Hi, I’m Jamie Noguchi. Technically, my brother is the Angry Zen Master, but he agreed to let me use that for my site. So that’s me. Let’s get to it!

Let’s face it, the 80’s were super cheesy. Jelly shoes, oily stickers, bangs that you could surf on, hair bands, power ballads, should pads. It was also what I’d like to refer to as the Golden Age of cartoons. We’re talking Transformers, G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, He-Man and to a lesser extent She-Ra, Silver Hawks, Voltron, Tranzor Z (how you get Tranzor from Mazinger I’ll never know), Jem and the Holograms, Jayce and the Wheel Warriors, Inhumanoids, Visionaries, Dungeons and Dragons, M.A.S.K. We actually looked forward to Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons because we knew that some of the best action on television was waiting for us.

As people tend to do, we grew up and our cartoons were replaced with imports.

And then, our beloved cartoons came back.

In 2002, the now defunct Dreamwave Productions licensed the comic book rights for Transformers and began to retcon season 1 of the show, generally referred to as Generation 1 or G1. The book was an instant hit and inspired other comic companies to pick up their own licenses. Devil’s Due snatched up G.I. Joe and Voltron with Wildstorm picking ThunderCats and Battle of the Planets (BoP is not really an 80’s cartoon, but it is a revival). You could tell that hardcore fans were behind these remakes. The stories were updated for modern times, but the characters were instantly recognizable. Optimus Prime looked like Optimus Prime. Cobra Commander was still Cobra Commander. They even threw in a crossover or two to satisfy the age old question of who would win if our favorite cartoons battled each other.

The 80’s comic book revival made some quick money for the comic companies, but only Devil’s Due has managed to continue to make G.I. Joe comics after the boom. And although I was sad that no one had picked up Silver Hawks for a comic, I thought that was good enough. Time to let the 80’s die.

Hollywood had other plans.

Someone out there in L.A. must have recognized the financial success comic companies experienced during this short period and thought, why not the movie industry. And so, this year, Michael Bay unleashed the live action Transformers movie. Except it wasn’t really our Transformers. Instead of just updating the stories while respecting the source material, Bay completely rewrote everything and redesigned the robots to look like tinker toys from hell. Where the show was always about the Transformers fighting each other, Bay’s version focused more on the people and how they prevailed over the Decepticons. Make no mistake, this was not our Transformers. This was a new franchise for a new generation.

Unlike the comic book industry, the movie industry doesn’t care about old sensibilities. They will remake our Golden Age in the image of this generation. G.I. Joe is up next. No longer are they America’s highly trained special mission force. Now, they are the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity fighting Scottish terrorists.

The most disappointing thing about what looks to be a second wave of remakes is not the fact that the movie industry is completely rewriting our Golden Age cartoons. What’s disappointing is that instead of creating new cartoons and franchises for this generation, they’re recycling old stuff and giving it a new shiny wrapper.

If you never saw the originals, you might make an argument that the source material is so good, it stands the test of time. Honestly, watching the old shows is kind of embarrassing. What seemed cool when I was 8 now looks like, well, kid’s stuff. These remakes spring form laziness and greed. Lazy because they’re unwilling to try new stuff. Greed because they know some of us old folks will buy tickets just to see what they’ve done to our favorite cartoons.

The ones who ultimately suffer? All the potential young geeks just waiting for their own Golden Age of cartoons.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 9:38 am and is filed under Angry Zen Master, movies. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.