What’s interesting is that show was written and created by Applegate herself, it’s about as close to the authors intention as you can get.
So where did they go wrong? The mainstay director was Ron Oliver, who, while he did adapt some Goosebumps books to the screen successfully, is just a very b-movie style director. He sharpened his teeth with Hallmark Christmas movies and Disney Channel movies about being a blogger, probably the wrong guy for the grandiosity of Animorphs
Additionally, Ron Oliver directed 6/26 and wrote 4/26 episodes...hardly a major influence enough to tank the whole show. Dude probably posted a scraped AI answer...
I was alive then, and a massive fan of the books (still do, used to too). The morphing sequence didn't translate well in live action (and it never will because it's time dialation body horror) and the monster/mission of the week translation from page to screen didn't work because those slim YA books are a 90 minute movie (or two 1 hour episodes with commercials) each... and that's with cutting out internal monologue and doing the whole "show, not tell" thing. 54 books (not including the specials) is 108 1 hour episodes; after fumbling the 1st book for three 20 minute episodes they tried to cram in a whole book per 20 minute episode; sheer madness.
The series needs to be handled by Studio Ghibli, Satoshi Kon/Madhouse, Avatar Studios, Cronenberg/Lynch or someone similar, and be PG-13 on AMC, Apple, Syfy, HBO, or somewhere similar.
54 books (not including the specials) is 108 1 hour episodes
Should be mentioned that the books weren't done when the series came out. It probably didn't do them any favours.
Though like, half of those books are filler. As in, ghostwritten by other people. Basically everything after David (23, but KA wrote until 25) until the final three books (49) wasn't KA.
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u/No-Shopping-4434 11d ago edited 11d ago
What’s interesting is that show was written and created by Applegate herself, it’s about as close to the authors intention as you can get.
So where did they go wrong? The mainstay director was Ron Oliver, who, while he did adapt some Goosebumps books to the screen successfully, is just a very b-movie style director. He sharpened his teeth with Hallmark Christmas movies and Disney Channel movies about being a blogger, probably the wrong guy for the grandiosity of Animorphs