All reviews are my personal opinion and do not reflect the views of any person or organization.
Here be Spoilers. Enter at your own risk.
Scrooge McDuck and the rest of the DuckTales crew are back with a new series. To celebrate Disney had a day long viewing of the first episode "Woo-oo!" on Aug. 12, 2017.
At first I was a little worried. I enjoyed the original DuckTales and was concerned that the new series would be too…modern. I've seen a lot of reboots and remakes of old series that just did not work out.
My concerns seemed to be confirmed after seeing the art style for the series. It looked too stylized and modern. The characters looked a little weird and Scrooge was wearing red instead of blue. The heads of some of the characters also seemed oversized. But then I remembered the DuckTales comics and realized the style and look was similar. I then understood what they [cast and crew] were trying to do and my fears were somewhat laid to rest.
And as always I try to reserve complete judgement until I actually see the show. Trailers and screenshots and such are promotional objects and the companies want to show the "exciting" or "new" or "best" stuff about the product. A trailer can make a product, like a video game, look awesome but once you play it, it is garbage. Or the trailer can make you cringe but the actual show is great. I found this latter to be true with the new DuckTales. I'd gone in worried about how they would "mess up" the characters and theme song (and other things) but found it pretty enjoyable.
I did find the "crazy, stalker, fangirl" Webby to be a little…uncomfortable. The new Webby was a bit intense for my taste at first. But I am glad they "aged her up" and she is no longer the "annoying tag along little sister" that they portrayed her in the original. She still seems to retain her "innocent girl" character while still making her more "mature." She believes in Scrooge and Donald. She still has her sense of wonder but isn't naive.
I''m glad they developed Huey, Dewy, and Louie's characters. In the original series, they had some differentiating characteristics but for the most part were carbon copies. Unless they were alone or the plot involved one over the others they seemed almost interchangeable at times. In the new series, each one has very defined characteristics and goals.
Mrs. Beakley's tough, almost military, personality was a bit hard to get use to, but I am glad she is no longer the "screaming and fainting at a pin drop" character she was in the original. It was nice to see that she could and was willing to stand up to Scrooge at times. This version of Beakley has obviously been in Scrooge's employ for awhile and knows the ins and outs.
The one character problem I had is that so far we haven't seen Duckworth, the butler.
The new theme song did an excellent job of combining the old version with a newer one. While I still prefer the older one, I was glad to see that the new one is still enjoyable and matches the tone of the series quite well. It had a very comic book feel to it which matched the rest of the style and tone of the series.
I did, however, miss the huge dollar sign on the Money Bin but was glad to see that Scrooge still knew how to swim through the money.
The part that really won me over were the Easter Eggs. In Scrooge's "relic room" (aka the garage) you can see objects from the original series as well as the movie. They also mentioned other Disney Afternoon cities, such as Saint Canard, Cape Suzette, and Spoonerville. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing some crossover episodes.
While the original still holds a special place in my heart; in the end, all I can say about the start to this new series is: DuckTales…Woo-oo! I give it a 4.8/5. And I hope it continues.
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Joe Rover 