THUNDERCATS! Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Da da da daaaaaaaaa, da da da, Thundercats are loose. Feel the magic, hear the roar! Thundercats are loose! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats!

*electric guitar riff*

Thunder, thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats!

*trumpets*

Yes, the Thundercats have arrived in London. A 12 DVD boxset of the complete series one for around $38.

So GG, I hear you ask. What prompted you to do this classic dvd review now? Well, I respond, I just finished watching an episode that ended with Liono, lord of the Thundercats, arm wrestling a caveman for the time capsule from their destroyed  home planet Thundera LOL . Of course Liono won, while the team cheered him on.

So let's get this out of the way first and foremost: Thundercats is not as good as you remember. Maybe it's just because I'm coming off watching the bizaarely brilliant/yet terrible Defenders of the Earth, but after the random insanity and cheese and hilarity and superhero awesomeness, Thundercats almost seems too logical, too sane.

It starts with a great episode that almost feels like an old well made science fiction movie (link below to watch it). Their home planet of Thundera is slowly destroying itself, the Thundercats uppn their mass exodus are attacked by the evil mutants. The mutants wipe out virtually their entire race except the flagship and a band of nobles. The flagship is hobbled and wobbles along to the nearest habitable planet: their new home: 3rd Earth. But some mutants have crashed too and a deadly evil lurks within an ancient temple, the evil Mumra: The Ever Living!

They kill off the best character in the very first episode, the old man, legendary warrior Jaga and from then on there are a couple of logic killers. Liono is a kid who ages to become an adult and yet the two other kids remain unscathed.

There is a problem of repitition in this series. When you were a kid in 1985 watching this, no doubt you anticipated the once weekly event of Liono erecting the sword of Thundera and crying out in might "Thundercats! Hooooooooooooo!" but fast forward 23 years and when you have them on dvd and watch more than one 20 minute episode at a time, seeing the Lord of the Thundercats do the same thing each and every episode; and watching the inevitable reaction of the Thundercats predictably riding to his rescue - if makes you bored.

But there is a bigger problem: the music. Godamn. GOD-DAMN. They re-use the same 4 tracks throughout all of the 16 + episodes I have watched. It's like the themes in star wars only without variation in arrangements. There is the quiet peaceful piano theme, there is Cheetarah's theme whenever she runs fast, there is the thundercats theme when they leap into action and there is the rocking tank theme. It's like they hired a musician for the first episode and then just re-used the same 16 minutes of soundtrack ad-nauseum. It really grates after a while.

Thundercats is also perhaps too logical for its own good. You don't get those random moments of insanity like in Defenders of the Earth that make you belly laugh. That makes it better in some ways but less entertaining in others. A lot of the episodes aren't very satisfying, you never get the sense of the closing of a story, just another chapter in a book that never ends.

That said it has some awesome stuff for kids and like minded adults to dig into. For a start the Thundertank is the most awesome tank in movie and cartoon history. It has giant paws! That can move and break stuff and a mouth which can bite stuff. It can burrow underground and burst out like a dolphin diving and breaking through the sea surface. Panthro can drive that thing up a sheer rock face. It can dive underwater and it has lasers that mount up from the base. It's also near indescrutable.

Cheetarh is sex-ay. She runs as fast as light, has a staff that expands like classic series: Monkey. Tigra has a bolus/whip that  emits bursts of fire when it hits stuff, oh and he can make himself invisible at will, no doubt spying on Cheetarah showering.

Liono has a lion gauntlet that acts as a shield, has a grappling hook attached to it and acts as a holster for the sword of thundera. The sword itself not only emits a bat signal, it also can fly and by proxy make Liono fly. It can create a shield of energy, it can fire electric bursts and it refuses to act in the name of evil.

Panthro is perhaps the coolest of the bunch, for a start his voice actor sounds like Lando in Star wars. Then he is the strongest guy like on the planet, he can lift the thundertank with his barehands. He uses nunchuks which can emit a noxious gas. He can fix anything too.

Jaga who dies in the first episode comes back as an ObiWan type character too.

Despite the repitition in this series so far, it has been entertaining and a great blast from the past and has shown signs of improving quite a bit.

INTRO PLUS EPISODE 1 PART 1 HERE:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JTCVDZpZN1g

Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! (s)