Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back once again with another installment of Shaman's Thoughts: where I pretend to be a know-it-all for one post. We're over a week removed from San Diego Comic-Con, the nerd equivalent of the Superbowl, and the smorgasbord of concept art, comic announcements, and most of: trailers; and aside from Justice League and Thor, the two trailers throughout that weekend that stood out for me are Rocko's Modern Life and Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie. Between Rocko's updating to current times and the jokes surrounding it and The Jungle Movie's nods to past Hey Arnold episodes, what was shown during SDCC weekend made fans aplenty happy, but it also brought something up that's been on my mind for well over a year now.
This year so far is looking to be a good one for reviving older animated series. Aside from the trailers I just discussed, there's the Ducktales reboot which looks like it'll be a fine show from the footage that's been shown, Samurai Jack's 5th season was an overall success, and there's excitement for the 3rd season of the Netflix Voltron show. This is a big difference as opposed to last year when The Powerpuff Girls reboot was often an object of ridicule and ire on the internet, before that it was Teen Titans Go.
While it seems as though reboots to older cartoons pop up left and right in recent years, this trend, for lack of a better word, has been around for much longer. Franchises like Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, and Tom and Jerry have been around for decades and to this day they are still getting new series and direct to video films. But with social media as prominent as it is nowadays, whenever a Be Cool Scooby-Doo or a Teen Titans Go makes it way to television, people ask why do companies/studios bring back these series? Why can't they focus on something new and fresh?
And in that pursuit of money, sometimes a studio may dig up an old property and try something new with it. From a business standpoint, it makes sense These series may have made serious money for whatever company owns them in the past so you'd probably put more faith in them than take a risk on something completely new. It makes sense as to why you'd want to reboot Ben 10, even if you've finished the franchise's fourth series. Cartoon Network more than likely made bank off of selling toy omnitrixes and alien figures. So why wouldn't you want to bring it back so you can make more profit off of it?
You know what can be a very powerful driving force into making something a profit or not? Nostalgia. This new reboot made be created to garner newer and younger fans, but longtime Fans of an old product will be keeping an eye out on said product if it's been brought back like a hawk. Whether good or bad, they'll tune in just to watch it and see how it is. If it IS good however, those older fans may want to buy DVDs or Blu-Rays, and the most hardcore will buy other kinds of merch to go with their recent purchases.
The best or most recent example of turning nostalgia into profit by reviving an old property I can think of may be Dragon Ball. Once Dragon Ball GT ended in Japan in 1997, outside of video games and a 30 minute OVA in 2008, fans had gone well over a decade without any new Dragon Ball content. While it wasn't as long for US DB fans (GT finished airing in 2005) their was still a clamoring for more DB. Then in 2013 a little movie called Battle of Gods came out, and needless to say it sold unbelievably well, that's not even taking how well it did in the states into factor, and the fact it came out in the US theaters for a limited time a year after it did in Japan. Battle of Gods' success is the spark that led to the resurgence of Dragon Ball we're currently in, with Dragon Ball Super 100 episodes in and not stopping anytime soon, and all the money off of new game s and merchandise the people at Toei animation are more than likely drowning in.
Now while the end all be all to an animated series's revival stems down to money, there may also be some other beneficial reasons that will coincide with it. That reason could be the fact that the show could've possibly been cancelled prematurely when there were obviously plans for more from the team behind the show. Take the picture above. This is a picture of the show Young Justice. The show was cancelled in 2013 because of low merchandise sales. Family Guy is another example. While the show today is 15 seasons in, back in the year 2002, things weren't so great as the show was cancelled 3 seasons in, before airing that season's final episode. But in those cases, sometimes through the power of the fan the themselves showing that there's a demand for their favorite show through buying video releases or through constant streaming on Netflix, that someone may take a look and bring said show back, allowing that creator to continue or finish something they've put a lot of effort into and want to write the final chapter on.
But sometimes when the idea of bringing an animated series comes into a studio's mind, they may not care about bringing back the original creator or through various other reasons, they can't bring them back. You just want the name recognition of a series and to update it to modern times for a modern audience. But it's with that mentality that so many reboots anger older fans. In your efforts to modernize your old show, you run the dangers of actually dating your rebooted show. But every now and then you do run into that series that fully understands that point and in doing so, you get something that not only captures the spirit of the original series, but improves on it. Something akin to Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, the short lived Thundercats reboot in 2012, or the current Ninja Turtles series on Nickelodeon.
What I'm trying to get at with this post here folks is that with the way things are going Cartoon revivals and reboots aren't stopping anytime soon. Is it a bad thing though? Not necessarily. If a creator has a story to tell with an older property then they should be allowed to tell it...unless your Genndy Tartakovsky then your story gets booted for a movie about emojis...
So when your favorite cartoon is announced to have a new series, don't write it off just yet. Who knows? The product you get may just surprise you. Then again, what do I know? I thought the Powerpuff Girls reboot was gonna be good...
Til next time folks, I'm The Shaman of Animation saying if you you went to see the Emoji Movie ironically, remember this:
If that movie gets a sequel, it's your fault.
Take care...
No comments:
Post a Comment