Looking back at some old cartoons and the modern movies that have tried to embody them, I feel horribly discouraged by the whole business.
Some of the best old cartoons were the three made by the same people to encompass land, air and sea, Thundercats, Silverhawks and Tigersharks. They were not much for plot and didn’t have the best animation/art quality (though it was better than almost every cartoon that came before the 1980s) but had amazing arrays of characters. Even some of the bad guys were valuable assets. Others were just obnoxious and often cackled too much. [Imagine a script in which your lines are ninety percent laughing like a madman.] But, while the three shows had more than thirty characters, each, they only had ten or fewer voice talents for the entire series! Ten voices for an entire series, playing every part. I’m pretty sure each series had only one or two women playing every female role, which is why Bluegrass has to face off against Melodia in Silverhawks instead of Steelheart, because…yep. She’d be facing herself and probably losing her mind in the sound booth.
Now, compare this with cartoons made by Hanna-Barbera, and you’ll see a stark difference. Some HB series, which may have only lasted a season, had FORTY voice credits. FORTY! That’s insane, even if they were only in one episode, each. Maybe they were cameo villains…but they appear in every episode’s credit list. And, still, that’s forty voices for a cheaply drawn cartoon, compared to Silverhawks, Thundercats and/or Tigersharks, which had wide arrays of characters played by a fraction of that many voice talents.
Unfair.
Now, you see movies being made that are supposed to be tributes or representations of those old cartoons. And, what do you get? Plots that are not same and characters that get warped. Rewriting cartoon history…madness. It’s like some legal battle that’s never going to be won by justice.
It’s enough to make you give up looking at any form of entertainment.
Next stop, mindless slavery to the machine.
No?
Then rebel with me. Please.
Let’s set these new-fangled movies straight and give those old cartoons the proper respect and representation.
Writingbolt's Creation 