Your Childhood Sucked
You watched what as a kid?
I’m going to preface today’s post with a preemptive apology. What I have to say may shock and anger many of my more sensitive readers but I feel it’s important that the truth be heard.
Your childhood Saturday morning cartoons sucked.
From G.I. Joe to Transformers to My Little Pony, the cartoons that so many of today’s adults fondly look back on are terrible.
Unfortunately, with a famine of new and creative ideas plaguing Hollywood, many of the summer’s biggest blockbusters have their roots in the small screen — specifically between commercials for sugary cereal and cheap plastic toys.
And so, as filmmakers attempt to breathe life into decades-old cartoons that smell of mothballs dipped in nostalgia, there exits a legion of mouse-clicking, forum-dwelling, cyber-Morlocks who are all-to-ready to cry foul at the first signs of source material infidelity.
This phenomenon was never so obvious then in the months leading up to the release of last summer’s Transformers.
As pictures of the film’s giant robots began to surface online, mothers across the nation dropped their cookie sheets — frightened by the moaning that wafted up from the basement where their adult children, ripe from an all-night Call of Duty gaming marathon, began to type fervent blogs of protest accusing Michael Bay of raping their childhood because he added flames onto Optimus Prime.
The truth of the matter, though, is that nobody should have given a Jean-Claude Van Damme if the robot had a “Big Daddy” Roth-esque makeover or if Bumblebee was no longer a Volkswagen. In the end, it’s not as if Michael Bay was adapting Shakespeare. He was directing the theatrical version of a glorified toy commercial.
Several weeks ago, I had the misfortune of reading an online comment from a fan responding to a quote from Sienna Miller. Miller, a star of next summer’s big screen adaptation of G.I. Joe., described the film as being pure, dumb action. The fan, in a flurry of capital letters and exclamation points, cited this quote as proof that the filmmakers were idiots who did not grasp the source material. I guess I better strap on my dunce hat because I can’t remember the cartoon, which featured a character named Sgt. Slaughter, as being anything but pure, dumb action fluff.
Even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a show I admit to being a big fan of when I was younger, is hardly watchable in retrospect.
And so as Hollywood, in its attempt to squeeze the pulp from already dry franchises, continues to produce big-screen versions of ‘80s cartoons, fans should be happy that truly talented individuals such as Steven Spielberg and the Wachowski brothers are the ones updating and adapting.
It could be worse. Uwe Boll could turn his attention from video games to ’80s cartoons.
And if fans are lucky, the childhood cartoons that they are so fond of may be released on DVD in conjunction with the new movie’s release. Just don’t get any tears on your Trapper Keeper when you rewatch the old cartoons and realize just how bad they really were.
