But anyway, let's drop all this ****. Here's the fact: adults get bored watching kids, and the people yelling for an Animorphs studio remake are adults. Most people who would actually even recognize the title "Animorphs" are adults. Kids aren't the primary audience. This makes it extremely hard to make it the way you want it to be. Remember, they have to get their money back, and this movie's production is gonna burn a hell lot of money.
I know for a fact that a huge chunk of the audience for the show Avatar is adult. People will like stuff that's inherently cool, regardless of whether the main cast are kids or not. Like NothingFromSomethin
g said, that argument is unsubstantiated and anecdotal.
If you just advertise it as being gritty as hell, people will buy it. That's just what pop culture is like, currently. Here's a relevant podcast to listen to.
http://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-our-favorite-tv-shows-are-so-bleak/ Very applicable to Animorphs.
KA sure showed a lot of scenes about how cruel and ugly war was. But she didn't spend a lot of time debating over how children shouldn't be forced into it. Yeah some scenes were as bloody and disgusting as Saw or Silent Hill, but that's all she wrote. She didn't spend pages and pages talking about how horrible it was that the characters were only 13-16. Not even in the Cassie books. Yeah you can argue that you felt heartbroken that a bunch of young teens were thrown so much responsibility and that they had to live with all the horror, but KA didn't really ramble over this topic that much. It was all "what had to be done had to be done". She didn't write about anybody freaking out or throwing up or crying for their mommies during/after battles. They all had this superhero attitude.
Actually, she did write about that. Quite a few times. One of the parts that sticks out most in my mind is the auxiliary animorphs' first battle, and that one paraplegic girl gets just about gutted by a hork-bajir, and she is crying and begging for her life while the other animorphs almost forget about her. She doesn't behave like you'd expect a veteran to. She acts like a kid. A terrified, bleeding, kid. You don't have to explicitly write the words, "Gee it's gosh darned awful that we're kids and not adults." That would be telling, not showing. That was pretty much the purpose of all the auxiliaries, in fact. To remind you that yes, they are kids and the original animorphs have completely forgotten that.
The way Karen acted when Aftran left her was another pretty good example. Every time someone mentioned Jake's appearance, they mentioned that he had a traumatized, stressed, "old man" sort of look in his eyes. Everyone had their own massive individual freakout or breakdown at some point or another. Rachel actually did throw up out of sheer stress at once (forget which book, but I remember it getting in her hair), and Marco implied he did too.
And then there was the weird flashback with Elfangor somehow "expelling the morning's grass" in #33, which is something I really want to stop picturing now. They mention having constant nightmares related to morphing and fighting. Quite a few of the books end on someone crying and/or emotionally broken.
So no, this argument is pretty invalid.
Oh btw I don't think it will be filmed "in the 90's" either. It's an action sci-fi. They're trying to portray cool Andalite technology. There's no reason they have to be in the 90's, when fashion was different and people listened to Backstreet Boys. Oh wait, maybe there is. Cell phones weren't around in the 90's and they had to use the family phone and talk in code... but that's not a big problem anyway. It's mainly about the war anyway, not how they had to talk in code if people tapped the phone.
Yeah, they might not go that route, but I really hope they do. It's about the series' unique flavor, really, regardless of Andalite technology (which didn't actually show up all that much, apart from the Escafil device; mostly all we see is Yeerk stuff). Every decade felt different culturally, and the series would have changed radically if it were set in the '70s or '80s. The Gulf War was kind of a big background event at the time, and didn't have quite the same tone as our current Middle East conflict. The culture just felt different as a result. And heck, they would not have gotten away with any of the stuff they did in airports post 9/11. Lots of world-changing stuff happened just after the series came to an end.
Not to be rude like I'm doubting your fanhood or anything, but I get the feeling you missed a lot of the themes and subtexts on your past reads, and now you're just kind of writing it off as just a cheap kiddy action/adventure with more blood than average. It really is more than that.