I feel like Animorphs has just never been taken seriously and that pulls the rug out from under it before it can have its moment. I'd really hate to see that happen... Again.
At least they have the eBooks out now. When the re-print didn't go so well, I was sure the eBooks would never come. (Plus, it makes it easier/cheaper to try reading it in other languages.)
Animorphs is in a very weird spot for marketing. It's cast and clearly meant for pre-teens and teens and in books that's fine but the themes it dives into (death, sacrifice, war, loss of self, PTSD, geocide, and others) to really have the same impact, to be shown and not just told, oh this happened off screen, do not work in a movie or TV show targeting those ages. Those themes are considered to dark and have to be lighted or removed. And if they re-target it to adults then they have the problem of a movie starting a bunch of kids they want adults to watch, which is a challenge as well. It's in a very hard place.
As for being taken seriously is if they're going to do the alien's they're got to do something and I'm not a fan of CG as I think even modern CG aliens (looking at you MCU) looks silly but we'll have to wait and see.
All this depends on if they ever make any movies let alone Animorphs
I don't really agree with most of that*. Plenty of kid and teen stories delve into heavy topics of war and violence (Harry Potter, Avatar, both TLA and LOK, The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.) And most of them seem to manage to get on fine.
*It is a legitimate difficulty for Animorphs if it is not done in an animated or CGI capacity because their weapon is their ability to become animals, and they are fighting aliens, but if using animation (if it isn't live-action) or CGI (if it is) today there just isn't much of an excuse. But the idea that the content of the stories is what makes it so difficult, especially considering how wildly successful other sci-fi/fantasy war-stories have been, just doesn't carry much weight for me today. Back before Harry Potter, sure, they were afraid of taking those risks for stories aimed at minors, but since then corporations have sort of been making bank on those sorts of stories. I think the bigger problem is that Animorphs, being a 90s series before Harry Potter, had a publishing set-up in that style - short, once-per-month stories meant to go on indefinitely.)
Yes those series make it work, but at the same time the chronicles of narnia, percy jackson, i am number four, Vampire Academy, alex rider and others didn't make it. So yes I'm worried they will not be able to make it work. I'm worried they'll age up the actors and make changes to the story. I'm worried they'll try and tell the whole thing in a single 2-3 hours movie and not give it a series, I'm worried they'll start a series and never finish it because they'll mess up the story trying to expand it's audience.
Am I hopeful, yes, but I fully expect to be disappointed. And I'll be very sad if they make it a cartoon because then I'll likely never watch it so I'm really hoping it's live action.
I'm not saying it absolutely will or won't, but I feel like (at least, of the ones I know there) they sort of prove the point. Narnia, for example, tries to make everything seem very non-violent in spite of it being a war (not so much as blood on the weaponry) and I don't remember hating Percy Jackson as a movie but they didn't adapt it very well from the books if I remember that correctly. The point is, that's no reason to shy away from the genre anymore, we know it can and does work - and often, not shying from the dark and gritty seems to bode better for the audience, though productiion and advertising is also important.*
I think with author input that'll be better than the show. At the very least.
I'd rather it be live-action, but I'd take good 2D animation and production over awful live-action with puppet aliens. A bunch of fans could do the latter on YouTube - heck, I'd thrown the idea of some of us getting together and making. a parody where Tobias is a parakeet at one point. I'd rather something that looks like Titan A.E. than something that looks like Potter Puppet Pals (which I enjoyed, but I would hate an Animorphs movie's 'best effort' producing that.)
*True for any show. They finally made the second Hey Arnold movie as a taste-test for making the last season and maybe even reconsidering a planned spinoff, The Patakis, but it was advertised so poorly many fans still don't have any idea the second movie was ever aired. Obviously, no reboot or spinoffs. Whoops.
I get what you're saying I've just become very cynical about movies made from books, far to many have failed or had to depart from the books to much for my taste (I personally dislike some of the Harry Potter movies for that reason). it's really just a waiting game. Hope for the best prepare for the worst.
I do want it live action and I've never seen Potters Puppet Pals but I loved the muppet/puppet effects done in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and would love for them to do the aliens in that style, far more than just throwing CG at the screen but that might be down to a matter of personal taste.
Nah I do get some of that. I mean, I think Harry Potter was about as good an adaptation as one could hope for from a fantasy/sci-fi movie because books have so many details that just don't translate well into movies (e.g. the characters' thoughts, narrative, references to things from before the timeline which in the movie would only really work in a flashback, etc.) Some of the shortest books would be a multi-hour movie, and probably wouldn't hold much interest.
Yeah... That's definitely a taste thing. That animation style is precisely why I never watched The Dark Crystal (wasn't a big fan of The Neverending Story, either.) I'd rather it be live-action with good CGI, or 2-D animation like Titan A.E. if that was the only way they could show battle scenes.
I'm also like... I'd rather it be well-adapted to modernity and succeed than try to keep it rigidly in the confines in which it was created and fail, so long as the essence of the story is captured. E.g. if they're 15-16 instead of 13 starting out because the content is more mature, meh, whatever. I was also telling another fan that if they adapted it to modernity, it could remove a few plotholes that really existed in the 90s, too.
A big example of that is if you changed it so it was set in 2020, how do you cope with the phone tech? But honestly, they should have made it so morphing energy did some sort of freeze or jam on surveillance even back then: The Andalites created morphing as a spy technology in the first place, and surveillance cameras were already abundant in the 90s. I never understood why an advanced species would make a spy technology that didn't do anything to surveillance. It makes no sense, and for a generation even more used to cameras than I was back then, it's very hard to suspend the disbelief that they wouldn't be recorded without some other explanation.
Anyway, I'm hopeful since the authors are involved; it's more than happened in the past. I love that no matter how little Scholastic has invested in Animorphs the fandom hasn't died.
ETA: I mean, I also think it would be better as a TV show to a movie adaptation, e.g. each book is an episode, with Chronicles/Megamorphs being "TV movies" if we were talking about really ideal in a true-to-the-books way, but it would be really high risk that you wouldn't get a complete series. There's definitely going to be concessions in converting a 64-book series into one or more movies, even if you cut out all the 'filler' content.
If they set it in todays world yes they need to deal with the fact everyone has a camera in their hand and making it part of the morph tech would be a good day of dealing with it. As for why it didn't in the first place, well the Andalites (or at least Ax) did view books as more high tech than computers so maybe they didn't have cameras.
The world is a very different place than it was 25 years ago, the books will need to be updated.
Ax views books as high tech because they don't have a chance to glitch (granted, someone could have changed his mind pretty quickly by rippling up a few pages) but they're very digital/technical, and they were in a war against the Yeerks. I think it's safe to say they understood the concept of surveillance. In any case, since morphing was defined as a spy technology even in the original books, making it that it also jams or freezes communications/surveillance tech in some way is a pretty logical fix that would make sense given its purpose is a spy technology. It would have made more sense in the 90s world that way as well, because CCTV and other surveillance cameras were already prolific in retail areas.
In some ways, 2020 kids would be much more cautious than 90s kids, so it would be more believable. E.g. - back in the 90s, the NSA scandal hadn't happened yet, but that hindsight 20/20 and suspicion of being watched means the kids would probably be a LOT smarter about communicating over the phone. The 90s version of Animorphs would honestly probably have gotten caught... Very quickly. I mean, the Yeerks don't tap the phones of their hosts' houses, even when one of them suspects their host's brother might be an 'Andalite bandit'? Nah. 2020 Animorphs have burner phones and communicate in code by some secure app that deletes messages after twenty seconds or something. They don't trust the human tech any more than the Yeerk tech.
Anyway, I hope it goes so much better than The Attempt That Shall Not Be Named.
I think it was a bit more than normal, but part of that is probably the 20/20 hindsight that our conversations were regularly being listened to by US government branches, let alone a species with advanced technology, that only made the news when I was in like, 8th grade. But yeah, some of those plotholes could actually be done better than they were back then.
I guess really I'm glad the fandom isn't dead yet.
Yeeeeaaaaaaaah, so many plotholes and mistakes from those factors. And later in the series, people would accidentally project facts from the TV shows onto the book series, e.g. in one book Jake is a Bengal tiger (what they use in the TV show, if I recall correctly) whereas in book one it's a Siberian tiger, very specifically, the largest of the big cats.
(Bengal tigers are the smallest subspecies of tiger. A Bengal tiger isn't going up against a lion.)
They admitted they didn't do a series bible before starting and since they churned out a book per month they and the ghost authors probably only had like a week or two to really work on it, so I don't really blame them. But I'd like to see it get more effort in this day and age.
But for movies, they're probably going to have to cut out stories like David and Aftran completely. The stories took place over multiple years, there's just so much to try to cram into movies.
That's by a series of movies would be great, David could have his own movie and Aftran would be a bit part in a couple movies before getting her own. it would be cool but sadly not to likely. Can Netflix just make it a series?
If they make it a movie and it's successful... Maybe Netflix would make a TV show?
I sort of agree though I feel like a lot of Netflix book-to-film does pretty well. Ah, it could be kickass. But I keep just being so happy it's not dead!
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animorphs2020-06-18 05:04 pm
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Or as Michael Grant said, "Could it be worse?"
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I'd hate puppet-like Andalites again though.
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And if they did Dark Crystal puppets I'd be okay with it. But I can understand why others might not like that
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At least they have the eBooks out now. When the re-print didn't go so well, I was sure the eBooks would never come. (Plus, it makes it easier/cheaper to try reading it in other languages.)
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As for being taken seriously is if they're going to do the alien's they're got to do something and I'm not a fan of CG as I think even modern CG aliens (looking at you MCU) looks silly but we'll have to wait and see.
All this depends on if they ever make any movies let alone Animorphs
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*It is a legitimate difficulty for Animorphs if it is not done in an animated or CGI capacity because their weapon is their ability to become animals, and they are fighting aliens, but if using animation (if it isn't live-action) or CGI (if it is) today there just isn't much of an excuse. But the idea that the content of the stories is what makes it so difficult, especially considering how wildly successful other sci-fi/fantasy war-stories have been, just doesn't carry much weight for me today. Back before Harry Potter, sure, they were afraid of taking those risks for stories aimed at minors, but since then corporations have sort of been making bank on those sorts of stories. I think the bigger problem is that Animorphs, being a 90s series before Harry Potter, had a publishing set-up in that style - short, once-per-month stories meant to go on indefinitely.)
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Am I hopeful, yes, but I fully expect to be disappointed. And I'll be very sad if they make it a cartoon because then I'll likely never watch it so I'm really hoping it's live action.
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I think with author input that'll be better than the show. At the very least.
I'd rather it be live-action, but I'd take good 2D animation and production over awful live-action with puppet aliens. A bunch of fans could do the latter on YouTube - heck, I'd thrown the idea of some of us getting together and making. a parody where Tobias is a parakeet at one point. I'd rather something that looks like Titan A.E. than something that looks like Potter Puppet Pals (which I enjoyed, but I would hate an Animorphs movie's 'best effort' producing that.)
*True for any show. They finally made the second Hey Arnold movie as a taste-test for making the last season and maybe even reconsidering a planned spinoff, The Patakis, but it was advertised so poorly many fans still don't have any idea the second movie was ever aired. Obviously, no reboot or spinoffs. Whoops.
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I do want it live action and I've never seen Potters Puppet Pals but I loved the muppet/puppet effects done in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and would love for them to do the aliens in that style, far more than just throwing CG at the screen but that might be down to a matter of personal taste.
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Yeah... That's definitely a taste thing. That animation style is precisely why I never watched The Dark Crystal (wasn't a big fan of The Neverending Story, either.) I'd rather it be live-action with good CGI, or 2-D animation like Titan A.E. if that was the only way they could show battle scenes.
I'm also like... I'd rather it be well-adapted to modernity and succeed than try to keep it rigidly in the confines in which it was created and fail, so long as the essence of the story is captured. E.g. if they're 15-16 instead of 13 starting out because the content is more mature, meh, whatever. I was also telling another fan that if they adapted it to modernity, it could remove a few plotholes that really existed in the 90s, too.
A big example of that is if you changed it so it was set in 2020, how do you cope with the phone tech? But honestly, they should have made it so morphing energy did some sort of freeze or jam on surveillance even back then: The Andalites created morphing as a spy technology in the first place, and surveillance cameras were already abundant in the 90s. I never understood why an advanced species would make a spy technology that didn't do anything to surveillance. It makes no sense, and for a generation even more used to cameras than I was back then, it's very hard to suspend the disbelief that they wouldn't be recorded without some other explanation.
Anyway, I'm hopeful since the authors are involved; it's more than happened in the past. I love that no matter how little Scholastic has invested in Animorphs the fandom hasn't died.
ETA: I mean, I also think it would be better as a TV show to a movie adaptation, e.g. each book is an episode, with Chronicles/Megamorphs being "TV movies" if we were talking about really ideal in a true-to-the-books way, but it would be really high risk that you wouldn't get a complete series. There's definitely going to be concessions in converting a 64-book series into one or more movies, even if you cut out all the 'filler' content.
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The world is a very different place than it was 25 years ago, the books will need to be updated.
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In some ways, 2020 kids would be much more cautious than 90s kids, so it would be more believable. E.g. - back in the 90s, the NSA scandal hadn't happened yet, but that hindsight 20/20 and suspicion of being watched means the kids would probably be a LOT smarter about communicating over the phone. The 90s version of Animorphs would honestly probably have gotten caught... Very quickly. I mean, the Yeerks don't tap the phones of their hosts' houses, even when one of them suspects their host's brother might be an 'Andalite bandit'? Nah. 2020 Animorphs have burner phones and communicate in code by some secure app that deletes messages after twenty seconds or something. They don't trust the human tech any more than the Yeerk tech.
Anyway, I hope it goes so much better than The Attempt That Shall Not Be Named.
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I guess really I'm glad the fandom isn't dead yet.
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Give the age it is nice to know there are still fans.
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(Bengal tigers are the smallest subspecies of tiger. A Bengal tiger isn't going up against a lion.)
They admitted they didn't do a series bible before starting and since they churned out a book per month they and the ghost authors probably only had like a week or two to really work on it, so I don't really blame them. But I'd like to see it get more effort in this day and age.
But for movies, they're probably going to have to cut out stories like David and Aftran completely. The stories took place over multiple years, there's just so much to try to cram into movies.
But yes! The fandom's not dead yet.
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I sort of agree though I feel like a lot of Netflix book-to-film does pretty well. Ah, it could be kickass. But I keep just being so happy it's not dead!