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HBO Max has begun airing a new series, Velma. This is a prequel spinoff of Scooby Doo, the much-beloved animated series from the 1970s, and told from the perspective of the eponymous character.
According to an old study, American kids grow up watching about a thousand hours of television a year. I confess that I was one of the young addicts who wasted an epic amount of time in front of the idiot box. After school meant cartoons, and so did Saturday mornings. But all told, Scooby Doo was one of the ones that was worth a look. Is it just me, or did it have some influence on The X-Files?
So the new Velma series should be a walk down memory lane, right? This one isn’t for kids anymore. We see that right up front, with a catfight in the shower (though somewhat obscured by suds), followed soon after by a gory scene. More remarkable is what’s been done with the characters. Putting it briefly, they now have more intersectionality points than Resident Bidet has functioning brain cells.
Zoinks!
Velma has been race-swapped, and is now of Indian ancestry. She has quite a complicated family situation following her mother’s disappearance. Now she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, causing debilitating hallucinations. She’s also developed a love/hate relationship with Daphne. There’s also been much speculation about the character’s sexuality over the years. (If frumpy plus nerdy equals pearl diver, then that much is plausible.) Here, it’s pretty clear that she’s a switch hitter.
Daphne is Asian, though her appearance isn’t much different than it was in the original. The only obvious indications of her Oriental identity are that her eyes look slightly different than before, her skin tone is a shade darker, and she has an abrasive personality. Just to make sure everyone in the audience realizes it, early on she announces that she’s Asian. Apparently she’s really a redhead, so maybe she’s a “hapa” with some strange genetics. It turns out that she’s growing up in a “Heather has two mommies” household. In that case, maybe she’s not adopted, as one might expect, but instead her father could be a turkey baster.
You can buy Beau Albrecht’s Space Vixen Trek here.
Shaggy — Norbert in the original, but nobody calls him that — is now Norville. Of course, he’s been race-swapped, too. Norville is a light-skinned black (Velma is a lot darker) with dreadlocks. He’s quite vociferously anti-drug, so unless he has something to hide, he is an inversion of the original character. Shaggy is pretty obviously a hippie, and his overall affect and mannerisms suggest he’s a stoner. If he were a real person, more likely than not he’d toke up in the Mystery Machine on every day ending in a “y,” at least.
Fred is the only one who hasn’t been race-swapped, and is quite Nordic, as before. In the original he was rather like Stan in South Park: the only regular character who is so normal that he doesn’t have any distinguishing shtick. Here, he’s the most annoying character. Fred is a spoiled rich kid, and is physically as well as profoundly emotionally immature. Since he happens to be the only one of the regular character who remains white, are the screenwriters trying to tell us something? Bless their hearts.
The strangest change is that, at least up to this point, there is no dog. That’s right: It’s atheism in reverse! They made a new Scooby Doo show without Scooby. If they do bring in the eponymous hound later, will they make Scooby a chihuahua? Why the hell not? It would make as much sense as any of the other changes.
Ruh-roh!
I’ve seen the first two episodes, and the series is expected to last for ten. It did have its moments so far, but overall, it’s quite mediocre. The way I see it, the filmmakers tampered with the character concepts for no reason other than to go woke.
At the time of writing, Rotten Tomatoes gives Velma a tepid 52% critics’ rating, and an utterly abysmal 6% audience rating. (For comparison, The Phantom Menace presently has a 51%/59% rating. This was the flick that had people bitterly complaining that George Lucas had ruined their childhoods. Even the cinematic abomination Manos: The Hands of Fate has a 20% audience rating.) Since television is an industry in which maintaining viewership is crucial — their advertising revenue depends on it — this is especially devastating. This is what happens when they set out to stick a thumb in the audience’s eye. Let this be a lesson that adding a bunch of intersectionality points to a popular franchise isn’t an improvement.
Have they no decency? Come on! Why does the entertainment industry have to keep messing with old classics? If they wanted to make a show about a Desi junior sleuth and her diverse friends, why not be original about it? What they should’ve done is to create fresh new characters with unique shticks, rather than plundering an existing franchise. They should leave other people’s works alone and make their own!
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25 comments
Remakes, sequels, and prequels should be outlawed. They all stand as evidence of creative bankruptcy.
I was only nine years old and planted in front of a TV set when ABC announced, “Coming this fall—one’s sloppy and one’s neat, so how in the heck can they live together? It’s The Odd Couple!”
“The Odd Couple?” I thought to myself, carefully rendering the appropriate italicization in my head. “That was a hit movie last year! It’s LAZY to now make it into a TV show.”
But the onslaught of “Roman Numeral Movies” in the 1970s—Godfather II, Exorcist II, Jaws II, etc.—is when I finally kissed Hollywood goodbye.
The entire WORLD needs to come up with some new material.
Godfather II is excellent, though. It’s better than the first, which is also great.
Strong disagree. I thought it was the most boring movie in world history. I sat there at age 12 watching Al Pacino sitting on a wicker chair staring at Lake Tahoe for what seemed like 45 straight hours. All of those Godfather movies felt like funerals to me. And they heralded an age of extremely dark lighting in films that persists to this day.
Thank you. I don’t get the whole mafia worship thing either. The first godfather was okay. Of all the mafia movies, I suppose I like the Scorsese ones the best.
At age 12? No wonder you were bored. I was watching Batman and Home Alone at that age.
I will grant that it is a long, slow movie, but I enjoy many such movies, including Fanny and Alexander, La Dolce Vita, Once Upon A Time in the West, etc.
I saw The Godfather at about age 20. I found it as excruciatingly long, boring, and pretentious as Jim describes. I never bothered watching the sequel. I also resent the glorification of organized crime, and, incidentally, the trend of overly dark lighting in movies as well for that matter. So yeah… 1/5 stars for The Godfather.
Godfather 2 hails from an era in which it was expected to be seen in a dark theater and large screen. Though nowadays it is quite a time investment with diminishing returns. I’m more in the mood to rewatch 70s political thrillers like The Parallax View. Many of the political films of the day were critical of the right, but film has lost its skill in the area compared to Day of the Jackal, Z or All The President’s Men.
The Conversation is an oft overlooked Coppola film make between Godfather 1/2 that might be the best spin (not remake) of Blowup. There’s probably a woke version of Parallax in the works, though maybe the right can get their own together ala The Hunt.
Aliens, The Terminator 2, Ghostbusters 2, Temple Of Doom, Poltergeist 2, Conan The Destroyer, First Blood Part 2, Empire & Jedi, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Road Warrior, Gremlins 2, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Evil Dead 2 and Halloween 3 are all sequels that I still enjoy. But they all are nostalgia from my childhood and only a few come close to the original( T2, Evil Dead 2 and maybe Empire). Remakes on the other hand are almost always fucking terrible unless in the hands of a skilled director that can bring something new to it. A few that stand out to me are John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Fly, Body Heat(a near remake of Double Indemnity) and Blow-Out(a reinterpretation of Blow-Up and my favorite De Palma film). I’ll take Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear over De Niro and Nick Nolte any day.
Neverending Story 2?
Perhaps the most disappointing sequel to a classic next to Troll 2(which is actually unintentionally hilarious). I’ll take Return To Oz instead.
I thought it was okay. Omg, what is Troll2? I actually have it.
Apparently it’s so bad and over the top woke that some people believe it’s a “right-wing psyop.” That may be the funniest thing about this abortion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/14/velma-is-so-bad-its-spawned-psyop-conspiracy-theories/amp/
Film and media critics have completely gone woke. None of them want to be seen publicly panning a film made by a black woman or something with a diverse theme, no matter if it is mediocre even by their own standards. So there are plenty of bland film with high scores on Rotten Tomatoes by the new wave of critics, the kind of film they wouldn’t have paid attention to decade ago. Fortunately the audience rating is still there (for now). Now, more than ever, it’s valuable to have a few savored film reviewers you can trust.
When you take four characters and start making 3 of them Indian, Asian and black, the new roles become racially overrepresented. Aren’t there more Mexicans in the US, anyhow? When are we going to demand Native Americans and Inuit roles to contribute to the overrepresentation? And shouldn’t it work both ways? A remake of Black Panther with a mixed race and ‘diverse’ Wakanda? Isn’t that actually the ideal of globalism?
We need to make the new things instead of whining that they do. Yes distribution is an issue, but we can solve that too. That reminds me that I need to go and support Jim Goad. The cost of tools for high quality production where the story and message is where the effort lies is cheaper than ever. We have no excuse. It is almost as if they make this stuff so that we sit about and moan. We’re better than that. Let’s prove it.
Yes, but if one wanted to compete specifically on this it is hard. Making animation is time consuming. Even one 15-20 min episode of this Jewish crap fest would probably take a team quite a while, even with the best tools and workflows. Before I looked I guessed that slog work was outsourced to Asia somewhere and it was, South Korea apparently.
To churn this poz out is a luxury that only exists with the vast economic might of scale. These studios can afford to do this, waste money on it and crap out hundreds of seasons if they want.
That doesn’t mean nothing can be done here. I’m aware of Emily Youcis’s work, but that’s more art animation in way. Perhaps the closest thing we have to this is that Anti Racist Hitler cartoon which was done a while back.
Realistic counter-poz toons have to be quite short. But one thing on the horizon in terms of dissident efforts is the AI thing. I could see years ago this was going to be a very disruptive tech. It is quite possible very soon, if it doesn’t already exist, that you can plug some inputs into an AI and get it to make the cartoon you want. At least get it to do 70-80% of the slog work.
Incidentally this has a rating of 1.3/10 on IMDB.
There has been a little bit out there already, such as Murdoch Murdoch. I’d like to see more. I’ve been rather interested in animation, though it would be a learning curve and I’m not quite sure where to get started.
Other than that, I’ll politely disagree and say that there is value in calling out woke remakes. Not doing so will embolden the enemy, and one of the reasons things are as bad as they are is because nobody pushes back.
I think there is simply not much talent in the entertainment industry right now. That accounts for the crappy state of popular culture. There are only so many high IQ people around, and they slosh about from thing to thing. They are in the tech and finance sectors right now. I heard this famous guitarist talking the other day, he said he was shocked that people consider him this great guitarist. He said, compared to the guitarists of yesteryear, he was nothing, he would be lucky to be a minor studio musician. There simply weren’t many talented people in music now.” All the talented people are in other things. They gravitate to where the money is. Or where the most success can be had with the least effort, finance and tech at this juncture. I actually think the best writing right now is in those little simpsons imitation shows, like adventure time and rick and morty.
I do have to admit, I also notice there is a big decrement in the quality of film and music if fewer or not many Jews are present.
It’s not real media is it. It’s just weaponized mindpoz.
It’s Jews poisoning any scrap of organic nostalgia that exists and replacing it with a reconstructed, deformed, mutated retarded monster that everyone hates. Imagine how petty, spiteful, resentful, paranoid, delusional, neurotic the mind is that seeks to debase a well loved children’s cartoon.
Why does the entertainment industry have to keep messing with old classics?
Because ruining the culture of the past that white people have fond memories of (even something as seemingly innocuous as a cartoon about a talking Great Dane) is part of the deconstruction process. It’s not enough to simply make new material.
And all three Godfathers are masterpieces. I was never bored for a single minute.
According to Wikipedia, Scooby-Doo debuted in the Autumn of 1969.
That’s not exactly how I remember it. I could have sworn it began in the Autumn of 1970 ─ although by that time I had long ceased waking up at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and cereal commercials. To be honest, I almost never actually read comic books as a kid.
Regardless, the Scooby-Doo television teasers made an impression on me because it looked like the new show was going to be like the Hardy Boys mysteries. (I also read all of the Nancy Drew books, fwiw.) But a new Saturday cartoon with ghosts, zombies, haunted houses, and other spooky stuff ─ I had not been this interested in a cartoon since Jonny Quest (1964-65), which was about four guys on scientific missions with a jet airplane and no Mom to keep them out of trouble.
Bonus points if you can name your favorite Jonny Quest episodes. Mine are the one with the invisible energy monster that nearly eats the stupid dog, Bandit, until they rescue it at the last moment using their jet packs. Cool. And secondly, the one called “Shadow of the Condor” about a monocled German Baron with a Fokker biplane in exile in the Andes.
I’m not sure if Scooby-Doo really lived up to my Mystery Machine expectations, but “those meddling kids” with an eponymous scaredy-cat dog were okay until 1979 when they introduced Scooby-Doo’s nephew, Scrappy-Doo. For anybody who was still watching, that is like when Fonzie “jumped the shark” on his motorcycle.
About the Scooby-Doo characters, they were clearly patterned after the Archies comics, which was about a bubblegum rock band led by Archie Andrews. I never payed much attention to the Archies TV show (1968-69) but I guess Betty and Veronica (blond and brunette) became the redheaded Daphne and the pageboy brunette, Velma in Sccoby-Doo. They must’ve been going for relatable social awkwardness, as Velma Dinkley was always losing her eyeglasses.
I don’t remember if they pursued the musical group angle any further on Scooby-Doo, but that was all the rage in those days with the Partridge Family (1970-74) and psychedelic school buses and so on. Susan Dey looked great pretending to play keyboards.
Shaggy was obviously Jughead from the Archies ─ but also the Beatnik with the goatee from the B&W TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-63), with Dobie (Dwayne Hickman) being Fred ─ and Zelda Gilroy (Sheila James) being the geeky real-life Lesbo (with an unrequited Tomboyish crush on Dobie in the show). Zelda was not unlike Velma on Scooby-Doo.
Bob Denver played Beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on Dobie Gillis ─ but I remember him instead as the bumbling sailor Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island (1964-67). Dobie Gillis was a little before my time, and I didn’t watch that show until the 1980s in college when I had Cable TV.
Two points: I never really got the impression from Scooby-Doo that Shaggy was a pothead. That comes a little later ─ in spite of Gilligan (I mean Bob Denver) playing a Beatnik in the earlier role.
Shaggy’s voice was originally done by Casey Kasem of the wholesome but overplayed Pop-40 countdown on the radio, and it was pretty obvious that he did sound like Shaggy.
Also, although the original Velma is a bit butch and geeky ─ quite different from keyboardist Veronica with the Archies, and maybe socially awkward like Zelda from Dobie Gillis ─ I never really got the impression that she actually played for the other team. Silly me.
I strongly agree with the point that Hollyweird needs to come up with some original stuff.
Anything after the third Star Wars was pure crap. I didn’t need to see the already dodgy Mos Eisley Cantina remade with even more diversity and puppets either.
Halloween III was also an abortion without the “the shape” villain Michael Myers, but it might have worked as a standalone feature.
I think it was Spielberg who perfected the related technique of making films mostly about lame special effects for maximum box office. I’ve never seen E.T. phone home and hopefully never will.
🙂
I like the one with the pteranodon. It has a pathos at the end.
Turu the Terrible was a gud boi ─ he dindu nuffin.
🙂
But it makes you feel sorry for them. They were meant to run free on the Savannah. I also like the one with the Komodo dragons.
Well heck, I remember “Shadow of the Condor” – I was thinking about it just the other day!
Interesting take on the Archie crossover there. I never would’ve taken Velma for Veronica; the latter seems rather more spoiled and high-strung.
If you have kids and think Scooby Doo might be something they would enjoy, it has been been remade and recycled many times now. The first couple of seasons are watchable but I was surprised have many lame iterations have come along, including movies. There is also the moronic Scooby Dum…. wait for it… a backwoods cousin who hails from Georgia.
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