide. The gravity associated with such violent motion would be enough to damage both bodies, and damaging the moon would affect its gravitational influence on the Earth's surface, causing more damage. It's not completely far-fetched. The movie version could go with that explanation and remake it with Armageddon-like CGI.
That would be awesome!
Yeah, but the point is, most of those characters have existed in independent comic strips since the 1930s. They're three-quarters of a century old, and people are talking about them in terms of a show that ran for one season. Most of what's interesting about those characters has nothing to do with that show.