Sunday 29 January 2012

Thundercats reboot…


Ok so perhaps I’m a little late with this post as it is a while since the series aired but being a huge fan of the original Thundercats I felt it necessary to finally inflict the remake upon myself and consequently inflict my reflections on it upon yourselves.

On first glance I shied away and my initial impressions were numerous. ‘Lion-O doesn’t look like that.’ ‘The Thundercats don’t look like that.’ ‘Why isn’t Snarf talking?’ ‘What happened to the rest of the theme song?’ ‘Where’s Panthro?’ ‘Why is Tygra so mean to Lion-O and how can they be brothers?’ My mind was reeling with questions and attempting to hold onto as much of the original series as possible.

However, I watched with an open mind and found myself soon drawn into this re-imagining of one of my childhood favourites. Tygra is adopted and jealous that he will never be king. Snarf may not speak but his other character traits have definitely translated. Fear not, Panthro does reappear and the visual appearance of the characters, with their sharper lines and anime styling, becomes pleasingly appropriate once you get into the series.

I was also glad to see that some of the core elements of the original Thundercats have remained. The logo, the Sword of Omens and thankfully Lion-O’s “thunder, thunder, Thundercats, Ho!” have survived the years along with an almost exact “ancient spirits of evil, transform this decayed form into Mumm-Ra, the Ever-Living!”

So it may be modernised and it may be different to the original but fortunately the programme makers have recognised that the original fans may not welcome a remake with quite so open arms and have thus ensured they bring the core elements across but have also made the series sufficiently different to the original that it does not replace or destroy what we watchers from the 80s loved so much. Overall conclusion is it is not bad and I will be watching the rest of the series because it is Thundercats after all. Don’t think I’ll ever be replacing my DVD set for a new one though.

Elloise Hopkins.

No comments:

Post a Comment