If it were me, I'd make it animated and set it from 1996-2000. Animation so you could make all the aliens look good without breaking the bank, 1996 so it would appeal more to the original readers. Think about it: the books are out of print. The audience for this series wouldn't be little kids: it would be 20-somethings who read the series during its original run and come back to it out of a sense of nostalgia (like, uh, me). Setting it in the mid-late 90's helps with the nostalgia, as well as avoiding the problem of new technology and knowing what those darn kids these days do. What with helicopter parenting and all, would 2014 Animorphs even walk home by themselves? I'm imagining all their parents picking them up in individual minivans and shuttling them to their next scheduled extracurricular activity, while Tobias walks home alone and becomes the world's only Animorph.
I also think the series was very 90's in tone and outlook. Things were pretty good in the 90's, at least in America - the economy was booming, we weren't at war, we were blissfully unaware of global terrorism... but in pop culture, there was a lot of "things may SEEM okay, but underneath the surface everything's actually HORRIBLE!!!" See:
The X-Files,
The Matrix,
The Truman Show, etc. Animorphs fits into that milieu very well. To give it more of a post-9/11 feel, you'd probably want the Yeerks to do some huge attack that kills thousands (or, hell, they're aliens, not dudes with boxcutters -
millions), getting everyone's attention, and then the paranoia that anyone could be a Yeerk drives the governments of Earth to turn on their own people, setting up constant surveillance, curtailing individual liberties, etc. (Would that be too on-the-nose?
)
Anyway, I doubt teens who experienced 9/11 in elementary school would have the attitude of, "I thought the world was perfect and I had nothing to worry about, but now I find that there's an alien invasion going on." (Edited to add: Oh God, I just realized: with modern-day Animorphs, 9/11 would have happened
before they were born.
How old am I?!) Also, this is probably horrible, but in an age where it seems like every dramatic TV show has a scene where the good guy tortures someone, I wonder if they'd have as many moral dilemmas? The war on terror seems to have established a theme in public discourse that's seeped into pop culture that we can do whatever horrific thing we want and still be the good guys.
But now I'm going off on a political rant. Here's how I'd do it:
- Animated, set in 1996-2000. No voice-over narration. The whole "I can't tell you my last name or where I live" thing doesn't work for a medium where you can see everyone's faces. I think I'd also go for an opening in the vein of LOST or Supernatural: no theme song, just the name of the show for like 10 seconds with some unsettling music possibly by Radiohead, then opening credits on the bottom of the screen as the show plays.
- Four seasons of 12 hour-long episodes (2 "spotlight" episodes for each character per season), each season ending with a made-for-TV movie based on a Chronicles book.
- I wouldn't be too slavish adapting each book in sequence, and ignore certain books entirely. ("The Underground," "The Experiment," "The Mutation," "The Hidden" - as much as I love this series, let's admit it: a number of these books were just filler, and some of them were just flat-out bad.) Instead, focus on season arcs: what is the primary arc of this season? What is each character's arc? Steal book plots as they fit in with the theme, make up your own when necessary, keep the good parts of a plot (there's a way to drive a Yeerk insane - but it'll be trapped in its host forever! Is it worth it?) while discarding the bad parts (it's maple-sugar oatmeal!). Take character development that happened in one book and pair it with a more interesting plot from another book. Play around with narrative emphasis. (What if "The Message" was told from Ax's perspective instead of Cassie's? Can you imagine if the book had started with: "My name is Aximilli-Esgarouth-Isthill. The Yeerks have destroyed the Dome Ship. I am trapped at the bottom of an Earth ocean, and my air and water is running out. If you can hear this, I beg of you, please help." What if "The Android" was told from Cassie's perspective instead of Marco's? Wouldn't the Chee's pacifism resonate with her?) You're already expanding David's plot throughout all of Season Two (which is a
great idea, by the way), so no need to adapt every book exactly as it was published.
- While I'm on David, how about making him a girl? The Animorphs are already kind of a sausage fest - the girls are outnumbered even before you add Ax and Erek - and a new female Animorph would throw off the readers familiar with the David trilogy, leading to more uncertainty as to whether or not she will betray them. Also, think about this: Jake has Cassie. Tobias has Rachel. Marco has no one. And that's largely treated as a joke in the series: ha-ha, womanizing girl-crazy guy is all alone. But let's work with that seriously. He's
lonely. If he's really into, let's call her Dominique, and she actually likes him back, his defenses are lowered. Since he's probably the most distrustful member of the group, his lowered defenses allow her to last a lot longer. And then of course, when she betrays the group, that gives Marco something to angst over other than his mom, as well as providing a bit of a warning sign to Rachel (i.e., is this what you're turning into?).
- Expand the Yeerk Peace Movement and resistence by ex-Controllers by, like, a lot. These showed up a little bit in the series, but not nearly enough. Plus, the YPM gives Cassie something to do in later episodes that doesn't involve ghosts, morphing buffalo, or random pointless trips to Australia. Also, Taylor's whole bit about the Yeerk going crazy because it can no longer tell where it ends and its host begins. More on that, and maybe more on Taylor. I have this idea for a plot, early on, where Tom brings his "girlfriend," Taylor, to the Berenson family Passover seder. She's a quiet, sad former model who recently joined The Sharing, after a terrible accident left her burned and mutilated. (Maybe even an accident that the Animorphs
caused in a prior battle with the Yeerks.) Jake and Rachel recognize that she hasn't yet been infested and the Animorphs try to save her, but ultimately fail, and at the end of the episode, she moves away. It's made to feel like a one-off episode meant primarily to establish the stakes and show more about The Sharing and its victims. Until she comes back in Season Three.
- End Season Three with "The Revelation" (TV movie:
Visser) and stretch out the last eight books to be the entire fourth season. The Auxilliary Animorphs also deserve way more attention, as well as the ramifications of everyone finding out about the Yeerks. Have Rachel die at the very end of "The Answer," air
The Ellimist Chronicles, then air the last episode.
As for the first episode, what do you think of J.J. Abram's technique in
LOST and
Revolution of starting with the world already changed and then explaining what happened in flashbacks? What if you just skipped the construction site scene, with its massive exposition dump, and just start it with them already being Animorphs? And then explain what's going on in flashbacks tailored to whichever character is most prominent in each episode? I don't know how well that would work, but it's just a thought.
I'm sorry, that's a huge wall of text. I'll stop babbling now. It's just that I've been working out ideas for a TV series too (not that it'll ever come to pass), so I was very excited to see this thread.
