Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Media => Topic started by: A² on June 02, 2010, 03:00:59 PM
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http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-02/animatrix-studio-4c-to-animate-new-thundercats (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-06-02/animatrix-studio-4c-to-animate-new-thundercats)
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it's pretty awesome how they timed this to get the maximum possible murderhits to their press release.
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Apparently they're going for literally dark and edgy with this one.
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Apparently Larry Kenney is playing Lion-O's father? I guess he said so on Facebook.
I still don't have a Facebook account, so if somebody could verify that'd be keen.
MEANWHILE: Steve Perry's death has kinda lit a fire under my ass, not just to add writer credits to Thundercats ep listings on various sites, but to put an end to these stupid fucking "Thundercats ended in 1986" airdates for once and for all. Simple enough on sites that don't require moderation, but IMDb mods tried to argue with me about why the copyright dates on the episodes aren't sufficient evidence that the shows didn't end in '86 (because, apparently, "some fucking guy said they did" is more compelling evidence). Fortunately, I found a site that had some scripts (http://purrsiathunder.org/tcshow/epscripts) which flatly contradict the '86 claim. So hopefully I can get the IMDb listing fixed and the rest of the lemmings will follow.
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so how many months of hype are we looking at here? I mean we don't even have -concept art- yet.
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Yeah, looking forward to art, and casting/writer news (beyond Kenney as Claudus). Looks like they've got a good group working on it, anyway.
Love all the fanboys ranting about how it's going to be "anime-style". I mean, you know, I don't want them to go all Tiny Titans bighead or anything, but guys...the original Thundercats WAS anime-style. It was done by a Japanese animation studio in a Japanese style.
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I can't wait to see Snarf.
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I gotta admit that the only way I'll be excited about this is if it turns out to be somehow Cowboy Bebop good, or if it manages to capture the same random-ass retarded brilliance as the original. I mean as a kid I liked it because it had the best toys. As an adult I'm amused by it because you just never know when some sort of space safari hunter or robot bear or samurai is going to show up and demand to be taken seriously. I'm not saying it can't be brilliant on its own, but if at any point in the development somebody looks at something and says, "No, that's stupid," they'd better be prepared to go all the way.
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I think it could totally do a He-Man and play it straight.
That said, I'm pretty damn sure we'll see Berbils at some point. And probably Hachiman. Safari Joe could be fun too -- I can see him having some traction because Perry created him.
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He-Man Remake was actually pretty silly in a subtle way. Once it tried to play it completely straight it fell on its face.
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Right, that's what I meant. There's a limit to how straight you can play ROBOT BEARS. Some silliness is necessary -- indeed, welcome. But I could go for less breathing/gravity in space. And try to iron out some of the more jarring plotholes. Like, who the fuck is Vultureman and where did he come from and why are they acting like he's been here the whole time?
The best episodes of the original series were the ones that played it mostly-straight but still had plenty of crazy shit to go around.
On the whole, though? I'll watch this thing, probably religiously, but I think you and I are pretty much in agreement. It'll never give me the same kind of feeling that the original did when I watched it the first time, and it'll be hard-pressed to give me the same kind of feeling that the original did when Cartoon Network finally dusted it off and replayed it when I was 13.
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Fixing plot-holes is fine, but please don't fix breathing and gravity in space. That shit is comedy gold.
Especially when Star Wars does it. there's an educational bit about the solar system immediately following it. Fuck it, let's just remake Silverhawks instead.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb50GMmY5nk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb50GMmY5nk)
:wakka: Four years in MS Paint.
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fattycheeks
6 days ago 5
I don't know if this is a compliment but as a Thundercats fan I must say this trailer gave me extreme wood that I banged my wife 6 ways from Sunday!!! She also thanks you!
I... I don't know if that's a compliment either.
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Fixing plot-holes is fine, but please don't fix breathing and gravity in space. That shit is comedy gold.
Especially when Star Wars does it. there's an educational bit about the solar system immediately following it. Fuck it, let's just remake Silverhawks instead.
I watched a Silverhawks today. That shit is fucking CRAZY.
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Larry Kenney interview. (http://raffertymillsconnection.podbean.com/mf/play/d2cuc/larrykenney_interview.mp3) Haven't listened to the whole thing yet but the big revelation he's given so far is that Lion-O and Tygra are brothers on the new series. (Fan speculation is that Tygra is adopted. Still, there was a pretty huge age gap between them on the original series.) He doesn't think any of the other original cast members have been given roles on the new series as yet.
Also: Wiegel on Reno 911 is his daughter. Huh.
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I watched a Silverhawks today. That shit is fucking CRAZY.
"I almost fell all the way down to Earth!"
My favorite part was that they would then teach kids about astronomy at the end of each episode.
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life is a lot easier when you're partly metal, partly real
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As I've been going through the writer credits for Thundercats and Silverhawks, I have discovered that most of the craziest breathing-in-space physics-bending shit came from a single writer, William Overgard.
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Who wrote Locket of Lies?
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Who wrote Locket of Lies?
Hang on, I've got a spreadsheet here...
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...Bill Ratter.
I'll get these up on my site at some point. I kinda like the idea of futzing with MySQL a bit and letting people sort by either broadcast order or the apocryphal but much more sensible fan order I've seen on a few sites.
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Done (http://www.corporate-sellout.com/index.php/2010/06/27/thundercats-episodes/), though I kinda punked out and just used a publicly-available JS. (PHP/MySQL would have let me do some neater things with the formatting -- combining the often-redundant columns, letting you sort by either writer in two-writer stories, etc.)
It IS fairly enlightening to sort by writer. Most of the best shit was written by Len Starr or Peter Lawrence, while most of the straight-up crazy shit was written by William Overgard or Kimberly Morris.
And Ratter's other episodes weren't much better than Locket of Lies.
thetvdb.com is totally updated, with writer credits added to every episode and stupid bullshit fake airdates removed. Plus they got the seasons split up correctly, which I think makes them the most awesome TV site on the Internet.
I've submitted writer credits to IMDb for the first season; I'll wait until those go through before I start updating the rest.
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MTV gets a few teases out of Michael Jelenic. (http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/11/03/thundercats-tv-series-michael-jelenic/) That's the same Michael Jelenic who's a producer on Batman: The Brave and the Bold, so I think the people who believe it will be either (a) bad or (b) not batshit fucking walking-the-plank-in-space crazy can breathe a sigh of relief.
"One thing is that I tried to simplify the mythology a little bit," he said. "It's a pretty complicated backstory that borrows from a lot of other sci-fi stuff, like Superman and Star Wars. In developing this, I wanted it to be a little more simple. In the other version, there's something like three different planets involved, and they all converge onto one planet, and nobody's really connected. I just wanted to bring that all together."
Hm. I can see eliminating Plun-Darr and putting the Thundercats, Mutants, and Lunatacs all on the same planet, but getting rid of the Kryptonian "fleeing a doomed planet" premise would be a pretty serious change.
And, presumably taking a cue from He-Man '02:
"Everyone always wants to know about Snarf," he laughed. "He will be in it, and he will not talk. Don't worry."
"He won't be going, 'Lion-O, why don't you do this?'" said Jelenic, imitating the character's familiar whine. "We just having him say, 'Snarf! Snarf!' That's a way to get him in the show without annoying every single person who hates him. It's funny, because people are always like, 'I hate Snarf! Wait. you're not going to put him in? That's terrible!'"
Meh. I'm in the "Snarf is necessary but could be toned way down" camp. I think he should still talk, and (occasionally) whine. But I'm still cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, especially knowing it's the same guy as TB&TB.
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"Everyone always wants to know about Snarf," he laughed. "He will be in it, and he will not talk. Don't worry."
"He won't be going, 'Lion-O, why don't you do this?'" said Jelenic, imitating the character's familiar whine. "We just having him say, 'Snarf! Snarf!' That's a way to get him in the show without annoying every single person who hates him. It's funny, because people are always like, 'I hate Snarf! Wait. you're not going to put him in? That's terrible!'"
So he's going to be Pikachu? I can live with that. The real question is, when are we going to find out about that blasted samoflange?
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I would be alright with Snarf if it was clear that the characters were as annoyed by him as the audience.
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Snarf was the perfect annoying butler, his problem was he spent too much time OUTSIDE the giant cat head fortress. I think if you limited him in that way instead of just replacing him with essentially a different character, you'd be okay.
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Replace Snarf with Jeeves.
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Yeah, I've actually seen him compared to Alfred on a couple other threads on the subject.
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Having him suddenly pop up with a bazooka and blow away a robot clone of Lion-O would probably help his reputation. It wouldn't even be that far-fetched in this setting!
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Yeah. They could also do like Star Wars and have everybody but the audience understand him.
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Only if the only reply he ever receives is "Shut up you fuck."
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Nrama interviews Jelenic (http://www.newsarama.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=NA_101108_nycc_jelenic_thundercats); he pretty much says the same stuff he said to MTV. The only "new" information is that it's going to be "darker than The Brave and the Bold" (which doesn't really narrow things down as TB&TB is pretty damn light -- though that makes its own dark bits really stand out) and it's going to be based around major arcs.
He also compares it to Avatar (the toon) and mentions Japanese animation with western storytelling; once again this has caused concern to fanboys who have never actually watched the credits of the original show.
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Or the intro.
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Or the show.
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Somebody on a Thundercats board pointed me to some more interviews.
comicbookmovie.com (http://comicbookmovie.com/fansites/scifimediazone/news/?a=23879) (audio) -- Jelenic talks a bit about trying to nail down what makes the original series so great (I would argue that the difficulty in nailing it down is in fact a big part of it), and also DOES seem to indicate that the show will involve the Thundercats losing their home (though I don't think he actually says "planet").
ToonZone (http://www.toonzone.net/news/articles/35410/nycc2010-a-roundtable-discussion-with-michael-jelenic) -- A long one that includes other stuff, like Batman and Wonder Woman. Sounds like he's really done his homework; he namedrops the Anointment Trials and the New Thundercats.
Also, the Batman/Scooby-Doo episode is going to be awesome, but that's another thread.
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Nothing makes the original show great except camp value.
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And rose-tinted glasses.
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And being a repressed furry.
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You can't appreciate the original Thundercats without a 5-year-old mentality or a large chunk of hipster irony.
The flipside being, you can appreciate the original Thundercats with a 5-year-old mentality or a large chunk of hipster irony.
That's what makes Thundercats great. In an era of drugged out, fantastic and utterly nonsensical children's programming, Thundercats was by far the most drugged out, fantastic and utterly nonsensical. And that means something.
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Yes, exactly. That's the point I was trying to make: it was a show where anything could happen. There were some loose guidelines, but no rules to speak of -- you want cavemen? Done. Time travel? Sure. Space cops, space pirates, space big game hunters, superpower potions, and a mummified dog who transforms into a bat? Check, check, check, check, and check.
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All that stuff just made me angry as a child. I was always yelling at the TV that in like just the last episode they solved a similar problem with one of Lion-O's totally fluid pool of super powers. At least with The Real Ghostbusters you knew they'd be busting ghosts in a more or less consistent manner from episode to episode.
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Yeah, he DOES keep forgetting he has a magic sword, doesn't he?
But it's no more silly a formula than Voltron. JUST BREAK OUT THE FUCKING SWORD ALREADY.
And yeah, Thundercats is damned inconsistent (though as I've recently discovered since familiarizing myself with the writer credits, it's actually quite consistent among each individual writer -- the good eps and the ones that develop the main plot are by Lawrence and Starr, the batshit crazy ones are by Overgard, and so on). But I think that's a big part of the charm. There ARE eps you can appreciate unironically -- and there are others you can appreciate ironically.
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The Wiseman Principle in effect.
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First image & press release. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30511)
Toyfair photos. (http://thundercatslair.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4956)
Copying my comments on Thundercatslair:
Yowza, looking good.
I like the new designs (Lion-O's even got random arm hair, like me!), but think the half-shirt on Cheetara's pretty unnecessary. Granted we all saw her in less back in Exodus, but c'mon now. And how many runners do you know with breasts that size?
I don't see the scars on Panthro in the pic but if they're on the toy that's a neat idea -- he's supposed to be the oldest and the one who's seen the most (particularly if we're looking at a younger Tygra in this version); it makes sense that he's taken his lumps.
Curious about the "classic" toys, too.
But the telescoping sword looks like a winner. Maybe for Christmas...
EDIT TO ADD:
Hey, nice pic on that link! New wallpaper get.
And now I see Panthro's scars.
Appears they've all got hair on their bodies and cat ears, for a little bit more furry ick -- I've always pointed out that the Thundercats weren't anthropomorphic cats so much as feline-morphic humans. We'll be seeing furry porn of Cheetara any day now, and I for one did not need that.
Oh hey, you know what else is interesting? The hilt on the sword in that pic looks like it did on the original series, not like the toy photo. Did somebody say something about the hilt curling on the toy?
Wonder what that gun is that Tygra's holding. Expect something to do with those things attached to his belt.
And the asymmetric armwear (Tygra's single glove, Lion-O's single shoulderpad) has kind of an unfortunate Nomura feel to it, but at least they're not all covered in belts.
It might sound like I'm griping but all in all I actually think it looks great. Looking forward to it.
EDIT: I just put my finger on who the new Panthro reminds me of.
He's Hellboy.
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A female cartoon character with unrealistic proportions? Shocking.
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My laptop now has some new wallpaper. I never changed it off the default when I reformatted this thing for school.
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A female cartoon character with unrealistic proportions? Shocking.
I'm sure I've been over "just because something happens all the time doesn't mean we should stop complaining about it" before.
Look, I can see advantages to seeing Cheetara in a half-shirt.
I'm also 28 years old.
It's a kids' show, and little girls get enough shit thrown at them to make them neurotic about their body shapes as it is. I don't know why there are half-shirts all over kids' cartoons; they're frankly ludicrous in most contexts. (Remember April's first appearance in TMNT 2003, where she was working as Baxter Stockman's lab assistant and wore a lab coat over her half-shirt?)
Plus, looking at it on a more complex level -- well, one of my favorite Frank Zappa interview soundbites was when he claimed, in a debate over sexual content on TV, that there's no sex on TV. The person he was debating was flabbergasted and asked how he could possibly make such a claim, that in fact there's sex everywhere we look on TV; Zappa responded that that's not sex, it's titillation.
Belly shirt and huge melons: titillating.
Smart, athletic woman with a husky voice: sexy.
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It's a kids' show, and little girls get enough shit thrown at them to make them neurotic about their body shapes as it is. I don't know why there are half-shirts all over kids' cartoons; they're frankly ludicrous in most contexts. (Remember April's first appearance in TMNT 2003, where she was working as Baxter Stockman's lab assistant and wore a lab coat over her half-shirt?)
Gabrielle from Xena wore a halter-top, and she was realistically proportioned.
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I welcome the return of 80s cartoons with technofantasy worlds and bizarre backstories. I hope Silverhawks is next.
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Wow, that's, uh, very animu. I get that the original cartoon was made by the nips too, but there's a whole spectrum between Vampire Hunter D and Chrono Trigger that you can occupy.
EDIT: I just put my finger on who the new Panthro reminds me of.
He's Hellboy.
Close!
(http://brentai.brontoforum.us/images/Jet-Cowboy-Bebop.jpg)
Man, just look at that. Same scar, same eyebrows... fuck, even the same brow. Somebody over there really, really just wanted to make a furry Jet Black. I hope there isn't a shitstorm over that.
Also begs the question of why Lion-O doesn't have the same hairstyle as Spike...
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I gotta admit that the only way I'll be excited about this is if it turns out to be somehow Cowboy Bebop
:nyoro~n:
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Belly shirt and huge melons: titillating.
Smart, athletic woman with a husky voice: sexy.
I'd argue that New Cheetara's design so far appears way less titillating than old Cheetara's, though. I mean, yeah, new Cheetara has exposed cleavage and a midriff and is technically showing more skin, but what clothes she is wearing is fairly loose and baggy. Meanwhile, old Cheetara, though showing less actual skin/fur than new Cheetara, is clad in a skin-tight leotard and leggins combo that showed off her every loving, supple curve.
I'm of the opinion that exposed skin =/= sexualization. That it's more of a devil-in-the-details type situation. A quick, curved line to denote a woman's cleavage does not a sexualized woman make. A soft, curvy line that takes into account how the malleable fat of the woman's bust rests inside the cups of her bra, on the other hand, is very sexualized.
Not to say that new Cheetara is or isn't inappropriately sexualized. All we've seen of her so far are a couple of promotional stills -- that's not really even enough to get the debate off the ground. When the show actually starts, though, and we see her in motion, the way she stands and the way she walks, and how the camera focuses and where it focuses on her, then we can really start to argue about how inappropriate she may or may not be for a children's show.
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Believe it or not I think the half-shirt thing is partially there to make her look more like a runner. Yes, it's nonsensical in terms of actual logic (which we are for some reason applying to ThunderCats) but in terms of art you can achieve much more dramatic poses by creating a clear separation between the upper and lower torso. Check out that top pic: if she were doing that crazy ninja-run thing in her original leotard outfit, it would probably look kind of stupid.
That said there's no good goddam reason she has to be wearing something with a neckline somewhere around her areolae* and not just a regular sports bra.
* And a waistline that's probably stimulating her clitoris.
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I can't believe any of you are complaining Cheetara is dressing like a slut. Do you even remember the one-piece she wore in the 80s? That was the skimpiest clothing a woman had on a cartoon since Yogi Bear's girlfriend.
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Yeah. Boo Boo only wore a bowtie.
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Man, I couldn't even remember what Cheetara's old outfit looked like until I Googled a pic, and I'm older'n most of you.
You guys are cracked.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v316/buge/herpaderp/cheetara.gif)
This is skimpy? Cheetara's downright practical compared to Wonder Woman. Heck, her suit doesn't even have heels.
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Do you even remember the one-piece she wore in the 80s?
Yes, Zara, I believe I honestly speak for all of us when I say that we do.
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I'd call that "form-fitting". Like Seven-of-Nine.
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New, better toy photos (http://www.thundercatslair.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4956&page=21), including Cheetara, an adult Lion-O, and the Thunder Tank box art, which includes a picture of Snarf (who apparently should not be fed after midnight).
MTV News has an interview with producer Ethan Spaulding (http://splashpage.mtv.com/2011/01/27/thundercats-tv-series-image-interview/), which doesn't tell us much but has a good bit on Panthro:
Yeah, we're making him the older veteran. He's been out there on Third Earth exploring. He's the elder of the group, once they get together.
So Third Earth IS in the new series.
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I hope it's just image rescaling that makes those toys look like they used Sam Gamgee's mold.
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Try clicking on them.
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More toy pics (http://insidepulse.com/2011/02/11/thundcats-classics-new-thundercats-officially-revealed-by-bandai/), featuring Angry Thundertank and Classic Series Lion-O with Claw Shield Inexplicably Missing a Fucking Finger.
EDIT: On closer investigation, the Claw Shield on the old cartoon WAS four-fingered. Huh. (Though it had five fingers on the toy and in the comics.)
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New toy video. (http://www.comicvine.com/2011-international-toy-fair-thundercats-toys/112-1427/) Quick glimpse of Mumm-Ra, who looks a lot closer to his original design than the rest; the Tower of Omens is in the new show too, and I'm pretty sure I saw a brief shot of Grune.
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Here's a treat: some test footage.
Flixist Exclusive (Flixclusive): Thundercats CG Footage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtTZu9OlypU#ws)
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Interesting. The original series, Lion-O wasn't as much of a brash idiot as this depiction.
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I like it. Lion-O really comes across as a boy in the body of a man -- essentially, a teenager. He's cocky, yet his dialogue is really sort of lame. The kind of stuff that a boy would find the height of wit.
Sort of like Superboy-Prime, if he didn't have 'psychotic murderer' on his resume.
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That'd be the CG movie that may or may not get made. I'm inclined to think its odds are pretty low given that it'd clash with the new series.
Interesting. The original series, Lion-O wasn't as much of a brash idiot as this depiction.
Well, kinda, in the early episodes. He outgrew it.
The main divergence is that Jaga didn't show up and tell him "Hey, you can make the sword fly back to you. Even if its eye's been covered and it's been dropped in a fucking black hole."
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More from MTV. (http://splashpage.mtv.com/2011/02/18/thundercats-tv-series-toy-fair-2011/) Includes blurry glances at Slithe, Mumm-Ra, and the Thunderkittens (whose look I really don't care for). Video has better looks at Mumm-Ra (Sword of Plun-Darr included), Grune, and a mystery reptilian.
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Thunderlilties!
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More toy pics. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30850) Notably, that's not the Sword of Plun-Darr in that Mumm-Ra figure's freakishly oversized hand; also interestingly, it looks like it's got an "Eye of Thundera" of its own. Could be nothing (the original Mumm-Ra figure came with two swords that he never used on the show); could be that's the new Sword of Plun-Darr and the figure holding the oldschool one was one of the "Classics" toys.
There WAS a reference in the first press release to "Stones of Power"; I really don't care much for the collection quest sound of that, but it could be there's a world full of artifacts just as powerful as the Eye of Thundera. Eyes DO tend to come in pairs.
(The Superman/Thundercats comic had a second Eye of Thundera just chilling in a museum in Metropolis. No explanation was ever given.)
(And hey, the Claw Shield's got an eye on it too. Could just be the symbol, though; the Thundercats like to paint it on everything.)
(Oh also, look at Panthro -- that's the first I've seen a visible Thundercat insignia on one of the toys; up to this point they've been empty red circles on the figures themselves and on the artwork. There was some conjecture that they were Transformers-style heat-sensitive things.)
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Was flipping through the channels when I saw some award show on cartoon network for sports or what have it.. Nothing better was on at the time. Well turns out the new Thundercats show had a trailer on there. Looked pretty good! Should see a video show up on youtube sometime soon.
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Someone at thundercatsnow.com is working on a fairly exhaustive rundown of Toyfair (http://www.thundercatsnow.com/features/toy-fair-in-depth-index/).
All the Thundercats have visible insignias now. And the Sword of Plun-Darr DOES look a lot more like the Sword of Omens now -- it's still double-bladed (probably two halves that combine), but it's got a red eye and it looks like it shrinks down to something very similar to the dormant Sword of Omens, as opposed to the coiled-snakes version on the old toon. Mumm-Ra's even got a tentacle-rapey Claw Shield.
More to come, as apparently they're just aggregating info on other sites.
Also: Jim Meskimen (http://meskimen.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/thunder-thunder-thunder/) is doing some voices on the show; hasn't said who. But he designed most of the minor cast on the original series. Also, an important namedrop I didn't recall hearing before: Andrea Romano is the voice director. She's probably the best in the business; show's in good hands.
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Should see a video show up on youtube sometime soon.
ThunderCats Remake Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWrh1axPj0M#)
This is just the sort of shit I wanted to see: more Thundera, Claudus as Lord of the Thundercats, Grune before his betrayal and banishment.
Granted, that's pretty much what the first episode of MotU '02 did. But it was a good idea then and it's a good idea now.
ALSO: Stills at bleedingcool (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/02/26/lots-of-screen-captures-from-the-new-thundercats-trailer/).
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Comments I wrote on that stills post:
Lots more caps at thundercats.ws. (http://www.thundercats.ws/news/thundercats-cartoon-news-3/thundercats-2011-trailer-extensive-screen-caps-65/) Good looks at Jaga, Claudus, and Grune, and a couple glimpses of Cats' Lair.
The Reptilian in stocks is in the background in the shot where Cheetara stands protectively in front of Tygra and Lion-O (http://www.thundercats.ws/news/attach/5/Thundercats-2011-Trailer-056_1298763418.jpg); in another shot, Reptilians in chains are dragging something nasty-looking (http://www.thundercats.ws/news/attach/5/Thundercats-2011-Trailer-032_1298763336.jpg). Other fans have suggested that it's Grune who has enslaved the Reptilians, and that possibly the thing they're dragging is some kind of prison holding Mumm-Ra (which would fit that menacing-looking engraving you've got in your second grab).
At a glance, I'd say Grune decides to take harsh measures against the Mutants, this is popular with the crowds in the streets but not exactly a shining example of the Code of Thundera. Tygra, Lion-O, and Cheetara show up to try and talk some sense into an angry mob and it doesn't go well. We've got pitchforks and torches, and what appear to be Thundercat guards who seem to be on Grune's side.
Jelenic's mentioned that the Thundercats would lose their home in this series, but hasn't explicitly said that Thundera would be destroyed as in the original series. Wouldn't it be interesting if they were ousted by their own people and Grune was put on the throne? I'd say it's more likely that Mumm-Ra shows up and trashes the place, but the political intrigue angle has a lot of potential.
(I'd also quite like to see Lynxana, a rogue Thundercat from the Marvel comics, as one of the Thundercats who sides with Grune, but odds are pretty low on that one.)
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Kevin Michael Richardson is Panthro (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/09/kevin-michael-richardson-will-friedle-thundercats-voice-cast/), which isn't exactly surprising as he plays 50% of all black guys in American animation (and 10% of white guys). He's a great pick.
He adds that Will Friedle is Lion-O, which is a nice fit too.
Anyway, two from Andrea Romano's stable of collaborators. Bet we'll get more. (Conroy for Grune! Hamill for Jackalman! Canals for Mandora!)
EDIT: Emmanuelle Chriqui as Cheetara. (http://collider.com/emmanuelle-chriqui-interview-elektra-luxx-tron-uprising/79562/) I've never gotten around to watching Entourage, so I guess I know her from...a few miscellaneous cartoon roles and an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark in 1996?
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She is easy on the eyes in Entourage but there's not a whole lot to say about her past that. We'll see if she can do more emotions than smug or annoyed.
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Official Cartoon Network version of the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KGj6KGeUto#noexternalembed-ws), higher quality and about 30 seconds longer (mostly in an extended sequence at the beginning where we see more of the Mumm-Ra engraving, including what appears to be a battle against Claudus -- or possibly one of his ancestors).
-
Hoping for The Demolisher to show up again and punch everyone in the face.
-
DEMOLISHER WINS, LION-O LOSES
-
Official Cartoon Network version of the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KGj6KGeUto#noexternalembed-ws),
Region-locked
-
When is this show supposed to start? I am all up ins for this, and will commandeer the living room's DVR to check it out.
-
Fall, I think.
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Wondercon trailer, 720p:
ThunderCats 2011 Trailer [HD] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yevav-RcUfQ#ws)
EDIT: some stills on the ThundercatsNOW Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/ThunderCatsNOW/104707792936607?_fb_noscript=1), and per io9 (http://io9.com/#!5788440) more casting news: Clancy Brown as Grune and somebody named Robin Atkins-Downs as Mumm-Ra.
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So, what? Did they just dub Lord of the Rings over a late 80's anime?
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"I only ask that you fight like cats!"
I've heard... manlier pep talks.
-
Hey, cats'll fuck a guy up.
...when they feel like it.
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Crave interview. (http://www.craveonline.com/tv/interviews/165005-thundercats-producer-interviews) Not much new, but confirmation the original theme song will be back -- of course, we already heard it at the end of that last trailer, so that was a safe assumption, but you never know with these things.
Opening titles will be 15 seconds long and will homage the old series but the producers acknowledge they will not be as awesome.
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New interview. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=31901)
Highlights:
- Lion-O and Tygra as "brothers" will serve as a sort of mystery over the course of the season.
- The Mutants will be factioned into separate armies, at least to start with.
- The Driller will be in the new show.
And, most importantly:
- We will learn what the fuck a samoflange is.
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CBR interviews Kenney and Jelenic. (http://video.comicbookresources.com/cbrtv/2011/thundercats-larry-kenney-michael-jelenic-on-re-imaginings-secrecy-lion-os-father/) No new information but fun to watch.
Jelenic's too modest. Of COURSE you can top the original series.
-
Rose-coloured glasses can be quite opaque, sometimes.
-
Even among the fans who spend half their time talking about how bad the original series was.
(Though I'm not gonna lie, I LOVE the crazy Bill Overgard shit in the original series. Well, most of it.)
-
In regards to what it is, you can't top the original series. Not since the state mandated drug tests.
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Another interview (http://video.comicbookresources.com/cbrtv/2011/thundercats-producer-ethan-spaulding-art-director-dan-norton/), this one with a producer and art director. Again, not much new info, but fun to hear what they have to say.
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Still don't know what the premier date is, but it appears that we're counting down to it, because IGN has launched a new weekly series called Thunder Thursdays.
The first installment (http://tv.ign.com/articles/117/1176532p1.html) examines the new takes on the characters. We get a bit more on each of them, mostly good (though I could sure as hell do without the Lion-O/Cheetara/Tygra love triangle), and some design sheets that I wish were bigger.
-
Over/Under on how long it takes Jaga to bite the dust and turn in to Obi-Wan Kenobi?
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3-part pilot; Jaga dies in Act 2 and shows up as a ghost in Act 3. In this version he'll be killed by Mumm-Ra instead of old age, and Claudus will be killed by Grune instead of
staying behind while his planet explodes also old age.
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Week Two: Third Earth (http://tv.ign.com/articles/117/1178363p1.html). With a handful of rather neat images. I'm pretty sure that's motherfucking Snow Meow in the big group shot (http://tv.ign.com/dor/objects/76335/thundercats/images/thundercats-20110623102314063-000.html?page=mediaFull) (along with Berbils, those fish guys from that one episode where the Thunder Tank gets trapped in an underwater ravine, and what I believe are Micrits), and the hovership (http://tv.ign.com/dor/objects/76335/thundercats/images/thundercats-20110623102235213.html?page=mediaFull) could be Berserkers but would be more interesting if it were the Doomgaze. Swordsmen Village (http://tv.ign.com/dor/objects/76335/thundercats/images/thundercats-20110623102141893-000.html?page=mediaFull) could mean we'll see Hachiman. Looks like a pretty good balance between old characters and new.
Also: Jackalman and Monkian have names now. (No mention of Vultureman but presumably he'll show up later, like in the original show, except possibly with some sort of explanation on who the fuck he is and how he got there this time.)
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Not much this week (http://tv.ign.com/articles/118/1180012p1.html), but a couple creature and vehicle designs.
And we have a premier date: Friday, July 29.
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Cartoon Network - THUNDERCATS - Promo. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXVJCpaZedI#ws)
Looks like I was wrong on my "three-part pilot" guess, but I stand by the rest of my predictions.
Curious whether Jaga or Claudus will die first; I don't expect they'll die in the same episode, but it's possible. While the original series managed to cram an awful lot into its first episode I expect we'll see a lot more setup this time, time spent establishing Thundera and its status quo before it gets destroyed. Hell, we don't get Grune or Claudus at all until later in the original series (though on the other hand, we DO get Panthro -- pity he's absent from yet another trailer, and I'm hoping he shows up at least by the end of the pilot).
Guessing Mumm-Ra will be released from captivity as the cliffhanger ending of the first half, which, going by my prediction that he'll kill Jaga, naturally puts that death in part 2.
Voices seem pretty good. Cheetara not as deep-voiced as before but not bad.
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ThunderCats2011 9 minutos de poder felino !!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s9gkwZ3K4U#ws)
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Cheetara sounds like Grey DeLisle. :9
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But that means that Cheetara and Lion-O will be...
THE MOST POWERFUL COUPLE IN THE WORLD!!!
-
...you know, if that's not Frank Welker as Snarf, Frank Welker is going to be mad.
-
(http://i.imgur.com/eYxcd.jpg)
Wilykit tying up her hair
All of my D'AWWWWWWWWWWWWW
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Yeah, the Kit/Kat scene was quite pleasantly surprising. Everyone keeps making Peanuts comparisons (and their voices DO have that sound to them), but what it really gave me was a Miyazaki vibe. Like, Castle in the Sky 'n' shit.
This week: Jelenic says he's hesitant to use the term "darker"; IGN headlines the story ThunderCats Gets Dark! (http://tv.ign.com/articles/118/1181091p1.html)
Not much new. Apparently the Anointment Trials are getting adapted in some form, though only in two episodes instead of five. I'm okay with that inasmuch as, while they're my favorite of the original series, they really are padded as hell. Plus it looks like we'll be seeing Lion-O square off with at least Tygra from the very beginning, so the "beat the other Thundercats to earn your crown" thing is really going to play out across more than just two episodes.
Also apparently the third episode is a Moby Dick pastiche where Lion-O Learns a Valuable Lesson about being consumed by vengeance.
That sounds quite a lot like Thundercats, really.
-
Yay. Setting my new DVR!
-
Wrapping up its column, IGN gives us the music (http://tv.ign.com/articles/118/1182312p1.html) (and what I legitimately hope is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the widely-cited but completely-bullshit IMDb credit for James Lipton as the original series theme's composer).
The characters have themes again, and this time the main character gets one too.
I didn't link last week's because it was a damn Comicon contest for a replica Sword of Omens, but it turns out the video (http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/07/14/thundercats-making-the-sword-of-omens?objectid=76335) has some good hi-res bits of the show in it. Including a bit of Lion-O doing the classic "Thunder -- thunder" motion.
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Alright, so, just caught the premier. I rather liked that a good chunk of it early on was spent world building and portraying the Thunder Cat empire as not entirely undeserving of its downfall.
Also: I liked that Snarf doesn't talk.
-
...you know, rarely does something justify waiting 21 years for. But fuck yes.
DN's right; there's a hell of a lot of nuance here that the original series just didn't have. Also, violence.
Also: [spoiler]MOTHERFUCKING LYNX-O.[/spoiler]
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Love this thing. Love it to pieces.
Set my DVR for it. :D
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This was really, really good! Can't think of a single thing I didn't at least kind of like about it. Good action, good story, good setting, animation is gorgeous, lizard folk are slightly more interesting than before, the kids are actually enjoyably watchable, Snarf is somehow kind of cute and not terribly obnoxious... I like it
Sadly nobody will really compare to Panthro's old voice actor, who as far as I'm concerned was the best thing about the original series. Earle Hyman's alive and kicking these days, but it looks like he retired as of 2001.
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Was...the king voiced by the original Lion-O?
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Yep.
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Weird, I was almost certain he was dead.
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Thundercats: HOOOOOOOOOOOOOly crap that was good.
Also I can't believe that the internet is arguing over which anime it resembles and not mentioning Cowboy Bebop.
I mean Panthro is Jet Black how are you not seeing this
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Didn't we already have that conversation, like, forever ago?
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I don't think Thundercats so much resemble anime as it does a 16/32-bit RPG. I suspect episode 3 is going to follow our wide-eyed hero, his more practical older adoptive brother and the girl as they travel through an evil forest while battling smaller random encounters and a boss battle against some manner of dragon or dinosaur. Episode 4 will involve a small-yet-bustling desert trade town.
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The PLOT is totally an RPG, but I mean in terms of character designs.
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Weird, I was almost certain he was dead.
Nope. Of the original cast, Bob McFadden (Snarf) and Earl Hammond (Mumm-Ra) have passed away; the rest are still around. (Including Earle Hyman, who played Panthro and whose name is confusingly similar to Earl Hammond's.)
Point of trivia: Larry Kenney's daughter is Kerri Kenney-Silver, who played Wiegel on Reno 911.
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http://cartoonvixens.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-cheetara-comparison.html (http://cartoonvixens.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-cheetara-comparison.html)
OH BOY HERE WE GO
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...I agree (and have said so in this thread), but man I wish she didn't come across as totally illiterate two sentences in.
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watched ep 1.
good points:
* snarf doesn't speak hooray
* lion's dad looks awesome
bad points:
* the most cliched plot, ever (prince that shirks his duties, check. stern father that reconciliates before dying, check. woman warrior in heavily concealing clothing, check.)
* THE KID IS GOOD WITH TECHNOLOGY BUT DAD DOESN'T CARE JUST LIKE YOU VIEWER PERSON
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I love that the Cheetara feminism rant goes on to say that Teen Titans is horrible because 50% of the female population dresses in a way she doesn't like but 50% is okay.
Also apparently showing your stomach is sluttier than an outfit that conforms to your vagina / ass?
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bad points:
* the most cliched plot, ever
[...]
* THE KID IS GOOD WITH TECHNOLOGY BUT DAD DOESN'T CARE JUST LIKE YOU VIEWER PERSON
Actually, the latter is an inversion of a cliche (technological society where the Sensible Adults dismiss magic as a fairytale).
But yeah, generally speaking the plot just ticks off boxes out of any given Joseph Campbell deconstruction, but that's not an inherently bad thing. It's perfectly all right to use a formula if you do it well (Star Wars, The Lion King, Harry Potter...). And it's one of the few cases where I think "It's a show for twelve-year-olds" is actually an appropriate defense. (Though I'm guessing most twelve-year-olds are familiar with the three examples I just gave.)
You're right, though, that for the most part there were no surprises. (I was surprised twice: the aforementioned [spoiler]Lynx-O cameo[/spoiler], which is of course just an Easter Egg for the fans, and [spoiler]seeing the knife flash in Panthro's hand, though of course as a fan I knew he was Mumm-Ra as soon as I saw it[/spoiler].)
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I love that the Cheetara feminism rant goes on to say that Teen Titans is horrible because 50% of the female population dresses in a way she doesn't like but 50% is okay.
Also, while I'll agree with SOME of the criticisms, it does bear noting that Teen Titans Animated Starfire is far and away the most modest design the character has ever had.
Also apparently showing your stomach is sluttier than an outfit that conforms to your vagina / ass?
New Cheetara's does both, though.
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It seemed like most of the complaints were about the exaggeration of her sexual characteristics in the new character design, above and beyond her costume design. Of course, they're quick to puritanically point out that the pre-pubescent character also shows off her midriff. You know, like small children trying to act grown-up do.
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I'm not sure I buy the "it's like a small child trying to act grown-up" argument. I don't think it's puritanical to think an eleven-year-old should put a damn shirt on.
I don't even really think the problem is sexy characters (well, in the case of the eleven-year-old yes, that IS a problem), but of such a narrow definition of "sexy". Huge jugs, bare midriff, impossibly tiny waist. Contrary to what Spram may tell you, beautiful women come in all shapes and sizes. Skinny, chubby, athletic, muscular, short, tall, dressed scantily or conservatively. Let's see some damn variety.
Original Cheetara was hot. And she didn't need giant breasts to be hot.
And I say that as someone who really, really likes big breasts.
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Wait this Cheetara is younger than 20?
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Dunno; I'd ballpark her at 20ish. The "prepubescent" comments refer to Wilykit.
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Yeah, Wilykit's strange translucent petal-skirt / bikini combo is a might bit... uncomforting.
As for Cheetara, I honestly don't find her new outfit all that different from her old one. One design has a bare midriff and cleavage, the other one hugs her every single curve like body paint.
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Just as a general note, the artistic style of most things have gotten more exaggerated in general over the years. Anime in the 70s/80s generally had, face nonsense aside, generally pretty damn good anatomy. More exaggerated and stylized proportions and characteristics for both male and female characters is more common. Lion-o went from a muscled warrior to a lanky, wirey teenager. New Panthro is even bigger than before. It's easy to look back at Cheetara now and go "Wow she's just some fit, atheletic fighter chick", but in the context of her time, she was a very sexualized character, design wise.
This isn't to say any individual criticism isn't valid or the whole thing isn't worth talking about, but I don't feel like people are looking at these things realistically. Context matters!
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Context does indeed matter, and the context here is that EVERY goddamn female cartoon character looks like that.
Remember April's first appearance in TMNT 2003? She was wearing a belly shirt TO WORK. With a labcoat over it.
Even Kim Possible -- as positive a female cartoon character as you're going to find -- had a minuscule waist and started out with a bare midriff. Though in fairness, she wore baggy pants, her breasts weren't exaggerated, and they gave her less revealing clothes as the series wore on.
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Implying of course, Thad, that you have watched the entirety of Kim Possible!
AHAH!
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Actually, no, I've seen about half an episode. But I'm glad it's out there. Girl-friendly cartoons depicting strong characters in non-stereotypical roles are a good thing.
(I have of course spent some time griping about Young Justice's approach to female characters. Megan's portrayal is infuriating for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with her perfectly reasonable costume. Given the choice, I'd take new Cheetara's skimpy outfit/strong, assertive role over Megan's non-exploitative costume/character defined entirely by her crush on an asshole.)
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It really doesn't help that she's one of maybe two female characters in that show.
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"Maybe two" is a pretty good description. I think the Round Eye Animation thread has me cataloging every time the show managed to pass the Bechdel Test.
I think it happened twice.
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Fish people in a laser-equipped hovership on a sandsea fighting a giant carnivorous plant? Lion-O spends the show being stupidly reckless, learns a heavyhanded moral lesson, and then saves the day by not really doing much of anything?
Now THIS is Thundercats.
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Fish people in a laser-equipped hovership on a sandsea fighting a giant carnivorous plant? Lion-O spends the show being stupidly reckless, learns a heavyhanded moral lesson, and then saves the day by not really doing much of anything?
Now THIS is Thundercats.
Wake me when someone gets put in a hole.
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I suspect episode 3 is going to follow our wide-eyed hero, his more practical older adoptive brother and the girl as they travel through an evil forest while battling smaller random encounters and a boss battle against some manner of dragon or dinosaur.
Well, other than being a quicksand ocean instead of an evil forest, I was pretty spot on here I'd say.
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How often, on average, does Lion-o forget what his powers are?
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God that was weird after the premiere. Just one episode out the gate, and they're doing a straight, no-frills Moby Dick concept. You're supposed to do this sort of stuff in the middle of season 3, when you need some real filler material and you've already done the episode where they get into an organized car race and win in spite of the guy who's cheating with the engine sabotage and the one where they get shrunk and have to fight the spider in the spider web
That said it was pretty enjoyable regardless... just... I dunno... weird
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How often, on average, does Lion-o forget what his powers are?
We're early enough in yet that he has the excuse of not knowing what they are. (And neither do we, strictly speaking; in TOS the sword's powers were "whatever the fuck is convenient in the last five minutes of the show", but this one might have rules of some sort.)
Anyway. In this episode, he exhibited the power of telling people to swim toward something they could cling to, pulling on a rope, and using the sword to cut a monster up.
...so actually the sword DOES have a power that it didn't in the original series: it can now be used as a sword.
God that was weird after the premiere. Just one episode out the gate, and they're doing a straight, no-frills Moby Dick concept.
The day after Futurama, no less.
You're supposed to do this sort of stuff in the middle of season 3, when you need some real filler material and you've already done the episode where they get into an organized car race and win in spite of the guy who's cheating with the engine sabotage
Didn't Batman:TB&TB do that at the beginning of season 2?
and the one where they get shrunk and have to fight the spider in the spider web
And that in the middle of season 1?
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God that was weird after the premiere. Just one episode out the gate, and they're doing a straight, no-frills Moby Dick concept. You're supposed to do this sort of stuff in the middle of season 3, when you need some real filler material and you've already done the episode where they get into an organized car race and win in spite of the guy who's cheating with the engine sabotage and the one where they get shrunk and have to fight the spider in the spider web
Whereabouts in the series do they do an episode where they meet a con artist who tricks Lion-O into trading his gold claw away, but then Lion-O has second thoughts later, but the con-man's already taken it to Mumm-Ra who puts a curse on it, and when Lion-O gets it back it tries to strangle him?
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God that was weird after the premiere. Just one episode out the gate, and they're doing a straight, no-frills Moby Dick concept.
The day after Futurama, no less.
You're supposed to do this sort of stuff in the middle of season 3, when you need some real filler material and you've already done the episode where they get into an organized car race and win in spite of the guy who's cheating with the engine sabotage
Didn't Batman:TB&TB do that at the beginning of season 2?
and the one where they get shrunk and have to fight the spider in the spider web
And that in the middle of season 1?
Not sure how you're versing either of those statements (assuming dead serious, because a total lack of sarcasm is your one true defining point!), but I for REALS cannot tell if either of these statements is meant in the good way or bad way.
I've enjoyed it, so far. But in the way I enjoyed GI Joe: Renegades, and thats troublesome.
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Deep Ones in a laser-equipped hovership on a sandsea fighting an Elder Thing? Lion-O spends the show being stupidly reckless, learns a heavyhanded moral lesson, and then saves the day by not really doing much of anything?
Now THIS is Thundercats.
FTFY.
I like how everybody's rocking an asymmetrical outfit now. I like to imagine that when Wilykit and Wilykat found those clothes at the beginning of the episode, they just found one outfit and split it. It would explain why one of them has just a right glove and one of them has just a left glove.
This show makes me want to play JRPGs so bad.
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Not sure how you're versing either of those statements (assuming dead serious, because a total lack of sarcasm is your one true defining point!), but I for REALS cannot tell if either of these statements is meant in the good way or bad way.
Not really any point to it other than "The Brave and the Bold is awesome."
-
Finally, four episodes in, we're going to get some Panthro action.
io9 has an interview with KMR (http://io9.com/5830236/how-thundercats-will-continue-the-awesome-legacy-of-panthro).
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Yeah, wow. Episode 4 was just... weird.
-
DVRed it last night, caught it this morning.
It's like that one part of (I think) Soul Blazer, where you have the village of people who only live for a few months. The idea that life is ephemeral. Hell, they outright spell out the message near the end.
PANTHRO.
-
PANTHRO.
I really, really, REALLY wish they had gone with a different voice actor.
-
BUGE. You have an EDH game to kill me in. GET OVER THERE.
-
I just played a thing! Respond, if you dare.
-
I liked it quite a bit. Lots of handwaving near the end, and it was all a little cute, but it was a neat enough central premise; very Doctor Who. And yeah, the last minute was pretty great.
I really, really, REALLY wish they had gone with a different voice actor.
He'll take some getting used to, but I quite like KMR. Jolee Bindo was my favorite character in KotOR.
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Yeah, liked it quite a bit too. Enjoyed how they would regularly drop lines like "The Thundercats have been with us for our whole lives!", as if they could never remember a time when Liono had not been helping them get out of this bramble
Wonder what happened to that chameleon guy
you think
you think he's ok
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Now THAT was some fanwank.
So far Panthro is too scowly, but granted he's been through a lot. He's finally cracking a grin by the end of the episode so hopefully he'll come to resemble the lighthearted, quick-to-laugh Panthro we know and love.
-
Anybody else notice that Panthro has a tail in about half those flashbacks?
-
Yeah. Not sure what's up with the tails. Do they, like, fall off? Did he lose it in battle?
-
I'm pretty sure he lost it like Grune lost that one tooth. Apparently, according to the creators... er... authors? Writers? Tails are a part of the Thunderian caste system (Tailless Cats>Tailed Cats>Non-Cats>Beasts of Burden>Tailless Cat Stool>Lizardmen)
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Kind of a worryingly average cartoon episode. Liked the flashbacks however!
So far Panthro is too scowly, but granted he's been through a lot. He's finally cracking a grin by the end of the episode so hopefully he'll come to resemble the lighthearted, quick-to-laugh Panthro we know and love.
This. Granted, a huge part of it was Panthro's voice actor in the old series, but man, really hoping they stick with the Warrior Ernest Borgnine angle they had in the original. He was like the Thundercats' awesome uncle.
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I think he's quite clearly the showrunners' favorite character. As such I expect we'll see him rounded out more.
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(http://www.thehighdefinite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/hipcats_2011_by_zano-d46prrh.jpg)
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Hipster Lion-O's sword can play music you've probably never heard of
-
Hipster Lion-O's sword gives him sight beyond what you've probably seen before
-
Speaking of which, "beyond sight" is now defined as "down".
I kinda like to think of the Eye of Thundera as sentient, and very reluctant to let Lion-O use it as a crutch. It spends the whole episode trying to get him to just use his head for a damn minute and then finally, in exasperation, just goes, "Okay, fuck it, the answer is DOWN. Look DOWN, asshole. Happy? Good. Now leave me alone."
...weakest episode yet, though I like the hint-dropping on Mumm-Ra and the Eye's backstory, and Panthro carrying everybody.
(Shark: Nobody's fallen in a hole yet, but they DID have a room slowly filling with water, which is similar. It also looked an awful lot like a bit in Thundercubs Part 1...)
Curious how much of The Key of Omens we'll see in the new series -- in the old series it's revealed that you don't actually READ the Book of Omens, you go INSIDE it using another ThunderMacGuffin, meet with a Guardian, and, if you don't have a THIRD ThunderMacGuffin, he will fucking BURN YOU ALIVE. It may be the most terrifying original-series episode, as well as the only third-season Collection Quest ep that is actually any good. Plus it manages to use the old Save-the-Villain bit in a way that it almost works: Mumm-Ra's pitiful wailing as he's roasted really does make you feel bad for the guy.
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I actually liked this episode, myself. More than the one with the flower people, at least. I especially liked the way each cat actually covered for the others' mistakes: Kit and Kat covered for Cheetara's mistake, Cheetara covered for Panthro's mistake, and Panthro covered for Kit and Kat's mistake. Not to mention the fight at the end with Mumm-Ra -- despite each Cat giving their all in the fight, Mumm-Ra ultimately proved too powerful for them.
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Anybody else notice how that cave sequence was practically lifted whole-cloth from Indiana Jones and the Last Cursade?
And what about the Wilykittens' map to that fabled city that they never mentioned after the pilot?
And why did the episode feel like a two-parter that was cut to bits?
-
Indiana Jones and the Last Cursade
:oic:
-
It's the keyboars, I swear.
-
Curse of the Keyboars
-
Did you guys just write the next episode?
-
...so anyone who doesn't want spoilers for Friday's ep should steer clear of various comic/toon news sites. And MTV Geek.
Anyone who DOES want spoilers, fine, what the hell, here they are: [spoiler]Silverhawks/Tiger Sharks cameos[/spoiler].
-
... okay, I kind of remember that first one but... what the fuck are the second?
-
Ninja:
(Ps. Spoilers)
This, apparently. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1FMvNsZ-HA#noexternalembed)
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I hope I'm not the only one who thought [spoiler]BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM AND DESPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIR!!!!![/spoiler] during tonight's episode.
-
So exactly when will Lion-O put on the pointy pink shades and don the flaming skull cape?
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The bad:
The most toy-centric episode in weeks.
Collection quest, ho!
The good:
Serious lore-building.
Answering the big questions that the original series never did (forging of the Sword, origin of the Eye of Thundera, where Mumm-Ra came from).
The fanservice:
[spoiler]Not just Tigersharks and Mon-Starr, but Feliners.
The guys forging the sword were surely Bengali's ancestors.
Monkians, Jackalmen, and Vulturemen -- all the Original Series Mutant races are now covered except the rats. Plus, elephants!
And I like to think that the purple cat lady was Jagara, though I never caught a name for her.[/spoiler]
Also: [spoiler]I like that Jaga is less Ben Kenobi and more Rod Serling.[/spoiler]
Meanwhile: MTV Geek takes a look at Jackalman (http://geek-news.mtv.com/2011/08/31/thundercats-jackalman-exclusive-designer-dan-norton/), who, as previously alluded, will have an actual name in this series: Kanar.
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Was that Cree Summer?
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I'm pretty sure he lost it like Grune lost that one tooth. Apparently, according to the creators... er... authors? Writers? Tails are a part of the Thunderian caste system (Tailless Cats>Tailed Cats>Non-Cats>Beasts of Burden>Tailless Cat Stool>Lizardmen)
So you could remove your tail to go up a rank? They didn't think this through very well did they.
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Was that Cree Summer?
Sounded like.
IMDB says yes (and that her name was Panthera) but IMDB says the original series ended in 1986, so grain of salt.
So you could remove your tail to go up a rank? They didn't think this through very well did they.
I assume the different races have more defining physical features than just tail/no tail.
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So basically the other races united to help the Cats overthrow Mumm-ra, then got kicked out of society later. Totally sounds like the lizardmen have legitimate beef in this series.
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Was that Cree Summer?
Sounded like.
IMDB says yes (and that her name was Panthera) but IMDB says the original series ended in 1986, so grain of salt.
Arrrgh
Not that I don't enjoy Cree Summer, but her voice is so ubiquitous that it pulls me out of every show I watch.
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So you could remove your tail to go up a rank? They didn't think this through very well did they.
Well, I doubt they could just remove their tail and move up, but now that you mention it I wouldn't be surprised if Tailed Cats would be expected to remove their tails when they ascended castes, which would be another explanation for why Pantro lost his tail.
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So basically the other races united to help the Cats overthrow Mumm-ra, then got kicked out of society later. Totally sounds like the lizardmen have legitimate beef in this series.
Though, on the other hand, teaming up with Mumm-Ra doesn't seem like the best way to get revenge on the people who helped Mumm-Ra persecute and enslave them. I'm curious how much of the story they remember. The Cats seem to have very consciously excised "We were Mumm-Ra's shock troops...in SPACE!" from their history, though I suspect Jaga had at least an inkling.
Of course, the fact that Tygra's ancestor is the Thundercat who remained loyal to Mumm-Ra is presumably related to the fact that Tygra was not raised by his biological family.
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See, after the first episode, I was hoping they'd get more into the socio-political aspects of the class divide between the Cats and... everyone else. At least, as well as a kid's cartoon can.
The way I figured it, Mumm-ra offered them a chance to topple the current power structure, and when it was a choice between starving on the outskirts of the kingdom or aligning themselves with Mumm-ra, the lizardmen chose the option that helped them. An alliance of convenience. Or maybe the story of Mumm-ra enslaving them has been lost, replaced instead by the story of the Cats oppressing them.
There's a lot there for the writers to work with, at least when they get bored of writing episodes where Mumm-ra gets impatient and starts doing donuts in the forest with his tank.
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And now that Lion-O's stated goal is to unite the different tribes, there's the very interesting question of how THAT will go.
There are obviously Lizardmen who aren't totally onboard with Slithe. Will they splinter off and join with Lion-O?
Or, more interestingly, will Slithe recognize that, with Thundera destroyed and Claudus dead, Mumm-Ra is the greatest threat to him, and switch sides for a temporary alliance with the Thundercats? That would be a lot more interesting than the standard trope of serving Mumm-Ra while plotting against him.
Also an option: Lion-O unites the Mutant factions -- against himself. The first episode of TOS made it clear that the three Mutant races working together was completely unprecedented, and I always wanted to see more of that. The rest of the series certainly played a lot with the idea that the Mutants' (and Lunatacs') greatest weakness was their inability to cooperate, but it would be neat to see what they could accomplish if they actually COULD.
Long-term, the series has to converge on #1: Slithe's not going to reform, but ultimately you HAVE to have the Thundercats unite with good-hearted Mutants, because otherwise you're left with something cynical (that also ends up promoting the same racist undertones that the series has taken great pains to flout). But short-term, I'd be interested in seeing how the other possibilities could go.
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Well, I gotta know just what the general public thinks of Lion-O right now. I mean, I'm sure the cats weren't wiped out to a man, but we haven't seen anyone really from Thundera since the kingdom fell. Thad touched on this earlier, but I'm willing to bet that some out there blame Lion-O for all this. After all, he's the one who insisted that the two lizardmen be released.
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Well, that was a fun episode, but I'm kind of getting sick of Lion-o. I mean, we basically just had two episodes in a row of nothing but Lion-o's adventures without the rest of the Thundercats. We haven't heard Cheetara or the Thunderkittens talk for two whole damn episodes.
Give us a Tygra episode or something. Or one about Cheetara, something that would give her more personality than just being Lion-o's cheerleader for once.
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Enjoyed it!
Was really on the fence about continuing with this thing after the Sight Beyond Sight episode, but this one and the one before it have been fun.
Did they ever explain how Drifter sorta floats around everywhere or am thinking too much about this?
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Agreed on both counts. On the one hand, I loved the introduction of a couple of really weird characters and I like it when they crank up the anything-can-happen randomness of TOS, like the whole world is one giant Mos Eisley Cantina.
But yeah, need to focus on the other Thundercats now.
EDIT: And by "now" I mean whenever the hell the next episode actually airs. I don't see any info on new stuff past this, suggesting CN is engaging in its usual schedule dickery. Speaking of which, apparently next week we're getting Young Justice instead.
"Yay."
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Did they ever explain how Drifter sorta floats around everywhere or am thinking too much about this?
Heavy-handed symbolism. That's pretty much it. I agree that they need to do more episodes featuring other members of the team. I'm still waiting for them to have an episode that finally resolves the treasure map the Wilykittens were excited about in the pilot. And how the heck did Tygra get so enthusiastic about all the technology he dismissed in the pilot? I know pilot episodes aren't necessarily indicative of characterization and tone for the rest of the series, but it would have been nice to have it mesh with the rest of the episodes, or at least flow into them better.
Also:
(http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110827161341/thundercats/images/thumb/e/e0/Book-omens-2011.jpg/400px-Book-omens-2011.jpg)
(http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100401015761/darkerthanblackfanon/images/2/23/Chaos_symbol-1.jpg)
:ohshi~:
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(http://i385.photobucket.com/albums/oo297/BBLegs/Chapter_five_how_to.jpg)
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the outward arrow thing has been a symbol of at least the idea of chaos for a long time jfyi
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Oh, I know. It dates back to at least Michael Moorcock's Elric stories. I'm just curious to see if the conceit is intentional or not.
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Heavy-handed symbolism. That's pretty much it.
Well, that and wonderful fucking weirdness. Guys who do crazy shit like that show up all the time in Thundercats, and nobody ever questions it.
And how the heck did Tygra get so enthusiastic about all the technology he dismissed in the pilot?
He dismissed it because he didn't think it actually worked. He was the first one to pick up a blaster once he saw that all this shit was real and not a fairy tale.
There's also the fact that the guy who was sitting right next to him and egging him on as he dismissed the existence of technology turned out to be lying and planning to use it to kill his father and burn his city to the ground.
I know pilot episodes aren't necessarily indicative of characterization and tone for the rest of the series, but it would have been nice to have it mesh with the rest of the episodes, or at least flow into them better.
A line or two of dialogue would have been nice, but I think it's a pretty clear progression.
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Heavy-handed symbolism. That's pretty much it.
Well, that and wonderful fucking weirdness. Guys who do crazy shit like that show up all the time in Thundercats, and nobody ever questions it.
Rmm, yes.
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Also, that was definitely Garry Chalk as the Duelist, but was the Drifter Stephen Root?
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2036813/Peaches-Geldof-morphs-ThunderCat-Cheetara-Cartoon-Network.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2036813/Peaches-Geldof-morphs-ThunderCat-Cheetara-Cartoon-Network.html)
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... why did they paint Cheetara's clothes onto her? That seems like something you could reasonably recreate... with clothes.
EDIT: it occurs to me that maybe I'm too much of a geek to appreciate sexy ladies in body paint.
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Eh.
NEW EPISODE TONIGHT
HOW NONSEQUITUR WILL IT BE?
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Eh.
NEW EPISODE TONIGHT
HOW NONSEQUITUR WILL IT BE?
IT WILL BE SO ABSTRACT THAT IT WILL BE A SECOND EPISODE OF CLONE WARS
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Is there?
thetvdb (http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=241431&seasonid=466607&lid=7) says next new episode is Sunday.
Of course, it says the title is Old Friends, so it's obviously wrong on at least that much since that was the title of episode 5.
EDIT: And according to a DVD thread on Thundercatslair (http://www.thundercatslair.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7303), "Omens, Parts 1 & 2" is the official title for the first two episodes of the series, not "Sword of Omens/Ancient Spirits of Evil" as previously given. (Keep in mind that in their original airing there was no opening titles and, correspondingly, no title card.) So yeah, looks like tvdb is all fucked up again.
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New Jelenic interview. (http://www.awn.com/articles/thundercats-ho-interview-mike-jelenic) Pumyra confirmed, Safari Joe teased, and also there's going to be an episode written by Peter Lawrence, the showrunner of TOS.
Also: Hear the Roar, the new book on the original series by David Crichton, has been released in the UK, and bookdepository.com (http://www.bookdepository.com/Hear-Roar-Unofficial-Unauthorised-Guide-Hit-1980s-Series-Thundercats-David-Crichton/9781845830380) has it for $24.23 with free international shipping. I'd like to get a copy, if for no other reason than for more grist for my argument with the IMDb editors on the airdates.
Which they will presumably reject because the book has "unofficial and unauthorised" in the title, making it less reliable than their current system of "some guy filled in some airdates".
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You'll see Pumyra, with several episodes devoted to her, even if our take on her is not the same as in the original series.
The original series had a "take" on Pumyra? Like as an actual character? 'Cuz all I remember was that she was a token female character to go along with the far more interesting New Thundercat characters and that she had maybe six lines throughout the entire series.
That said I actually liked Pumyra more than Cheetara because she didn't sound like she had been smoking cigarettes for 40 years.
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The sound effects guy has a blog (http://soundslikejeff.wordpress.com/)! It's interesting stuff.
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This involves Thundercat's and yet I can't help but blame CN for doing this so quickly.
...And why? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufXf67qBcc#ws)
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Troll-Ra was funny but then I realized his name should -- obviously -- have been Meme-Ra.
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Got my copy of Hear the Roar!
Have flipped through and it looks pretty damned amazing. Ultimately I think I'll need to read it cover-to-cover just for the depth and breadth of the interviews. If there's anybody who worked on Thundercats who wasn't interviewed for this book, he's probably dead and Crichton probably interviewed his kids.
For now, though, I of course went straight to the airdates so I could bludgeon IMDb with them. Fucking IMDb.
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I've spent the last few years going to Wikipedia for the sort of information IMDb is supposed to be for. Didn't even notice the shift.
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Which would be great if everybody else weren't still fucking using IMDb as the definitive source. Thundercats ran two seasons and ended in 1986, because IMDb says so. I'm fairly confident that even Warner used IMDb as reference for its (poor) DVD releases.
IMDb is seen as more authoritative because it's moderated, and because the people who see it as authoritative have never actually tried to submit a goddamn correction. In practice, while Wikipedia's let-anybody-submit-anything-and-trust-someone-will-correct-it-if-it's-wrong approach has its downsides, IMDb's approach, in practice, amounts to accepting absolutely any submission as fact and then making it a bitch to revise it once it's been added. Basically it takes the old Twain quote about the time it takes the truth to put on its shoes, and breaks both truth's hands. And one of its feet. At that point, in most cases the truth's pretty much just gonna go "Fuck it, why do I even want to put on my shoes now? Fine, whatever, James Lipton wrote the Thundercats theme."
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The book is really quite fascinating.
I'm curious if the fact that the new series gave Lion-O an ancestor named Lion-El is a nod to the fact that that was his name in early drafts of the original series bible, or if it's just that "Lionel" is a really obvious name for a lion dude. There's some other stuff in there, like the Thundercats seeking to unite the disparate peoples of Third Earth, that's certainly made it into the new show, so it wouldn't surprise me if they'd been looking through TOS bible for ideas that didn't quite make it to the screen.
It's interesting to look at the show as a push-pull between Starr and Overgard (the relatively straight mythology episodes and the batshit-fucking-insane anything-can-happen ones), and in fact that's pretty much what it was from the very beginning; they were the first two guys brought on as writers. (And indeed wrote the first and last episode, respectively.)
Starr's pleasantly candid about where he got his ideas; every episode had to have a moral and so he flipped through old fables. He remembers his favorite as "Better an honest enemy than a false friend", which he got from Aesop -- and man, he's right; the guy can spot a good turn of phrase. I know exactly what episode that quote was used in and in what context; it really is a pithy line.
And one of my long-standing questions -- why Starr was clearly steering the ship in the early days but turned things over to Lawrence later on in the series -- has an unfortunately predictable answer: they stiffed Starr out of royalties. He's the guy who wrote the series bible, wrote a story around Ted Wolf's character drawings, and pretty much built the whole show, but Rankin and Bass didn't give him a "Developed By" credit and the share in profits that would have gone with it.
(Lawrence, as you might expect, tells the story differently; in his version Starr was just not good at managing a team. Which is probably true, but he doesn't make any reference whatsoever to Starr feeling cheated. Whereas Steve Perry -- who, as we know, had some rather serious money troubles of his own -- corroborated that Len felt cheated and had a falling-out with Jules.)
(Adding: It probably also explains why Lion-O's Anointment was irritatingly split up in the production, original airing, and now, sadly, DVD order: Starr was basically sent off to work on the mythology-building stuff all by himself, so his scripts would likely have been trickling in individually in-between the other writers' work. Given that the episodes were being produced in a mad dash and, in some cases, still being put together after the season had already started airing, it's understandable how the order didn't get corrected before broadcast, but it SURE as hell should have been corrected for the DVD release.)
There's an interesting bit with the show psychologist, too; on the whole it seems like the demand for more responsible children's programming was handled a lot less acrimoniously than, say, the comics debate in the 1950's. I suspect this is partly because both sides were more reasonable and partly because, having seen what had happened with comics, producers of children's cartoons were ready out the gate to cover their asses. It'd be interesting to do some research into the various "Think of the children!" movements over the years/decades/centuries and see what their commonalities and differences have been.
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Man, the bit from Perry is bittersweet.
The first writer profiles, with Starr and Lawrence, are conversational in tone; I suspect they were from phone interviews. Perry's, by contrast, is more of a long, uninterrupted story. And he's a great storyteller; it's got a beginning, a middle, an end, a couple of laughs in-between, and has a little bit of Stan Lee flair to remind you that he learned to write from reading Fantastic Four. What a talent. And then add in the knowledge that he was in excruciating pain, barely able to work.
His profile (and, I suspect, the rest of the book) only devotes a single sentence to "a period of professional inactivity" and his death at 56; nothing in there about his cancer or murder. I suspect it's a last-minute edit, that Crichton felt he needed to acknowledge it but also had a page count to maintain. Any more detail in his description of Perry's final years would have warranted a couple more pages, and been a real downer besides.
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My fondest memory was watching Earl Hammond portray Mumm-Ra, the demonic leader of the Mutants. He visually became the animated character ... eyes blazing, arms uplifted, head reared back. As he roared "Ancient Spirits of Evil..." he actually drooled and spat like his animated counterpart. Anytime we got within a paragraph of that trademark Mumm-Ra line, every actor began backing away from Earl's microphone, until no-one was within ten feet of him.
(Ellipses in original text)
Seriously, guys, I am loving this book. $25.32, free international shipping. (http://www.bookdepository.com/Hear-Roar-Unofficial-Unauthorised-Guide-Hit-1980s-Series-Thundercats-David-Crichton/9781845830380)
Meanwhile, in the twenty-first century: tonight's episode will introduce the Berbils.
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So after a month and a half hiatus, they start off their show with reintroducing the second-most irritating race in the franchise.
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I remember for Mandora, Bob McFadden said, "She looks like John Wayne." Bob could give you a personality for wind. He was a genius. They would all start doing John Wayne impressions -- they would give it to me. Bobby was very funny; he had this filing cabinet in his brain and would remember every voice he'd ever heard. He'd say, "Put a little Joan Crawford into that." [...] I'd done some [voice work] for an animated film called The Little Red Pony, and for a few minutes, I was friends with [its star] Mia Farrow. That's where Willa came from; Mia Farrow doing an impression of an English accent. [...] I also remember that I was riding Doug Preis's back, as he voiced the Amok character. Nayda was Katherine Hepburn and was suggested by the guys. Earl Hammond would suggest some obscure things that were way before my time, like "Do Al Jolson." I knew the name, but I'd be like, "What the hell did he sound like?" And he'd do an impression.
(bracketed text in original; ellipses mine)
She also mentions that on multiple occasions, including the last episode, she brought in a camera and recorded the sessions. This, like most things, makes me very angry about the complete half-assedness of the DVD releases.
She's still got at least some of the tapes; she mentions how valuable it is to her to be able to see Hammond and McFadden after their passing, and the book has a few stills from them in the photo section. Seeing as Warner doesn't seem terribly damn interested in them, I'd really love to see them up on YouTube. I know there are rights issues for the lines and the audio, but even just seeing a small sample of it with the audio would really be wonderful.
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Thad, I'm going to ask this question and I don't want you to take it the wrong way or be insulted, I just want to understand:
What is it with you and Thundercats? Your interest in everything about the series, past present and future as well as everyone involved seems to borderline on obsession and I can't figure it out.
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Everyone has a favorite show. I know pretty much everything there is to know about Firefly, and I managed to do it
without becoming a creepy fangirl without letting anyone know I became a creepy fangirl.
tl;dr, Thad really likes Thundercats, is no more obsessive about it than your average Narutard, is in fact 500% less obsessive about it than your average Narutard
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I disagree with that on the grounds that Narutards probably don't keep extensive spreadsheets on the writers for each episode in each season and fight with IMDB over air dates and writers.
Edit: Which I will say is quite a respectable service in honor of the show, it's writers, and people who worked on it, actually.
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Ziiro, you know there's a continuum of fanboy-itude? Much like how there's a continuum of intelligence and/or ability to grasp patterns and concepts?
EDIT:
And in case you're wondering, fetishizing about characters in your show of obsession does in fact increase the obsessiveness by a factor of 6.
EDIT EDIT:
Always. Don't make me break out the proof.
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I disagree with that on the grounds that Narutards probably don't keep extensive spreadsheets on the writers for each episode in each season and fight with IMDB over air dates and writers.
That's because there's no need to. All that shit is well-documented in Naruto's case. You can damn-well bet that if IMDB was missing writer credits on 75% of the Naruto episodes and said half of them aired years earlier than they actually did, somebody would have corrected it.
Now, if IMDB had rebuffed them, odds are they probably would have given up rather than come back a year later with proof. ("Proof" here is "This guy made the same educated guesses I could have, but did it in a book.") But that says more about my own tenacity and stubbornness than my approach to Thundercats in particular.
And while editing every single episode is pretty onerous and I've clearly put more effort into it than most, I'm not the only guy out there correcting erroneous information on IMDB. Somebody appears to have corrected the record and stated that Bob McFadden, not Doug Preis, was the voice of Lynx-O (an understandable mistake as Preis joined the cast around the same time Lynx-O was added, and you wouldn't figure Lynx-O had the same voice as Snarf), and thankfully the site no longer says that James Lipton wrote the theme song.
Anyhow. I like Thundercats. It was the cartoon I glommed onto at an early age, moreso than its contemporaries like He-Man and Transformers. It's the one I'd be late for school to watch, once they put it on at 7:30 in the morning. I spent the next 5 years or so enjoying it with my brother and cousin on my extensive but incomplete VHS collection, and then recorded every episode off-the-air when it reran on Cartoon Network.
It was interesting watching it in my teens -- I can state definitively that, for the most part, the last two seasons sucked (http://www.corporate-sellout.com/archive/00_08.html#stream09-thundercats) -- but when it was on it was on. Starr and Lawrence did great mythology episodes, and while Overgard contributed some truly execrable excrement (Exile Isle, Circus Train), he was also responsible for some really great batshit insanity that really set the show apart from its peers (Sword in a Hole and the various Mandora eps -- yes, even the one where Snarfer gets captured on his way home with Mexican takeout).
And its relative obscurity among its peers is notable too -- He-Man and Transformers have had theatrical movies and multiple relaunches, while Thundercats got a half-assed DVD release and didn't get a relaunch until this past summer. It hasn't gotten the attention or the care that those series have.
And that's probably where Perry's murder comes into it -- when he died and Bissette wanted a list of his credits, I thought it was a disgrace that you couldn't just punch his name into IMDB and find them. And once I got started giving him an entry, and separating his existing credits from the other Stephen Perry, I just kept going.
I suspect I'm not done yet. Crichton's book is fascinating as hell and has given me more than just airdates to correct -- for example, the other day I submitted an update to IMDb to note that Julian P Gardner is Jules Bass writing under an alias.
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That makes a lot of sense actually. I'm glad for the sake of historical accuracy that someone like you latched onto the show. It is also incredibly disappointing that no official group is updating things on IMDB, and most things on IMDB are done by (a majority of) stupid people.
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Eh, I'm an amateur. Dave Crichton's a pro; I'm just copying down his original research.
(Granted, I still could've come up with those dates myself. But they're really the least impressive thing in the book.)
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So, last night's episode.
Not bad, actually. The Berbils are nowhere near as obnoxious as they were in the original series.
Hug.
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Inclined to agree, but it still might be the weakest of the series to date. Though I liked Jim Cummings.
And [spoiler]Snow-Meow![/spoiler] I would like to see more of THAT thread.
Further thoughts on why TOS stood out among its peers:
It had the best villain.
It had better animation than most of its contemporaries (considerably better than He-Man, probably par with Transformers).
It was a straight-up hero's journey story in the way that most of the others weren't.
EDIT TO ADD: And the music. It wasn't just that the opening theme was great (though it was); I think it had more music cues than most of the other toons at the time (Jem probably notwithstanding, since it of course had a couple of original songs every episode). And recognizable character themes. (I like how Lion-O doesn't have theme music but the Thunder Tank does. And Snarf has two different arrangements. Three by the second season.)
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I disagree with that on the grounds that Narutards probably don't keep extensive spreadsheets on the writers for each episode in each season and fight with IMDB over air dates and writers.
That's because there's no need to. All that shit is well-documented in Naruto's case. You can damn-well bet that if IMDB was missing writer credits on 75% of the Naruto episodes and said half of them aired years earlier than they actually did, somebody would have corrected it.
Adding: The other thing that's different about Naruto is it's still fresh in people's minds. It's easier to say "That wasn't 2004, it was 2007" than "That wasn't 1986, it was 1989" -- especially if your target audience was born around 1980. Tell the average person around 30 that Thundercats aired over two seasons from '85 to '86 and there's nothing to immediately suggest anything wrong with that.
And here's where we hit on something else that's unusual about me as a person: I can immediately tell you no, that's wrong. Not only are there 3 clear season arcs in the last 60 episodes, but I distinctly remember when the last season aired. Like I said, I was late for school most every day after the local station put the show on at 7:30 AM; I can tell you with absolute confidence that the last season (from Return to Thundera on) aired when I was in first grade.
Now, of course IMDb does not accept "I have an extraordinarily good memory" as a reason for an edit; nor should it. (Although it DOES accept pretty much any justification for an original submission!) Which is why I had to rely on hard evidence to back up my memory.
Crichton had a tougher row to hoe than I did; he couldn't have relied on his memory, because he's British and the last 3 seasons didn't air there at all. I'm curious as to whether he came across the correct (rough) airdate information in initial research (eg the dated scripts on some of the fansites) or whether it didn't come up until he was talking to the people who actually made the show.
Course, in either case, it's easy to infer from the very clear season break every 20 episodes.
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Some thoughts on the original series characters (and contrasting them with their use on the new series):
Lion-O and Panthro are the best, most fully realized characters of the core group. Lion-O's the audience identification character and the focus of the Hero's Journey arc; he's a boy trapped in a man's body who has to grow up in a real hurry. Panthro, meanwhile, is the seasoned vet who just kicks ass at everything he does; he's strong, he knows kung fu, and he's a technical genius.
The new series has played Lion-O pretty much the same as TOS; there's no artificial aging fuckery, but aside from that he's very much the same character, a boy trying to be a man after having his leadership role thrust on him.
Panthro...well, he's not there yet. So far he's the gruff one. His goofier portrayal in Berbils is actually a good thing; we're seeing him warm up a bit and the show's starting to hint that the Panthro we know and love is hiding somewhere beneath his harsh exterior. Old-series Panthro was quick to laugh; this one isn't yet but I'm hoping his shell will crack.
Cheetara's the next most well-rounded character, and she's the one with the most obvious superpower. Honestly I think she's most memorable for Lynne Lipton's sultry voice (which Lipton credits to direction from showrunner Lee Dannacher -- EDIT: and, later in the book, Starr's notes are quoted as suggesting she purr like Eartha Kitt), but she's always in the thick of things and feels like she belongs there.
She hasn't done much on the new series. I like the whole "Jaga's Cleric" angle, but they haven't really done anything with it since the second episode. I want to see her developed further, beyond just being part of a love triangle.
Tygra, by contrast...well, nobody ever seemed to know what the hell to do with him. What's interesting is that his best characterization is in two episodes with Jules Bass's fingerprints on them (under the pen name "Julian P Gardner"): Pumm-Ra and Trouble with Time. Pumm-Ra has that great bit where Tygra volunteers to infiltrate the Lair himself: "I am the architect of Cats' Lair. I know every turn, nook, and cranny." Unfortunately the architect angle isn't played up much in the rest of the series; he should be depicted as being as much a design adept as Panthro, but never really is beyond this one scene.
Trouble with Time has him artificially age and gives the interesting line at the end, "I was tempted to stay in until I was as young as Lion-O" -- it implies he's older, more tired, than the rest of the team. But that's only ever suggested again in Lion-O's Anointment; more on that in a minute.
Tygra also has an obvious superpower, in invisibility. But it's never really used to effect. He should be a ninja -- invisibility is for spying and for sneak attacks. We see a bit of that, but never very much, and it gets worse when the show goes all wacky and can't decide how the fuck his invisibility actually WORKS. (One episode actually flat-out says that the whip makes him invisible, and when he uses it on himself and Willa Nayda at the same time it causes bizarre results. And I'm not sure if that's the same episode that says he can only swim when he's invisible, but seriously, how the fuck does that work?)
Tygra's such a cipher that Starr had to completely make up a power for him when Lion-O faced off with each of the other Thundercats in Lion-O's Anointment. The others had clear abilities -- Panthro has Strength, Cheetara has Speed, and the Thunderkittens have Cunning. Since it's presumably too difficult to build an episode around Architecture or Invisibility, Tygra's episode gives him the ability to project illusions, which is never referred to in any episode before or after. (Hear the Roar includes a memo from Bass to Starr that makes that point; it's pretty funny.) If anything, if they'd had a more coherent approach, Tygra's invisibility should have been wrapped into the Mind Power mental projection, and maybe he should have been the one with an oracular Sixth Sense instead of Cheetara.
But instead, nobody ever really seemed to know how to play Tygra; it's no wonder they left him on Third Earth with Pumyra in the last season.
And this, of course, is one place where the new series has done a good job: I'm not crazy about the love triangle, but other than that Tygra's characterization has been great. The idea that he's the older adopted brother who's got a chip on his shoulder brings some real complexity to the role, and I want to know more about him.
Then we get to the Thunderkittens. They're largely extraneous, most of the writers didn't like them, and they exist mostly to act immature and fuck things up. Which is already Lion-O's job. Of course, the fact that they are mentally the same age as Lion-O is never acknowledged after the first episode (presumably because once you start tugging at the "artificial aging" thread the logic of the entire series starts to unravel -- even if you assume there's a reason Lion-O aged and the Kittens didn't, what about the Mutants? The New Thundercats? And so on). The only thing they brought to the table that the rest of the cast didn't was their bond as twins; when used well it gave them a unique character relationship, but when used poorly it made them redundant.
New series has improved them, partly by making them markedly younger than Lion-O and partly by making them Miyazakian street urchins. They're still the comic relief, but they make more sense this time around.
And then there's Snarf. I like Snarf. I like that he spends much of his time being whiny and irritating. He's the mother hen and the conscience and even though he'd just as soon stay at home where it's nice and safe he's as brave as any of the rest. I kinda wish they hadn't made him a mute on the new series, but on the other hand he WAS pretty damned irritating.
And do I need to say anything about the New Thundercats? Lynx-O was cool despite being a token; I liked him as the wise elder statesman who has turned his disability into an asset. The other two are basically useless and redundant.
And that's it for the Thundercats themselves. (Well, not Snarfer I guess, but fuck Snarfer.) Maybe I'll have a long rambly post about the bad guys at some later date. (Basically: Mumm-Ra's great, the Mutants serve as an interesting evil mirror to the Thundercats, and the Lunatacs have their moments, particularly Alluro, but showed some serious diminishing returns over time and there's a reason each season used them less than the previous.)
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I would write, hotly, for two or three hour stretches, and then rush out of my studio, strip naked, and throw myself into the swimming hole. Often I was yelling, 'Safari Joe does it again!' When others were present, they looked at me as if I had gone off my rocker. But I didn't care. I was so into the writing of 'Safari Joe', and it was coming to me so quick and easy, and I was excited about this to such an extent that I seemed to be living on Third Earth. Much of the dialogue spoken by Safari Joe in that episode is lines I would yell to the waterfall. I was crazy.
You know how it's sometimes hard to pin down what was great about Thundercats?
It's that. That right there.
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Yeah, Tygra was weird on that show. I always thought he was supposed to be the Smart One -- the mastermind with the plans and the precise, experimental technical knowhow that contrasted Panthro's heftier, practical mechanical knowhow.
As for the new show, I want to see an episode wherein Tygra's obvious jealous adoptive brother/heir bit hits the tipping point with Lion-O and they both get into a big fight and the end of the episode they both grow and learn something. And Cheetara, as the calm, collected one in the group, really needs to lose her shit at some point.
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As for the new show, I want to see an episode wherein Tygra's obvious jealous adoptive brother/heir bit hits the tipping point with Lion-O and they both get into a big fight and the end of the episode they both grow and learn something.
I doubt we'll have to wait long.
And Cheetara, as the calm, collected one in the group, really needs to lose her shit at some point.
It'd sure be nice.
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I wonder if Lion-O let anyone know that he [spoiler]accidentally lost the Sword of Omens[/spoiler] in the one episode with the bizarre sword-obsessed town and Drifter.
Probably not, because I'm sure that Lion-O doesn't want to give more fodder for Tygra to call Lion-O an incompetent leader.
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You know, I'd certainly noticed that Lion-O lost the damn sword a lot on the old show, but hadn't noticed until the book pointed it out that it was one of Overgard's favorite devices. Quik-Pik steals it, Captain Shiner throws it into a black hole, he doesn't take it to Exile Isle because he's worried he'll lose it...
...
...presumably it's to eliminate the Sword as a giant deus ex machina, but the problem is, it almost always ends in using the Sword as an EVEN BIGGER deus ex machina. "Lion-O can summon the Sword to him. Even if its eye's covered and it's been thown into a goddamn black hole."
I have noticed that "Sword of Omens, come to my hand!" has not been used on the new series. It may be because Lion-O just doesn't know it can do that, but I'm betting it's because in this version, it CAN'T do that.
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I should also add that the book has a review of every single episode, coupled with a writer's summary -- usually the writer of the episode, but if they're unavailable, with showrunner Peter Lawrence instead.
The reviews are well-written, though of course I don't agree with all of them. The four-star rating given to Locket of Lies has me wanting to do that bit from Laserblast where Mike and the Bots go through Leonard Maltin's book and mock his ratings. "Key to Thundera is as good as Locket of Lies! It may not be on par with The Telepathy Beam, but at least it's half a star better than Wild Workout!"
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Due to the illness of another writer, our due date on this script was moved up a week, which is why we almost submitted this script with the inappropriate dialogue below.
If Mike or I were stumped for a line or a description while writing our half of the script, we would write something absurd in a red font and hope that the other would think of something to put in the final version. In 'Malcar', when Lion-O and Snarf break through the rubble to save Panthro (later Bengali), Snarfer, Egbert, and Oswald, I couldn't think of a line so I wrote:
LION-O
Panthro, where are the Snarfs?
ANGLE ON PANTHRO COUGHING UP SNARF FUR
PANTHRO
What (cough) Snarfs?
Somehow this came out in black and not red. Fortunately, Mike caught it in time and wrote back, 'Did you mean to put this in red?' If we had sent this in, we might have found out about the child psychologist.
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I also like the writers' various theories on why Silverhawks was not as successful.
Peter Lawrence points out that none of the protagonists are actually interesting or well-developed besides Commander Stargazer; Leonard Starr blames the show's failure on its distinct lack of Leonard Starr; and Steve Perry points out that the Silverhawks toys weren't nearly as good as the Thundercats ones.
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I really gotta wonder: how long is Lion-O going to put up with Tigra's bullshit before he calls him on it and punches him in the face?
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Hah. I just noticed something about the Sight Beyond Sight episode: at the beginning the Thunderkittens fuck up by launching fucking missiles at Lion-O, Tygra and Cheetara, and my first thought was immediately "Welp, who let the Thunderkittens out of the cage?". At the end of the episode, on the other hand, Lion-O's the one who fucks up on a pretty equally scale, and it's the Thunderkittens and their power of Phat Beats that save the day.
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Really the most random, padded ep yet, but not bad. (Funny how it had more in common with the original series' Berbils ep than, well, this series' Berbils ep. Trollogs notwithstanding.)
I DO like how absolutely nobody comments on the Thunderkittens shooting missiles at the other Cats beyond Panthro's initial "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"
Lion-O's "mistake" is...well, kind of an imperfect moral lesson. "Consider the consequences of your actions" is a good lesson, but "Assume the senile dudes who don't seem to know where the fuck they are half the time have a good reason for not just swatting the bugs that keep eating their food" is not.
(Were there any lady elephants?)
I do kinda like the whole nomadic thing they're going for. TOS had a hell of a lot of episodes where they were out searching for MacGuffins (particularly in season 3), but, with the exception of Thundercubs, there was really no sense of them being completely out in the woods; they always had a home base near at hand. (Even Lion-O's Anointment ended each episode back at the Lair, even if Lion-O himself was out on his own.) I'm not crazy about the collection quest, but it's doing a great job of showing that Third Earth is a huge fucking place and even the Thunder Tank takes days to get between regions.
(Hear the Roar notes the continuity gaffe that there's a line in The Thunder-Cutter about the Treetop Kingdom being a three-day journey from Cats' Lair, yet later in the same episode the Thundercats respond to Lion-O's signal and arrive in minutes.)
I expect we'll see air travel (Thunderstrike/Feliner/Thunderclaw/Hovercat?) later in the series, given that this series seems to be following the original in the gradual acquisition of more technology.
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Tangentially, you know what else is interesting? A good chunk of the Peter Pan and the Pirates production team was made up of Thundercats alums. Peter Lawrence was in charge of the writers, Lee Dannacher was in charge of the actors, the Malachs were onboard, and Overgard wrote for the show too.
I kinda want to go back and watch the thing; I remember enjoying it as a kid, and now that I've got names to put to it I can take a stab at why. Pity it never got a DVD release; I'm sure anything I may be able to find on YouTube/BT is going to be fugly.
Odd that it kinda got buried; it was a critically-acclaimed show (won an Emmy and Tim Curry thinks highly enough of it that he put it on his list of credits in his bio in the Spamalot playbill). I wouldn't mind seeing it available as even a burn-on-demand kinda thing like Warner does.
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Odd that it kinda got buried; it was a critically-acclaimed show (won an Emmy and Tim Curry thinks highly enough of it that he put it on his list of credits in his bio in the Spamalot playbill). I wouldn't mind seeing it available as even a burn-on-demand kinda thing like Warner does.
A quick google suggests that it ended its initial run right before Hook came out. Maybe it just got forgotten under the big budget Pan, even though it continued in re-runs. I remember disliking it as a kid but liking Hook a lot.
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That could explain everybody forgetting it and it never getting DVD releases or suchlike, but the decision to forego a second season would have happened well before Hook came out.
And if Hook had been a success, it would likely have IMPROVED the cartoon's ratings, not hurt them.
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Definitely the most TOS-y episode at least since the Moby Dick one, and possibly even moreso. Most likely this is because it was written by Peter Lawrence, head writer for TOS.
We met some new characters who were decidedly Overgardy (Overgard loved samurai), and got a Moral Lesson that was identical to the one from original series episode Good and Ugly. And then we found out this whole side trip would have been unnecessary if the Thundercats had just looked a little closer at that goddamn wall last week; again, in this series "beyond sight" appears to mean "right the fuck in front of you".
While it's great that Lion-O is learning the valuable lesson of FIGURATIVELY looking closer than what's on the surface, he really could stand to learn how to do it LITERALLY.
Maybe he doesn't need the Eye of Thundera, just fucking glasses.
(http://www.thehighdefinite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/hipcats_2011_by_zano-d46prrh.jpg)
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I'm hoping that whatever Lion-O figured out at the end of the episode was more complex than the "it's inside the damn wall".
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Wake me when someone gets put in a hole.
Surprisingly, it took 13 episodes.
Also: HOLY FUCK, DID I REALLY JUST SEE THAT?
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... so was that, like, a reference to the Three-Day Drop or whatever it was called? (If you fall it'll take you three days to reach the bottom).
Also? Panthro didn't ask for this.
I'm okay with that.
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... so was that, like, a reference to the Three-Day Drop or whatever it was called? (If you fall it'll take you three days to reach the bottom).
Sure had a more-than-passing resemblance to his fight with Hachiman.
Also? Panthro didn't ask for this.
[spoiler]He's going to look more like Jet Black than ever.[/spoiler]
I mean, okay, I expected [spoiler]Grune would die, because he was a ghost in TOS[/spoiler]. And I expected [spoiler]he'd fight to the death with Panthro, because that's what they've been building to[/spoiler]. But I expected [spoiler]Green Goblin Copout, where the story dares to ask the question, "Can a hero kill?" -- and then totally avoids actually having to answer it, by having the villain accidentally kill himself[/spoiler]. Really the whole episode piled one cliche on top of another just to lull the audience into a false sense of security.
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... so was that, like, a reference to the Three-Day Drop or whatever it was called? (If you fall it'll take you three days to reach the bottom).
Sure had a more-than-passing resemblance to his fight with Hachiman.
Is that what happened? All I remember is that there was a massive fell tree across an equally massive pit and that there was one of them Amazonian ladies with unnecessarily gravely voices.
Also, calling it now: [spoiler]Pumyra is going to be Lion-O's love interest, and will help him get over his feelings about Cheetara (more like CHEAT-ara. See what I did there?)[/spoiler]
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Sure had a more-than-passing resemblance to his fight with Hachiman.
Is that what happened? All I remember is that there was a massive fell tree across an equally massive pit and that there was one of them Amazonian ladies with unnecessarily gravely voices.
Hachiman and Lion-O met and immediately engaged in a dickwaving game of chicken where they both started hacking away at the tree. While standing on it.
The Warrior Maiden in the scene is the younger one, Nayda; her voice isn't particularly gravely (and is based on Katherine Hepburn).
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So I bought Silverhawks when it was like $2.50 on Amazon last week, and I just watched the second episode and MAN that show is crazy. It really is Thundercats' "a bunch of completely crazy shit happens and everybody just acts like it's normal" style cranked up to 11. Like, they go to their new assignment and their boss is Robocop and works in a 1930's film noir style detective office. With bookshelves that part to reveal a screen behind them.
Also, it is a show where "a character named Bluegrass plays nothing but rock music" barely even cracks the list of things that don't make any sense.
And at this point in the series the crazy shit hasn't really even begun in earnest. Introduce Stargazer and Tallyhawk, 15-minute fight scene, Copper Kidd learns about asteroids, roll credits.
Show's still just $6.42 if anyone else wants to get it. The complete D&D is $6.49.
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Honestly I remember most of the show's weird shit and I still think the oddest thing is the whole "if we turn completely different bits of each of you into robots, you can breath in space" premise.
And then Melodia shows up and doesn't even give a fuck.
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Really, I thought the weirdest thing was that people fell in space. Like, there was gravity. In space.
And at the end of every episode there was a science fact bit.
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Honestly I remember most of the show's weird shit
And I don't. I mean, I remember the basic stuff, but I only caught a few episodes when it ran on Cartoon Network a decade or so back, so I've only seen a handful of episodes since about 1986.
and I still think the oddest thing is the whole "if we turn completely different bits of each of you into robots, you can breath in space" premise.
And then Melodia shows up and doesn't even give a fuck.
Yes, obviously the breathing/falling in space shit is ridiculous, but Thundercats had already blazed that trail. (I used to wonder if the two were set in the same universe, partly because of the "penal planet" idea existing in both shows -- but of course the Silverhawks are from an Earth that looks a whole lot different from Third Earth, so not so much.)
I think part of Silverhawks's general weirdness is that it mashes up so many genres. I mean, Thundercats is pretty straight up fantasy/SF, so when you see Merlin in one episode and a space game hunter in the next, okay, I mean, that's kinda odd but it's not Silverhawks odd.
Silverhawks is based on the high concept of "the Untouchables in space". But since they cribbed their villain directly from Thundercats, you wind up with a Mumm-Ra who, instead of being an ancient evil who has been woken from his slumber, is Al Capone.
Aside from that, you get two more immediate problems: Stargazer is the only interesting Silverhawk, because he is Eliot Ness, and you're looking at a children's cartoon about the Mafia that has to deal with mid-1980's network S&P. So Mon-Star's motivations are never quite as clear to the audience as Mumm-Ra's. I remember he owned a casino and the Silverhawks kept raiding it, but I don't remember them ever explaining the connection between organized crime and casino operation to 4-year-old me. And I certainly don't remember anything about bootlegging.
So Mon-Star and the Mob do general Evil Villain stuff. Like jumping a claim in Limbo Gold Rush. Whose original title was "Clementine", and which is based entirely around people singing new lyrics to same.
Obviously I'm not saying space westerns don't work. I'm not even saying that putting the Untouchables in the middle of a space western doesn't work. But putting the Untouchables in the middle of a space western where Space Al Capone Who Is Also Mumm-Ra sends one of the Misfits to jump a claim by a singing space cowboy who rides a rocket horse, well, there is a whole lot of shit going on at that point.
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Nono, the weird part is that they had to do something to breath in space. Thundercats and okay let's be honest Star Wars get a pass because they never really admit that space isn't really something you can get out of a spaceship and jump around in while talking and setting off fucking sound bombs. Silverhawks is all like, "No, of course you can't just go hopping around in a vacuum... unless we give you a robot arm. There, have fun!"
Also, as DN pointed out, they end every episode with a science fact.
Looking back on it though, the craziest thing is actually probably Steelheart's hair.
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Well, they have those mask things. I don't think they use them consistently, and it still doesn't explain Hardware, Melodia, et al, but it's not quite "metal arm helps you breathe".
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I am reminded of the time I re-watched all of Aeon Flux, though obviously that was geared to a completely different audience.
Of course there the hopeless weirdness was more-or-less intentional and sort of consistent. Well at first anyway. The show's already-tenuous grip on sanity sort of unravels in a way that the creators want you to think was intentional, but was probably more a symptom of increasingly massive drug consumption by the scriptwriters.
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Adding: come to think of it, Silverhawks was helmed by a British writer. Wonder how familiar he actually WAS with the Untouchables. How popular is the American prohibition cops-and-robbers genre in the UK?
Could be that it IS reasonably well-known over there (at least among Lawrence's generation). Or it could be that it isn't but that he nonetheless knows about it (in the same way that an American can loosely base a series of fantasy novels on the War of the Roses). Or in any case he certainly had a mostly-American team of writers; Overgard was a bit too young to remember the period but he certainly would have grown up watching movies about it. Not that Overgard was one to stick to the genre he was supposed to or anything.
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Stock American tropes like Westerns and Pulp stuff are somewhat big in Europe. Westerns much more so than gangster stuff though.
The story of The Untouchables was pretty well-known in the 80's if I recall... I think it may have been because that's when Ness's autobiography was published or re-issued or something. The Kevin Costner/Sean Connery movie was kind of the culmination of that surge in popularity.
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Meskimen's concept art for TOS (http://www.thundercats.ws/news/thundercats-cartoon-news-3/thundercats-never-before-seen-concept-art-165/)
Most of these made it to the screen unchanged.
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So, what was the reception for Season 1 of the new series? Is there going to be more on the way?
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Well, that wasn't actually intended as the ending of season 1 (as should be fairly obvious from the note it ends on); there are at least 13 more episodes already in the can that were supposed to be the back half of season 1 but are now being arbitrarily called "season 2".
Apparently they'll be starting March 24 (http://www.thundercatslair.org/2012/03/new-thundercats-episodes-return-to-cartoon-network-on-march-24th/); it's moving to Saturday mornings, which at least puts it in with the DC animation block.
I haven't heard whether more episodes are being produced yet or not.
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Jackalman and Monkian (http://www.thundercatslair.org/2012/03/thundercats-episode-14-new-alliances-preview-images/). Or whatever they're calling them in the new series, since they apparently have actual names now. (I remember reading Jackalman was "Kayner" now; haven't seen what they're calling Monkian yet.) Plus, a shot of the Berbils working on Panthro's robot arms.
...and from the messageboard, apparently the next three eps have already aired in Ireland (http://www.thundercatslair.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8108). Welp, fuck waiting; if CN doesn't want me to pirate its shows it should stop sticking random fucking months-long gaps in the middle of seasons.
Remember, Sherlock series 2 is premiering in May!
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Based on that news release, they're called Kaynar and Addicus, respectively.
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:mystery: That's what I get for just looking at the pictures.
Addicus, huh? Somehow Gregory Peck is not the first person I think of when I think of Monkian.
(Wait a minute...mockingbird...Finch...! :mystery:)
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Layers upon layers, Boyd...
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:oic:
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Well THAT sure freewheeled back and forth between slapstick at the Berbil Village and THE MOST TERRIFYING VERSIONS OF JACKALMAN AND MONKIAN EVER.
Who could be responsible for such a mixture of whimsy and dread? Oh. JM DeMatteis. Well that explains it.
Meanwhile: it's interesting to see a Lion-O who is simultaneously the most and least mature guy in the room. His strategy for winning the war is sound, while his bitterness at Tygra and Cheetara is utterly adolescent.
Not to say they're acting much more maturely than he is. The old "drop your weapons or we'll kill him" schtick? Cheetara is clearly not familiar with how cartoon villains operate. If that trick works a second time then we'll be into Original Series idiot-ballery.
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What I want to know is how Thundera was so painfully backward despite being a supposedly great empire. There were automatic doors in Jackalman's prison for fuck's sake.
Seriously, how did they not know about technology when literally every other species has a floating tank?
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So okay. Lion-O's Anointment is my favorite arc on TOS, and I had low expectations for condensing it down to two episodes.
But I'm still disappointed.
Two main problems:
One: the "it's all a dream" part.
Two: the pure, unadulterated deus ex machina that gets Lion-O there. This show's spent considerable energy establishing different rules for the Eye of Thundera and Jaga, quite clearly for the purpose of preventing the "Oh, the Sword can get out of black holes" resolutions of the old show -- and all that went straight out the window this episode. You don't need "Sword of Omens, come to my hand!" to have a lame, magic fix to certain death.
And the thing is, the Anointment Trials could have worked just fine in this world. All it would have taken would have been for Tygra to challenge Lion-O for leadership; there's your setup.
And speaking of, the Tygra-as-leader segments were much better than the Lion-O segments. I'd like more of this. Maybe a little less of the casual violence -- oof -- but I quite like how Lion-O and Tygra have both started playing on Slithe's insecurities. There's more to winning a war than combat expertise, and they've got him rattled.
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The thing that's getting on my nerves is that this is yet ANOTHER storyline about Lion-O learning a hard lesson and overcoming his weaknesses. It gets really frustrating really quickly when the hero is constantly getting knocked down, especially while he's already down, and he never really has a chance to stand up for a while.
If Lion-O could just be consistently awesome for just one episode while some other character got their conceitedness kicked out of them, that would be swell. Tygra could learn that Lion-O is the damn leader of the Thundercats and deserves at least some respect for his numerous accomplishments, or Cheetara could realize that she actually hurt this guy and that she needs to grow the fuck up and talk to him about it instead of just kind of expecting him to get over it.
It's telling that Cheetara was at her most developed when she was a figment created by the magic jewel stone in the gauntlet.
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Yeah, I'll buy that too. TOS focused pretty heavily on Lion-O fucking up and Learning a Lesson, but from the very first episode he was the guy everybody else could count on to save them when they were in trouble. His relationship with the other Cats was never as adversarial as it's been in this show.
I'm fine with him and Tygra as rivals, but that bit where Tygra saved him from the Hole in the Ground should have been a turning point. Cheetara...yeah, I think you're right about her too.
Panthro's getting there; I think he came the closest to actual constructive advice of any Thundercat in the episode, real or otherwise, with that "Kid, you're your own worst enemy" line. And it's telling that the guy who should have had the hardest time coming to trust him is the one who's the most low-key about questioning him now.
The Anointment Trials were a big turning point for Lion-O in TOS -- I think you can really draw a clear break in his characterization in the show to Pre- and Post-Trials. I'm hoping this show gets that too and we DO get a confident, less-impulsive leader. He's already proven he's got good instincts and is willing to make hard choices; what he needs is to be a little less impulsive. And he could use some support from his family.
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Welp, I'm not convinced anyone learned anything, but maybe they'll act like they did.
I hear next week's involves the tigers. Maybe we'll finally hear what the deal is with them. And oh hey didn't the original series have a second tiger guy?
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I'm not entirely sure I understood what Lion-O was supposed to have learned. I guess it was don't be such a god damned idiot?
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I'm not sure I understand what ANYONE was supposed to learn.
It occurs to me that the angst on this show is probably not just an overcorrection from TOS, but also an overcorrection from the head writer's last show, The Brave and the Bold.
It also feels decompressed as hell compared to the old series, but maybe it just feels that way because it's one episode a week instead of five. I'm tempted to do an episode-by-episode comparison on how many wacky characters, settings, and powers got introduced at a time.
Certainly they've decreased the use of catchphrases over recycled animation, but I'm hard-pressed to say the episodes are any less formulaic. Thundercats set out after a MacGuffin, Mutants fuck shit up, they fight, Lion-O learns a lesson. I think there's less of Mumm-Ra than there used to be, but again, I'm tempted to actually do a straight comparison.
Anyhow, we're overdue for some levity. (I actually liked Panthro and the Berbils, even if the Stretch Armstrong arms are a bit much.) Seems like meeting the Tiger Clan will probably not offer much in the way of levity.
You know what show was great at alternating angsty episodes with funny ones? Teen Titans. I'm thinking specifically of the Judas Contract arc followed, if I'm not mistaken, by the Larry episode.
Firefly, too. I'm still trying to convince my fiancee that Firefly is awesome; we've mostly been watching it sequentially but there was one time where I was like ooh, the next one is the one with the ship that's been attacked by Reavers -- but hey, if we skip that one, the one after THAT is Shindig; let's do that.
(EDIT TO ADD: Oh also nice use of a bit of Mumm-Ra's original theme at the beginning of this week's episode.)
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Welp, I'm not convinced anyone learned anything, but maybe they'll act like they did.
I hear next week's involves the tigers. Maybe we'll finally hear what the deal is with them. And oh hey didn't the original series have a second tiger guy?
well it's a good thing he wasn't in this one because TIEGARR WRAITHS.
Man, so much of this episode was way crazy weird and jumbled. It felt like it was supposed to be two episodes that got edited into one episode. At least Lion-O managed to be the Smart One for an entire episode.
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DS game coming (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/04/18/new-thundercats-nintendo-ds-video-game/); looks like a bog-standard platformer.
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So they've been teasing us with snowcapped peaks for two weeks now. Next week, will we see one with a hook on the end of it?
(Also: What are they doing looking for a pass through the mountains, anyway? And what happened to the whole thing where they were looking for one of the McGuffins when the Mutants attacked them? Obviously they made it back to the Tank.)
(Speaking of the Tank, I like how the whole Council Chamber from TOS fits in it now.)
Wake me when someone gets put in a hole.
Surprisingly, it took 13 episodes.
Next week's episode is titled "The Pit".
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I'm just going to assume that Mumm-Ra knew the sword was there all along and was just waiting for a Cleric to show up and lift the curse.
Because the alternative is that he failed to work out that the Sword of Plun-Darr was in Mt. Plun-Darr.
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Mumm-Ra is such a ponce in this series. Can't remember what he was like in the original, but he doesn't anything badass since the episode he just said "Fuck it", jumped in his sarcophatank and almost beat the shit out of the Cats. Now every time he personally tries to attack the cats he gets beat down until he turns in Super Mumm-Ra, then Lion-O just uses a sparkly gem and he's beat down faster than when he was just regular Mumm-Ra. More than one time where I've wondered why the Cats don't just use Lion-O's sparkly gem to go all General Sherman on Mumm-Ra's Awesome Spaceship-That-Just-Happened-To-Crash-And-Look-Like-A-Pyramid.
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Can't remember what he was like in the original, but [...] every time he personally tries to attack the cats he gets beat down until he turns in Super Mumm-Ra, then Lion-O just uses a sparkly gem and he's beat down faster than when he was just regular Mumm-Ra.
That is pretty much every episode of the original series.
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My gut said that was pretty much how things were.
On the Plun-darr issue, to be fair to the writers, it's possible the rats just named the mountain Plun-Darr after discovering that the sword was there. Which makes the rats look even more stupid (considering they kept trying to retrieve a weapon they knew to be cursed without any kind of plan for removing it, that kind of spoke volumes already). The cats don't look much better, deciding that hey they might as well make Mumm-Ra's powerful weapon useful again. It's like they never read Lord of the Rings.
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Weeeeeell the point of Lord of the Rings was that somebody was going to find the Ring sooner or later and it's lucky that the good guys got their hands on it.
Of course, Lord of the Rings wasn't written with the intent of selling Mumm-Ra with Sword of Plun-Darr action figures.
Anyhow, on TOS Plun-Darr was the name of the Mutants' home planet. So the sword was named after the planet. Here, the mountain would presumably have to be named after the sword.
(The whole Rataro/Ratilla/Jaga thing was a nice nod to TOS too.)
Anyhow, the biggest problem with Space Conqueror Mumm-Ra is that it pretty much abandons the whole "mummy" premise. Sure, he wears bandages and lives in a pyramid, but...the mummy archetype in monster fiction is all about explorers stumbling on ancient evil. It's interchangeable with the Balrog in the Mines of Moria, or pretty much any given Lovecraft story.
The first episode gave us just a taste of that, of Mumm-Ra being an ancient enemy who had awoken, but ever since the Mumm-Ra in Space episode, that's been completely absent.
The early episodes of TOS did a pretty good job with that -- the Thundercats only happened upon Third Earth by chance and accident; they disturbed Mumm-Ra's rest and threatened his rule. He's got a great Villain Monologue at the end of Pumm-Ra, when he's infiltrated the Cats' Lair and they're driving him out, where he says that they've got it backwards and it's they who have invaded HIS home.
Course, TOS kinda lost track of that idea after awhile too, to the point where in the last season he follows them home to Thundera to keep fucking with them, which kinda undercuts the whole idea of him just wanting them to leave him the fuck alone to rule Third Earth in peace.
Anyhow. They don't use him as much in TNS as in TOS, which at least to some extent makes him a scarier and more credible villain just by virtue of not having him stupidly defeated by his own reflection each and every day. The last time they beat him through Unexpected Resurrection, Distraction, and Go-Go-Gadget-Arms, and the time before that he didn't even show himself, he played the much cannier card of playing on Lion-O and Tygra's baser feelings toward each other.
And I imagine that, like TOS, TNS will have him much more evenly matched with Lion-O once he gets his hands on that sword.
A couple things bugging me about current continuity: first, they've pretty much just left the Stone from a few weeks ago dangling -- the episode where they were climbing the mountain to get it and were ambushed by the Mutants. If Lion-O misread the MacGuffin Radar and it was actually directing them to the Sword of Plun-Darr, then okay, but that hasn't actually been explained; near as I can tell there's still a Power Stone up on that mountain that they just kind of abandoned.
The lack of a home base makes the whole thing feel a little more aimless, too. I grant that it makes Third Earth seem a lot bigger than it did on TOS, that they can't just go home at the end of each episode, but the Tower of Omens could give the show some grounding, make it feel more like they're building something than just running around on a collection quest.
Then again, now that they've rescued some refugees (something that TOS didn't tackle until the last 20 episodes) maybe we'll get some more rebuilding going on. Lion-O told them they could resettle near Thundera, which could be kind of a big deal.
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Was it just me, or was the word to enter Tookit's forever bag "Rankinbass?"
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It was definitely "Rankinbass".
Anyway. On the one hand, I think doing a light, fluffy episode after three weeks of relentless grimdark is a good palate cleanser.
On the other hand, on three seconds' reflection, "G'wan kids, we're just gonna leave you here to take care of yourselves on the mean streets of a city run by our natural enemies who might make you fight to the death if you get caught stealing food to stay alive" is not so light and fluffy. Especially since we never actually got a scene where the Thundercats let the Kittens know they were packing up and leaving town.
I really do kinda dig kleptovoyancy as a superpower; it reminds me of Paycheck. (The short story, anyway; I never saw the movie. I find that Ben Affleck is actually pretty great in movies where he is not the lead, but I have learned to steer clear of ones where he is.) It also means that pretty much everything Tookit touches automatically becomes a Chekov's Gun.
Bonus Icky Thought: I'm not opposed to Pumyra flirting with Lion-O on principle. But in practice it keeps making me picture Lion-O fucking Bobby Hill.
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So okay, two things.
One: So what the hell happened to Pumyra? She's with Lion-O, Panthro, and Tygra in the beginning of the episode and then she's just gone.
Two: So let's see if I've got this right.
These cultists took Turtle-Man apart and replaced his entire body with robot parts...
...and then when he asked if they could make robot bodies for his family they said no, it's heretical to make robot bodies for people?
(And okay, a third thing: in the beginning of the episode the Soul Sever says he checked his math "to the thousandth decimal point". Maybe the reason his experiments don't work is that he is trying to do incredibly complex engineering without actually knowing what a decimal point is.)
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...I must admit I did not see that one coming.
One: That's dark as fuck. I mean, they're pretty explicit that [spoiler]she actually died under that rubble and THEN was brought back[/spoiler].
Two: It's a dark mirror of what happened in the original series. This, quite clearly, was the result of the showrunners watching [spoiler]Thundercats-Ho! and saying "Well, it sure is a good thing those Berbils just fucking happened to show up, save everybody, and take them to Third Earth, so that Lion-O's guilt turns out to be completely unfounded and everything is cool! Now, what if that HADN'T happened?"
It gives Lion-O a real failure -- two, in fact; letting her die and then trusting her after she came back. And it plays with one of the major themes of the new series: that his trust is his greatest strength and his greatest vulnerability.[/spoiler]
Two nitpicks: the Kit and Kat sequence really screws up the sense of scale that the rest of the series has established. After an entire season spent establishing just HOW FUCKING HUGE Third Earth is, they manage to bounce back to pretty much every location they've visited in the span of about a day.
And also, it would have been nice to see [spoiler]at least a couple lizards come out of that bag[/spoiler].
Well, and one more, I guess: [spoiler]if Pumyra really was setting out to infiltrate the Thundercats as a spy, she didn't really choose the best way of going about it in immediately trying to kill Lion-O as soon as she met him. She pretty much fucked up every step of the way and counted on him to keep forgiving her.[/spoiler]
Anyhow. Second season unconfirmed; this may be all we get. That would be a pity, as on the whole I quite like the new show.
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Thad, you may want to sit down.
RIP Thundercats: 2011-2012 (http://www.thundercats.ws/news/thundercats-cartoon-news-3/rip-thundercats-2011-2012-504/)
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Not exactly news; we knew before the season ended that there hadn't been any movement on another one.
This doesn't even make it official per se, it's just Norton reiterating what we already knew and adding "draw your own conclusions".
Second season increasingly unlikely, still technically not impossible. CN's given really long lead times between seasons before. But I'm not going to hold my breath, either, particularly as the toy company's shut down and that's where the real money is.
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The Second Season that never was (http://geek-news.mtv.com/2013/09/16/power-con-2013-thundercats-reboot-creator-details-the-second-season-that-could-have-been)
And honestly, I'm kind of glad about that
'Cuz god damn. Pumyra doesn't get redeemed, she gets turned into a power-hungry bug monster and killed by Tygra. Lynx-O was beheaded by Slythe because Lynx-O murdered an entire mating season's worth of unborn Lizardmen. If Bengali showed up I'd imagine he would have probably been thrown in a Sarlacc to be digested for over a thousand years after cannibalizing a child.
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I love the look of horror on Larry Kenney's face in that first shot.