So, you may have heard that one of my all-time favorite TV shows is supposed to make a comeback. A publisher I've never heard of called Zeros 2 Heroes is apparently taking over the franchise. (Edit: Actually, Zeros 2 Heroes is a "social media company" that is handling the community part and possibly the webcomic part of the new effort; the actual production company is Rainmaker Animation, which apparently bought out Mainframe Entertainment.) Five different groups have presented concepts on their website, and fans are rating and commenting on them.
I looked them over and wasn't very happy, but I didn't expect to be. Maybe a cool show will come out of all of this, but it's not going to be the ReBoot I fell in love with. Hell, season 4 wasn't, either. In seasons 1 and 2, Bob was Han Solo, perfectly willing to delete Megabyte if he got the chance, but in season 4, suddenly Greedo shot first. (And Dot had apparently lost her mind.)
Some of the new incarnations don't bother to give us our old characters, or when they do, it's in a vague, "in the past" kind of way. The ones that do "continue" the story completely destroy the characters...Bob becomes a big bruiser in one of them, and Mad Max in another. Isn't this what games are for? And also, it's been done. Even if we ignore season 4 hippie Bob, I can't see Guardian 452 turning into a musclehead. It's just not...him.
In one incarnation, Dot is actually described as "just a girl". What? In another, somehow she is married to Megabyte and the mother of a child with two fathers. What?
After season 4, I've had about enough of Dot getting the shaft, thanks. I'd like to see her kick some ass, like she did in the first three seasons.
There is no way Dot would ever think of herself as "just a girl", and there is no way she would knowingly and willingly marry Megabyte, regardless of whether or not she had "code growing inside her". (Bleh.)
Matrix and AndrAIa, who probably fit these new "hardcore" (snerk) concepts better than our original cast, are curiously absent, though one of the concept creators promised they'd show up later.
In most of these stories, Mainframe has been destroyed. In some of them, the city doesn't even appear at all. Mainframe is kind of like one of the main characters of the original show, and the search for it was the entire point of season 3. Plus, Mainframe is awesome. Why would you ever get rid of it?
And then, oh and then, there's the art. All but one of the designs goes completely off from the look of the original show. Honestly? I don't think the show needed an updated look. Smoother animation, better textures, maybe. But it doesn't have to look world-realistic...it's happening inside a computer. I think season 3 was as far as they should have gone with tweaking the look. Season 4 crossed the line--somehow, the characters looked like action figures who didn't quite seem to be placed properly in the scene, like they were filmed on a green screen. Now these new concepts are telling me that my beloved characters won't even look like themselves.
What reason do I have to watch this new incarnation, really? I can't seem to find one.
I think I will just have to write this off. And while I'm at it, I'll write off season 4, too. Season 3 had a perfectly good ending. Sure, they didn't beat Daemon, nor did they meet "the User", but they saved Mainframe and they were all reunited. It ended with a sense of hope. I'd rather leave ReBoot there than with all these new, "darc" incarnations--season 4 included.
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Wow, some of those ideas are really out there. A lot of the new character designs are strange, the names are basically just re-used and the characters redrawn under the excuse of 'reformatting'. The biggest problem though is some of the ideas, since a lot of it writes out like bad fanfiction or cyberpunk-wannabe material.
Season 4 really didn't leave the series in a good place. After Season 3's long adventure to find Mainframe and return it to life, they set about turning it into a warzone again, handing over control of the city to Megabyte at the end. Unless they were going to repeat the epic struggle to regain the system again, they had few choices in handling that problem.
One of the issues I have most with a lot of the ideas though is that they're saying "The fans of Reboot are getting older..." and then making things darker, more 'realistic' and more complicated. That's pretty much what every fanfiction writer on the internet falls into. "I enjoy a cartoon for 14 year olds, but I am 18 and too old for it. I will write my own story where everything is cooler."
Now, really, the series evolved a lot from its simple roots as 'What if AIs in computers were characters', but they're creating an excessively large jump for the recreation. Well anyway, it's not like I have a script handed in, so I can't offer anything better. I guess we'll have to see how this develops and hope for the best, eh?
I just remembered something else I didn't like about season 4...in the beginning of ReBoot, Bob seemed fairly seasoned, and I assumed he was just randomly assigned to Mainframe. But in the flashbacks from season 4, he essentially caused the destruction of Mainframe's twin city and the death of most of the sprites, and decided to stay because he felt guilty. It's like they were completely rewriting his character.
I think the Web gave Bob enough angst, without having to retcon more in (and badly).
Oh well. If Star Wars has taught me anything, it's how to ignore parts of the franchise that I don't like.
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