Top 10 2018 ReBoot Reboot FAILS

Positioned as a reboot of Reboot, the new show could have tried to balance satisfying old fans while finding a new audience. Unfortunately, the premise has almost nothing to do with the source material or core concept. Rather, it heavily borrows from the likes of "Tron", "Code Lyoko", "VR Troopers" and "Power Rangers." Rather than taking place in the computer city of Mainframe, where inhabitants must defend themselves from such things as viruses and deadly games, it instead follows four teenagers that discover a hidden control room beneath their school. There they are recruited by an A.I. to enter and defend cyberspace, guarding it from a hacker that has begin targeting real world locations.

The original series was groundbreaking as the first completely CGI series, pre-dating Pixar's "Toy Story", and drew it's strength and confidence from it's concept of representing the life inside of a computer. Shockingly, despite CGI animation being relatively cheap and easy to produce these days, the revival puts most of it's focus and run-time on it's real world setting. While this could have been executed in an less offensive and more organic way, everything they included as live-action ranges from uninteresting to offensively cheesy. Simply put, nothing outside of the computer world lands as intended, making for a very painful watch.

While there was endless potential for this franchise to return refreshed and enhanced by modern technology, it suffers from not only being primarily focused on the real-world, but by having animation that is incredibly basic and cheap looking. The original was a vibrantly animated show that was colourful, imaginative, highly-stylized and felt lived-in. The new series feels incredibly barren and blandly animated, while somehow appearing inferior to it's 90s predecessor, especially in its later seasons. Even worse, it makes very little use of facial animation. The heroes wear suits that cover their faces, and when they speak it jarringly cuts to extreme close ups on the actor's faces with added heads up displays.

With the central focus being placed on the live-action, the show had to get it right. Instead every character is bland and one-dimensional. Everyone is an underdeveloped walking cliché, as the cast includes the mandatory jock, the awkward nerd, the social media addict, the cool kid, and the fish out of water to play up the laughs. The parents range from tech-phobic mom to the overprotective dad. However, the main offender is the antagonist, a hacker who calls himself The Sorcerer. He is so stereotypical it's laughable, from living in a warehouse surrounded by computers, to being a loner, sporting a hoodie, and having absolutely disgusting hygiene, including chapped lips and blackened fingernails.

It is never a good idea to have characters spending all their time looking at screens and vocalising every thought as the leading narrative device. Focusing heavily on screens filled with nothing but code is incredibly tedious and un-engaging, but having characters do that while walking us through their every thought and motivation is a complete yawn and downright silly. Thehacker spends pretty much all of his screen time talking into his computer, either alone or to a computer character that isn't there. He rambles, fixates, and doesn't say or much that is actually interesting or organic. This is unfortunately something you will see a lot, from the authorities to the main heroes.

The original Reboot's main staple was having it's heroes contend with Game Cubes. Dropping on Mainframe,the heroes would enter the games to defeat the avatar of the user, or they would get nullified. This allowed the series to work in it's fun concepts and scenarios, and make countless pop-culture references. These ranged from "Evil Dead" to "Star Trek", "Mortal Kombat" and even "Pokemon." Outside of the games, it similarly spoofed everything from "The X-Files" to "The Blues Brothers". These references weren't just wildly fun, but a central part of the show's DNA, and without any of it, save for a haphazard Minecraft reference, it's all incredibly sterile.

ReBoot had one of the most recognisable themes ever. From it's exciting opening score, to stylish use of electrical guitar, the show's audio complimented the action, musical pop cultural references, and emotional cues. You'll find none of that in "The Guardian Code". From a lack of a full opening theme, it hits only one major beat, which is a sense of slow burning cyber drama throughout it's run-time. It's bland enough to feel like daytime television like soap operas, only occasionally dropping a random pop song to remind viewers its "cool". Even worse, once those end credits land you are hit with full on pop music that is wildly out of place.

Speaking of the jarring nature of the soundtrack, absolutely nothing in the show works together to appeal to any set demographic. Kids will find this show too boring and bland to watch, tweens will find the parts aimed at them pretentious, and adults will baulk at the teen cast, high-school setting and flat out bad dialog and acting. Regardless of which group you are represented, you will not find the story or how it is told compelling, and the ugly looking animation makes this feel like a budget product from the early 2000s at best, not 2018.

If this show was a self-contained revival, it could avoid some of it's identity crisis, but it quickly makes the original baddie MegaByte one of it's central villains, having recast the late great Tony Jay. It likewise revisits Mainframe, forcing cameos by Bob, Dot, Enzo and Hexadecimal, several of which are portrayed their original voice talents. At the same time, it establishing itself as a continuation of sorts, though completely omitting events of later seasons, like Hexadecimal's heroic sacrifice. Worst of all, it showcases the real-world computer that houses mainframe and disparages everything about it and it's virtual city as retro and lame.

Somehow the creators through it would be a good idea to directly make fun of a passionate and loyal fanbase. It portrays a stereotypical Reboot fan as middle-aged loser who lives in his parents basement, who vocalises having waited 20 years for Reboot to return. It is mindbogglingly awful and non-nonsensical on every level, which includes filling the basement with merchandise from the original's run, such as a T-shirt, a statue of the character Mike The TV, and character posters. It is just done in such a cringe-worthy way that will upset fans at best, and confuse new viewers at worst. Hopefully, it's not too late for the show to make major course corrections.