"They Had Such Potential!"

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Giovanna P

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This thread is dedicated to all of the animated shows, movies and characters that seemed strong in the conception, but lost something in the execution. Which animated items can you remember showing promise, but not living up to that potential?

For me, one such show is Hero: 108. From the moment I first saw the trailer for this show, I thought there was potential there: a mystical Eastern land in which humans and animals co-existed more or less as equals in harmony, but after that first 5 seconds or so, the series quickly meandered into a muddled mess with a human/animal war, and characters with odd quirks like being cursed or possessing powers activated by food they hated and so forth, with little to no explanation or embellishment as to all of these many disparate ideas that floated around the show.

What are your choices? Share with the class.
 
Capital Critters, I thought the pilot episode was pretty good but the episodes following it stunk big time. I can see why it got the axe after only 7 episodes.
 
Pretty much don bluth's films from Rock-a-doodle to Pebble and the penguin.

Rockadoodle: Updating the chanticleer story is an interesting idea, but mixing dated 50s music, wizard of oz-esque structure, and a little boy turning into a cat made the result a random and strange mess.

Thumbelina: This one couldve been alot better if disney handled it.

Troll in Central Park: The idea of a troll being banished for growing flowers sounds simple enough, but sending him to new york is a cliche done already and everything is way too sugary and cutesy.

Pebble and the Penguin: Its been said that don bluths take on it was compromised due to creative differences and executive meddling, so we'll never know if it were to turn out better.
 
I remember that my mom and I were so excited for Atlantis: The Lost Empire. We saw it and thought that it was terrible. I think I would have liked it better if it had more fantasy and less action.
 
Yes. I was the first one to find out about it on rabroad and even exchanged over a dozen e-mails with its Executive Producer, but it really wasn’t worth the amount of time that I invested in it. I still adore those turtle tanks, though.

I suppose I can’t really think of anything else. However, Skunk Fu! would have been a lot better if they actually had more than one villain. I believe there were fifty-one plots and they all used baboon and the ninja monkeys as the villain… Fortunately, Cartoon Saloon is still making that movie, and with The Secret Of Kells under their belt, I’m sure a theatrical finale for the series could be much better. I give the series props for keeping toilet humor to a minimum, though, as they could have easily overdone that given the nature of the title character.
 
I'm going to go with Chaotic. The idea of these kids getting to explore the world where the monsters of the game live and become them while playing said game sounded like a cool idea. However, the series, at first, focused too much on just the battles. It got better with the second season with the tribes banning together to defeat their common enemy and there was more focus on the world of Perim. I think season three was a step back considering the tribes going back to fighting with each other and a less focused storyline compared to the previous season.

They really could have done a lot more with the history of Perim, explaining the creatures lives and functions in their world. They definitely could have turned that one episode where Kaz dreams about the creatures attacking Earth into a season long arc and still advertise the cards. It wasn't a bad show, but I think it could have been a lot more creative, given how it was setup in the first place.
 
The old British cartoon series The Dreamstone comes to mind. Mind you, I love the show, but it's a little marred by having a very nice an imaginative premise that focuses almost entirely on the comedy routines of the villains.

Said villains are, of course, outright hilarious, but I thing a bit more could've been done with the lead characters to give the show a bit more depth.
 
I'll second Chaotic. You look at Yu-Gi-Oh, Bakugan, and other toyetic shows and see a lot of story and characterization there that's completely absent from it. It's a real shame because Perim could be fleshed out so much more and serve as a really epic setting. I've also found it a bit sad they never really have any stories that take place on Earth (aside from a few like when Kaz's mom took away his scanner). I personally wonder if the people who make the Chaotic card game know it's an alternate world, and if they created it themselves or it was there and they just tapped into it. Are the Codemasters employees at the company in the real world and watch over it? There's a lot of potential there, but it's never touched upon at all. Maybe someone from the real world trying to take over Perim by hijacking the company or something, or take over the real world using the monsters from the game world (like they did in the dream episode, kind of). Most of it is just episode of the day, though.

Ben 10 and Generator Rex are some other examples. They have interesting enough premises (both involving a kid who can transform into a variety of things) but the execution is forgettable and leaves a lot to be desire. Most of it's just Ben and Rex fighting the villain of the day and mostly standalone episodes. Maybe a few recurring characters pop up form time to time, but the writing just seems really weak and I find all the characters extremely annoying. The closest Ben 10 came to interesting me was the movie they went into space and visited various alien planets. They explored the world a bit more, there was more drama, and it was refreshing after 'Ben and the team travel to a new town, fight a villain, then leave' the series always used. If they had more story, it'd be a lot more interesting.

I could list a lot more shows, but I'll just leave it at those for now
 
I'm going to have to say the most recent one for me was Huntik. It has a very catchy opening theme, it has a neat overall theme and earlier episodes were pretty mature.

Later episodes felt like there was far too much cramming together. It felt like I was comparing the 90s X-Men against Wolverine and the X-Men or X-Men Evolution.

I'm hoping the second season is good, but the first season totally felt crammed towards the end.
 
I got a few on the top of my head that I would like to share.

Cool world- The idea of a live-action/animated horror movie amazed me, but even though I like Who framed roger rabbit I blame Roger for getting Paramount to change the horror concept into a film that tried to follow its footsteps of success. It wouldve been better off as a live-action/animated horror movie in my book, it also proves that to this day Paramount is not even good with animated films.

American Dog- Thanks to this act, its the reason why I will NEVER work at Disney once I head into the animation biz. This sounded almost like a great follow up to Lilo and Stitch but then John Lassester had to step in and turn the project into something similar to Toy Story. I highly doubt if Sanders wants to make American dog for Dreamworks, he probably to this day is holding a grudge on John for screwing with his works. On a side note, It would be interesting to see Chris sanders make an R rated 2D animated film with the cute girls he draws a lot.

Bobby's girl- What I wouldnt give to see an animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi and John K, Trinstar has made the poor choice on not getting this off the ground.
 
Several of Don Bluth's films. A Troll in Central Park had fairly nice character designs and good animation (though I wish the troll's would have looked different). However, the script and overall plotless-ness of it killed the film.



Isn't that kinda unfair? Does anyone even know what the film would've been like if it had been released with its original story? If I remember correctly, we never got anything past Sanders' original plot. It sounds like it had potential, but that doesn't mean it was going to be good. For all we know, it could have been weighed down by intense oddities (to the extent where it gets annoying). Sometimes people create bad movies, even if they've previously made great ones. I love All Dogs Go to Heaven, but Don Bluth has made some terrible movies. I also enjoy Tim Burton films--but, God, I will never sit through Mars Attacks again (I only finished it because I was halfway through, and decided to hold tight).
 
The concept of "Drawn Together" has a lot of potential, especially when it comes to satirizing the animation world and all its various incarnations (superhero cartoons, princess movies, fighting monster anime, webtoons, and so on), but by pumping the show full of sleazy sex jokes and thoroughly unpleasant characters, it missed out on just about all that it could have been. I remember watching the first few episodes and being very disappointed.



Actually, the original version of the movie was supposed to have even more action, but the Disney suits thought it slowed down the plot and made them cut a bunch of sequences. Atlantis was intended to be a full-blown action epic, something Disney had never done before, but instead turned into just another movie.
 
I'd like to throw 'Titan A.E.' in the ring as one of those films that 'had such potential'. This film could've been a great sci-fi epic, but it didn't quite catch on with movie goers. Quite a shame, because you don't see animated sci-fi movies very often, and it was a breath of fresh air for Don Bluth after the his 'Disney' rut throughout the 90's.

Another film that I thought could've been great was the 'DuckTales' movie 'Treasure Of the Lost Lamp'. Now don't get me wrong, I was a huge 'DuckTales' fan, and I enjoyed this film for what it was. However, this film was a mixed bag at best. It wasn't quite as epic as the 5 part episodes from the show, nor was the animation on par with what people normally expect from Disney most of the time. The early part of the film does look nice, but once they enter the temple, it starts to take a slight nose dive. It's not really a bad film, but in retrospect, this could've been great if the team behind it had just a little more time to polish things up.
 
The Voltron in 3D cartoon had an interesting concept, but definitely had troubles in the execution stage and then just de-evolved into something that even I couldn't watch.

When Gargoyles started the third season on network television it lost a lot of it's edge and I'm sad that they didn't follow bible that the creator left behind because that meant the spin-offs didn't happen and they actually sounded kind of interesting.

The rebooted He-Man series in the 2000's lasted 2 seasons, but they had so many threads unresolved that it's a shame a third season didn't happen.
 
I agree with Restless and will have to say you're being unfair.

Not only did Sanders get anywhere past the original plot, the original plot (to me, and obviously, others) didn't even sound interesting at all. Heck, I'm sure even Chris Sanders agrees.
 
My animation professor was at Disney when all this was going down. And the reason the movie got changed because it had story problems. Chris Sanders willingly stepped down from the project.

Besides, stuff like this happens in the industry all the time. What ends up on the screen is rarely what the creators originally pitched.

For me......I'll have to say Invader Zim. I've been watching episodes on Nicktoons, and even listened to recordings to episodes that weren't made, and it had a lot of funny stuff.
 
"Zim" was still funny, though. But I can see a lot of instances where it felt like the show was holding back. Jhonen Vasquez's sense of humor is hardly kid-friendly, and I'm guessing he had lots of ideas that had to be thrown out. (Jhonen has always said he works better by himself than he does with a group of other writers pitching all at once, which I believe was a large factor in his decision to leave the show.)
 
Series or movies? Or both?
Movie wise, hmm Hey Arnold the movie.
I enjoyed it sure but I was hopping for a better storyline yah know?
 
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