Concerns...

Let's discuss Duck Tales and my concern for the reboot.

I realize at age thirty-five the reboot is not for me but I grew up with the original so it has a place in my heart. And a theme song that still gets stuck in my head every now and then.

Issue 1. The animation style. I am tired of everything being stylized ala My Little Pony or Steven Universe. It's not that stylized animation is bad. It works for cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory but it's not Duck Tales. Duck Tales, despite being about ducks, played with color, light and shadow. I like textures, depth and detail in cartoons and it had that ...once. The animation style bothers me more than anything else. It looks cheap. I know they did "studies" that confirm that little kids don't care but some of us appreciate well done animation and sometimes good animation inspires the artists of the future. Look how many artists today grew up watching the 1990s Batman or Gargoyles. Even children need that inspiration.

Issue 2. Webbie. The new show is patting itself on the back that "This time Webbigale isn't just a token girl!" Okay, first let's slow down there. Webbie was NEVER just the token girl. Webby was younger than Hughie Dewie and Louie by a good three to five years. I seem to recall her celebrating her fifth Birthday on the show and at one point the boys celebrating their tenth. Webbie was a bit like the show's Elmo (For better or worse) in that she was the one the younger fans were supposed to connect with, I'm talking pre-school age viewers. She had her own personality. She was never a background character. There were many episodes dedicated to her or where she was needed. If she was ever left out it wasn't because she was female, it was because of her age or she was "too small" and that actually got addressed many times in the show as an obstacle of frustration for her that she would always over-come, one way or another.

Sure she was no Gosalyn from Darkwing Duck but she was not meant to be Gosalyn. So she was feminine? Why do we treat femininity like it's something offensive today? If little girls want to wear bows and dresses, let them. There are plenty of Gosalyns in the world. We should not make the Webbigales feel ashamed of their femininity because of "Girl Power TM."

Webbie's femininity never stopped her from being part of the adventure of having adventures of her own. And kindness and warmth need to stop being looked down upon as "wrong" or "weak" when designing female characters lately (i'm looking at you, Once Upon a Time, with what you did to Belle this season!). There was nothing wrong with poor, little Webbie. To pretend the original Webbie was a sexist stereotype is as much a revisionist history as pretending Janine never kicked ass or saved the guys on the Real Ghostbusters Cartoon. A character is only a token character if there is nothing to them other than their token status of token girl or token black character. Frankly, looking back on it, I think Webbie was more developed than the boys half the time.

Issue 3. Mrs. Beakly. Disney / Marvel seems to have a problem with women of age lately. Mrs. Beakly was not a young woman. Why does she have to be sassy and young? It's just like what has been done to Aunt May in Spider-Man. Why can't older women go on adventures or be well developed characters? You would think Agism would be something we would be working to get past, not become the new modern issue that wasn't as big a problem in the past. Today the mindset seems to be "Aunt May can't raise Peter Parker because she's 'too old" so let's make her hip and young!" and Mrs. Beakly (a freakin' duck) has to be de-aged to 'realistically" go on adventures? Why?! No one questioned it in the original. I always figured she was near seventy and Scrooge was in his fifties or early sixties as he's... You know... Scrooge. And that brings us to issue 4.

Issue 4. I love David Tennant. I adored him as The Doctor on Doctor Who. But they have just picked the second youngest man to have ever played The Doctor on Doctor Who to play ...Scrooge. Yes, I know he's Scottish but how old can he really sound? Tennant has a very young voice. Do they not remember that this is meant to be a Scottish character loosely inspired by the one from A Christmas Carol? Hence the name... Scrooge. Also Alan Young will always be my Scrooge.

I'll try to give the new show a chance. I know it's not really for my generation but these are some of my concerns about the new Duck Tales.