Voltron on big screens, little screens

Voltron is coming back! Will it still be as cool as we all remember it? Probably not. In fact, it’s likely impossible for it to be as cool as I remember it.

Having not seen it almost two decades, it has likely improved quite a bit inside my mind. When I heard, awhile back, that the television series was to be remade, I almost went out to get the DVDs, so that I could refresh my memory of the classic series, but then I remembered what happened when I watched the first TRON movie for the first time in twenty years.

The movie, which had been my favorite film as a young man had aged much less well outside my head than it had inside my head, where the special effects were fantastic, and the plotline was pithy and conclusive.

Since that day, I live in constant fear that some other childhood favorite will be re-revealed to me in the same manner, pushing out the fantasy version I’ve created for myself, and replacing it with the stark, unfeeling reality of the things I came to love across my childhood.

At least War Games hasn’t let me down.

Anyway, in addition to the new television series, which debuts in May, a production company has finally secured the rights (legally this time) to a Voltron film adaptation, and is currently taking bids from financiers.

They have a script, and a director ready to go, but the only thing publicly known so far is that it will be a CGI/live-action production, unlike the new television series, which will be animated, like the original.

No word if the two will share canon. The series will surely cover the stories of new Lion Squad pilots, to draw in a new audience, but the movie might tell the story of the original Voltron team in order to ensure that the children of the 80’s will want to see it.

Of course, there will be new toys.