The TV show, then and now

[Liora]

As for the "I hate it because it was a cash-in" argument, it's valid, but again what would you expect?  Any crossover-medium thing with a book series, especially while it's popular and still in circulation, is a cash-in.  Let's just be honest here with the reality of this not exactly being Game of Thrones or Walking Dead or whatever, it was a quickly-hashed-out afternoon series on Nickelodeon, aimed at elementary kids.  There's nothing wrong with that, really.  We don't seem to whine about stuff like Ninja Turtles, which started the exact same way, a sanitized version of a somewhat-popular-but-niche property to make the most of the license.

Well, I was a kid, so I had very high expectations of it. I don't think it's fair to say, "Oh come on, were you seriously expecting these people not to try to make as much money as they could as quickly as they could?" because we were children.  I was not yet old enough to develop that kind of cynicism. I didn't think of Animorphs as a product to be milked for cash; I thought of it as literature that spoke to me. It hurt me that the people making the show didn't feel the same way. I felt like they were entrusted with this story and these characters that meant the world to me, and they betrayed that trust.

Yeah, Scholastic wanted to cash in, but there's cashing in and then there's cashing in. Look at what's happened with kids' book series since then. The Harry Potter movies were a cash-in, but they were good - with fantastic British actors, gorgeous special effects, and writing that was almost obsessively faithful to the books. Even the toys and candy were high-quality - I mean, cross-marketing with Jelly Belly to make Bertie Bott's Ever-Flavour Beans? That's just flat-out genius! Everyone involved has made ****tons of money from this fictional universe while simultaneously respecting it. It can be done.

[NothingFromSomething]

Harry Potter was bought out by an enormous movie studio to make the films.  Animorphs wasn't.

And, just to be clear, I pretty much hated it as a 12 year old too.  It annoyed me a lot.  That being said, it's not a horrible series or anything, if we're being objective in looking at it.  It's well made for what it was, it just had a buttload of seemingly arbitrary changes, probably just for convenience given what they had to work with.

Another point here is, no series that's given the green light for kids is ever going to be as intense, gray-area controversial, or yep, bloody as Animorphs.  The whole issue with wanting it adapted into basically anything is that it's going to be watered down and sanitized to the point where it bugs us.  When you consider the stuff that went on in those books?  It's not exactly even PG-13 material.  Still amazes me how Katherine and Michael got away with half of that stuff, such an anomaly.

[AniDragon]

Books are rated very differently than TV/movies. Readability level and the age of the characters matter a lot more than actual content.

While I do agree that it's unlikely they could have actually made an AniTV show that 13 year old me would have enjoyed, I still think they could have done a better job than they did. It's one thing for fans of the original material to not like a thing, it's a whole other for people new to the franchise to ALSO not like it.

With things like, say, Michael Bay's Transformers movie, there were a lot of transformers fans who (reasonably) didn't like it, but they (the first couple of movies, anyway) were still good enough to draw in new fans, who then took a deeper interest in the franchise. AniTV did the opposite. You STILL hear people say "Animorphs? Isn't that that ****ty TV show?". People saw the TV show, didn't like it, and then were even LESS likely to read the books than before.

So yeah. If a thing fails at pleasing the existing fanbase: *shrugs* It happens, but it might still have merit.

If it's so bad that it even discourages NEW people to check out the franchise: Complete failure.

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, books definitely get away with a lot more than movies or TV can.  A lot of the problem with the series is the violence in the context of...kids.  You'd be presented with either the option of ageing the kids up, being like Hunger Games age, which I'd hate, or sanitizing it all to be more palatable to a wider audience.  You could have the same broad story arcs, but have to skirt around a lot of the less acceptable themes and content.  Unless you want to go with a soft-R rating, which no studio would even fund.

I'm not so sure I agree with the TV show being more known than the books, though, at least not among a certain generation.  It would have reached a *wider* audience maybe, younger kids watching Nick in '98/'99, but if you were say 11-14 in the second half of the 90s you were probably at least vaguely aware of the books. 

Transformers, I guess that's an example.  Though I don't know that that sold because it was Transformers, y'know?  Yeah, it pisses off the fans of what came before, but the general public just saw "big giant robot movie, Michael Bay, Shia and Megan", y'know?  They didn't give a crap whether it was the Transformers brand.

Not sure if the Animorphs show could reasonably have been "better", at least as an adaptation (faithfully) with those resources, and content limitations, but I agree it wouldn't have been hard to be more accurate in terms of a toned-down version of the plot.  It pretty clearly wasn't made by anyone with any subjective, sentimental connection to the series, just another job, but admittedly that was going to be the case as a majority of the book's fans were, you know, 12-13. 

I still feel they at least went some way to capture the "average town with something very, very wrong going on underneath the surface" vibe pretty well, Twin Peaks light.     1993 Body Snatchers movie tone, but more kid-friendly.  It had atmosphere, for what a Nick show can get away with.  Jake and Cassie were more or less Jake and Cassie, Chapman was done okay.  Nice ambient music.  It's not good, but there are non-sucky elements to this thing.

[musicianguy84]

I'm a new-comer to this site. I was 14-16 when I watched the show on Nickelodeon. I remember very little about the series til I decided to re-watch a upload put online from the re-mastered Qubo channel airings. I can't find the link now...But it's very high quality. I'm 29 now so WAAAY out of the intended demographics. But I liked the series as far as I can remember as a kid...But seeing the show now...Yeah the CGI effects are poor but of the quality in the 90's. The morphs were always the same. But I also thought that maybe that was for the best...Most of the animals they used were lions, tigers, etc....So big strong ones. But naturally subtlety was needed at times too as in rats, ****roaches, lizards...

The show in the 90's got me reading the books. I really loved the books and how adult the author KA approached everything. I didn't get all the books and only had, maybe 15 books total. I had a Megamorph book also. I got rid of the books 4-5 years ago though while cleaning house.

But back to the TV Series. I did like the action....But it did have a cheezy feel and of course no one used guns they used those light/laser things lol.

But the thing I HATE the most about the series now was it never ended! While the show highlighted most of the best books...It just...Stopped. Then opened up that deal with Tobias being the son of Elfangor...To this day still wonder how that worked, and he was still human. lol...

Yeah the music was cheezy almost like a soap opera type. But had solid actor... Shawn Ashmore as gone on to be in most all the X-Men movies and the new TV Series on Fox, The Following. Looking much older of course.

Brooke Nevin and Paulo Costazno have also been fairly active. While the rest just went off somewhere.

I do wish there had been some continuity...since it was a serialized series. But I guess with over 30+ books to choose from by the time the show started they had to pick and choose.

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, Shawn Ashmore and Brooke Nevin show up from time to time in a lot of Canadian stuff.  Pretty cool getting that little "Animorphs!" moment when they're in a movie.

[RYTX]

Over the last couple weeks, I took it upon myself to watch the entirety of the Animorphs TV show because, well apparently I hate myself.
Okay, honestly, it's not a terrible show. It's not good mind you, but it's not a terrible show. It is however a terrible adaptation of Animorphs.
I think these are two seperate issues and looking through this thread, it seems we are aware of most of them, however, since it's fresh in my mind, and the web is for letting you relish see your own opinion over and over again, I'ma post my opinion.

As a show it was just not well done. The live animals were boring in the action scenes, which were assembled by frequently cutting the camera. The dialogue was pretty weak, the way too long "dramatic" pauses that made me think the volume was faulty, and the acting while not terrible (by the main cast)wasn't strong by anyone except for a few a lines. There was other little things that they didn't build well, the "big game" had thirty people, generic extra's were really, really bad, and other that the opening theme, a lot of the music bugged me.
All that said, the biggest annoyance with it as it's own show was that almost every episode ended with "I still have my friends..." ,"as long as we have each other..." . And that was bad. It was cheesey even for nick back then.

But as an adaptation of Animorphs, it was vile. I can forgive the breaks from the source. I can forgive aging them and making new plots (hell, some of them I liked. Drop all the kids in the pool at once. Neat.) But every one of the Animorphs character was... I don't even know the right word.  Wrong.


I get why this is hard. I believe much of the strength of the books was that you spend a lot of time listening to the characters perspectives on what the fight did to them as people. I get why that's hard to put on television, and the opening and closing monologues, while a reasonable attempt, failed. But each of the Animorphs essentially became, nothing. Not even something else, they where completely interchangable with any other human being.

But Jake and Tobias where way too rough round the edges for my taste. Marco, Marco actually wasn't as bad. His age showed when he spoke Spanish, blt mostly he lost is cool in places that Marco shouldn't have. I give him a little break because I laughed at this character, which you're supposed to but still, his role as a tactician, the real concern he did have for his family and friends is not at all discernible.
Someone used the words de-clawed for Rachel, and yeah that's perfect, which is a shame, because there were moments I was convinced Nevin could slay it (telling Tobias to try harder days after being trapped-Yes.) But then they just ruin it(Freaking out in Yeerk morph and afraid Tobias doesn't like her for it? No.)
And Cassie. Cassie was, God. Don't get me wrong, I hate book Cassie, but a part of Animorphs is hating Cassie. But I don't recall any real moment where Cassie was given any depth, any morality other that apparently freaking out about animal testing. It was terrible. (Also, that girl was way too pretty to be Cassie. I know Cass was supposed to have a kinda cute thing, but that actress was as pretty as Rachel /shallow).
And Ax. Ugh. Spending all his time as a human. Kinda funny at points, but never as intelligent or serious as he should be.  What really killed it for me was him wearing a watch. I yelled at that.

There is more, of course the magic (card+fur+hold = break any code), lack of emotion, almost never felt fear, V3 didn't decay, but he wasn't really frightening at the start, the "I can see it's a Yeerk by looking in their eyes" (no, you can't,  that's what makes it such a terrifying threat) the Tom hitting on Melissa. Ugh.

So one the whole, here's what I say about the show then: I watched it because I loved Animorphs, and I was a kid-I'd watch anything that wasn't overly sad or gross if it was mildly amusing and tied to things I liked.
Now: It did not age well, but I suspect any show won't look great if I've taken of the rose-colored glasses (got commercials for Caitlin's Way during this. Don't remember what I thought about but I'm not going watch it to try and recall them). It is stain on the Animorphs name, but you know what? It made me laugh. Parts from the books they did right, parts from the books the did wrong (no always a good laugh) and new parts. And to me, any show that makes me laugh is okay.
I think it will be a long time before I watch it again. It'd been 15 years, I think I can wait that long again. I will remember it for the hurt it did to a wonderful book, and I will remember it as bad for that, but as a TV show, as an entity that is "based on the books by KA Applegate" it is....okay

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, I re-watched the 5 or 6 episodes that I own after posting in this thread the last time, still kinda feel the same way about it.

What I find funny though is how people that hate the show still seem to want a movie.  You'd get a better adaptation now, most likely, with the cheaper high-quality digital canvas to work with and an influx of slightly-more-intense YA book adaptations.  But it'd still be the same problems we'd be complaining about, "why couldn't they do this?  or this?  or this?", and it'd still come down to things like "they might have been able to get away with that in print, but we can't in a movie", and "13 years old?  Let's just make 'em 18 instead, that'd be cool, right?  right?". 

I keep thinking about stuff like Ender's Game in relation to an Animorphs adaptation.  I actually think they did a pretty halfway-decent job with that movie, it's definitely not bad, but at the same time people that love the book have a right to be pissed off.  It's just sort of...unfilmable, at least in the way it's presented in the book.  And the movie producers aren't even necessarily wrong in making the concessions and sanitizing it, it's sort of their job to do that.  You can really only get away with that Animorphs explicit violence and Vietnam-esque theme choices if you have an adult audience, it's kind of one or the other: keep it aimed at kids and make it way more palatable for the concerned parents of America, or change the audience to a young-adult college-kids thing, and that'd no longer really be Animorphs.

Special effects have gotten better, and things like cable TV shows are more complex and ambitious than they used to be, it's still not really enough to change the landscape where any of-sane-mind producer or studio is going to let anyone directly adapt the books though.