Dan Norton Explains what would have happened.

I'm probably the only person who thinks these ideas are horrible.

You tc fans are like sonic fans..

Maybe if they decide to use these awful season two ideas for another season or movie they could get a fitting director like Rian Johnson or J.J. Abrams to direct it.
I say that as I recently seen The Last Jedi.

"xluckinekostylex, post: 122901, member: 26034" said:

You tc fans are like sonic fans..

there a reason you keep acting like that?

They revised the interview.

https://soundcloud.com/tcs2011int/cats2011-ros-revised

"balgus82, post: 122914, member: 11012" said:

They revised the interview.

https://soundcloud.com/tcs2011int/cats2011-ros-revised

I surely enjoyed listening to it. :)

"Daremonger, post: 122916, member: 25241" said:

I surely enjoyed listening to it. :)

I guess the reboot will be remain dead...

"xluckinekostylex, post: 122917, member: 26034" said:

I guess the reboot will be remain dead...

so are many things i like, Just gotta accept it and move on.

I think it sounds great when Dan tells us the story -many silly parts, he even gives us a lot of narrative emotion -He seems to think that everything he does is very cool. The problem is when they pass that story to episodes of 20 minutes, the story becomes ridiculous. The story is very heavy, then it becomes too silly. -the part of the bag... WTF. They pulled out another Thundera from the bag.:thumbsdown

Conceptually it is a good barrel of ideas, but to make a story you have to get rid of the most ridiculous, the heaviest part and lighten the plot since they doesn't want to go until its final consequence, they always return to the idea of good against bad and that's why they fail with this story of grays.
Then there is a problem of the moral lessons that in this series are very poorly written or shallow.

Cheetara was taken out from the Münchhausen novel :roflmao, I thought it would be more profound, but it ended in a ridiculous :poop.

My niece is my Wily Kit:(, I gave her that nickname as a child, now I have to tell her that her uncle Lion-O is going to marry her... EWW !! Disgusting !! Now I understand why Dan didn't want to answer me when he assured me that neither Pumyra nor Cheetara would be the Lion-O couple:coffee. What happened to Mandora? What happened to Willa? Lion-O had better options than Wily Kit.:mad

I am satisfied that it has been canceled, I would have disliked that it ended up as the Legend of Korra, full of promises and at some point in episode 9 of the first season lost all sense.:whistle

lion-o would get together with whileykit? GROSSS

This is why someone else should have continue the story in comic form they should've lighten the mood and make it more enjoyable,

"xluckinekostylex, post: 122929, member: 26034" said:

This is why someone else should have continue the story in comic form they should've lighten the mood and make it more enjoyable,

Regardless of opinion on the ideas for the second season of the show....without the involvement of the 2011 cartoon series writers I think there would be even less interest in the comic.

"Mark M, post: 122931, member: 5058" said:

Regardless of opinion on the ideas for the second season of the show....without the involvement of the 2011 cartoon series writers I think there would be even less interest in the comic.[/Q
[QUOTE="Mark M, post: 122931, member: 5058"]Regardless of opinion on the ideas for the second season of the show....without the involvement of the 2011 cartoon series writers I think there would be even less interest in the comic.

Oh come on, I think the comic writer should stay away from Dan Norton's season 2 storyline, started of with a fresh storyline for season 2 and add supporting characters like willa, mumm-rana , hachiman , etc. Something more enjoyable , that doesn't mean it won't be less intresting.. Plus willa , nayda or Pandora could 've been lion-o's queen.
[/QUOTE]

"xluckinekostylex, post: 122932, member: 26034" said:

I 'm not meaning it wouldn't be enjoyable or interesting. I am just saying if the cartoon creators aren't inolved people might not be to interested.

Having finally listened to the whole podcast, I think its great that Dan came out and gave us this information on how the show was going to play out.

Like I said before, I really like many of these ideas and it sounds very ambitious. The part that interests me the most is Slythe's development. Had the show played out and we'd gotten a conclusion, I think Slythe would have ended up being my favorite character in the show.

What's the difference between the revised interview and the original? (The original seems to be no longer available.)

I haven't posted in a long while, so um, hey, guys hey! :)

So, I'm one of those who loved the reboot and was incredibly sad when it was cancelled (in fact, to this day, I'm still a littlle butthurt about it, lol). So, it was great to hear from Dan after all these years and to learn what would've happened on the show if CN weren't run by a bunch of incompetent dillholes.

Anyway, my thoughts on the podcast? First and foremost, the show should've been moved to Adult Swim, a Netflix-only show, or been moved to a time in which it was more likely teens, young adults, and older adults would've tuned while stupid Chima is moved to a slot more appropriate for little kids so that way both CN execs and the writers walk away happy. TC 2011 was definitely not a kid-friendly show nor shouldn't have been marketed as such. The second season confirms that the writers really wanted to go full speed ahead in the darker and more adult route (which is completely fine for me; I really appreciate they wanted to be gutsy and take chances).

As for the ideas for the continuation, I like most of them (I'll get into the ones I don't like a little later). However, I don't think one more season would be enough to ensure all the subplots and character development were satisfactorily wrapped up. A good chunk of these ideas are really ambitious and seemingly require more episodes in order to give them proper depth and not give off the appearance of rushed development and/or OOCness. So, I personally feel that there would need to be two or even three more seasons to wrap all things up.

Moving on the ideas I didn't like, the first one that really gets in my craw is Lion-O ending up with Wilykit. Like...huh, what? :confused: No wonder Dan Norton didn't want to say much on Lion-O's love interest subject on deviantArt; he probably realized later on that the idea sounds slightly disgusting, unnecessarily lazy, and irrational. Yes, the age difference between Lion-O and Wilykit isn't huge and they would get together after a time-skip, so no pedophilia. But still...I can't see Lion-O being fine with and wanting to ending up with someone who he probably viewed and still views as a cute little sister. :sick Also, speaking of Lion-O, him ending up with Wilykit would just make him look like a desperate pervert (IMO). He couldn't get with Cheetara nor Pumyra, so he's going to settle down with his team's resident little sister because supposedly there are no other fish--er, cats in the sea? Lastly, the Thundercats franchise isn't at all lacking in female characters; surely there were plenty of better options for Lion-O's love interest. You telling me that none of the writers didn't and couldn't entertain the idea of one of the Amazon Maidens, Mandora, Jaguara, etc as his future queen? :mad

I'm also not a huge fan of Bengali being Tygra and Cheetara's son. I would've preferred him to be a former member of the Tygra's clan who was exiled because of his pale fur and grew bitter and serves as a foil for Tygra. Just anything not affiliated with Tygra and Cheetara being his parents. That said the idea of Bengali being a "TyChee" child isn't as bothersome to me as the Lion-O/Wilykit, so meh, I could've dealt with it.

Pumyra not being redeemed and being killed? I like a lot. Not because I dislike the character, but because it's an unpredictable and gutsy move, especially in this day and age where slacktavists will pitch the biggest fit ever over a female character getting a slight scratch on her face and declare it a "romanticization of violence against women". I also had a feeling Pumyra wasn't going to be redeemed and rekindle whatever thing was going between her Lion-O, so I feel somewhat vindicated. The only thing I have a slight bone to pick with is Tygra killing her. I get that the writers chose him because he and Pumyra didn't interact much, so it lessens the personal ramifications of killing a former teammate and that they feared that Lion-O might lose fans and/or lose a good chunk of his innocence if they had him be the one to kill Pumyra. Still, if I was in the writers' shoes I would've made Lion-O be forced to kill Pumyra. It just makes more sense to have the Cat who was the closest to her be forced to kill her because she's beyond hope. It also would also reinforce Lion-O's theme of growing from a boy into a man and highlight his development as a king and a savior who sometimes has to make hard decisions to protect his people/his world.

Last but not least, I would've included Humans into the story, made them unknown to the Animal Races until Lion-O and company stumbles upon a city or tribe of living humans, and then once they (Humans) become known, all sorts of conflict ensues and throws a wrench into the effort of uniting all the Animals against Mumm-Ra until everyone gets their crap together and decide it's a worldwide front against the evil zombie. Seems dramatic and ridiculous I know, but this would play into the show's main theme of racism and intolerance. Also it seems to me the writers were aiming for the show to be an dark epic sci-fi fantasy opera, but had their hands tied because of toy-obsessed execs and being given the unwanted responsibility of having to appeal to a demographic they clearly didn't want to target in the first place (6 year old boys).

That said, the rest of ideas they explained sound great and I'm miffed more than ever that this show was cancelled and there is a high chance it won't be continued in some capacity. :cry

After listening to the podcast, there are a few points I want to get across:

[CENTER]#1: The Concept of Loyalty[/CENTER]
In what was to be Ep. 27, Dan talked about how loyalty was going to be part of the Code of Thundera. However, after the storylines of the love triangle, Tygra being jealous of Lion-O, and the characters challenging Lion-O's authority, etc., it seemed the opposite.... unless it was Fridge Brilliance. :biggrin

[CENTER]#2: Bandai[/CENTER]
When Bandai was brought up, Dan talked about how they wanted three variations/transformations of each character. Do you believe that this had any influence over the direction of the Season 2 storylines?

Think about it like this: Each character (or at least the Cats) would have had three different designs: Present, five years later, and ten years after that. But this could have been handled a different way. Some ideas could have possibly been:

• Ceremonial costumes, since they were going to be a new kingdom
• Aquatic costumes, since they were going underwater
• Or better looking costumes, since they now had the means to have better clothes

(Also, I never gave my opinion on the toys that were released for the NS, but these are my thoughts:

I believe that the toys for the NS were alright. I do not know too much about the toys' functionality, but in terms of the figures, I had two problems with them: 1) some of the figures are not detailed enough in the face. One example of that would be the Claudus figure, like this one here: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thundercatslair/images/4/40/Bandai_ThunderCats_Claudus_Action_Figure_-_002.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140727135548 2) I did not like how some of the figures have all of the bolts and/or screws showing, like this example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Bandai-Thunder-cats-LION-O-Action-Figure-2011/272785641612?hash=item3f834a908c:g:DnMAAOSw20JZf922 It would be challenging to display it as a loose figure, being that it would be aesthetically displeasing to look at. :thumbsdown I also believe these figures do not match up to the ones that have been released for the OS.)

[CENTER]#3: 65 Episodes Instead of 52[/CENTER]
Dan had brought up the idea of doing 65 episodes instead of 52, and expressed some ideas that were going to be done in the extra 13 episodes. But here is the thing: How would the extra episodes even work with the current set-up that they have? Would the episodes have the storylines that would have been explored in a 65-episode structure, but due to less episodes, you were unable to? And how were you going to label the episodes? "Lost Stories"?

Instead of the structure being this...

• Ep. #13: Spirit Stone
• Ep. #26: Tech Stone
• Ep. #39: Lion-O goes into the Book of Omens to train
• Ep. #52: Series finale

... You could have had a 65-episode structure somewhat like this:

• Ep. #13: Book of Omens
• Ep. #26: Spirit Stone
• Ep. #39: Tech Stone
• Ep. #52: Lion-O goes into Book of Omens to train
• Ep. #65: Series finale

Besides, one of the problems that many people said about this series was that the pacing was rushed. Having that second set-up would have improved the pacing.

[CENTER]#4: Originality (or Lack Thereof)[/CENTER]
Dan remarked about when creating this series, it could be unique if it was not original; I do not totally agree with that. You may not be able to make something completely original, but you should be creative enough to come up with your own ideas, even if the franchise is not new.

If you polled people about which franchise they thought this story was from, without naming characters, settings, etc., I would believe the top answer would be "Final Fantasy": a group of characters, possibly with one or many of them "chosen", to destroy a supernatural villain, usually having to find stones to help defeat the villain (especially when it is four stones).

Some might even say that this story would be from "Inuyasha": an anime about a hot-headed, sword-wielding hero (Lion-O/Inuyasha) who has an older brother (Tygra/Sesshomaru) who is jealous about the younger brother’s "inheritance" (which includes a powerful sword that can transform (Sword of Omens/Tessaiga)) and believes he does not deserve it, and leads a group of characters to help defeat a supernatural enemy (Mumm-Ra/Naraku), having to search for gems(?) or parts of one (Shikon Jewel shards/Stones of Power) to destroy him.

[CENTER]#5: A Devil's Advocate?[/CENTER]
There were some ideas that were not good in the season that existed (the love triangle, etc.) and in the season that did not exist (Bengali being Tygra's and Cheetara's child, Lion-O & WilyKit, etc.) So what the staff of the series should have had is someone hired to be the role of Devil's Advocate. How that would work is that if someone tries to use an idea that seems questionable or of lacking quality, the Devil's Advocate would decline the use of the idea and give an explanation. If the presenter(s) of the idea disagrees with the explanation, he/she/they would have to make an argument of why the idea would work. If the Devil's Advocate still declines, the idea becomes naught. I would bet you that role would probably make anything that uses a writing staff a lot better.

[CENTER]#6: Management[/CENTER]
I have a boatload of things I want to say in this section:

Marketing

When it came to the promos and how often they aired, it seemed like CN wanted "ThunderCats" to be one of the premiere series of the network. Then two weeks after the series premiered, the number of times the promos aired drop significantly. Then when the series came back on Saturdays after the four month hiatus, the marketing was limited to the half-hour before the new episode premiered, almost as if CN wanted nobody to know that this series was back or they were trying to burn the remaining episodes.

And that leads to the next point...

Visibilty

You cannot complain about visibility when you pretty much received an F on the marketing aspect.

Toy Sales

I am still trying to understand why the executives are trapped in the ‘80s, thinking that toy sales have so much emphasis in determining a show’s future. You do need profit, but why just worry about toys when you can produce caps, mugs and shirts as well? You could make a profit on those aforementioned items because they have low cost and can be sold at high volume. If the executives believe in the disillusion that toy sales is all that matters, then their thinking is archaic and anachronistic.

The Legend of Chima vs ThunderCats

The one thing I did not like about this is that the property they have the rights to was treated with less respect then a series that was made to resemble the property they own.

(Btw, if one of the executives actually said "We do not like anthropomorphic animals." when discussing "ThunderCats", then they registered at least an eleven on the Bullcrap Meter. I am sure they said the same thing when it came to Jake the Dog, Gumball, Rigby, Mordecai... :rolleyes:)

Demographics

As for what direction this series should have gone in, Norton et al were correct. This series was not made for kids nor should it have been.

Sometimes I wonder if one of the reasons the writers could not attempt to write for an older demographic is because CN does not really have any programming blocks for the 12-and-up viewers, aside from Adult Swim, like when Toonami was airing in the after-school hours in the late ‘90s to the early ‘00s or on Saturday nights in the late ‘00s.

Also...

There seems a bigger problem that WB has not addressed: distribution. It was not with just this series; "Young Justice" seemed to have had that problem as well. The reason the show did not work on CN is because of low quality; it did not work because the demographic that would have helped this series succeed does not appear at 10:30 AM. (I am glad "Young Justice" got its second chance. :thumbsup)

If CN does not share your goals anymore, then stop distributing your content to that network. You may have a 20-plus year relationship with them, but if they are not interested in what you are trying to achieve, then find somebody who will.

"Night Song, post: 123164, member: 25271" said:

First and foremost, the show should've been moved to Adult Swim, a Netflix-only show, or been moved to a time in which it was more likely teens, young adults, and older adults would've tuned while stupid Chima is moved to a slot more appropriate for little kids so that way both CN execs and the writers walk away happy. TC 2011 was definitely not a kid-friendly show nor shouldn't have been marketed as such.

Also it seems to me the writers were aiming for the show to be an dark epic sci-fi fantasy opera, but had their hands tied because of toy-obsessed execs and being given the unwanted responsibility of having to appeal to a demographic they clearly didn't want to target in the first place (6 year old boys).

I agree with you on the above statements, except for one thing: I would not have aired the series on Toonami's current block, only because of how late it comes on. It would have been better suited for the Toonami block that aired on Saturday nights ten years ago.

Those are my thoughts on this situation.

The problem is. The series was a train wreck and had way too much filler aside from bad character decisions. No I'm not going to forgive them for what they did to my three most favorite characters.

I really liked your review [USER=26114]@Lion-O-hearted[/USER] . Very well written. I agree with everything you pointed out. I'd just like to add a little bit of my opinion regarding the point you make about this series not being for kids. The problem here is that it's like the makers were in two minds and were approaching this series as both a kids show and as an adult show. Hoping that it would succeed on both fronts but instead it failed on both.

On one hand the show itself, the look of it, the storylines were all aimed towards adults. But then on the other end, they were expecting it to sell toys like crazy. How can anyone justify cancelling a series aimed at adults because the toy sales were poor??????

It's like what Mr. Miyagi tells to Daniel san in The Karate Kid. "Either you karate do , yes, or karate do no. You karate do "guess so", "SQUISH", just like grape.