Ducktales 2017

[djnyr]

"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."

#9—Visuals and Voices

A. Look at Me, I’m Animating!

The animation on New Ducktales has won praise from Pan, Scrooge MacDuck, and other posters on these boards, and I’ll admit that it’s skilled on a technical level; movements and facial expressions are fluid and well-timed, and there are some impressive special effects at times (like all the shadow-Magica stuff in the first-season climax). However, to me the success of animation isn’t measured solely by the animators’ virtuosity in making the drawings move; the drawings themselves have to be visually interesting and appealing--and above all, have to be able to convince of the reality of the world that the animators are trying to present. New Ducktales’ animation was simply too self-consciously stylized to ever convince me that the characters and settings of New Ducktales were real on any level; the drawings simply called too much attention to themselves to ever allow a viewer to forget that they were only drawings.

The sketchiness and angularity of the character designs was the show’s most pervasively disruptive visual element. So much detail was removed from beaks and feathers that the established characters often wound up looking like first drafts or fan art, and the rounded and compact Disney Duck designs that have been around as long as the characters have were abandoned in favor of blockier and more elongated versions that looked distractingly unreal. Compare New Ducktales’ recreation of the famous “Sea Monster Ate My Ice Cream” bit from Original Ducktales with the bit itself; the Scrooge in the original scene has a weight and mass that lends dynamism to the cartoony antics, while the stretched and flattened new version looks like a weightless video-game graphic.




Despite the claims of some of the show’s personnel that the new character designs owe something to Milt Kahl, that simply isn’t the case; Kahl did draw the Ducks’ beaks with less definition for television in the 1960s, but there the resemblance ends. Below is an image of Donald (with Ludwig) from a 1961 Walt Disney Presents episode, “Inside Donald Duck,” worked on by Kahl, then a New Ducktales image of Donald (with Scrooge), then another shot from the 1961 TV episode, then a shot of Donald from a 1950 theatrical cartoon, “Hook, Lion and Sinker”. As you can see, the 1960s TV Ducks aren’t as slick-looking as the 1950 theatrical Duck, but both the 1960s and 1950 Duck have much more commonality (and are much more enjoyable to look at) than the 2017 Duck.  Look at the feathers, the brow, the hands, the jacket. 

 


 


Donald, Scrooge, the Nephews, and the other established characters were particularly visually distracting, since their looks were not only over-stylized but also jarringly inferior to their classic designs. Although the show’s all-new characters were spared such comparisons, they also were too flatly stylized to look like fully realized cartoon beings. For example, the minor villain Falcon Graves (who could have and should have been used for more than just an exasperated foil to Mark Beaks) had some visual potential as an intimidating heavy, but lacked the real sense of force and power that a more grounded and less abstract art style could have given him. One of the images below is of Graves in New Ducktales, and one is a piece of fan art which actually has a lot more vigor and life than the “official” art from the show; if you were shown these images without any prior familiarity with New Ducktales and told that one was the work of professional TV animators and the other was tribute art by a fan, which would you be more likely to identify as the professional work?

  

The locales through which the New Ducktales characters moved were, for the most part, equally flat. Compare (below) “Ithaquack” as seen in “Spear of Selene” and the earlier Ithaquack from Original Ducktales’ “Home Sweet Homer;” the new version is just a blockily impressionistic drawing of an island—an effective piece of draftsmanship, but not a picture that generates any interest in the locale it portrays. The old version, on the other hand, effectively evokes a sense of mythological romance, mystery, and grandeur; even a comparison of the clouds in the two pictures immediately underscores the difference.




The abstract scenery designs of New Ducktales worked well enough in some instances—for example, the stone circle in “Missing Links of Moorshire,” which Matilda referenced a few pages backs; the sharp and blocky look is appropriately jarring and disorienting for the mystical Celtic realm. That said, a more full-blooded and traditional art style could have achieved the same result just as well, and could have upped the eerie atmosphere quotient; compare and contrast a “Moorshire” shot with a too-brief throwaway shot from the Legends of the Three Caballeros episode “Stonehenge Your Bets”; one looks merely weird, the other looks dramatically spooky:




The minimalistic, flattening artistic approach was also in evidence in the depiction of less preternatural locations. The screen grabs below juxtapose the Original Ducktales Duckburg with the New Ducktales Duckburg, and the original Higher for Hire landing stage from Talespin with the New Ducktales version. In both instances, the older image uses light, colors, shadows, depth, and well-defined drawing to visually pull you into an imaginary world, while the less graded color schemes, flatter lighting, shallower perspectives, and more sketchy drawing of the new image leaves you standing outside the show’s world, looking at a well-executed drawing that remains just that.






I do realize that the classic Disney animation approach was so dominant for decades that many modern animators make a point of reacting against it and going off in as different an artistic direction as possible. However, there’s a reason that the classic Disney character designs, colors, lighting effects, and other visual achievements—pioneered by greats like Frank Thomas, Mary Blair, Milt Kahl, and many others—have been dominant for so long: namely, they’re just plain good—attractive, arresting, and imaginatively stimulating.

I also know that the classic Disney look can’t be recaptured fully on a TV budget, but “Legend of the Three Caballeros” was nevertheless able to utilize it to very good effect. I realize that the computer process “ToonBoom” was used to actually animate that series, as opposed to traditional hand-drawn animation—but, although I know many hardline animation buffs will disagree, for me the process is less important than the result. ToonBoom may be more mechanical and deny individual animators the opportunity to express themselves and put more of a personal stamp on things—but if it allows for the delivery of traditional-looking Disney animation on a TV budget, I’m all for it. It’s a lot more fun to look at appealing characters and interesting backgrounds, even if they don’t move with theatrical-level fluidity, than it is to look at more expressively animated but uglier and flatter characters and backgrounds.

New Ducktales’ animators may be technically skilled (and they obviously enjoyed demonstrating their skill), but that skill was repeatedly, and unfortunately, used in support of self-consciously stylized flourishes which emphasized the unreality of the Ducks’ world, rather than making the characters, their world, and their adventures more visually engaging—which is the real first duty of an animator.

[djnyr]

"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."

#9—Visuals and Voices

B. Talking Points

One of the first principles of good cartoon voice acting is to give a character a unique set of vocal quirks which both complement and enhance the character’s personality, and which make the character immediately recognizable and inherently amusing. Most of the famous theatrical cartoon characters (Mickey, Donald and Goofy; Bugs and Daffy; Popeye; Woody Woodpecker), as well as the best-remembered early TV toons (Yogi Bear; Ludwig Von Drake; Boris and Natasha; Bullwinkle) had iconic voices like this (I know it’s a mixed metaphor to call a voice “iconic,” but I can’t come up with a better term). Even people who cannot recall the details of any specific cartoon involving one of these characters have a good idea of what they sound like. The Disney Afternoon followed in this tradition—the original voices for characters like Launchpad, Don Karnage, Wildcat (Baloo’s oddball mechanic on Talespin), Darkwing, and Gosalyn, among others, were not only ideally suited to their personalities but were very distinctive and immediately funny.

Few of the voice cast members of New Ducktales, on the other hand, made much effort towards establishing amusing and unique voices for their characters, or towards recapturing their characters’ preestablished voices. Instead, they relied primarily on rapid-fire and incessant talking, and frequent screaming or shouting, in order to convey “humor”, and wound up sounding largely interchangeable. The voices of the Nephews are a prime example, and one of the most persistently jarring ones, given their prominence in the show. I do realize that, at 72, Russi Taylor was probably not willing to take on a starring role in an ongoing series. However, instead of trying to recreate her quirky, quacky, boyishly mischievous voices for the new HD&L, or hiring new actors capable of conveying a comparable combination of duckiness and boyishness, the showrunners relied on actors with basically non-quirky voices who sounded nothing like ducks or small boys, and who desperately tried to compensate for their essentially bland voices by non-stop strident yammering—which, despite the Nephews’ ill-conceived individualized “character traits”, made them frequently hard to tell apart vocally. Kate Micucci's Webby voice, for obvious reasons, could at least be distinguished from that of the boys in terms of pitch, but suffered from the same problem of relying on shrillness and incessant talking to make an essentially ordinary adult female voice sound like the voice of a little girl.

The same was true of a lot of the voice work for the “adult” characters. For example, if you had me listen to the New Ducktales voices for Gyro, Gladstone, Fenton, Fethry, and Mark Beaks, one after the other, without anything in the dialogue to give me a clue, I’d have to listen carefully to each voice before I could put a name to it—some are more enthusiastic, some more irritable, some more irritating, but all are high-pitched, fast-talking, given to shouting, and have few distinctively “cartoony” characteristics to make them stand out from the general cacophony. I can understand why actors with limited cartoon voice-acting credits, like Jim Rash and Paul Tompkins (Gyro and Gladstone), or no significant cartoon voice experience at all, like Lin-Manuel Miranda (Fenton), were not able to create particularly memorable voices for their characters, but I was rather surprised that Tom Kenny, a cartoon veteran capable of doing much more eccentric voice work, did not create a more distinctive voice for Fethry. I have to wonder if Angones and company actively prevented any of the voice work from getting too individualized, for fear it would be too jarring to the show’s vocal “house style” of interchangeable noisiness.

Certainly, the treatment of the show’s most idiosyncratic and memorable voice—i.e., Donald—encourages such suspicions. Tony Anselmo was one of the only really seasoned voice actors allowed to play a regular role on New Ducktales--but only nominally, since Donald, as we’ve already discussed, was repeatedly sidelined. Anselmo himself, as he described in the convention panel video linked earlier in this thread, was also sidelined, being denied any input into the writing for the character—whom he’d only been voicing for thirty years. Adding insult to injury, whenever the showrunners wanted us to take Donald “seriously”, Anselmo was replaced with a celebrity “face” actor with a much more generic voice. Anselmo’s mention of how the writers kept begging him to deliver dialogue “as written” is also highly indicative of the showrunners’ lack of respect or understanding for the distinct craft of voice-acting; the voice actor isn’t merely a utensil for the writers, but a key player in bringing a character to life—Daws Butler, for example, developed and refined his Yogi Bear voice from cartoon to cartoon, and developed and refined the character’s personality right along with it.

The New Ducktales treatment of other veteran voice actors strengthens my impression that Angones and company really wanted to keep exclusive control of characterizations by limiting appearances by actors whose vocal takes on the characters were likely to take on too strong a life of their own. Kenny’s Fethry was a guest star only. Terry McGovern was not even asked back to voice Launchpad, even though his inimitable vocal mixture of coolness and cluelessness defined the character (the new actor, in keeping with the Flanderized writing for New Launchpad, just sounded clueless without the cool factor). Jim Cummings was only given one extended guest spot as “Jim Starling,” and was denied the opportunity to re-voice Don Karnage or the “real” Darkwing, both of whom were his own vocal creations. Corey Burton and Tress McNeile were allowed to reprise their established characters, and acquitted themselves well in limited screen time, but I suspect this was a call by Disney, and not by Angones—who, I am sure, would have recast not only Ludwig and Daisy, but Donald as well, if he had been allowed to.

Rob Paulsen, another accomplished voice-acting veteran, was relegated to a minor recurring role (as Gibbous the Moonlander) which barely required him to exercise his considerable talent, and, like Cummings, was not allowed to re-voice a character whose voice he created—i.e., Steelbeak (who was instead handed to yet another celebrity with no real cartoon credentials). Russi Taylor was given a meatier guest-shot/cameo, but could also have been put to better use; although, as mentioned, I wouldn’t have expected her to reprise the Nephews, she would have been a highly appropriate choice for Della (albeit a better version of Della—I wouldn’t have wanted her to voice the show’s actual train-wreck version of the character), and would have been able to make her sound quacky enough to be believable as Donald’s twin sister—unlike Paget Brewster, whose repeated yelling was unable to compensate for her basically non-comic voice and made her Della merely annoying.

All that said, I’m sure that a major part of the New Ducktales showrunners’ reasons for marginalizing the cartoon voice-acting pros, in favor of celebrity players better known for movies, television, standup, and the like, was simply the desire to cash in on the celebrities’ “names” and social media presence. That’s more of a commentary on the sad state of the modern animation industry than anything else; Original Ducktales’ voice cast, in which Alan Young was the only actor with any kind of “name” value, would never get a show green-lit nowadays. Still, I think that the Angones crew also liked using celebs with no preconceived idea of the characters and little experience in developing funny-animal cartoon voices, since that undoubtedly made it easier to get them to follow the showrunners’ direction and fall in line with the jokey, self-indulgent tone of the show’s writing.

In fairness, some of the celebs actually did try to deliver genuine characterizations; Catherine Tate’s manic Magica was a respectable stab at the character—or would have been if the writing of the character hadn’t been so dreadful. David Tennant, though his voice was too young and jaunty for Scrooge, without any of the childlike and excitable qualities that Alan Young brought to the part, still managed to give old McDuck a distinctively gruff and sarcastic voice that departed somewhat from Tennant’s normal delivery. Lin-Manuel Miranda, although his Fenton voice was bland compared to Hamilton Camp’s original, at least put plenty of earnest gusto into the role, and made his frequent shouting seem less desperate than that of many of the other voice actors. As a general rule, I think that the cast members with some stage training—whether in Britain or on Broadway—had a better understanding of how to act with a voice alone, since vocal projection is such a key part of the theater. On the other hand, performers like Jim Rash, Danny Pudi (Huey), Bobby Moynihan (Louie), Ben Schwartz (Dewey), and Adam Pally (Kit Cloudkicker), whose primary experience was in television or other non-theatrical venues, appeared to simply equate “vocal projection” with “talking fast and loud,” which had a rather wearying effect.  However, stage training didn’t prevent Giancarlo Esposito from making a hammy mess of the Phantom Blot; considering what he’s capable of in the way of sly bravura villainy, his gratingly bombastic performance was one of the biggest voice-acting disappointments in a show full of them.

Overall, the vocals of New Ducktales generally complimented both the writing—showy, but without substance—and also matched with the art style—attention-getting, but not terribly pleasant, as well as disconnected from any facsimile of reality. One never got the impression that one was listening to a bunch of adventurous ducks and other humanized critters conversing with each other, but rather to a bunch of humans talking loudly while cartoony pictures played on the screen.

[djnyr]

"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."

#10—The Road (to Duckburg) Not Taken

Many of the folks who have defended New Ducktales, here and elsewhere, have taken the position that the show has to be separated from fond memories of the comics or nostalgia for the Disney Afternoon in order to be fairly evaluated. The Disney Ducks have been part of my life since an early age, so I’m as vulnerable to a charge of nostalgic bias as anyone. As a kid, I learned to read on Gladstone I’s comics, acted out my own Duck adventures with vinyl figurines, watched Original Ducktales whenever I could, saw Treasure of the Lost Lamp on the big screen, and paid for subscriptions to Gladstone II’s titles with my own pocket money. I obviously have an enormous emotional attachment to these characters and their world.

However, I have carefully tried to put emotion aside in this dissection, and have attempted to treat this analysis like I would treat the analysis section of one of my briefs for court; I didn’t want my critique to be dismissed as an example of the impassioned but often unreasonable Fan Outrage that rages in so many corners of the Internet. I’ve tried to demonstrate how New Ducktales, even taken on its own terms as a “reboot”, possessed many fatal flaws, chief among them tonal inconsistency, continually self-deflating writing, and poorly drawn characterizations.

That said, I think it is highly relevant to compare the things New Ducktales did wrong with the things that its predecessors did right. New Ducktales didn’t develop in a pure vacuum, but was instead an attempt to build on the work of others, and thus can’t be evaluated in a pure vacuum, independent of that earlier work. As noted earlier in this analysis, Angones and his crew eagerly attempted to exploit the nostalgia of Duck comic fans and Disney Afternoon devotees at every turn, so it’s entirely fair for those fans to take some notice of how little New Ducktales resembled its source material, and to express deep disappointment at how poor a job the show did of capturing the appeal of that source material.

In the end, it’s disappointment at a great opportunity lost that I feel even more strongly than my irritation at the continually wrongheaded creative choices on display in the show. Original Ducktales aired in the days when producers were only vaguely aware, if at all, of the huge grown-up following for Barks’ comics, and were more likely to assume that the primary audience for the show was children. Hence, although the original show was of much higher quality than almost any TV cartoon since the early 1960s, it almost never achieved the levels of dual appeal to both kids and adults that Barks’ comics did.

Angones and company, on the other hand, launched their show in the Internet age, and were obviously very much aware of the many ardent grown-up Duck fans out there. However, they made no serious effort to intelligently adapt the source material which gave rise to that community, even though they were happy to exploit the community’s devotion through constant name-dropping and allusions. Instead, they devoted their energies to selecting bits and pieces of their source material at random and tossing them into an unwieldy stew largely composed of elements from animated superhero series (like Bruce Timm’s DC shows), animated sitcoms (like The Simpsons), and popular live-action movies (like the Marvel films and the Harry Potter series). The Duck components of that stew were so smothered in a broth of generic pop-culture pastiche that the essence of the source material was utterly lost, much more so than on Original Ducktales, which, though simplified in comparison to Barks, always felt like it was about recognizable versions of the same Ducks that he wrote about.

I suppose it makes some sense from a cautious, purely businesslike standpoint to simply pattern a show after other recent successes rather than try to give a series its own feel and tone, but it’s enormously disappointing from a creative point of view—and, I would argue, ultimately short-sighted, even from a financial standpoint. The original Duck comics achieved worldwide fame because of the unique genius of Barks’ world, and whatever successes Original Ducktales achieved were derived from its efforts to adapt that world. A new adaptation that built on the same world, but with greater knowledge of its enormous appeal to audiences of all ages, could have become a gem among modern cartoon shows, with staying power—and money-making power—far beyond that of its contemporaries. Instead, it became just another product, indistinguishable from dozens of animated and live-action peers. Angones and company missed the turn to Duckburg almost as soon as they started out on their journey, and never bothered to pick up the road map.

This is my final entry in this series; my thanks to Alquackskey, Matilda, That Duckfan, Aldwayne, Mousemaestro, Farmspirit, the KKM, and everyone else who has contributed comments and replies in the course of this thread; you have all helped me to sharpen and focus my own thoughts on this subject. I never intended this analysis to be extensive as it became, but I simply felt like there were many points about this series, and its interaction with its source material, that needed to be made--and realized that I might as well take the time to make them.

[Matilda]

On the speed of talk in DT: in the interview Scroogerello posted (thread titled "Tony Anselmo and Terry McGovern Disney Duck Q&A"), Anselmo says the voices on DT '17 were sped up 20%. Do we know that that's true across the board? MacDuck in a reply on that thread says they sped the dialogue up but kept the pitch level.

Also: excellent comparisons of drawings in your June 15 post, especially the two Ithaquacks and the two Stealbeaks.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 20, 2021 19:40:09 GMT Matilda said:

On the speed of talk in DT: in the interview Scroogerello posted (thread titled "Tony Anselmo and Terry McGovern Disney Duck Q&A"), Anselmo says the voices on DT '17 were sped up 20%. Do we know that that's true across the board?

I think it must be — as I assume that's the root of the slight, difficult-to-pin-down but undeniable difference between the triplets' voices in the “audio episodes” they did after the finale, compared to how they sounded in the series. Even Anselmo sounds more like "himself" (so to speak). 

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(line break because the following is aimed at, depending on how you want to read it, "everyone" or "djnyr", but certainly not at Matilda specifically)

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…

…I've been fairly quiet, by the way, but I've been keeping up with what you folks have been saying — not without a degree of bitterness. A lot of those criticisms that have been discussed ring true, but I'm just generally disheartened by the glass-half-empty attitude of it all. I wish I had the time and mental energy to write “I come to praise DT17, not bury it”, and perhaps I will at that, someday, but for now you'll have to content(?) yourselves with the cliffnotes version: I loved DuckTales 2017 for as long as it lasted. I was not blind to its flaws, not even (as the archives of this long, long thread will attest) back in Season 1; indeed, I was more skeptical of it in Season 1, and liked it more and more as time went on, won over by its unique tone and setting and characters even as I accepted that it wasn't the comics-based show I'd hoped it would be at the very start. It seems a lot of people had an opposite experience — started moderately positive, then soured on it more and more with every grating decision. 

The animation style was not the heights of 1960s Disney — but what is, in this day and age? The art-style was miles above most other current children-aimed animated productions, Disney and otherwise, and that includes shows I love (compare what some of the DT17 crew went on to do in The Owl House). Yes, yes, Legend of the Three Caballeros, I know; but if I'm being honest, I see the rigid Toonboom-ness of Legend's lovely designs, and the lively animation of DT17's flatter designs, as equal and complementary problems, which basically average out. Legend looks better in stills, DT17 looks better in motion; I'd be hard-pressed to say which one I liked more visually, on the whole. I maintain that there was more than technical proficiency in DT17's character animation, by the way. The range of comedic facial expressions was imaginative as anything; I'll always remember little moments like Glomgold's cockroach impression in Moonvasion!. And neither did the animators slack off when it came to conveying earnest emotion.

And as for the writing — well, what can I say? Nitpick and criticise as one might, they must have been doing something right. By the finale, I loved those characters, as fully as one ever does a cast of fictional characters. And the show was popular enough that I can't have been alone. 

Sure, they were not the characters from the comics, but that much became apparent very, very early on, and anyway they never hid that this was a reboot with all that implied. In the end the 2017 Continuum was doing something akin to a modern cartoon tackling a well-known mythology and trying to craft a modern tale out of it, with no intention of being an accurate adaptation; creating its own characters with their own emotional arcs on motivations, but wrapping them up in the imagery and setpieces of the original myths, cleverly recontextualised. It was like that — but with "Duck lore" writ large as the "native mythology" whose symbols were thrown together and rewritten; no more or less an insult to Barks than Disney's Princess and the Frog was an insult to the Brothers Grimm (or indeed The Sword in the Stone an insult to Chrétien de Troyes). Is this what most of us hoped The New DuckTales Series would be, back in 2016? Well, no. But that is what it did, and while a measure of disbelief in 2017 that this was what it was doing was warranted… frankly, it seems sad and unproductive to me to see people still hammering at the show in 2021, with it dead and buried, for not being what we hoped for in 2016 — rather than appreciate the very special show we did get, or at least leave it to the audience it did find.

I will not speak as to whether DT17 was a good thing to have happen to the Disney Comics fandom. Putting on my Serious Analyst hat? It was probably a net negative. Without it bringing the upper echelons of Disney's attention back to the Ducks, perhaps we never would have had to suffer through the Erin Brady takeover and the unceremonious death of the IDW monthlies. And on a micro-fandom level, while it may have generated steady discussion on this very Forum and associated spheres, it also created a schism which I fear may never completely heal. 

But looking at DT17 itself, not DT17-the-hurricane-that-washed-over-Duckdom?… Well now.

DuckTales 2017 was fun, indeed it was often uproariously funny; its animation was better than it had any right to be, for all that it wasn't literally Marc Davis; and its characters were strange and unique and well-acted and engaging, for all that they weren't Barks's Ducks. It was clear, also, if one followed the blogs and social media profiles while it was being made and aired, that it was a labour of love from the writing and directing team; have whatever arguments you like about which of these people were "true" fans of the classic material, but they visibly cared very deeply about the actual stories they were writing, and I think that counts for a whole lot more in the grand scheme of things.  I loved it more and more every season; perhaps the only reason it does not stand as my favourite animated show of the 2010s is that the decade also managed to produce Infinity Train, which is simply unfair competition. 

I am still very sad that it is gone.

And though I cannot ask anyone to like it, for whom it just never clicked… it makes me even sadder, and played no small part in my lessening activity on this Forum which was once such a regular part of my online life, that heaping such an ocean of negativity on this thing I loved has become, not one of several viewpoints engaged in productive and polite discussion, but the norm.

I had thoughts on Life & Crimes of Scrooge McDuck and Last Adventure, you know; and not all of them were even positive, either! But I hardly posted the slightest fraction here. Why would I, when I couldn't even open this thread without tripping over ever-grander statements of Why New DuckTales Failed that seemed not even to countenance the idea of starting from a position that it was pretty darn good, actually, at the end of the day? Where you see an “unwieldy stew” I came to recognise a haphazard mix that, somehow, partway through became a magic brew, far more engaging than the sum of its parts would suggest. I daresay I am happier than you for it; for I have three seasons of a great show, and you have a lasting disappointment. 

And again: I'm not asking anyone to love this show who doesn't do so already. And I respect the depth and quality of writing of your posts, djnyr , I truly do. But I think it would be fairer, and humbler, and kinder — just that, kinder — to do away with that high-handed undertone you have throughout your posts; this feeling (and I know you never said that in so many words; but, true or not, that's the feeling your writing on the subject gives off for me) that you hold anyone who'd fundamentally feel DT17 to be a successful and engaging show is somehow shallow, unable to "grasp" the "patent" fact that the art is "ugly" or the jokes are "grating". I may be coming in a bit late to say this, but if you could write on a basis of "here is why the show failed to click with me", rather than "here is why the show was Objectively Bad and people who like it are Wrong"… well. 

It wouldn't be any less interesting, and, methinks, it would be kinder. That's all.

[djnyr]

Jun 20, 2021 19:40:09 GMT Matilda said:

On the speed of talk in DT: in the interview Scroogerello posted (thread titled "Tony Anselmo and Terry McGovern Disney Duck Q&A"), Anselmo says the voices on DT '17 were sped up 20%. Do we know that that's true across the board? MacDuck in a reply on that thread says they sped the dialogue up but kept the pitch level.

Also: excellent comparisons of drawings in your June 15 post, especially the two Ithaquacks and the two Stealbeaks.

I thought about mentioning the 20% speed-up in my section on the voice acting, but couldn't get a clear idea of when it started and when it stopped; Anselmo is the only person so far that I've found referring to it, and he indicates, in this panel appearance with Bill Farmer (Goofy), that the speeding-up stopped after the first season, although I didn't notice any difference in the speed of the voices between the first and subsequent seasons; he starts talking about New Ducktales at the 26:00 mark and continues to about the 29:00 mark:



I found a non-Youtube video of Anselmo and Farmer in another joint Q&A, and in this one, Anselmo reiterates what Scrooge MacDuck said about speeding it up without raising the pitch (go to 23:00 in the video at the link, and stay with it to 25:00):  www.tv.creativetalentnetwork.com/who-said-what

Scrooge, replying to your post, I was actually hoping you'd contribute more to this thread; in my line of work, there's always a brief for both sides, and I was half-expecting you to provide the opposition brief.  You've been one of the most articulate and enthusiastic defenders of New Ducktales on this forum, and while I'm sure we wouldn't change each other's minds in a debate, I think we could sharpen each other's thoughts and arguments, especially since I think we come from very different places in our attitude towards the Ducks in general (not just in regards to New Ducktales; your posts on other subjects have often made me do a double-take, and I don't mean that in a negative way--you simply have a very distinctive viewpoint).  I find it very hard to understand how it is possible to emotionally engage with this show, but I'd certainly be interested having it argued to me, and I'd never denounce anyone as "shallow" for taking that attitude.  I carefully tried to steer clear of extreme pejoratives like that during this analysis (for example, I don't recall actually using the word "ugly" in regards to the animation); I know I've been guilty of using descriptors like "steaming pile of garbage" for the show in the past, and made a point of avoiding such "Fan Wrath"-style statements in my recently concluded analysis.  

As to your central argument that the show was its own thing and shouldn't be compared to the comics, my counter to that would be my "Trading on Unearned Goodwill" section in the analysis; I found (and I'm far from the only one) that the showrunners made it impossible to judge the series as a new creation, by continually reaching back into the past for justification for its questionable decisions or to evoke audience sentiment.  Again, I think it eminently fair to judge it against the material it was constantly trying to link itself to.  

[Matilda]

Scrooge MacDuck: I also wished you had joined the conversation and argued how the show worked on its own terms. I am mystified, though, by your complaint about djnyr's analysis, and particularly about your sense of its "undertone" of scorn for anyone who would value the show. Plenty of people write that way online; djnyr did not.

I also contest the notion that djnyr should have written about "why the show failed to click with me" rather than writing, well, criticism, like any critic of any artistic material. Of course it's perfectly acceptable and fair and polite to criticize something by making statements about its "objective" qualities--that's indeed what we hope for, although the criticism is always colored by the critic's leanings and worldview and cultural setting and all. It is not polite or kind to imply that anyone who appreciates something I the critic am disparaging is a troglodyte, but again, I do not think that djnyr did that.

I'm one of those who started out feeling moderately positive and got more and more disillusioned and unhappy with the show. Obviously there are intelligent people whom I respect and who care about the Ducks in other fictional forms, such as you, who found a lot to value in it. I'm glad of that and I don't think you're Wrong. I would read your critical essays on the show with as much interest and appreciation as I did djnyr's.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 21, 2021 0:08:29 GMT djnyr said:

(…) I find it very hard to understand how it is possible to emotionally engage with this show, but I'd certainly be interested having it argued to me, and I'd never denounce anyone as "shallow" for taking that attitude.  I carefully tried to steer clear of extreme pejoratives like that during this analysis (for example, I don't recall actually using the word "ugly" in regards to the animation); I know I've been guilty of using descriptors like "steaming pile of garbage" for the show in the past, and made a point of avoiding such "Fan Wrath"-style statements in my recently concluded analysis.

That's very kind of you to say — and I do know that you wrote it with quite a lot more thought put into the wording than a typical Internet Outraged Fan Screech, but to an extent this only exacerbated part of my problem (if it had been a Screech I could more easily discount it and distance it), though I am glad to know it was unintentional. To select a random paragraph from one of your last posts…

New Ducktales, on the other hand, had such a consistently glib, snarky and surface-level take on its characters that it couldn’t transition to sentiment or point a moral without feeling very insincere, even though it tried to give at least one character some “lesson” or other moment of “growth” in nearly every episode. These lessons (like Louie’s supposed schooling in humility in “Richest Duck in the World,” the jaw-droppingly stupid “Everyone needs to pay more attention to Dewey” arc in “Sky Pirates in the Sky”, or Scrooge’s apology to his rogue’s gallery in “Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck”) came off as more painful and forced than even the most clumsy moments in Original Ducktales--where exercises in sentiment sometimes felt like heavy-handed underlining of the show’s theme, but never felt like attempts to introduce themes entirely antithetical to the show’s overall tone.

…here we have you going "it couldn't make its moral without feeling very insincere”, X element “came off as painful and forced”, it had a “consistently glib, snarky and surface-level take on its characters”. There's scarcely an individualised modifier putting this into perspective. I am very glad to hear from you and Matilda that you'd welcome my counterargument, and accept that much in good faith, but please do try and understand how wearying the prospect seemed of trying to share a point of view starting from a place of “at the end of the day I did have a lot of sincere emotional investment in those ducks”, in the face of such declarations of “glibness”.

To put it another way: maybe that's a failure of communication rather than any actual such intent on your part, but in the absence of clarifications otherwise, it seems to me that by default “this show's sentimental elements are glib and unearned” and “to find them moving would demonstrate shallowness” are, on a level of logic, inextricably linked statements. One implies the other, as surely as "This flower is obviously, evidently red" would imply that people who see it as brown as colour-blind.

Jun 21, 2021 0:08:29 GMT djnyr said:

As to your central argument that the show was its own thing and shouldn't be compared to the comics, my counter to that would be my "Trading on Unearned Goodwill" section in the analysis; I found (and I'm far from the only one) that the showrunners made it impossible to judge the series as a new creation, by continually reaching back into the past for justification for its questionable decisions or to evoke audience sentiment.  Again, I think it eminently fair to judge it against the material it was constantly trying to link itself to.  

Ah, but again, that is not quite my argument. I think, ultimately, that it is doing the same thing with Duck Comics lore writ large as, I dunno, as Disney's own Hercules: The Animated Series was doing with Greek Mythology. To borrow a phrase coined by writer Lawrence Miles in another fandom: it is a show by, and for, people to whom the Duckverse is a native mythology, a dense reservoir of plotlines, characters, designs and Iconic Moments invested with emotional resonance. The show is weaving a new tale, which neither seeks to adapt nor replace this original material, but simply rely on this shared knowledge between crew and audience to convey anything from a joke to the emotional significance of a moment (a good example of the latter would be the investment of Scrooge's grief at the end of The Last Crash of the Sunchaser with additional Mythic Weight by mirroring Scrooge's first panel in Christmas on Bear Mountain). 

Indeed, I think the nature of most of the references demonstrates that DT17 should be viewed in light of whatever it's referencing, but rarely if ever as an attempt to do the same thing as what it is referencing. They are references meant for people who have already experienced the comics/seen Classic DuckTales/seen Darkwing Duck/etc: new fans wouldn't get the nods in the first place. 

You could perhaps think of what DT17 does as canon-puns — where different circumstances resolving, just for one moment, into something that directly echoes a pre-2017 element is a joke shared with an audience of like-minded people, like a piece of wordplay resolving into an ultimately meaningless shared sound between two phrases. Take DT17's biography of the conman-turned-billionaire known as Flintheart Glomgold. The "Duke of Baloni" and "Scottish or South African?" beats are anything but attempts to adapt Turkey With All The Schemings or whatever else — they are in-jokes with the audience. While already finding the altogether original story of the 2017 character Duke Baloney/Flintheart Glomgold funny and occasionally moving in its own right, one is meant to go "……ooooooh" at the way it ends up echoing certain well-known meta trivia about the original Glomgold. One is supposed to find it clever and possibly get a giggle out of it. Nothing wrong with that. 

Crucially, with this sort of thing, there is no expectation that the new material should share the tone and values of what it's referencing. They are shared cultural baggage, which is not quite the same thing at all as examples to follow. Again I think back to Disney's 1990s cartoons, this time their Little Mermaid: The Series: like it or not, it was doing anything but trying to convey the tone of Hans Christian Andersen — that's not even on its radar. And yet the “Metal Fish” episode, which featured a fictionalised version of the actual man Andersen having an encounter with mermaids, partly relied on knowledge of where the Little Mermaid story had originated, before it went through a game of Chinese whispers to end up as the 1990s Saturday morning cartoon series. I don't see this as a contradiction.

Of course, all this is a dangerous game. Say you're, I dunno, a Star Trek fan: it is at heart a case of another Trek fan walking up to you and going "want to hear about my OCs? Now, it's not Star Trek, it's not even very like Star Trek, but I was practically raised on Star Trek, I think in Star-Trek-terms half the time; so since you do too, then perhaps you will enjoy this other thing I made up, considering our shared background", and then sprinkling in Star Trek jokes throughout their story, in part to keep signalling that you and they belong to the same tribal subculture at heart. If you don't actually end up enjoying their story, then they have wasted your time. But if you do end up liking the story for its own qualities, and thus appreciate the Trek in-jokes in the spirit they're meant, then I think that justifies the endeavour well enough.

[That Duckfan]

Scrooge MacDuck, perhaps you and djnyr are talking at cross-purposes?

I believe there's a distinct different between rating a show on its artistic merits, and rating it on your enjoyment of it. Scrooge, you're obviously in the latter basket, full of I feel thats and IMOs. Djnyr seems to be more focused on the former, although I've heard convincing arguments that 'literary' criticism is putting the cart before the horse. I take your point that some things may be a bit much to ask from DuckTales, though as we've discussed there are other contemporary animated series that do manage to tell a tight story. Not all animated series are alike, and they don't all have the same goals/bars.

My main contribution in this thread has been to ask about the goals behind this show. I would have liked a perspective like the one in your last post. You clearly judge the show on its own merits.

For what it's worth, I don't feel any emnity towards people based on their opinions of DuckTales 2017. I like all of you!

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 21, 2021 11:47:40 GMT That Duckfan said:

I believe there's a distinct different between rating a show on its artistic merits, and rating it on your enjoyment of it. Scrooge, you're obviously in the latter basket, full of I feel thats and IMOs. Djnyr seems to be more focused on the former, although I've heard convincing arguments that 'literary' criticism is putting the cart before the horse. 

I'm not sure that's the whole of it. Art being art, I don't think you can denounce a piece thereof as a failure if the end result is in fact enjoyable in the manner in which the creators meant for it to be enjoyable. It is still worth analysing — but Djnyr's essays are more of an autopsy than an analysis. They seem to start from a premise that DT17 “failed”, and from there, try to eludicate how it failed (in a cunning and well-argued way!). And it is that mixture of personal feelings and attempted objectivity which rankles with me. 

[djnyr]

Jun 21, 2021 12:30:27 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 21, 2021 11:47:40 GMT That Duckfan said:

I believe there's a distinct different between rating a show on its artistic merits, and rating it on your enjoyment of it. Scrooge, you're obviously in the latter basket, full of I feel thats and IMOs. Djnyr seems to be more focused on the former, although I've heard convincing arguments that 'literary' criticism is putting the cart before the horse. 

I'm not sure that's the whole of it. Art being art, I don't think you can denounce a piece thereof as a failure if the end result is in fact enjoyable in the manner in which the creators meant for it to be enjoyable. It is still worth analysing — but Djnyr's essays are more of an autopsy than an analysis. They seem to start from a premise that DT17 “failed”, and from there, try to eludicate how it failed (in a cunning and well-argued way!). And it is that mixture of personal feelings and attempted objectivity which rankles with me. 

In law school, I had it painstakingly drummed into me that the proper method of legal analysis is to state your conclusion, frame the issue and the scope of analysis, then cite and analyze all the pertinent facts and law in support of your conclusion, then restate the conclusion after having demonstrated the support for the conclusion.  That's what I've tried to do here, and I think that most critics tend to do the same--pretty much every movie review begins with a title or opening sentence that gives you a very good idea of where the review is going to go. 

Obviously, I began writing this series with the conclusion that New Ducktales was not a good show, but I only reached this conclusion--as any critic should--by watching the show to the end; I didn't begin watching the series with a plan to condemn it; when it was first announced, I was really hoping it'd be good.  Although I quickly became disillusioned with the show, I determined to stick it through to the end, watch it as objectively as possible, and give it a chance to pleasantly surprise me, only to watch it continually fumble characters or ideas that had the potential to be interesting.  I recall feeling some curiosity as to how the Blot would be handled, and thinking (when he was unmasked as a FOWL agent) that it might be interesting to see him returned to his Gottfredson roots as a spy--only to see a horribly misconceived all-new version of the character who was the Blot in name only.  I recall feeling a soaring nostalgic thrill when the new Kit yelled "Spin it!" and flipped his airplane to foil the pirates in the opening sequence of "Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker," then subsiding into dull disgust as I watched the character be misrepresented, belittled, and turned into a mere foil for more Della/Dewey antics.  I began to develop a little bit of interest in Bradford, as a potentially complex and unusual villain whose goals were what Tolkien's Saruman would call "Knowledge, Rule, Order" instead of mere wealth and power, only to watch him devolve into a maniacal, one-dimensional supervillain.  

You can't entirely shut out subjectivity from any critique or argument, but I've tried throughout this analysis to provide an objective, factual foundation by citing as many concrete examples of this show's missteps as possible, instead of angrily quacking "This stinks!" and leaving it at that.  I don't think that I need to defend the legitimacy or honesty of my critique any further; I'd much rather hear your counter-arguments in greater depth.  For instance, in regards to your comments about my examples of insincere dramatic or sentimental moments, I'd be curious to know if, for example, you found yourself able to take the justification of Dewey's behavior in "Sky Pirates in the Sky" at all seriously, or found Scrooge's climactic confession moving in "Life and Crimes." 

You've already done a good job of explaining why the show appealed to you, so your thoughts on more specific points would be welcome.  If I'm not misrepresenting your central position (and if I am, feel free to point it out), you enjoyed the show more on a metatextual level than on a basic textual one, although you also obviously enjoyed the "text" itself more than I did.  As a counter-argument, I find it hard to agree with your view of the show as an intentionally-woven mythic web of Duck trivia and lore, in part because the web was so heavily interwoven with references to or riffs on characters and universes who had absolutely nothing to do with the Ducks--the Avengers (Marvel), the other  Avengers (1960s British TV), the 1990s Batman and Superman TV shows, Dr. Who, Harry Potter, the Simpsons, Gravity Falls, and so forth.  It felt less like a celebration of the Ducks or the Disney Afternoon, and more like an unwieldy mash-up of unrelated franchises that the showrunners liked or thought that their audience might like, with the Ducks and the other Disney characters merely one of the elements of the mash-up.  When I was a kid, and was playing my own games with my Duck figurines and my Duckburg set-up of toy houses and cardboard boxes, I had a tendency to fill Duckburg with simulacrums of any characters in any other book or movie that caught my fancy, from Walter R. Brooks' Freddy the Pig stories to the Rankin-Bass Christmas specials to Tolkien's books; it made for a very overstuffed and unwieldy universe indeed, and looking back I realize it provides a nice unintentional lesson in the importance of maintaining creative focus.  Each type of story has its own music, so to speak, which shouldn't be drowned out with themes from unrelated stories.  

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Mmh. Thank you for the in-depth answer; I'll be back with more elaborate thoughts later. Suffice it to say that I was perhaps overdramatic when I wrote the first of my recent replies, having been in a fairly depressed state of mind for unrelated reasons at the time I wrote it. Perhaps I was lacking in the very same good faith which I think you should apply more of to the intentions of Angones & crew! For all that I apologise. Although there is still something about the negativity inherent in your approach which disheartens me on a personal level, that's not really a flaw on your part; it is just… what it is.

For now, anticipating but not replacing a self-contained argument later, my counter-counter-counter-rebuttal: the wording of your examples of being intrigued then disappointed in your second paragraph still make me feel that you're not approaching the show on the terms where I think it ought to be approached. Hoping to see an existing side of the classic characters represented faithfully on the big screen was my early hope for the likes of the Beagle Boys in Season 1, but by the time of Season 3, I think the “hope of being pleasantly surprised” that one should try to harbour with something like the Blot is more along the lines of hoping the resulting story will be engaging in practice, with the full expectation that it won't have much to do with Gottfredson. Applying a similar logic to the 2017!Blot that I did to 2017!Glomgold, the way I see it, “magic-hating crusader” is supposed to be an engaging gimmick in its own right; and separate from that, as a kind of cherry on top, one is meant to be amused and intrigued by the way in which the way this original  concept is developed ends up being an unexpected but self-consistent mashup of the Epic Mickey Blot with the idea of the Blot as a mere, if extremely competent, mortal.

As I said, I view DT17 as a work of original storytelling rooting itself in the common baggage of a 21st century Duck fan, of someone with similar tastes to the creators; that there would be a body of "things with crossover-appeal to Duckdom" that is drawn from secondarily to the actual Disney material is unsurprising and an expected part of the process. I find the analogy to the action-figures games fitting… I just don't think that's a bad thing if they can pull it off. And I think they do. Somehow, all the "canon-wordplay" and the fannish influences coalesce into a coherent, unique tone and an equally unique fictional universe. I told myself the same kinds of unwieldily crossovery stories as you as a wee nipper, and I see what DT17 has achieved as essentially being a fully-realised version of the kind of thing we were aspiring to in those days.

In fact, although the end products could not be more different, I see that fundamental thrill as no different from the geeky delight of Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, where Don Rosa snaps together details that were never meant to fit together, but which many of us felt, as young readers, ought to, into a narrative that is itself satisfying, although it is utterly unlike a Barks story; and where additional fun is had by inserting history or movie references which don't really have a reason to be there, other than that Don Rosa is a fan of those things to, and they occupy a linked area of his brain to the part that loves the Ducks, and if as readers your interests overlap with Rosa's, this'll make sense to you in just the same way. Putting bits of John Steed's DNA in the backstory of SHUSH feels, to me, as being a similar kind of fun to, say, name-dropping Doctor Moreau in a Sherlock Holmes story. Somehow perfectly natural deep down, yet just odd enough to be interesting.

This fun would all be empty if the new story being told out of this recombined imagery were not engaging; but I feel that it is. And a glance at the many series of ‘Reaction Videos’ on YouTube will give a good sample of new viewers of various ages who don't have the "crutch" of the preexisting emotional investment in the classic material, and simply get sucked into the story DT17 is telling with no knowledge of how Don Karnage or Beakley or Rockerduck were used previously. 

When it comes to emotional moments that worked or didn't — well, just to focus on Life & Crimes as an example, I did feel that the ultimate confession-and-forgiveness scene was botched in this instance, more on a plotting level than anything else. But I loved individual moments within the scene; I still think the Magica flashback is tremendously effective, and Tennant's delivery of Scrooge's realisation that he's "starting to wonder if [he] might be part of the problem" was, as I recall, marvelous, even if it only matched up to a flashback and a half. (Also, to counter your feelings on the matter in your post immediately before, I felt that Bradford's arc made complete sense both emotionally and thematically; I'll have more to say on the thematic side of things later.)

[alquackskey]

May 29, 2021 1:00:43 GMT djnyr said:

"I come to bury Ducktales 2017, not to praise it."

#5.—Disney Afternoon Guest Stars

A. The Trouble With This D.W.

Darkwing/Drake Mallard was the only one of the Disney Afternoon heroes to be used as a semi-recurring cast member on New Ducktales—not surprisingly, since Angones has repeatedly stressed his great admiration for the original Darkwing show. I can believe that Angones was more fond of Darkwing than of Ducktales or Talespin, since it was much looser and wackier in its plotting and characterizations than those shows were, and since it was built entirely around superhero tropes. However, based on what we saw of Darkwing and his universe in New Ducktales, I doubt that Angones’ enthusiasm for Darkwing extended beyond “hey, remember that funny superhero cartoon show when I was a kid?” For example, I don’t think he could have come up with the version of Steelbeak that he did if he had been a Darkwing devotee of the caliber of say, Aaron Sparrow or the late Christopher Barat.

Steelbeak wasn’t the only aspect of the Darkwing universe that was mishandled by the Angones crew; broadly speaking, the universe itself was mishandled. In making Darkwing Duck a show-within-the-show, Angones was obviously trying to tap into the nostalgia of the real Darkwing show’s many fans, who he doubtless expected to identify with New Drake and New Launchpad’s fanatical fondness for the show’s counterpart. However, Angones apparently expected to simultaneously exploit nostalgia for the original Darkwing series while changing most of the things that made that series work.

One of the best running jokes of the original series was Drake Mallard’s insistence on taking his own self-created and over-dramatic superhero identity absolutely seriously and his exasperation when others failed to find his dramatics as awesome as he did. His resentment of rival superhero Gizmoduck was an aspect of this image-consciousness, as was his insistence on appearing properly cool and dramatic at all times, even when doing so actually inconvenienced him (as when his various “I am the terror that flaps in the night” intros delayed him long enough for the villains to shoot at him or clobber him).

New Drake, on the other hand, is not a self-dramatizing superhero who insists on believing his own hype, but a roleplaying fanboy merely imitating a TV character that he hero-worships. New Drake's occasional displays of Original Drake’s traits, like his dislike of Gizmoduck, feel oddly out of place, since there’s no real reason for this humbler, more aspirational version of Drake to be jealous of another superhero. As with New Fenton, New Drake may be a “nicer” and less egotistical character, but he’s also a much less interesting one. Also, as with New Fenton, New Drake feels like a superhero fan’s wish-fulfillment fantasy (in this case, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could cosplay as a superhero and use all my nerd knowhow to save the day”) than an actual parody of superhero characters, which the original was.

Angones’ reboot of the Darkwing characters also jettisoned another key aspect of the original series—i.e., Drake’s relationship with Gosalyn, which in the original show was used both for humor (Drake’s efforts to juggle crimefighting with the equally difficult task of parenting a rambunctious tomboy) and for occasional touches of genuine sentiment. That’s all gone in New Ducktales, with Gosalyn becoming a grim, capable Action Girl with zero quirks or personality, instead of an adventurous and mischievous kid, and being given a missing parental figure to look for in the future, instead of being an orphan who forms a new familial bond with Drake. This Drake and Gosalyn aren’t the odd but tightly-knit family unit they were on the original series; they’re merely a crimefighter and his sidekick, who have little in common other than the fact that they fought the same villain and have no real reason to team up long-term other than the fact that they were a team in the original show. Original Gosalyn was an integral part of the original Darkwing series; here, she felt like a bland afterthought who was put in because someone was checking off a list of characters from that series. It didn’t help New Webby had already coopted Gosalyn’s rowdiness and wackiness (and taken it to new and off-putting heights) long before New Gosalyn debuted.

As for the rest of the original Darkwing cast, none of them fared much better than Drake or Gosalyn.  I've already covered Steelbeak and FOWL.  Quackerjack and Megavolt both came off like their old selves (thanks in part to the voice work), but were reduced to being mere action-scene punching bags (and, of course, serving as nostalgia bait). Liquidator, on the other hand, was not only underused, but lost his established voice and his one defining gimmick—the amusing flow of advertising slogans that he used to communicate with—to become just a henchman with visually flashy powers.  Bushroot fared the worst of the “Fearsome Four,” though, being radically changed from a hapless, lovable misfit into a screeching, inhuman monster. There was some speculation that Angones went this route because Bushroot’s voice actor, Tino Insana, has passed away, but it appears to have been driven merely by more of Angones’ self-indulgence and fondness for imitating superhero comics. From Angones’ Tumblr:

Commenter: So what’s the story behind bush root design for the “LET’S GET DANGEROUS” special?

Angones: The story is that the “Twin Beaks” episode of Darkwing Duck absolutely traumatized me as a kid and it felt like a fun opportunity to play with that version of his design. Also liked the idea of him being a bit more primal/elemental, like Swamp Thing, a man trapped inside a monster.

Groan. The whole joke of Original Bushroot was that, in spite of his monstrous plant form, he was a mild-mannered, neurotic goofball—a spoof of creepy superhero-comic characters like Swamp Thing. Angones, as with so many other superhero-spoof elements of his source material (Gizmoduck, Darwking, FOWL), missed the joke entirely here, because superhero tropes are about the only things he takes seriously (as opposed to myths, treasure-hunting, etc.)

Taurus Bulba, like Gosalyn, was so radically altered—from a suave, cunning, but physically overbearing master criminal to a hypocritically jovial and hucksterish mad scientist--that he felt like he was only in New Ducktales because he was in the original Darkwing pilot; there was no reason to simply not create a new mad-scientist villain here other than the desire to call back to the original show (especially since Bulba’s Russian accent was eliminated, destroying the clever literary in-joke contained in his name).

As for Negaduck, I think the whole elaborate attempt to give him an origin story (and a rather tragic one at that) entirely missed the point of the character. The original version, with his outrageous nastiness, was a great spoof of the over-the-top, evil-for-evil’s-sake villains so prevalent in 1990s comic books (the modern Joker being the most egregious example). Having him be a good guy (or at least a guy with some good qualities) gone wrong, and giving him more mundane personal motives for his insane villainy, as opposed to a perversely pure devotion to wreaking havoc, made him a less effective parody and a less entertaining character.

Negaduck’s “arc” on this show also felt like all setup and no payoff; we never saw him again after he morphed into his familiar self. The same was really true of all the Darkwing plot elements on New Ducktales: the Fearsome Four were pulled out of another dimension, then sent right back to it; Drake and Gosalyn met and teamed up, but then never really worked in tandem again. The Darkwing characters (not counting Launchpad) also had next to no impact on the overall story arc of New Ducktales; they felt like they were merely marking time until they got a show of their own.  I definitely got the impression, as others on this thread have suggested, that Angones expected to spin off a Darkwing reboot from New Ducktales, only to be blindsided when the Rogen reboot was announced instead.

Although I don’t expect the Rogen reboot to amount to much, a spinoff of Angones’ version of Darkwing would definitely not have been very interesting either, based on the uninspired way he handled the character and his universe on New Ducktales.  He appears to have liked the original Darkwing show not because it was a funny cartoon spoof of superheroes, but simply because it was a cartoon with superheroes.  As J.R.R. Tolkien once pointed out, there's a distinction between being a great admirer of something and being a perceptive admirer.  Angones may have liked Original Darkwing, but he didn't really have much of an understanding of what made Darkwing and his world fun.

I've finally gotten the opportunity to come back to this... and what a point to start with.
I don't care what anyone says - not only is the Darkwing Duck universe handled poorly, it's probably handled the worst out of all of the adapted Disney Afternoon properties.

One of the greatest things about Darkwing Duck was that, while many of its characters went against expectations, it doesn't come across as deliberately subversive. Sure, certain characters go against what you'd expect from their archetypes, but it doesn't feel as though the writers were deliberately saying "How can we surprise people or go against their expectations with this?"
Steelbeak is an easy example - as has been discussed, it would be easy to view him as either the cunning mastermind/Bond villain type, or as a brutish thug. And he has elements of both; he's cunning and witty like a Bond villain, and he absolutely has the brawn to work as a thug.
Yet, neither of those define his character - he's witty and cunning, but he's still susceptible to the show's comedic humour, and it's shown that while he has great expertise in some areas, he's entirely dense in others. Likewise, he's more than a match for Darkwing physically, but he doesn't rely solely on his brawn or even any form of honour system; he doesn't get his hands dirty if he doesn't have to, but he's more than capable.
In Darkwing Duck, the characters are built as characters - Herb Muddlefoot fits into the annoying neighbour archetype, but he's still a developed character with his own interests, goals and life. It doesn't feel like he only exists for this purpose - episodes like "The Merchant of Menace" give us a look into his life and show us that, while he does fit into the annoying neighbour archetype, he's still his own person; he's dedicated to his job (which he's talented at) and he really is just a genuine good guy, not just a tool with which the writers can push Darkwing's development.
In a similar vein, look at Quackerjack - he fits the archetype of the loony jester, but he's so much more than that. He's not some insane monster that's beyond logic, nor is he an 'agent of chaos' or anything like that; he's just a guy who thinks differently, and ended up applying that badly in life. The annual comic issue, that was all about Quackerjack, has one of my favourite sequences ever printed - it shows that he just doesn't know how to cope with the world around him, and turning to villainy was his response to that (A sequence which, by the way, was disgustingly butchered in the Definitively Dangerous Edition omnibus). It's a beautiful expansion of the character of the show; he's not a villain for the sake of it - there's a real story behind him.

None of this translates through when you look at the adaptations of the characters in the new series.
Steelbeak, as has been discussed, is defined mainly by his stupidity, because that fits the character archetype - it's played for laughs, and he's so stupid that he literally cannot become more stupid.
Taurus Bulba is far worse, because his entire story is mired in needlessly complicated changes.
Taurus Bulba, in the original series, and even in the comics, is the single most dangerous foe that Darkwing has ever faced. He's extremely powerful, extremely intelligent and is ruthless in whatever he does. When he's defeated, it's always by a bare scrape - it takes herculean effort from the protagonists, and it's never an easy win. He's the most genuine threat that the protagonists ever face - his humanity is well and truly gone. The only character that really fits in a similar vein is Negaduck, but the difference is that Negaduck has some laughs, and his petty villainy can be exploited - Bulba is hellbent on getting what he wants; no games, no toying around, "Give me what I want or I kill Gosalyn".
All of this was changed in the new version - while he's still evil, he's much lighter as a character; he has more comedic moments, and he's a fan of Darkwing Duck. He's, in general, a more affable guy (Again, compared to the original) and he now has the desire to create a new reality.
The changes make no sense, outside of what djnyr has been describing thus far about villains - the crew don't like their own villains being shown up.
Taurus Bulba is far worse than ANY villain on Ducktales - Magica, Lunaris, Bradford... none of them come close to how serious of a threat Bulba is. He's not some hammy monster, he's a dangerous, insidious villain; he's able to keep plans in motion for years. He's patient, and he doesn't fall for jokes or tricks - when he's defeated, everyone is firing on all-cylinders.
If THAT Taurus Bulba showed up, there'd be no way any of the Ducktales cast would have a hope of defeating him. As such, he had to be watered down, sanitized and made to be less of a threat - otherwise, he would have utterly stolen what little credibility Bradford has.

New Drake really doesn't fit the mold of Darkwing Duck - he's missing everything that makes him Darkwing.
Drake Mallard had his own inspirations - characters like Super Pig, or seeing Darkwing coming back from the future - but the journey to become Darkwing Duck was a long one. It took years of training, honing his skills... and, by the time of Darkly Dawns the Duck, he's pretty much exclusively dealing with thugs.
He has no friends, he lives in his lair on the bridge, and, most importantly - he doesn't know how to connect with people.
This is a fundamental part of his character - he has spent so long working alone that co-operating is a challenge for him. He gets annoyed when Launchpad does things in ways that he doesn't like, he's constantly clashing with the Justice Ducks (Especially Gizmoduck), he gets pouty whenever anyone tells him what to do... it's a constant struggle for him.
This is, honestly, pretty realistic; you can't just be a happy-go-lucky friendly person after being isolated from other people for so long. He's so used to his own company that the constant invites from Herb are grating for him. He's so used to having to figure things out for himself that, when people like Gryzzlikoff tell him what to do, he takes it as an insult to his abilities. He's so used to being in charge of how he does things that, when he has to share responsibilities with the likes of Gizmoduck or Neptunia, he doesn't handle it well.
None of that is present here - because Drake has had a relatively normal life before becoming Darkwing. The show in-universe doesn't adhere to the original too closely, but assuming that the background is similar, Drake is copying Darkwing on the TV show - he didn't 'become' Darkwing.

As far as the original series goes, I've mentioned before that, in a sense, Darkwing and Drake are two separate people. For years, Drake has been dead or dormant; it wasn't until he adopted Gosalyn that Drake had any reason to exist again. Once she entered his life, everything changed - I know I've referred to the quote before, but it's just a perfect summation: she didn't need Darkwing Duck to be a hero, she needed Drake Mallard to be a father.
A lot of the series involves Darkwing learning to be Drake again - to support Gosalyn in mundane pursuits like school or kid stuff, to be civil with his annoying neighbours, to live the life of a normal human being.
This all changes him as a person - Gosalyn's disappearance doesn't just lead him back to a lonely life, he becomes Darkwarrior Duck; he completely snaps, and this time both Darkwing AND Drake are gone.
It's a very clear before and after - once Gosalyn enters his life, everything changes; he has to bring Drake back, but can't give up on Darkwing either. He's not on his own any more - he has a family, friends (and later a girlfriend), and change needs to happen.

This doesn't happen in the new series, because 'Drake' never disappeared. He's an amiable guy - not the snappy, closed-off guy that the original tended to be.
Darkwing Duck's backstory is so important to who he is - he dedicated his life to being Darkwing. It wasn't until Gosalyn and Launchpad came along that he realized that there was more to it than just being a hero.
All of this is missing from the new series - and, as a result, he's just not as believable.

Darkwing and Gosalyn's relationship is another aspect of the original show that I adored - because their love was genuine.
Even solely comparing 'Darkly Dawns the Duck' to 'Let's Get Dangerous', the difference is clear as day.
In the original, Professor Waddlemeyer clearly loved Gosalyn - it's made clear that she acts out and doesn't behave in the ways that she's expected to. Whereas everyone else tries to get her to fit in, he accepted her for who she was. Darkwing is the first person that ever sees things from her perspective - that she's just got 'spirit'.
They grow more comfortable with each other, and it becomes clear that Darkwing, no matter how much he pretends otherwise, craves these sorts of connections with people. Him coming in to adopt her still stands out to me - the two just work together. There's some level of mutual respect between the two, and even if they're constantly bickering, they mean the world to each other.
The connection between the two is so genuine - Drake is her father, full stop. He grew to love her, and made the conscious decision to raise her as his own - which she whole-heartedly accepted. It's hard to articulate, but the love between the two feels so genuine.
Compare that to the new series - he takes her on as a sidekick until she finds her grandfather again. Also Launchpad is there.
Need I say more? It takes a beautifully written family dynamic and ruins it.

Obviously, Gosalyn needed to change - no one could ever match Christine Cavanaugh. Her voice was far too distinctive, and she played the character perfectly.
However, the dynamic being changed is what I find to be the major problem; the loving bond is gone.
I can understand that the time wasn't there to really flesh things out - but then, how about just... not shoehorning half of the Ducktales cast into the story?
Bleh.

As for the Fearsome Four... eh.
I wasn't really feeling Quackerjack or Megavolt, but it's mainly due to how little action they really get - they need more space on their own to shine, to show their characters off properly.
They just feel like they were thrown in there because they had to be - their quirks from the original show come across as cheap ways to show off their characters.
Quackerjack loves toys and all, but his warped view on the world around him never really comes into play. Megavolt humanizes electronics, but it feels more like a gag than an actual element of his character. Maybe more could have been done with them so that they'd feel less like caricatures of the originals, but as it stands, that's what they come across as to me.
Liquidator... oof. Why is he buff? Like... he has such a simple design, why bother changing it? They stripped away what little personality he had, which just reinforces the idea that they're only there because they had to be.
I've mentioned before that I think that how they handled Bushroot is absurdly distasteful, so I won't go much into that. The idea of him being more primal/monstrous conflicts with his place in the fearsome five - he was pretty much the only one with an active conscience.
Negaduck is... Negaduck. Liquidator is a corrupt businessman and one of the more realistically evil villains in the show. Quackerjack has a twisted world-view and thinks it's all in fun. Megavolt's brain is literally fried.
Bushroot is the only one that actively stops to consider that what he's doing is wrong - he often has weak justifications for his actions, or is shown to feel bad - when the five are together, he's usually the one who's not enthusiastic about villainy. Why make the group's voice of reason and moral compass more primal/monstrous?

Negaduck is another character that was just wasted.
Negaduck, in the original series, is a very loose character - his origins are muddled, and what little we know of his canon backstory is confusing enough. As such, I can understand the desire to give him something a little more concrete.
That being said, the TV show angle just wasn't the way to do it.
I won't keep going on about why I think it was a bad decision, but in the context of Negaduck, it fundamentally changes who he is and what he stands for.
Negaduck, in the original, was the Negaverse counterpart to Darkwing.
Jim Starling, however, is just an actor who turned to evil because he got the axe.
Negaduck has an inherent evil to him - it's not from experience, nor is he doing it for an ulterior motive - he's an evil counterpart to Darkwing.
The thing about Negaduck was that evil is in his nature - you can't reason him out of it because it's an integral part of who he is. For him to be Negaduck, he has to be evil - the comics began to imply that there was a little more to it than that, but were sadly cancelled. As such, we'll work with what we have.
Jim Starling is not inherently evil - he's a jerk, he's pompous, but he's not evil. He's bitter, but he still has a heart - which shone through multiple times in the episode where he becomes Negaduck.
Again, this goes against what Negaduck is - He's not someone who got a taste for power and wanted more, he's not someone who feels as though the world is doing him an injustice, he's not someone who lacks control of his life - he's evil, pure and simple. The reasoning for his evil is that he's Darkwing's Negaverse counterpart - it's not any more complex than that.

As many have said, the set-up for a Darkwing spinoff is just too obvious.
Sure, they had 'plans' for Negaduck, but if they really wanted to do him justice, there are several episodes in season 3 that could be sacrificed to give him his time to shine.

I have low expectations for the reboot, myself - all I want is an ending to the Darkwing comics. The fact that they were cancelled just before Quackerjack got his big arc is criminal.
That being said, I definitely wouldn't have been happy with this version being given a spinoff - I'm completely sick of this Launchpad, and I have little fondness for this Gosalyn or Drake.

Also, one thing that annoyed me in 'Let's Get Dangerous' - the "C-List Villains" gag was pulled straight from the comics (Complete with Ducktales using Jambalaya Jake and the BugMaster, both of whom were used in the comics gag - even though there were plenty of other options), and I didn't like it there either. 
I don't get why there's such a need to rag on some of these villains; Tuskernini, in particular, is a favourite of mine.
I don't see why there's this idea of "If they're not Steelbeak, Taurus Bulba, the High Command or the Fearsome Five, they were lousy and unmemorable".

[Matilda]

Yes, alquackskey--there's no point in having simulacra of Darkwing/Drake and Gosalyn relate to one another without the relationship they had in the original series and in the comics. They become each other's family. Gosalyn has no family to find or go back to. Darkwing doesn't know how to connect to other people. If he ever did know how, he has, as you say, gotten very rusty over the years of living on the bridge and focusing only on his Darkwing persona. When Darkwing and Gosalyn become father and daughter, Darkwing does--grudgingly, humorously--develop his interpersonal skills as Drake, growing along with Gosalyn, as she becomes more trusting, confident and self-defining. That's the heart of the show: not just that Drake/Darkwing loves his daughter, but that the two of them respect each other and mutually call each other to grow as persons, all while they bicker and drive each other to distraction. And with Launchpad there to observe how much Gosalyn takes after Darkwing!

[djnyr]

Jun 22, 2021 2:08:23 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Mmh. Thank you for the in-depth answer; I'll be back with more elaborate thoughts later. Suffice it to say that I was perhaps overdramatic when I wrote the first of my recent replies, having been in a fairly depressed state of mind for unrelated reasons at the time I wrote it. Perhaps I was lacking in the very same good faith which I think you should apply more of to the intentions of Angones & crew! For all that I apologise. Although there is still something about the negativity inherent in your approach which disheartens me on a personal level, that's not really a flaw on your part; it is just… what it is.

For now, anticipating but not replacing a self-contained argument later, my counter-counter-counter-rebuttal: the wording of your examples of being intrigued then disappointed in your second paragraph still make me feel that you're not approaching the show on the terms where I think it ought to be approached. Hoping to see an existing side of the classic characters represented faithfully on the big screen was my early hope for the likes of the Beagle Boys in Season 1, but by the time of Season 3, I think the “hope of being pleasantly surprised” that one should try to harbour with something like the Blot is more along the lines of hoping the resulting story will be engaging in practice, with the full expectation that it won't have much to do with Gottfredson. Applying a similar logic to the 2017!Blot that I did to 2017!Glomgold, the way I see it, “magic-hating crusader” is supposed to be an engaging gimmick in its own right; and separate from that, as a kind of cherry on top, one is meant to be amused and intrigued by the way in which the way this original  concept is developed ends up being an unexpected but self-consistent mashup of the Epic Mickey Blot with the idea of the Blot as a mere, if extremely competent, mortal.

As I said, I view DT17 as a work of original storytelling rooting itself in the common baggage of a 21st century Duck fan, of someone with similar tastes to the creators; that there would be a body of "things with crossover-appeal to Duckdom" that is drawn from secondarily to the actual Disney material is unsurprising and an expected part of the process. I find the analogy to the action-figures games fitting… I just don't think that's a bad thing if they can pull it off. And I think they do. Somehow, all the "canon-wordplay" and the fannish influences coalesce into a coherent, unique tone and an equally unique fictional universe. I told myself the same kinds of unwieldily crossovery stories as you as a wee nipper, and I see what DT17 has achieved as essentially being a fully-realised version of the kind of thing we were aspiring to in those days.

In fact, although the end products could not be more different, I see that fundamental thrill as no different from the geeky delight of Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, where Don Rosa snaps together details that were never meant to fit together, but which many of us felt, as young readers, ought to, into a narrative that is itself satisfying, although it is utterly unlike a Barks story; and where additional fun is had by inserting history or movie references which don't really have a reason to be there, other than that Don Rosa is a fan of those things to, and they occupy a linked area of his brain to the part that loves the Ducks, and if as readers your interests overlap with Rosa's, this'll make sense to you in just the same way. Putting bits of John Steed's DNA in the backstory of SHUSH feels, to me, as being a similar kind of fun to, say, name-dropping Doctor Moreau in a Sherlock Holmes story. Somehow perfectly natural deep down, yet just odd enough to be interesting.

This fun would all be empty if the new story being told out of this recombined imagery were not engaging; but I feel that it is. And a glance at the many series of ‘Reaction Videos’ on YouTube will give a good sample of new viewers of various ages who don't have the "crutch" of the preexisting emotional investment in the classic material, and simply get sucked into the story DT17 is telling with no knowledge of how Don Karnage or Beakley or Rockerduck were used previously. 

When it comes to emotional moments that worked or didn't — well, just to focus on Life & Crimes as an example, I did feel that the ultimate confession-and-forgiveness scene was botched in this instance, more on a plotting level than anything else. But I loved individual moments within the scene; I still think the Magica flashback is tremendously effective, and Tennant's delivery of Scrooge's realisation that he's "starting to wonder if [he] might be part of the problem" was, as I recall, marvelous, even if it only matched up to a flashback and a half. (Also, to counter your feelings on the matter in your post immediately before, I felt that Bradford's arc made complete sense both emotionally and thematically; I'll have more to say on the thematic side of things later.)

Taking your points one by one: With the Blot, leaving aside the fact that the character bore absolutely no resemblance to any past Blot (not even in a meta way), making it seem pointless to retain the old name for the all-new character, I failed to find him at all engaging in his own right, and his backstory to be unbelievably ill-conceived.  By making him so horrifyingly wronged by Magica, having the protagonists ally with Magica to stop him, and failing to have any of the protagonists even waste a moment of pity for the loss of his family and the extermination of his village, it was hard to get any enjoyment from either his villainy or his defeat.  I'm curious to know if you yourself found the Blot-in-name-only to actually be engaging in his own right, or if you merely meant that the showrunners expected him to be engaging; I recall your describing the Blot in "The Phantom and the Sorceress" as "an appalling mess of a character," and only being mildly more positive about his reappearance in "The Fight for Castle McDuck."  

On the crossover/mash-up issue, my problem with such things is that they're almost inherently self-indulgent and undisciplined, and result in such a disparate and unwieldy array of characters and plot threads that it's impossible to develop any particular character or thread in real depth.  As a kid, I liked Barks' comics but always wondered why he never used more than five main characters (Scrooge, Donald, and the Nephews--who are really a single character) in his stories; in my games, I'd regularly throw Gyro, Launchpad, Goofy, and/or one or two invented characters into the adventuring mix; my siblings still like to joke about my invariable childhood refrain of "Wouldn't it be funny if Character X met up with Character Y"?  As an adult, I realized of course that Barks knew what he was doing; kids, and fans, may like sprawling crowds of characters, but a wise author knows he can't make his cast too diffuse without diffusing interest. There are similar problems with pulling in plot tropes from every genre and franchise under the sun; the Bondian spy genre, the magical-fantasy genre, the sitcom genre, and the superhero genre, to name but four of the main stock universes that Angones and company raided from, are each distinct, and the funny-animal adventure genre is, in turn, equally distinct; you can't simply shuffle the same set of characters between these distinct worlds with doing some jarring violence to their personalities (Scrooge as a secret agent, Goldie and Scrooge as immortals, Fergus and Downy as immortals who are also stock sitcom parents, and Magica as a droll slapstick villain who's also an immortal mass-murdering enchantress being some of the premier examples).  

The most charitable construction I can put on the overcrowded and tonally scrambled New Ducktales universe is that it's the result of fannish over-enthusiasm, although I recur again to one of my central points--that a significant portion of the fans whose enthusiasm the showrunners allegedly shared was just as likely to be irritated by the arbitrary and usually wrongheaded changes to beloved characters.  That's one of the reasons (other than my innate cynicism) that I tend to suspect that Angones and company didn't really understand or like the Duck comics and the Disney Afternoon as much as they claimed, and that they spent more of their time running over a checklist of Things that Made Money and were Popular with Fans (Disney and non-Disney alike), then throwing them at the wall to see what stuck.  Even if you give them credit for being genuine fans, I think that there's a crucial distinction between this type of (alleged) fannish over-enthusiasm and Rosa's Life and Times; although my reservations about that series are serious and numerous, neither I nor anyone else can deny that Rosa's approach to the saga was disciplined, focused, and rigorous; he pursued a constant narrative arc (at least in the original 12-installment series), maintained for the most part a consistency of tone, and continually delved deep into the personality of his central character.  I may not agree with some of the directions that Rosa took Scrooge in, but his version of the character was undeniably complex, with real flaws that the New Ducktales showrunners could not or would not give him.

Which brings me to your comments on "Life and Crimes"; to me, the Magica flashback was the worst of the lot, and it was particularly ludicrous to make it the turning point in Scrooge's prosecution; leaving Glomgold in the shark cave and drinking Ma Beagle's sarsaparilla is excused by the "karmic court" because those characters were "bad" before meeting Scrooge, but Magica was ten times worse: the fact that Scrooge caused a tyrannical and downright cannibalistic witch to be separated from her equally evil brother and thus weakened her power, by all logic, should be considered a good thing, regardless of his motives in doing so, and the fact that he failed to help the villagers afterwards was utterly irrelevant as to the question of whether Magica had a case against him.  Like so many of the show's other moments of drama, it simply didn't feel like it was thought through with any care.