If only that’s what was coming. Wait, I should do the bit.
He is the terror that flaps in the night!
He is the reboot that spits on the original!
He is…Disney’s latest bad remake idea!
In case you haven’t heard, Disney+ wants to bring back the masked mallard (not to be confused with that time Scrooge McDuck did a stint as the Masked Mallard in the original Ducktales) for more adventures in the city of St. Canard. The Ducktales reboot showed that you can do something different and make a good reboot that honors the source material. There’s a trick to it, though, and from what I’m seeing here the magician has left the stage.
Before you yell at me, all we have is a plot, not a series. I’m not reviewing the series. Yes, it might be good…until you find out who’s behind this new incarnation: Seth Rogen. Additionally, I’m looking at everything else, like the teaser image…
…and not getting my hopes up, which is the opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing. DW needs to lose some weight. Yeah, yeah, “Dark Knight Returns homage” or whatever, but I hated that design, too. Maybe the style will be tweaked, but what they have here really doesn’t work. And neither does everything else I’m seeing about this show.
First, there’s the plot, From Variety, article linked to earlier:
The official logline states, “For the last 35 years, Darkwing Duck has been trapped in his worst nightmare: an alternate world that’s never heard of his superhero exploits. Now a rebellious teen named Duckie who knows all about his heroic past shows up to pull this ego-fueled vigilante back into battle. Together, this unlikely duo will get dangerous to fight old enemies like Negaduck and Megavolt and reunite with allies Launchpad, Gosalyn and Morgana to save the entire universe.”
That means this isn’t a reboot, it’s a relaunch of the original Disney Afternoon continuity, like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Doctor Who gave us. A reboot is a new continuity with new takes on the characters, like DuckTales received. Frankly, that’s where they should have gone: continue the already praised reboot of Scrooge and company. In that show, Darkwing Duck was a TV show character along the lines of Batman ’66. Jim Starling played the character, but a young Drake Mallard took the character’s never give up attitude and desire to help others and wanted to play that role, giving a new generation the same hero he had growing up for kids who were like him as a child. So instead of following the celebrity culture in Hollywood, as Starling did, Drake wanted to actually be an actor to bring kids who needed a hero like Darkwing what they needed. I’m not sure if “based” is the right term, but it works for me!
I’m also not against bringing back the old continuity, but Disney doesn’t make cartoons like that anymore, when they make them at all. Bob Iger was too busy pushing for his live-action demakes of Disney’s library because he’s more in the celebrity culture than Starling and Hollywood hates cartoons–just the guy NOT to run a multimedia empire created by an animator with the goal of pushing the limits of cartoon storytelling.
So we have Darkwing trapped in another dimension (the Negaverse?) brought back by Seth Rogen’s original character so they can age up Gosalyn and Honker (that’d be my bet…they hate kids) and probably do some grimdarkish recreation of…oh, did I not mention Seth Rogen is the one of the producers? Not the executive producer; that title goes to head writers Sean Tretta and Borja Peña Gorostegui. So maybe it’s their original character who has to come in and save Darkwing. Looking at their credits, Gorostegui has two writing credits, and this is one of them, while Tretta as writer and producer worked on Star Trek: Picard, 12 Monkeys, The Great American Snuff Film, The Death Factory Bloodletting, and other credits that make him ill-suited to bring back a kids cartoon that aired on ABC Saturday Mornings and weekday syndication for kids. At least he has some producer credits…also not suited for kids. It only gets worse from here.
Rogen isn’t just producing, he’s voicing Launchpad McQuack! Terrence McGovern, who voiced Launchpad in the original series, seems to still be active and this is a continuation of the original series. Barring that, Beck Bennett is also still active and not only did a great job, but to a new generation his voice is that of Launchpad’s, and he was the character that tied DuckTales to Darkwing Duck outside of the occasional Gizmoduck appearance. The man needs to be saved from the Gunnverse anyway. (He’s allegedly Steve Lombard…as in they have to convince me that character is Steve Lombard.) Rogen is not my first choice. He’s not good at having a different voice. With his ego, I’m actually surprise that he’s not voicing the title character.
No, that role went to Mark Hamill. Look, whatever you think about his current political ramblings (personally I don’t care what he thinks of Donald Trump–USING HIS GRANDKIDS BECAUSE THEY WORE STAR WARS COSTUMES AT HALLOWEEN TO ATTACK THEIR GRANDFATHER IS MORE JOKER THAN LUKE SKYWALKER!!!), the man’s a darn good voice actor. I just don’t hear him as Darkwing. Watch that Justice League Action episode where he plays numerous roles. There isn’t a lot of voice range between Hamill playing himself, the Joker, the Trickster (both roles he’s played elsewhere) and Swamp Thing (his usual role in the show). When I hear them talk, I’ll be surprised if I hear Drake and Launchpad instead of Hamill and Rogen. At least I trust Hamill to be good in general, if not Darkwing specifically.
Of course, all of the fans brought up the lack of Jim Cummings, the original voice of Darkwing who came back to play Jim Starling in the rebooted DuckTales who eventually fell into being that continuity’s Negaduck. (The original show had him as Darkwing’s mirror universe twin, with Cummings in both roles. We even visit the “Negaverse” in one episode.) Of course, Cummings has been treated poorly by Disney for awhile now, the final insult being Bob Iger getting an award for service to Disney while Cummings, who voiced numerous character for them, including Winnie The Pooh and of course Darkwing! Plus he worked on other Disney projects like Hondo in the Star Wars cartoons. I wanted to find the video of just his Disney roles, but they’re in there. Even Cummings had to comment on the slight after his fans noticed and rallied on social media.
That might be why Disney didn’t hire him, and let’s get that straight. He wasn’t “fired’, he just wasn’t hired for that particular version of Darkwing. That’s like saying he was fired from the DuckTales reboot in favor of Chris Diamantopoulos. That wasn’t the case there, either. Although again, this isn’t a continuation from that reboot, which I’m sure would have been far better received. That’s how today’s kids met Darkwing and us kids from the past didn’t mind despite the new origin of an actor who became his childhood hero instead of the latest in a line of heroes working for a spy organization and fighting crime. (Tad Stones, the show’s creator who supposedly consulted but was probably ignored, first envisioned a spy series but it was turned into a superhero show.) Instead they went for the big names, because that’s how Disney works. Production started before Iger left…if he left. We know what happened last time.
There was also some theories surrounding perceived political affiliations, which the article two paragraphs up mentions, but that’s only speculation. Granted, the two replacements are heavily one-sided politically, but I think it’s more Cummings finally acknowledging they were already ignoring his contribution given that Bob Iger got an award Cummnings should have had years ago. His only response: “I hope they get what they deserve”, without saying what that is. Class act. The rest of the cast are not voice actors, which Hamill and Rogen at least can claim. It’s all about the “important” celebrity names and remaking a brand for themselves rather than the proper target audience: kids, the nostalgic, and whoever really liked the new take we already got.
So I’m not a fan of the plot, the voice acting decisions are wrong, and the people behind it are not known for doing anything for kids or in animation. This is a train wreck waiting to happen. FOWL couldn’t have hurt this show more than the choices of who is working on it or the story they want to tell. I don’t have Disney+ or their channels so I probably wouldn’t get a chance to watch this…and frankly I feel that I’m missing out on nothing. They should have spun off from the rebooted DuckTales or actually went back to the Disney Afternoon style and performers, or did a full reboot rather than a relaunch. Iger may be leaving, but his failures seem to be sticking around to continue the damage to the brand.
