Throwback Breakdown: Scooby Doo on Zombie Island- A Dark Masterpiece

way back in the early days of the savage books channel and I mean way back when my content looked like this I uploaded a seven and a half minute video talking about the dark aspects of Disney movies across that video I made mention of the writing techniques and practices that were necessary to properly marry animation targeted to children with adult themes like death or racism and at the end of the video I had said that in order to craft cartoons that both kids and adults could enjoy the narrative needed to be centered on simple issues that even children could get behind while carefully interweaving a subtle backdrop of real struggle that adults could be engaged with to this fine line of balancing innocent and mature themes is a necessary duality for animation to keep in check but then I also said that if you were making scooby-doo on Zombie Island you could disregard all that and throw the rulebook out the window that video was uploaded over 18 months ago and believe it or not ever since then I have been wanting to dive into what makes scooby-doo on Zombie Island so unique and across the year and a half that I've been sitting on this idea my interests and curiosities have changed and grown now I find myself wanting to investigate and unpack the writing behind a bunch of really dark animated movies not only because I think I would have a lot of fun with it but I think all of you could scratch that nostalgia itch while also learning about what narrative and writing decisions went into making those dark animated movies you love so much sometimes the best inspiration that a writer can get is from learning how their favorite stories came to be this scooby-doo on Zombie Island video will be the first entry in the prospective series throwback breakdown and if you guys like this I will definitely dive into other movies like El Dorado and Atlantis and others but for the here and now we are going to focus on the mystery gang and their crazy adventure through moonscar island but to do that we have to establish some context for the film and that can only be found in the late 20th century [Music] it's the 16th annual Daytime Emmy 1989 was a great year for scooby-doo not only was it the 20th anniversary of the franchise it was also the year it received its first Emmy nomination a pup named scooby-doo which was basically an adorable reskin of the scooby-doo where are you series stood in the running to receive the award for outstanding daytime animated children's programming young Scooby and the mystery gang stayed a strong presence on daytime television earning two Emmy nominations across a four-year run however 1991 was the last year of the show and due to Scoobies there after being absent from Saturday morning lineups the franchise started to see diminishing returns it's hard to keep kids invested in a series that they aren't able to watch but 1991 while seeming like the beginning of the end for scooby-doo was really the start of something monumental 1991 was the year that Turner Broadcasting purchased hanna-barbera the animation studio behind scooby-doo and the reason Turner Broadcasting did this is because they were conducting a bit of an experiment the company was looking to make a 24/7 cable channel centered on animation something that had never been done before and at the time was considered revolutionary in generally in advisable primetime watching hours for children who were you know the main consumers of animation were between 8 and 10 p.m. on weekdays and before noon on weekends why would a channel ever run cartoons for 18 hours a day outside of its target window this concern was not overlooked by Turner Broadcasting and they moved forward with tempered expectations Terrence F McGurk the executive vice president of Turner Broadcasting said the company had realistic expectations that the prospective channels growth would be modest for some time Ted Turner the chairman and namesake for Turner Broadcasting largely agreed and expected a very slow growth for the 24/7 animation channel considering it a long-term play not everyone was so reserved though one of the most excited responses came from Scott Sassa the president of Turner entertainment he said we perceived the addition hanna-barbera as parallel in some ways to our acquisition of MGM we got some terrific gems then like Gone with the Wind and Casablanca with this deal we're getting gems like The Flintstones The Jetsons and scooby-doo now I think you all can agree that is some very high praise but Scott Sassa might have been right on the money because that experimental animation focused channel was Cartoon Network yeah that one by 1994 only two years after its launch Cartoon Network became the fifth most popular cable channel in the United States blowing expectations out of the water and a lot of that was owed to scooby-doo in the early years of Cartoon Network the mystery gang was on the channel a lot part of that was out of necessity as Cartoon Network's library of usable television shows was limited another reason was that people just wanted to see scooby-doo after its long absence from Saturday morning lineups the return of scooby-doo even if reruns spiked Cartoon Network's ratings causing people to sit down and to min when Network executive Linda sieminski was asked about the constant running of Scooby Doo on the channel she said they keep showing it as long as the ratings were good those high ratings persisted and caught the attention of Warner Bros who eventually merged with Turner Network wanting to capitalize on the popularity of Scooby Doo where I bros directed the hanna-barbera studio to create a direct-to-dvd Scooby Doo project and thus the seeds of scooby-doo on Zombie Island were planted all that was left was to build a team to water those seeds to blossom once upon a time our development crew led by Davis story was told you're making Scooby Doo's they're gonna be hour-long and you're gonna you know you'll get a writer and David said well let's use Glen because we've worked with him for Nizar in scooby-doo there was the quote-unquote brain trust of this thing there was Davis of course Glen Jim Stanton would be the head designer and myself that was Lance Faulk writer and designer for multiple scooby-doo projects the brain trust that he spoke of was a team of hanna-barbera animation veterans chosen director and designer Jim Stenstrom had been working with hanna-barbera since the early 80s and had worked on the emmy-nominated a pup named scooby-doo Glen Leopold in Davis Joey both of whom had received Emmy nominations in 1994 were also brought on to write the script and as previously mentioned Lance Faulk would be working with them as well now by being part of this chosen group each of these gentlemen were given a unique opportunity when it comes to television due to the fact that Warner Bros wanted this scooby-doo project to go straight to DVD they weren't too concerned with the contents of the creation meaning that the team got nearly complete creative freedom when writing the movie with four big names working alongside each other this freedom led to competing ideas about what this project should be director Jim Stenstrom came forward with a rather radical idea at the time he proposed that whatever the movie be it contained real monsters he wanted to make the most out of the animation and not be limited by only what a masked human villain could accomplish Jim also wanted to use the opportunity to shake up the formula of what scooby-doo had so consistently and predictably been writer Glen Leopold was very much not on board with this idea listen to lens Falk talked about it and Glen says no no no no scooby-doo is a solvable mystery where the audience salsa has always been that way that's the premise of the show that's what it is we need to do that we're just doing it longer Davis Dewey then spoke up about his own concerns mainly with the writing and Davis said the thing is about that is you can do that for 22 minutes but if you do it for 70 minutes and you're yanking people around for 70 minutes and truth out to be a fake cursor all it's really difficult to hide that the the resolution for that long and the other thing is it's kind of unsatisfying to do an entire movie work to guy in a reprimand in my assessment Davis doe had some pretty valid critiques based in the execution of the writing the typical 22 minute scooby-doo runtime was the perfect length to set up the conflict the monster the chase and the reveal all while keeping the audience interested of course everyone watching already knew that the gang would unmask the monster and prevail in the end but that really wasn't the point of the show it was seeing all the clues and wacky hijinx that led to the unmasking but a 70 minute movie was an entirely different animal and demanded different writing considerations as such so the team was caught in a bit of a bind when conceptualizing what the movie would be on one side you had Glenn Leopold a man who had been writing for scooby-doo for nearly 20 years saying that the traditions of the show needed to be upheld on the other side it was Davis DOE and Jim Stenstrom hanna-barbera heavy hitters in their own right saying that the monsters should be real it took designer Lance Faulk chiming in with his own idea for any headway to be made and I was the guy who said and this is my my one significant contribution but I think it's a really great one as I said we need to do both them so we need to have definitely in the body is very need to have a solvable mystery and unmask and do all the scooby-doo stuff but we also need real woven into the story in some fashion so that we can fill it out but also to make the stories more sophisticated because we need to have clues leading to one thing but they're really really about the other thing and so you can do all these little that can pour across things and as soon as I said that everyone was like yeah that's it that's what we do lands Faulks comment about story sophistication is really important in understanding why Zombie Island stood out from other scooby-doo mysteries before it si contrary to Glenn Leopold's purest beliefs Scooby Doo had very much included real monsters in its storylines before the 1980 series Scooby Doo and scrappy-doo included the likes of aliens and vampires not people in masks but real supernatural forces however shaggy Scooby and Scrappy never attempt an unmasking and never really even comment on how strange it is to encounter real monsters and that distinction is what makes zombie island special the previous real monsters in the series weren't taken seriously which means that the implications of their existence didn't need to be taken seriously either I mean there is a literal shape-shifting vampire in scooby-doo which would normally beg the question how did it come to be and are there others the curiosities like that are ignored for the wackiness of it all zombie island takes those deep questions surrounding the monsters in puts them at center stage previous scooby-doo movies or episodes would have glossed over or completely ignored the details of these monsters but lands Faulks idea of using both a solvable mystery and real monsters allowed for a jarring ly intense look at what a genuine supernatural enemy would be but all of that was still just the conceptual basis of the film figuring out an actual story to put on top of it was a whole other task entirely and of course if you're watching this video you already know the story that they chose was the mystery gang battling against pagans who sold their souls to a feline God in order to become werecats that could suck the life force out of victims in exchange for immortality' not exactly the most straightforward narrative in fact I would say that it's the most imaginative scooby-doo script ever written but I know what you're thinking how in the world did they decide on all that well it actually makes a lot more sense than you might think but to get there we have to talk about two other cartoons first SWAT Kats and Jonny Quest hanna-barbera while most famously remembered for the likes of scooby-doo and the Jetsons had many other cartoons under its belt too one of which was the action-adventure show SWAT Kats the radical squadron but SWAT Kats really wasn't just any other show by 1994 literally only its second year of airing SWAT cats became the number one syndicated cartoon in America if the show was so popular that hanna-barbera wanted to make it a focus of their programming planning to release merchandise posters and episodes through the rest of the 90s but that unfortunately never happened you see Ted Turner the chairman of Turner Entertainment the one we talked about before was displeased with SWAT Kats specifically the violence in the show at one point he even addressed the US Congress about the issue listen to the SWAT Kats creators talk about it back in 1994 a lot of you guys are young you don't recall that there was a big movement a lot of it parents against violence and TV and they had a lot of say about what's going on to a point where the big broadcasters the head of the big broadcasters went into the Senate big committee and they were saying well we don't do violent show you know like the big networks and stuff like that and Ted Turner being kind of an outsider he said you know well we're not gonna make we're not gonna be making violent show [Music] we were making SWAT cats at the same time shortly after Ted Turner made his feelings known SWAT Kats was cancelled and it was canceled so quickly that whole episode had been written but never voiced animated or aired and just like that the number one rated cartoon in the world and all the people who worked on it had the rug completely swept out from under them but that actually brings us to Jonny Quest and the 1996 episode Eclipse the setting was based in New Orleans and the villain that the quest gang was facing was a woman named Elise Lanois at the climax of the episode it was revealed that miss Lenoir was actually a succubus that would drain the life force of others during a lunar eclipse in order to retain her youth and immortality and if that sounds familiar yes that is just the plot of scooby-doo on Zombie Island which would release two years later in 1998 I am Elise Ling Hwa is your house really haunted yes rather I should say it is part of the plot let's rewind a bit to break all this down so remember how I said that SWAT Kats was abruptly cancelled leaving episodes written but unaired one of those episodes was called succubus also known as the curse of cattle Oona the titular character of the episode was a succubus cat named Katrina Moorcroft with the help of her assistants she would lure the unsuspecting to her mansion where she would steal their life force in order to maintain immortality sometimes even under a full moon how are you getting DejaVu yet if so that's good it means you're paying attention that unaired SWAT Kats episode is almost a one to one clone of the Jonny Quest episode Eclipse but why well the two had developers on SWAT Kats where Davis doei and Glen Leopold with hanna-barbera being the close knit studio that it is both those men were also on the creative team for Jonny Quest alongside writer Lance Faulk hopefully now the puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place Glen Leopold and Davis Joey took the unused succubus script from SWAT Kats and brought it to life through the world of Jonny Quest and then when Lance Faulk joined Glenn Leopold in Davis Dawei on the proposed straight-to-dvd scooby-doo project the three merged the SWAT cat script and the Jonny Quest script into what became scooby-doo on Zombie Island there is a delicious nearly poetic irony about all of its two Glen Leopold and Davis toys shows SWAT Kats was canceled for being too violent Ted Turner in the other studio executives feared what violent and gruesome cartoons would do to their viewing audience and ultimately their bottom lines but when Warner Bros came calling to Glen Leopold and Davis doe eight years later giving them complete creative freedom for the Scooby Doo project they took one of those SWAT Kats episodes that was quote-unquote too violent for cartoons ramped up the intensity to 11 and then made the best scooby-doo movie of the decade maybe of all time scooby-doo on Zombie Island wasn't just a random movie with werecats zombies and ghosts it was a story that the creators had been sitting on for years a story that at one point was deemed too brutal to even be successful and a story written for a completely different fictional world but one that somehow still managed to work beautifully zombie island's unflinching look at real horror and violence and fear is its strength not its weakness the creative freedom given to the team to explore real conflict is what makes the events of the narrative and its climax so compelling you know I think it was cool that it was a little scary you know kids like that they're fine with that you know long we're not being too explicit or pork terrific about it so that was that's what you get when you have them you know good artists who work well together without a lot of interference you you get zombie island when zombie island first released LA Times reviewer Lynn Heffley wrote it's more entertaining than you'd think despite the familiar Saturday morning type animation the hook this time the zombies ghosts and Sharptooth monsters are real warning some of the cartoon gruesomeness is too intense for young viewers now while I agree with Lynn heffley's assessment on some level I think the hook of the film was so much more than monsters being real I think that the true hook of Zombie Island what made it so alluring was what the reality of the monsters meant for the stories and messages that a scooby-doo movie could tell here's what I mean scooby-doo for decades had been exactly what Glen Leopold had described it as a solvable mystery there was a tradition amongst the show of what to expect every single time these characters came on-screen fred would lead the gang Velma would lose her glasses Daphne would be the damsel in distress Shaggy and Scooby would bumble about and the villain would be unmasked to the tune of all cartoons have a bit of a formula they follow that it's just the nature of 22 minutes syndicated story telling but Scooby Doo's formula became part of its identity so zombie island in effect wasn't just a simple tweak of the formula it was an alteration of Scooby Doo's DNA one that was somehow an homage a parody and an evolution of classic scooby-doo the homage comes from the way it structures itself just like classic scooby-doo you have the introduction of a mystery the suspicious unsavory characters that ultimately turn out to be innocent wacky chase scenes and the innocent characters that turn out to be behind all of the mayhem the parody comes from the recognition of this formula and how the monsters are always just men in masks you know the real reason I changed jobs was because the monsters and ghosts always turned out to be bad guys and a mask got a little boring no kidding the movie literally has an entire parody song about it [Music] but the evolution comes from all those things that Zombie Island does differently Fred doesn't really lead the gang Velma doesn't lose her glasses Daphne can defend herself Shaggy and Scooby find and thwart the villains and of course the monsters are actually real part of the reason Zombie Island comes off as so good is its ability to walk this tightrope of tradition subversion and evolution and I fully believe that properly performing all of these narrative gymnastics was only possible because the four main creators of Zombie Island had a deep love of what scooby-doo stood for but also a deep desire to produce what scooby-doo needed to be and that brings us to the last big point of this video the writing of zombie island's characters throughout the story of scooby-doo the show's characters had traditionally been flat this is simply a literary term to mark characters that are uncomplicated with only a few defining traits or motivations that are easy to understand again a large reason for this was the short 22 minute runtime of the syndicated show the mystery gang was good and the men in masks were greedy and bad and that's all you needed to know why exactly were the villains doing bad things because they were bad why are you making this complicated there wasn't much time to include many more details than that scooby-doo was very much you get what you see type show where the only big reveal came by way of unmasking to me this is zombie Island's biggest departure from classic scooby-doo as it moves away from using simple flat characters to using round characters characters with complexity depth in context to their actions but the truly genius move was that this character evolution was not focused on Scooby or the other protagonists it was focused on the antagonists there are many people out there myself included who believe that the antagonist is the most important character in a story the reason for this at least speaking for myself is not that I like to see evil people doing evil things it's because of what the antagonist represents in a story on a functional level a guiding principle of writing is that a story can only be as compelling at the conflict that the protagonist must overcome that conflict though is completely dependent on the antagonist that is their narrative function in a story an antagonist is meant to embody the struggle that the protagonist must surmount so by definition the more interesting fleshed out and effective the antagonist is the more engaging the conflict will be which ultimately leads to how entertaining a story as a whole will be the zombies in Zombie Island could have very easily just been malevolent spirits who wanted to haunt the island Lina Simone and Jacque could have easily been mustache twirling stereotyped villains but none of this happened the creative team behind the movie decided to give these characters a complex background and a reason for their action the zombies were tortured souls who had lost their lives to sorcery doing everything they could to keep others from succumbing to a similar fate it went even further with Lina and Simone they were settlers who saw their friends and family massacred by pirates and fed to Gators they sold their souls to a pagan deity out of heartbreak in order to take vengeance on the pirates that had destroyed their lives the situation on zombie island was as complex as it came only after the reveal of all this information do you realize that the same ghost trying to help the gang with the warning to leave was also a mass murderer some of the zombies that aided and thanked the gang were Confederate soldiers men who fought for the right to own people through slavery the conflict that the mystery game had to overcome was so impactful because of all of this background the villains weren't greedy because they were greedy or bad because they were bad they were given justifiable reasons that while not agreeable were understandable Simone and Lina were two women that experienced horrible trauma but then became the very thing that they once hated mass murderers zombie islands greatest strength by far is taking this concept of monsters being real and not shying away from telling a genuine story of struggle and law zombi Islands high critical acclaim isn't just based in the execution of a unique scooby-doo mystery the reason so many people liked Zombie Island is because the writing of its story appealed to both kids and their parents children loved the funny wackiness but adults then and now loved the intense story that the well-crafted brutally honest conflict created and while kids are certainly the target audience for animation there were certainly something to be said for creating animation that adults can enjoy too well primarily children watch cartoons but but but but adults watch cartoons too in fact in the evening on the average evening more people who are dolls are tuned to the Cartoon Network they tend to see it thank you guys so much for watching all the way to the end I know this was a longer and honestly different type of video than what I usually put out so please let me know if you like this first installment of the throwback breakdown series because if you do I will be happy to continue making more in the future and if you really like what you heard subscribe to the channel and sign up to patreon to get some great benefits as always it was a pleasure and I will talk to you all again soon [Music]

Channel: Savage Books

Views: 132,768

Rating: 4.9590549 out of 5

Keywords: zombie island, scooby doo on zombie island, scooby doo where are you, scooby doo movie, savage books, how to write, throwback breakdown, scooby doo, animation

Id: xzr4cb1d_7s

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 07 2020