Trying to escape to a better adaptation.
Both Hollywood and the comics industry have been bringing back some the 80’s favorites, or even sooner. Josie and the Pussycats, Voltron, He-Man, Underdog, and more are all over the place. Fans, including those who grew up with these shows, should be pleased. Right?
Ask fans of Land Of The Lost if Will Ferrel did a good job on paying tribute to the old show. As Godzilla fans if the Tri-Star movie makes them less or more concerned for Legendary’s run, even though parent company Warner Brothers seems to be limiting promotion as much as possible? The problem isn’t that our childhood is coming back, it’s that it really isn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a difference between “bad adaptation” and “bad production”. Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica was a big hit but it wasn’t Battlestar Galactica, not the one Glen Larson created. I could see people getting into DC’s current (mis)interpretation of Masters Of The Universe. Keep that in mind. I even thought Man Of Steel was a decent superhero movie, but was in no way a Superman movie. The Buck Rogers I grew up with was almost nothing like the original from what little I’ve seen, but I still enjoy it. We’re talking strictly about how my childhood favorites are being interpreted and I find it lacking.
Can you give it back to the real He-Man?
As a second disclaimer I’m not saying it has to be a clone of the original and can’t do anything different. Cartoon Network’s interpretation of He-Man and the Masters Of The Universe and Thundercats were new but the spirit of the original was still there, more so in He-Man than Thundercats but they felt like new takes. There was also the Ape Entertainment run of Richie Rich comics that felt like a good update but did something almost completely new by adding elements of Jonny Quest. Speaking of which, the Real Adventures was a better update of its property than Doctor Who. However, the Voltron comic didn’t feel like it understood the original, and Land Of The Lost looks more like a bad parody than a reinterpretation. (See the 90’s Land Of the Lost for a better version.)
There are a few reasons why this is. One is that the license holders are just looking to make money off of their brand, and when a studio, be it comic, TV, or movie, comes calling they’re happy to make some extra cash. World Events has no visual problem with Dynamite’s Voltron, Hasbro (know for being very hands on in the past) has registered no issues with Bay’s version of the Transformers (which gets treated as nostalgia despite the line still being produced when Steven Spielberg saw a movie opportunity), and Sid & Marty Krofft were praising the movie before it came out. (Haven’t heard what they said after, though.)
Another reason is the producers of these movies and comics, who have either no real knowledge of the originals, thus making a poor update, or have the mindset that they can do it better, which seems to be DC’s mantra with their own properties. This is why the upcoming Godzilla movie is ignoring all but the first when it comes to designing their movie, since they think it was the only good one. This is why 7-Zark-7 was missing from the Battle Of The Planets comic (which you may recall I gave much praise to) while acting closer to the original Gatchaman. Frankly, Ross and the writer he got should have just called it Gatchaman and been done with it. And this is why the He-Man comic has Orko turning evil (yes, someone told me what Giffen has done to him in the New 52 crossover), Wendy and Marvin (of the Superfriends) being horribly mutilated, or Scrappy-Doo being made the villain, in hopes of appeasing the people who hate those characters. Actually, there’s a lot wrong with the live-action Scooby movie based on searching the wrong forum.
An example of a proper updating.
The solution is rather easy and will not only allow you to appease the fans and the detractors but still make money for the license holders. Find fans who can write a good story without making it into fanfic or promoting pet characters. Or at least find someone who will research the original and try to give it a modern twist without ruining what people love about it. This has been done. Batman ’66, Devil’s Due’s run on Voltron (even if “A Legend Forged” was terrible), at least some of Dreamwave’s Transformer stories (too bad they were never paid), the aforementioned He-Man and Thundercats cartoons, and the occasional fan comic/artwork/film show that you can update a property for a modern audience without losing the magic of the original that made that property so highly sought after in the first place. Instead of angering fans, make them enjoy this new version, let them decide if it’s better or not, and still reach a new crowd. It can and has been done.
But as long as scripts feel like they were designed for something else (I’m still convinced that Underdog was a failed script for a live-action version of the then-active Krypto The Superdog cartoon), as long as they’re in the hands of writers and directors who do not understand, if not having outright contempt for, kids and nostalgic properties, and the license holders aren’t that interested in protecting the spirit of those properties, our childhood will continue to be raked for movies and comics that only bear the names of our favorite shows and characters. While this does sadly block a REAL adaptation of our old favorites, we can only hope the license holders capitalize on this and bring us the old shows back on home video or Hulu or something, so we can remember (and admittedly question at times) what we loved so much about this part of our childhood.
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