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High school shows, if they avoid a typical 'rich good looking jerk' antagonist usually have to go for corrupt, tyrannical or otherwise antagonistic teachers and school staff instead. Recess usually had the teachers cast as antagonists, though they often had humanising moments, while Daria mainly focuses on a corrupt principal funnelling the school's sparse funding into increasingly absurd security measures and sports facilities rather than classroom equipment and teacher salaries. (I did like the episode where a teacher's strike results in Li hiring (briefly) an obvious pedophile and then drafting Daria herself as a substitute teacher) On the other hand, a lot of more recent shows tend to downplay school as an element or bypass it entirely. (Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, to a lesser extent Star Vs)
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Jul 15, 2017 05:39
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Star Butterfly is technically rich, popular, and good looking, and has her parents buy off the principal basically to solve any problems. And she's played against a pretty stereotypical obnoxious rich teenager, though she's basically only put up with because she's rich and can afford nice things. Probably not gonna change much, especially since money problems are something more and more people are experiencing, and there's not a lot of sympathy for the rich going around.
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Jul 15, 2017 07:18
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Most writers are basing stories on their dimly remembered childhood and adolescence with occasional blind stabs at relevance.
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Jul 15, 2017 12:22
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Xelkelvos posted:Rich? Yes The show seems to love dumping on Jay being terrible and ridiculously out of shape. A bit funny given his Simpsons appearance has him basically be a more successful, likeable version of Homer, to the point where Homer gets jealous and has a crisis of self-esteem.
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Jul 16, 2017 04:52
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The villain of The Lion King's whole plan was racial integration, implicitly making an army out of the lesser predator race because he had insufficient pull with his own kind, and the happy ending is turning his own minions on him before casting them out again.
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Jul 20, 2017 07:06
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Timon and Pumbaa practised true racial integration, a pity they let themselves be Uncle Omnivores for the predator class. The Lion King owes a lot to the Jungle Book where the food chain was likened to a class/caste system, which all kinds of entertainingly problematic/unintentionally apropos metaphors to go with.
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Jul 20, 2017 11:11
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No one remembers the 90s Timon and Pumbaa cartoon, which was weird as hell. It even had adult Simba show up occasionally and go along with their antics. (Well, those two were basically his foster parents for most of his adolescence, it's just like old times for him) Also Lion King 1 1/2, which is basically the Rozencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead of the franchise.
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Jul 21, 2017 04:55
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I mostly remember the episode where Timon and Pumbaa work at a drive-thru. And apparently there's another one where they're in Ancient Greece. (I don't think there was a Hercules crossover, that was the Aladdin cartoon. Which is hella anachronistic for other reasons) Also there was one with a bottomless pit. A lot of those 90s cartoons, especially the genre of Ren and Stimpy imitators, start blurring together.
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Jul 21, 2017 06:17
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That seems odd given one of the defining traits of Timon and Pumbaa is that they love eating anything that crawls. But it was one of those 90s shows where the setting is whatever the gently caress the writers feel like that week.
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Jul 21, 2017 14:11
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They should just bring back Star Trek TAS.
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Jul 21, 2017 17:59
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Louie is obviously the evil triplet. Makes me wonder how they're going to go with Darkwing Duck if he shows up. His early caped avenger days, pre-Gosalyn and Launchpad? I read somewhere that Darkwing is basically a take on Donald Duck's Paperinik superhero persona from the comics, spun off into its own character.
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Jul 22, 2017 03:04
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Guy Mann posted:Gravity Falls had both Dipper and Mabel, Grunkle Stan, Soos, Wendy, and depending on the season either Robbie or Ford as regular characters on top of all of the recurring townspeople and monsters and it did OK. It seems like that works well enough given Batman takes on Bond villains half the time anyway. (Ra's Al Ghul is straight out of a Bond movie a lot of the time. ...and the last Bond turned into Batman, oddly enough) Given the whole point of Scrooge is that he's a character with capital-h History, they could get a lot of worldbuilding out of various stuff he's been involved with over the years.
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Jul 22, 2017 03:35
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At this rate we're going to see Gargoyles and Pirates of Darkwater revivals. Are networks suddenly all apologising for shows they screwed over?
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Jul 23, 2017 16:11
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Danny Phantom didn't age very well, though it was still pretty interesting. I wonder if they could get the rights for the Ghostbusters to show up, since the show seems almost perfect for that, complete with Danny's parents fanboying over them and having been huge fans of them.
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Jul 24, 2017 05:57
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Last I heard, the magic baby and the dog both seperately appeared for a season or two then suddenly stopped appearing in episodes never to be mentioned again.
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Jul 24, 2017 18:18
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Rand Brittain posted:For me it basically comes down to whether all the craziness going on actually has some kind of vaguely satisfying explanation for: Explaining things is overrated. Just acknowledge that weird poo poo is out there and nobody really knows why, unless you have some REALLY good ideas.
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Jul 25, 2017 16:55
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Johnny Bravo is a kinda odd show. The Scooby Doo crossover episode had him fit scarily well into the Scooby Gang dynamic. He's one of those characters you could drop into practically any setting and it's not hard to imagine how he'd fit and what he'd do. Like Hank Hill.
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Jul 27, 2017 09:01
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The perfect karma for all the poo poo Timmy pulls would be to have to serve as a fairy godparent for the rest of eternity.
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Jul 28, 2017 07:08
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Guy Mann posted:It's pretty telling that the guy who plays Eggman is the one voice actor that has remained constant across shows and games over 15 years. Mike Pollock is just perfect and Sonic Boom having him be the Newman to Sonic's Seinfeld works so well. Notable that they have an episode where Sonic and Eggman switch bodies, and they don't switch the voices to indicate it like they usually do in cartoons; their mannerisms and language change to be great impressions of each other.
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Aug 1, 2017 04:59
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This is definitely a network that's devolved into 'placeholder' mode. Apparently, even the kids have lost interest because it's always the same 40 episodes.
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Aug 1, 2017 08:33
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The Powerpuff Girls revival crashed and burned really hard, I doubt it's going to be renewed when the contract's up.
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Aug 1, 2017 12:47
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When they played Adventure Time I think it was usually the first season almost exclusively as well. I watched most of Avatar in one go in a three-day marathon Nick had, the show lends itself to that.
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Aug 1, 2017 14:50
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Crabtree posted:After Brave and the Bold I will not accept any remake of the 90s Aquaman being used in movies or animation or anything. Aquaman should be goofy and happy and fun and also serious about ocean issues and doing the right thing. People are never going to take Aquaman seriously so write exactly with that. Don't try to make people think he's Namor, he'll never be that. But being someone that owns his own hokeyness and thrives despite is actually good. Especially now that most Superheroes are loving disasters that maybe save a few people while destroying a city for the billionth time this week. Luckily, that seems to be exactly what they're going for with Mamoa. Seems to be more or less the Justice League movie's equivalent to Thor.
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Aug 9, 2017 06:46
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Same here, it sort of made sense, though probably got weird in later seasons when The Batman introduced its own Batgirl and Robin. Kinda weird that til recently cartoons were so skittish about any kind of shared universe, making near-nonsensical rulings to avoid 'confusion', and now it turned out audiences love shared universes. Though hell, even Star Trek worked just fine with three shows having common points and crossovers.
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Aug 9, 2017 11:59
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Gaunab posted:Robin being insecure having no powers makes more sense than having him hit way above his level because you can't think of any way to make him useful in fights. Oddly enough Teen Titans kinda emphasised both, he was some weird mix of hot-blooded aggro shonen hero and brooding Batman wannabe at the same time. There's a reason Teen Titans Go has so much fun at his expense.
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Aug 9, 2017 14:56
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BioEnchanted posted:I haven't noticed any, it may be that the best of the people who are making cartoons now understand how to relay such messages intrinsically, alongside the main story instead of putting the story on hold. For example, Steven Universe has a large emphasis on talking problems out and tackled an abusive relationship at one point and it came naturally out of the characters as presented. We didn't need a ~Very Special Episode~ about "Dealing with Abusive relationships" or "Saying No to peer pressure" as the ideas were presented naturally through the progression of Lapis Lazuli and Jasper's arcs as they applied to the overall visual metaphor that is Fusion. It probably means something that a lot of the people making cartoons have grown up watching them now, and are aware how cringeworthy and useless Very Special Episodes are, not to mention the old moral guardians are pretty toothless now. Steven Universe and definitely Adventure Time make social messages part of the narrative. (there was also a SU episode about mindfulness and cognitive therapy, presented in song form)
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Aug 11, 2017 12:32
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Just assume Donald Duck is saying almost nothing but swear words and he's perfectly understandable, even identifiable.
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Aug 12, 2017 13:04
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A lot of the family weirdness comes from an era where basically every adventurer with kids/family had to be an uncle, because you couldn't have single parents or otherwise non-wholesome relationships, which eventually results in the parents having to be written out of the picture usually vaguely because you can't imply bad stuff happening to families either. So there's some uncomfortable handwaves about family members vanishing into the ether, and end up with Donald as the legal guardian of the triplets anyway. Disney protagonists aren't allowed to reproduce, basically.
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Aug 13, 2017 08:12
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And even Goof Troop is pretty sexless, IIRC, with Goofy as a single father and no mention of the mother, while it's hard to imagine Pete and Peg having much of a relationship. See the old joke about how The Addams Family was the first TV married couple who could plausibly have conceived children. On another note, a lot of shows nowadays focus on generational stuff, Disney alone has Gravity Falls' spoiltertastic past, Star Butterfly being the latest in a long line of mage-queens, and DuckTales taking up its heritage in a meta way by establishing a long history of adventuring that's all new to the kids. (But also adding curveballs so old fans can't assume they know everything) Even Venture Bros is set in the aftermath of a great age of adventuring that's gotten old and obsolete, even as the new generation are slowly displacing the old. Wondering if that has any significant subtext for what it's like being a kid today. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Aug 13, 2017 |
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Aug 13, 2017 10:10
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I vaguely remember that apparently pretty much anything is fair game for new Ducktales besides Rescue Rangers (due to a movie deal, apparently) and possibly Mickey himself. The TaleSpin references make me wonder if they're going to stick to that being a period piece or update the implied setting. (or a bit of both and update the setting to the 70s or whatever, but have it be in the past with Scrooge and/or Donald having gotten into messes with Higher For Hire in the past)
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Aug 13, 2017 11:23
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Yvonmukluk posted:I think this basically sums up part of it, to boot: I'm reminded of how the main exception I can think of from the old days is Johnny Quest, then realised there's an entire show about how ridiculously irresponsible and outright abusive a parent Dr Quest would be in the real world.
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Aug 13, 2017 14:14
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I figured they might have made Glomgold a Scot in the 90s as much because they figured kids wouldn't recognise/understand a South African accent as because of controversy.ConanThe3rd posted:That said, I think we can all agree that Beakly being Scrooge's Race Banner is probably the worst kept secret of this whole affair, right? I was thinking Brock Samson, but same thing really.
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Aug 13, 2017 19:56
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Don't get your hopes up, it could just be in development limbo. Happens all the time to anyone familiar with comic book properties, like how Aquaman had to be written out of the last season or so of Justice League because of 'Mercy Reef' that never saw the light of day.
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Aug 14, 2017 06:03
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Looking over the characterisation of the triplets, and how in the comics they're occasionally hinted to have more in common with Scrooge than it first looks, I'm wondering if they're each meant to reflect a different aspect of Scrooge's personality. Huey has his hardworking, (mostly) honest and pragmatic nature, as well as his intelligence and organisation; Dewey his bravado, drive, and showboating streak; Louie his greed and occasional unscrupulous streak in the name of getting what he wants.
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Aug 14, 2017 09:55
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Cartoons don't really do theatrical movies anymore, it seems, since they never seem to have done well. Even the Transformers movie (the original one) did poorly. About the only show that seems willing to gamble on a theatrical movie lately is The Show That Must Not Be Named.
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Aug 14, 2017 16:51
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Teen Titans had a few really good episodes (Terra's whole arc, kinda) but a lot of it really hasn't aged well. The serialisation was near revolutionary for its time, but later shows just took everything and did it way better.
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Aug 15, 2017 07:43
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Batman and Gargoyles didn't take themselves that deadly seriously either, they were just good at making things seem important. Batman TAS had a very distinct impressionistic style that made some rather silly plots far more dramatic than they had any right to be. It is great when Batman just loses his poo poo about kids being mistreated.
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Aug 15, 2017 08:25
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Point there on the serialisation, though it was certainly part of a growing trend. The DCAU was a bit funny in places; the last season of JLU has the Legion of Doom (apparently they weren't allowed to use the name even though it totally was) form in response to the Justice League because the villains can't reliably operate solo any more. Young Justice would follow up on similar themes with the Justice League unsure of whether to take on more members, because it might provoke escalation. (not yet realising nearly all the villains have come together under The Light)
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Aug 16, 2017 13:05
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nerdman42 posted:I vaguely remember that there was a Justice League episode where the heroes went to a Nazi-controlled Earth and the writers were told they could either use the Nazi symbol or real guns but not both. So they did the former. I thought they did the latter, it wasn't the actual Nazi symbol? (though pretty close to it) And it was specifically Vandal Savage running the Nazis.
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Aug 16, 2017 16:18
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And I always thought BTAS went the opposite direction by using antique guns, both to play up the retro aesthetic of Gotham and to have the guns less resemble modern ones. (Since the general idea is to avoid 'imitable behaviours', and like that one Wonderella comic, a kid is a lot less likely to find a tommy gun in their parents' night stand)
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Aug 16, 2017 16:23
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