BW Media Spotlight

I don’t really follow Twitter these days. Occasionally I’ll peek in to see what’s happened and my browser start page is still the Notifications page to see if anyone is trying to get my attention or retweeting something I did post, but posting is otherwise all I use it for anymore. There’s too much in-fighting where nobody listens to what the other is saying (“agree with me or die” is the norm whether you talk politics, sports, or storytelling) and just wants everyone to agree with their angry rant. Anyone who disagrees is a “toxic manbaby” (even if they’re women) and whatever -ist they can use in that given situation. Not the responders are always much better as they let their rage take over rather than explaining WHY they don’t like something in a way only a die-hard extremist can misinterpret. Then again, it’s Twitter. The character limit can work against even the best social media users.

Recently I tried to prove that the dislike of ThunderCats Roar isn’t just fans of the original series who just want to hate everything by posting a review from someone with no ties to the original also hating the show. (He also put down the term “Cal Arts style” by highlighting why the term is garbage, though I have noticed a few shows using a bean as the starting point for designing character heads so there is at least some interesting similarities out there.) My own response to the pilot was basically “meh”. I was expecting another mockstalgia (the original announcement video didn’t exactly offer hope, and neither did the arguments for it) and while I can’t proclaim it a loving parody it wasn’t the garbage I was expecting. It just didn’t impress me outside of a few gags, including the “don’t say his name” gag that others hate but I thought was used well in the end. I just hope they dropped it afterwards.

A defender of Roar popped up on Twitter and contrary to how Twitter usually functions these days he was rather nice about it. He is a fan of the original who I guess went in with a more open mind than I did and found it good. He honestly enjoys it and was concerned I was joining the ragefest. Honestly I didn’t get enough out of it to rage against. There were parts I found bad from a storytelling perspective, like how the ThunderCats were introduced, but it wasn’t as bad as expected. During the conversation, he said this:

I’m breaking my resolution to not engage Roar critics to req one thing: please stop holding up 2011 TC as an accurate or even faithful adaption of ThunderCats. It absolutely is not. You just like it bc anime action & mature themes, the direction you want. The rest: fine, bang on.

Yes, during the conversation (I’ll post the actual tweet if he approves it…no sense making a target just because we don’t agree) we discussed reboots versus re-imaginings and the 2011 ThunderCats reboot came up. He does have a point on this one though. Back when I reviewed the pilot episode I did note that changes were made that I didn’t care for. Since then the full series has been out and I did catch the first batch, though I missed most of the episodes when it moved to the Adult Swim version of the Toonami programming block because I didn’t know it was there. The only thing they really fixed from the pilot was bringing back the sci-fi elements. And while there is a reason people use the show as a good example of a reboot, it’s not as good as He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe, and that messed with things, too.

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