Eastman Interview. The Franchise should lean more on its gritter roots

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by newfan

Kinda sold on checking out 2k3, happy to skip New Adventures.

I mean, New Adventures in and of itself is NOT a bad little cartoon, for what it is. I was very shocked as an adult to find out that I didn't hate it. Like any other show, SOME episodes are absolute dogsh*t but there's a lot of good ones, too. The animation is far more sophisticated than the original series, the music is good... Skeletor has a completely different personality and voice to the point where he's basically a totally different character than the Skeletor everyone knows, but he's incredibly entertaining. Like he legit saves the show all on his own. The writers were very open in admitting that since the Batman movie was a hit at the time "New Adventures" was in development, they basically made Skeletor exactly like Jack Nicholson's Joker. It works fine; it's in no way the same character anymore, but he's a fun villain.

But then, Skeletor is a microcosm for the entire series. SO different from the original that even if it's good... what's the point, exactly? Old fans won't recognize or like it, and new fans won't care about the old thing so even the name itself has no intrinsic value.

What happened - and Mattel has since admitted that this was a huge mistake - was that in developing "New Adventures", they focus-grouped and solicited the opinions specifically of kids who knew nothing about the original toys or cartoon, because they wanted a "brand new audience". And among that group of kids, the toys and cartoons tested off the charts; Mattel completely expected NA to be a huge hit, based on research data. When it actually hit the market, however, it all tanked. New kids didn't care - they were too busy watching TMNT to care about anything else at that exact moment in time - and the older fans hated everything about it.

Since then, Mattel has repeatedly admitted that throwing out the baby with the bathwater was a huge mistake, and that their fatal flaw was in guessing they didn't need the support of older fans; they assumed that they could just create a new audience out of thin air anytime they wanted to. They haven't made that mistake since. They tried hard to appeal to the kids of 2003 with that relaunch, BUT they also mostly aimed it at older fans from the '80s... which was wise, because the little kids in 2003 didn't bite.

I've often said that Nick/Viacom would do well to heed these lessons and apply them to the TMNT brand. You CAN'T just go about trying to whip up a new audience of 5-year olds every few years and "If the older fans hate it, Oh Well". Things don't work that way. It makes much more sense to start with the fans you already have in your pocket, and work backwards from there. If you make things too alien and unfamiliar, you're going to lose people who really want to care. It's inevitable. And you CAN'T just say, "Eh, we'll make even more new fans, so we can afford to lose some." That never, ever, EVER works.

[frank_one]

Originally Posted by Leo656

He's got an exposed skull for a head/face; I think if that doesn't tickle something within a person then that person is simply dead inside.

Personally a big, big fan of the "demonic red glowing eyes" variant as originally illustrated very early on. They did away with that pretty quick... "too scary for the kiddies" and all that. But it looks so damn cool that way. I'm glad they brought it back for the newer toys.

"Skull Face" is a nice visual. "Skull Face + Burning Red Eyes" is just plain amazing.

https://www.poeghostal.com/wp-conten...a_skeletor.jpg

((((Swoon))))

Fun fact: Skull-face is a character by Robert Howard, the creator of Conan the barbarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull-Face

[newfan]

Funny you mention Skeletor being so different in appearance and voice Leo, it was at his appearance that I sat thinking 'what?' and turned the channel. I wasn't really watching toons at the time though.

Anyway, I will bow out at this point and let TMNT commence.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by frank_one

Fun fact: Skull-face is a character by Robert Howard, the creator of Conan the barbarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull-Face

Yes indeed! It's all connected and all very, very cool.

[Galactus]

I quite like New Adventures but it really isn't a He-Man show but I have to say their version of Skeletor is one of my favourites. I love how he subtly manipulates his way into being leader of the mutants and the power play between him and Flogg throughout the series.

I'd actually forgive NA a lot if the parts of the first episode that were set on Eternia used traditional designs to start off with like the mini comics which have an explanation for the changeover. Actually I'm rather fond of a few of the German/UK comics which gave an interesting take on the changeover. I've always been curious to see what the planned Filmation version of what would become NA would turn out like.

[shredder orokusaki]

After the failure of Rise evryone realized that it needs to be at least as serious as the 2012 or 2003 seires are for it to becoem a success(or even as serious as IDW and mirrage comcis are) and not like Rise. 1987 series is 1000 times better.

[UsagiYoJimBelushi]

cant wait for last ronin!!!!

[Venom]

Originally Posted by Leo656

He-Man stuff cause MOTU is cool

Remember the Greyskull script floating around the web in the mid-2000s? That would have made a decent MOTU film reboot!

[Leo656]

Yeah, that was pretty good.

There's allegedly been several good-to-great scripts floating around, they're all just "too expensive" for a niche property that they don't expect a big return on.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Yeah, that was pretty good.

There's allegedly been several good-to-great scripts floating around, they're all just "too expensive" for a niche property that they don't expect a big return on.

Yet Vin Diesel was able to get "The Last Witch Hunter" made.

I don't understand the trepidation behind it. Transformers seems to be a bigger risk than He-Man, and those movies made gangbusters!

[Leo656]

By all accounts it's the whole fantasy/"naked barbarian" thing.

The era of D&D-style "Epic Fantasy" was the 1980s, and it kind of went out with that decade. "Lord of the Rings" did huge business, but that's considered a huge fluke by most people working in the entertainment industry, especially given how the Hobbit prequels under-performed compared to expectations and every other fantasy series that was attempted since then died on the vine almost immediately. General thinking among the pencil-pushers is, "Nobody wants swords and sorcery anymore", thus they're not going to risk $100 million on a movie based on a toy line from 40 years ago with its own fractured and nitpicky fanbase.

I kinda do see their point, I just don't agree with it.

Less of a factor, but still a factor, is the whole "naked barbarian" thing. In some ways, people have matured and gotten more intelligent in the last few decades, but in other ways they've become more immature. Back in the 80s with the Conan, Red Sonja and other fantasy stuff at the forefront of pop culture entertainment, you could have a muscle-bound warrior in a loincloth carrying a big sword and MOST people just said, "Hey, that's bad-ass!" But consider how prominent the "He-Man is Gay" meme has become in the last ten years, and it tells you a lot about WHY Hollywood is wary of moving forward on any sort of live-action project. In the present day, in spite of how "progressive" we've supposedly become, if you present the He-Man character to kids (and even some alleged adults), the typical response is, "Some muscle guy in a loincloth? Dude, that's gay."

That's them projecting their own insecurity - and "Meme Culture" certainly hasn't helped one bit - but that's the way things are right now. The cultural climate simply isn't open to accommodating that sort of thing. I mean, several theatrical movies about Hercules failed semi-recently, and one of them starred The Rock, even. If a movie starring The Rock doesn't make a zillion dollars, it simply means that audiences don't want the material.

I get it. I just don't like it. To some degree, it's like in pro wrestling, where you can get the audience to cheer for just about anything if you "train" and condition them properly - see how comic book movies went from being "too risky" to becoming the ONLY movies that make money anymore practically overnight - but that genre of entertainment simply isn't worth the risk according to Hollywood, thus they're not going to do the work to try and "make it cool".

Giant robots, on the other hand, are always an easy sell even when the material is dreck. Frankly, I know what *I* think is cooler but I'm always gonna be outvoted on that.