Misty Technicolor Memories

It seems that actor Chris Pine is up for the part of Captain James Kirk in the upcoming Trek movie. Among other named participants are Zoe Saldana as Uhura, and Zachary Quinto as Spock. Looking pretty good, so far.

“You’ve wrecked my childhood!” is a phrase oft heard on the Internet, when the new remake of a favorite property comes along. Most recently, some Transformers fans screamed it to anyone who would listen. I can’t help but think that these people show a disappointing level of perspective; who over the age of 20 hasn’t picked up an old book, or the DVD of an old movie, and discovered that it just doesn’t speak to them the way it did all those years ago?

I recently acquired the first season of “Battle of the Planets“: an anime import about a team of bird-costumed super-ninjas in a rocket-jet fighting a high-tech criminal syndicate. It suffered from translation; the translators were forced to make massive cuts of violence and teenage-level plot points while adding in footage of a cute robot and space travel. Imagine that someone had told you that, for Freedonian broadcast, classic Trek had to be cut to 30 minutes per episode, never leave Earth’s solar system, and ditch the pointy-ear guy.

I loved “Battle of the Planets” when I was 8. I made paper airplane versions of the hero’s razor-edged jet boomerang, tinfoil helmets, and beach towel capes. Finally seeing it again all these years later was fun, but I couldn’t help but admit that I was no longer able to appreciate it the way I once could, and that was okay. The upcoming live-action movie will probably be a tiny bit more mature; and I won’t complain at all about all the things they got “wrong”.

Or at least not very much.

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3 Comments

  • rattrap says:

    Actually, the upcoming movie will be all-CGI, by the same people who did this spring’s TMNT (which I enjoyed quite a lot, your mileage may vary). It’s being scripted by Paul Dini, the mind behind Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League. It is going to be based on Gatchaman, not Battle of the Planets.

  • nviiibrown says:

    I felt that way when Thundercats was on Toonami. I was like “Awesome! Why does it suck?” Then it became more of a campy love.

  • tltrent says:

    OMG. A live-action BoTP!!!

    You know of course that the love of my life is Jason aka Condor aka Ken aka…sexiest cartoon man evAR?!

    *swoon*

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