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I'm sure most people who are even vaguely aware of Animorphs will suddenly be having flashbacks to the failed TV show run by Nickelodeon in the 1990s, but hear me out. Given Amazon Prime is about to adapt works like Ringworld and The Culture to the big screen, and even though I have my doubts about them I'm still wondering this, is it finally time to give Animorphs another shot? As bad as it will get for The Culture, I'm still absolutely sure nothing could be as bad as the 1990s Animorphs TV show. That said, these books will absolutely need to be handled carefully, given they were as 1990s as you could possibly get, and cultural attitudes have shifted since then. I dunno, what do you guys think?

KA Applegate has been *far* less disappointing than the other well-know young adult author who got started in the 90s using initials to mask her gender, and a series as honest as Animorphs about the cost of war is something we could use more of in the world. Between that and the required technology to do the series justice being more cost efficient than ever, it does seem like a good time.

It is, especially with what Amazon Prime is doing. That said, my biggest concern is how to translate the oversaturation of 1990s culture that Animorphs was firmly entrenched into to the small screen. As for action, I don't think we need to worry. Animorphs is far more effects-heavy than, say, something like The Culture which is about humanism and futurism and cornerstones of the sci-fi genre. Animorphs is less likely to be botched in terms of its message so much as screwing up the dominant 1990s atmosphere.

Animorphs? How about they bring back Manimal instead.

Animorphs would be difficult to adapt. It was officially aimed at kids, but could often be pretty dark and gory. So, you would have two options. Either keep the adaptation aimed at kids, but tone things down so that parents don't get upset. Or, aim it at a somewhat older audience, which would require changing certain things. Like, maybe making the characters a little older, and adding some romantic subplots.

As far as it being very "90s", isn't it true that most older things are dated in some ways? If you look at most movies, tv shows, books, etc, you can usually tell what time they were made, or at least have a general idea. Most things are "of their time". When they make a new version they usually update it to make it more current. In the case of Animorphs though, I would be wary of a version made right now, because I wouldn't want heavy handed politics and current topical issues. That is a surefire way to make something seem dated pretty quickly, since social attitudes and priorities are frequently changing. What is relevant today might be largely irrelevant (or at least no longer a popular concern) a decade from now. This is especially true because we're on the verge of a new decade, and there's no telling what 2020s culture might be like.

If this were the 1990s, I could see that approach working. It's how they made ReBoot Season 3, a step up above the typical fare that had come before. I don't think it can today, though, because late-stage capitalism and audiences with severely lowered expectations is ensuring weaker scripts get sent out but at least meet a certain action/fanservice quotient.

The reprints tried doing that in 2011, and it failed, because Animorphs is a unique story that could only take place in a bubble in time, between the fall of the wall and the fall of the towers. It wouldn't work in today's environment of social media, where the Yeerk invasion would get out long before they could get fully ingrained into our society. Literally, you have to set it in the 1990s or abandon one of the core conceits of the series.

Most things can be updated for a newer time. You just have to approach it differently. You can still do an aliens secretly living among humans story. You could have it so that it starts off with just a few people (maybe high ranking government officials) being taken, to make it easier to cover things. Or, you could have it so the aliens initially arrive a lot sooner. Like, decades before hand, so by the modern day they are already everywhere. They could deliberately put out ridiculous stories about alien invaders (maybe with some truth mixed in to further confuse people) to make people who talk about aliens look crazy or stupid.

You could probably come up with a counter argument for why that wouldn't work, but I really don't think it would be as difficult as you might think. I think most people would accept it. Hell, there are people in real life who believe there are secret government alien conspiracies, with lizard people and such.

Yukaphile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 10:18 pm
The reprints tried doing that in 2011, and it failed, because Animorphs is a unique story that could only take place in a bubble in time, between the fall of the wall and the fall of the towers. It wouldn't work in today's environment of social media, where the Yeerk invasion would get out long before they could get fully ingrained into our society. Literally, you have to set it in the 1990s or abandon one of the core conceits of the series.

"The Yeerks are using Madeupword-ian Signal Jammers to disrupt cell phone and camera use around their bases". There, I just solved the issue.

A big part of the paranoia of the series was that the Yeerks controlled the government, schools, police, and media. So why not say they're controlling the internet too? Also, if we're being honest, even without cell phones the books had some face palming "how didn't anyone notice this?" moments of the kids being seen mid morph by random civilians with no consequences.

I understand the argument that the series could only happen in the 90's but I disagree. I read the books when I was in around 5th or 6th grade. I can't remember the exact age, but it would have been at least 2 or 3 years after 9/11. It didn't affect my enjoyment of the series.

Well, look. There are scenes you simply could not do today. Like where Visser Three morphed a kafit bird and chased Ax to a McDonald's. Or where Cassie morphed bird and escaped the Yeerk pool in #29. The Sickness. And when the invasion is out in the open and people are being herded to the Yeerk pool, you'd have had about a thousand people posting that onto the Twitter and other social media. Also, people weren't as suspicious as we are now in the 1990s. Nowadays we can't imagine not having an enemy to fight. It makes discussions like those where Marco, Ax, and Tobias are talking about how people aren't ready for another world war obsolete. In the 1990s was the perfect time for a body-snatcher invasion, given how complacent most Americans were. I think to remove the 1990s from Animorphs removes a lot of the themes from the books. That's where the reprints went wrong. I may be booted out of his community, but this is one area I agree with the poparena.

I understand the argument, but I disagree.

Even if you remove cell phones and the internet as a factor entirely, the books had some moments that should have broken the Masquerade of the Secret Invasion. Like the dust monster from Megamorphs 1, or the Animorphs morphing into chimpanzees on the roof of a truck in public. So if the suspension of disbelief was already stretched a bit in those cases, I don't see the addition of modern day camera phones as a complete deal breaker. Plus, you could always have the Yeerks using their advanced tech and influence to do cover ups or jam phones, like the SCP Foundation. For the specific examples you gave, it would just be seen as footage of weird birds acting strangely, possibly a hoax like that video years back of a hawk trying to snatch a kid. And when the Yeerks were publicly herding people into pools, the secret invasion was pretty much out in the open anyways at that point.

You're right that the specific scene of Marco, Ax and Tobias talking about how America has no enemies can't be done anymore . . . but that's one scene in 50 plus books. It's a powerful scene, but Animorphs is not solely that scene. Yes, it talks about the nature of war, but Animorphs has * a lot* to say about the nature of war, PTSD, how it changes people, ect. You still have plenty of themes that can be discussed without watering things down.

As for the idea that "the public isn't complacent anymore, so you can't do secret alien invasion stories anymore", I think that's a bit simplistic. It's like saying you can't do a story about a Space Cold War or the end of the world just because it's not the Cold War anymore.