Nostalgia
One of the top videos at digg.com at the moment with 2821 diggs (at the time of writing) is the song Happy Happy Joy Joy from the surreal early 90s cartoon Ren and Stimpy. The show was over the top in almost every way and looking back on it, none of its potency has been lost. Probably the main reason this video has so many diggs is due to its nostalgic value (and also that it remains extremely entertaining.)
Hollywood, of course, has tapped into this nostalgia, by attempting to bring the cartoons of the 80s to life (or CG life). The recent Transformers movie, which is based on the 80s cartoon about a warring alien race, had expensive production values and big names behind it including Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay. The film made a lot of money, and the sequel is currently in production.
Interestingly, the film makers did not try to tap into a new children/family market. They instead made it an all out action movie (why else get Michael Bay to direct?) and retained some of the themes of the cartoon as well as leaving the characters pretty much as they originally appeared, and then brought that to the year 2007.
Another film that tried to cash in on nostalgia value was Inspector Gadget. Unfortunately this film missed the mark. The problem here was that it was updated too much. The technology shown in the film was the type that looks dated a couple of years later and some of the characters had been changed completely. The original cartoon series also had Get Smart’s (yet another series that has recently been made into a film for its nostalgia value) Don Adams as the voice of the bumbling inspector. The film had Matthew Broderick and it fell flat.
Astroboy is currently being made into a CG animated film due to be released next year. It stars the voices of Nicholas Cage, Bill Nighy, Donald Sutherland, Freddie Highmore and Kristen Bell. Astroboy originally appeared in Japan in a manga by Osamu Tezuka in the 1950s. It was made into a black and white animated television series in the 1960s, followed by a colour series in the 1980s (image on right from astroboy.co.uk). It tells the story of a boy-robot who was created by a scientist after the death of his son. The story has a strong message of tolerance throughout. It will be interesting to see if they follow the same path as Transformers and retain the themes and visuals of the original, or cash in by updating the story too much.
There are quite a few other 1980s cartoons that will probably be made into films. This includes He-Man, a cartoon about a rather buff warrior (with a really original name) living in Eternia. He and his friends are in constant battle with the evil Skeletor. This was actually made into a movie in 1987. Before Courtney Cox was your Friend, she starred in Masters of the Universe with Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella. The film is quite funny to watch now, and proves that it does not need to be remade 20 years later.
