The Movie Blog reader “Roguepirate” sent me this email with a question interesting enough that I thought I should post it here:
“I’m a big fan of themovieblog and podcast, and I just go through listening to Monday’s (9/10) round table and after hearing the discussion on GIJOE it got me thinking. I grew up in the 80’s watching GIJOE, Transformers, Thundercats… all that good stuff, so when i hear about a movie based on an old cartoon i’d like for them to stay as close to the original however, i haven’t watched an episode of GIJOE since the early 90’s, same goes with all those other cartoons and I’m pretty certain many other people haven’t either. So my question is, how much does nostalgia cloud a persons judgment on something like making GIJOE international? Sure i remember Saturday mornings sitting in front of the TV, eating cereal watching GIJOE blast Cobra with their jets and lasers, but was the cartoon really as good as I remember it? or are we just romanticizing a time in our lives when things were better? I bought the Voltron DVD’s remembering how great and awesome the cartoons was, watching it now when i’m 25, a lot of the episodes are boring and lame. So I guess if you can revisit some of those great cartoons of the past, compare what you think of them now to what you thought of them when you were a kid, things aren’t as great as we remember.”
Roguepirate raises a great issue. I wonder how many of those people protesting the recent GI Joe announcements have actually watched an episode of the cartoon in the last 10 years? I know I had this experience recently… you see I remember LOVING the original Halloween movie… but I haven’t seen it in like 20 years… and then I watched it again the other night and realized it’s really not a good movie at all. Bad acting, bad dialog and worst of all… not scary in the least.
There was another cartoon I used to love called “Grandizer“. I remember it being one of the very best on TV… but then a few months ago I saw an episode and it was just brutally bad. Nostalgia did indeed cloud my judgement… or at least my memory of how good the show was.
So what shows or movie have you LOVED… but haven’t seen in a long time… and then when you saw it again went “WTF!?!?”
