Thundercats

[Salamok]

Okay the original was just bad enough to be good for my 12 year old self.  I had to take a trip down memory lane and give the prequel premiere a shot, I can't be the only 1 right?

Unfortunately I have grown up and/or it is way worse then the original because it is pretty bad, the worst part is it is all prequelly and I now find myself suckered in for the back story. 

So did anyone else give this a go and have a take on it?

[Merusk]

I watched it on demand the other day.  I wasn't totally clear on the back story and was ranting for a while about how they're Thunderrans but start-out on 3rd Earth.  The Wife said she thought the original Thundercats were actually the ancestors mentioned several times. 

That just irritated me even more because wtf is this, the Wheel of Time where the same Heroes and Villains get spat out every time there's a climactic battle.. only they keep the same names, just because?  And if that Is the case, did someone beat the snarfs with a club so their species suddenly lost the capacity for language?

The only bit I really got a kick out of was the casting of Lion-O's original voice as the doomed king of the cats.  The angsty brother vs brother of Tigra/ Lion-O, non-talking snarfs and racist cats (really, I wanted the mutants to kill 'em all after the first 10 mins. That shouldn't happen.) turned me right off.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Non talking snarf was like, the best part of the whole damn show.

Also, it's not a sequel or a prequel, it's a reboot.  How is that hard to tell?  Sure they 'could' say a group of cats from thundera defeated mum=ra a few centuries ago but to have them all be the same names/breeds? That would be stretching plausibility by a lot.

Overall this one is already far superior to most cartoons out there now, way better than the original.

[raydeen]

I was all set to watch the premier and then fell asleep before it came on. Will have to catch it On Demand I guess. I was kinda hoping it would be as good as the He-Man reboot a few years ago. Although that wasn't a stellar production it pulled it off quite well.

[Salamok]

Also, it's not a sequel or a prequel, it's a reboot.  How is that hard to tell? 

Didn't realize it was a reboot but it still had some prequel feel to it, the original never delved too deeply into the fall of the empire or the death of the entire race IIRC.

[luckton]

Also, it's not a sequel or a prequel, it's a reboot.  How is that hard to tell? 

Didn't realize it was a reboot but it still had some prequel feel to it, the original never delved too deeply into the fall of the empire or the death of the entire race IIRC.

The original was made back in a day when you didn't have 'deep' cartoons.  The cartoons were deep enough for kids (read: us back in the day) to buy the lineup of toys year after year.

[Merusk]

Also, it's not a sequel or a prequel, it's a reboot.  How is that hard to tell?

Didn't realize it was a reboot but it still had some prequel feel to it, the original never delved too deeply into the fall of the empire or the death of the entire race IIRC.

The original handled it in the first episode and no further other than mentioning Lion-O's major malfunctions a few times. Their planet - Thunderra -  blew-up, but unlike Kryptonians they weren't idiots about all the earthquakes and such and created a fleet of ships to escape.  Although it seems they waited until the last possible moment, because everything was falling to shit as the TCs ran to their ship.  Lion-O was a boy of 8 at the time, but all the other TCs were as you see them in the show.

In the mess of the escape their ship is damaged. I don't remember if it's the planet that does it or if mutants jump them.  Jaga says he'll just put them on course and then join the others in their cryosleep tubes, where they then retire to.  He's lying because the ship is far worse off than they realized. There's no way for them to rejoin the rest of the TCs on whatever planet they were going to as their new home, so he dies at the controls after finding a habitable planet to set the ship to crash on.  (The third one of a small primitive solar system.  Charts call the system "earth" so they call the planet "Third Earth")

After the crash, everyone wakes up and wonders who the fuck this big dude in the blue leotard is.  They then realize it's Lion-O, his tube having been damaged in the escape he's aged physically during the trip.  So you have an 8-year-old in an 18-20-something's body (which makes Cheetara's one and only comment about him being a stud just a little creepy.)

The Mutants tracked the wounded ship to 3e but crashed for some reason. This is why there's only the 3 of them and the small group of TC on the planet.  (Until later episodes where you get some pair of TC who also crash on the planet.)  And explains why every now and then you get random spacefaring guys who show up and nobody goes ballistic over the tech.Their lack of tech is because of their lack of industry.  Panthro is the guy who does all the mechanical work but he's a minor engineer/ mechanic not much else. They've got only what they salvage from the wreckage and scavenge from other spacefarers who take a detour to this insignificant world.

This backstory is why it wasn't totally clear to me if it's a reboot or a sequel.  The original back story they never encountered Mum-Ra until crashing on the planet.  He's just this evil guy who had conquered the planet centuries before and is pissed these interlopers are trespassing until he discovers the Eye is a powerful artifact and he covets it.  There was no living on the same planet as the mutants, they were a war-oriented spacefaring alliance looking to conquer as much as they could and the TCs were in their way.

Combine all that with the little plaquard of adult Lion-O beating the shit out of Mum-Raa at the beginning of this series and you're left a little confused.

Yes, I watched entirely too fucking much Thundercats as a kid.

[luckton]

I'm going to go with full-on reboot, a la how the old Batman movies compare to the new Batman movies.  The characters and faces are there, but we're gonna drive on and off the road at random and see how it goes.

I rather liked the first episode, and it's refreshing that they're taking the 'grand season story arc' approach instead of self-contained throw-away episodes of old.  Looking forward to next episode.

[luckton]

I dunno about others, but I've been watching this series, and oh man... 

Let's recap some episodes and update the thread:


Overall, I'm impressed with the show, and love how the people behind it have tried to keep things fresh while still paying tribute to the 80s series.  Now that they've established the lore, I'd love to see some more character development with the individual cats, but I'm sure that's to come.

[MisterNoisy]

This is actually shockingly good.  I was kind of expecting a complete trainwreck, and now I've got it DVRing.

[angry.bob]

This is a good show so far. This weeks episode with the rabbit swordsmith was very good I thought. New Cheetara gives be boners, especially in whatever episode it is that she was rubbing her cans on Liono's back and whispering in his ear.