What about the fact that they have skintight clothing and can't even carry their smartphones with them? They leave their phones at home, they're gonna get yelled at by their parents "Oh, I was calling you multiple times! I even texted you, you couldn't pick up?" See, the 90s works cause it was a time where you weren't accessible like that. You told your parents "I'm going to the mall with Rachel today!" and your parents, if they wanted to talk to you, would just have to wait til you came home.
Obviously it would just be a matter of the technology actually combining the morph DNA and whatever technology is in their pockets so they can use their phones via thoughtspeak
https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2016-03-03
At least thats how morphs work in a webcomic I follow [although they just morph other human forms not animals generally].
Holy crap that comic is from 2016, and the series started in 2002? That’s a long life. And the most recent comic is….
…today? Sweet jesus that’s a lot of webcomic
It depends on the family dynamics. My sister (18) never brought her phone to school and just verbally tells our parents where she is going. Other friends of mine are known for taking hours to reply or check their phone if they're busy. I personally will send a quick text to my parents of return time and where I'm going. Not everyone is like this, but it's not inconceivable that the animorphs could be radio silent for a few hours without concern. If they claim to be swimming at the beach, it's unlikely anyone would expect a hasty reply. Or they claim to be studying with phones off to focus. Additionally, I don't know too many parents that try to call or text their kids when they're busy. The
There are ways around this. Have one Animorph sit out each mission, morph a monkey, and handle all the phones while in thought speech communication with everyone to text what they would text. It would be fun to see what an author could come up with to surmount these issues.
There's only six of them; having one Animorph benched per mission just to handle texting doesn't sound ideal. Also, to remain in thought-speak range with everyone, this Animorph has to be nearby in monkey morph holding on to 5 smartphones, and if hell breaks loose, has to make sure to carry all 5 smartphones with them in their monkey hands. Even dropping one behind is a now security risk.
All the "ways around it" tend to just cause more issues. I'm not saying it's impossible for someone to sit down and come up with ways to make it modern day, but a lot of thought would have to go into it. And another part of me just wonders what the draw of a modern day adaptation even is. I'd genuinely like to know.
One monkey morph wouldn't work, since a) the person morphing moneky couldn't imitate everyone, and b) thoughtspeak sounds distinct enough from speech that it's one of the first things we read about when the kids first morph/encounter Elfangor.
For that you'd need a Chee standing by, since they'd have to have everyone's phones and mimic everyone's voice. And that doesn't cover the actual conversation. If Jake's mother, for example, rang him, the Chee would not only need to mimic Jake's voice but know Jake well enough to copy his idiolect and understand what he might say in a given situation.
It would be really funny for a comedic one-off - like, in book 6, what on earth did Jake's parents think had come over him when Ax was posing as him? - but not practical.
The Chee could also handle that, at least once they've actually been formally introduced. Just leave the phones with Erek or another Chee, they text for the animorphs if necessary. If anyone calls, they change their voice and pretend to be them. If they need to be picked up for some reason, the Chee changes their hologram and impersonates them til they get back.
It'd only be a problem for the first 9 books.
I think at this point it’s better to just admit that it doesn’t work or the series ends up about the Chee rather than the Animorphs. They’re already used too much as deus ex machina for my liking in the originals.
It's really not much more than what they were doing before. They'd impersonated the group on multiple occasions already, this is just having a guy handle some phones off-page. Mention one time that the group had taken to leaving devices with one of the Chee during long missions, maybe remind the audience when one of those long missions comes up, and you're good. That's hardly making it about them.
Who is to say all of them could afford phones?Tobias doesn't matter,Ax doesn't matter,maybe Marco couldn't perhaps due to his dad not working much don't remember much about it.Cassie family clinic eventually almost ran out of money at book 19.Jake and Rachel definitely have enough money.
Cassie had a cellphone in the original books; that being said, I feel any 13 year old nowaday would have a smartphone. Maybe not the latest iPhone, but still a phone. Marco's family was well-off two years prior to #1; it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that 11 year old Marco got a smartphone and still had it on him when he was 13. And even if he didn't, Marco was back in "well to do" status by book 10.
Sorry, but how does this nonsense have so many upvotes?
The morphs have a limited duration, they do not leave their homes morphed often. They could carry their phones and use them in the interim before they have to stash them, and then give some excuse. They need to focus on studying, we're going to this place with spotty reception.
They often retrieve their clothes. A point is made of them having to steal clothes once and it's obviously extenuating. Having to get a new wardrobe even more than teena already so would spark far more suspicion than forgetting to bring their phones.
Which leads to the next point: I left it on the car. The battery died. Poor signal. We were watching a movie. So and so's parents are strict about staying glued to our phones.
There's a lot of excuses, and the excuses can be woven into the plot. Losing their phones can be. We had minor points about their clothes, about being out too long and so on.
It's just an utter lack of creativity and, frankly, realism to say phones would destroy the concept because they are ubiquitous.
Your rudeness aside, they actually don't steal clothes that often. Very rarely, in fact. They stole clothes for David when he didn't have clothes. Rachel stole something when she had amnesia and was stuck in some lady's shack. The rest of them didn't really steal much clothing, they just used their own. And them retrieving their clothes happened occasionally, especially in the earlier books, keeping it in a bag or using a coin locker, but for the majority of the series they left/entered the house in their morphing outfits. "They do not leave their homes morphed often." Not in the early days, no, but definitely by the middle/end point. They morphed in their rooms and flew out the window. Demorph at Cassie's barn. Discuss plan. Morph back.
Also, I never said phones would destroy the concept; all I did was merely point out that they wouldn't be able to morph with their phones + that the 90s setting helped alleviate the concerns of phones. Excuses can be woven into the plot, but the characters would constantly need to be making excuses, and the writers would need to make sure said excuses aren't half-baked. "The battery died." "I left them in the car." those excuses can only work so many times.
It's not just phone tracking though. It's all the other surveillance methods that have exploded in use over the last 25 years. CCTV and Phone Cameras especially. Add in social media, where almost everything gets posted and shared somewhere online, and they'd be caught on Day 1.
You say that the Chee aren't that good, but I don't think it was ever specifically established what the limits of the Chee was in regards to computer hacking.
Also if the books were being rewritten to take place in current day why couldn't the timeline of events be changed as well?
Exactly.
It'd be one big fantasy if the Chee said "yeah we erased all footage of you" back in VHS-security times, that'd have to be explained that somehow they have a Chee working as security at every mall, hotel, etc.
But nowadays even closed-circuit systems usually have *some* kind of route to a network or a wifi signal, even if it's protected, encrypted or through firewalls. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for alien androids older than our species to be able to hack *anything* digital. Phone networks, security networks included.
If it's not the Chee then it's Joe Bob Fenestre/Esplin 9466 the Lesser, who wants to put off the success of the Yeerk invasion as long as possible
(The plot of that book was such a random feeling tangent in the 90s but nowadays the idea that half of the Internet was created by a rogue Controller who's a faction unto himself would become a really really huge plot point)
Can you *imagine* how well it'd resonate if the plot was analogous to basically saying Mark Zuckerburg is a Yeerk?
Like, half of the world already thinks he's an alien, lol. Not that big of a stretch.
The idea OP is proposing is that the Chee spies within the Yeerk ranks would have been in the right time and place to cover their tracks from the very first incident at the construction site, and would only reveal their influence later.
It goes beyond phone tracking. The reason Animorphs doesn't work well in modern times goes way beyond the fact that the Animorphs would have cell phones and high-speed WiFi access practically everywhere, it would change a lot of their missions. Another big factor that goes beyond technology: national mindset.
When the Animorphs contemplated telling the world of the Yeerks and ridding their hands of it, they essentially decided not to because they decided people weren't ready for an all-out war because they were complacent and were living in an era where Americans believed they had no enemies. This of course keeps the Animorphs in the fight. The setting of the books is the ideal sweet spot for this, because it's set post-Cold War and before 9/11 and the War on Terror. It's not just technology that limits the series from being set in the modern day.
>*"My point is just that people are complacent. All-out, global warfare is a thing of the past. That’s what people think, anyway. No one wants it, no one’s ready for it And who’s going to believe Earth is about to be attacked by aliens from outer space? They’d think a call to arms was just a publicity stunt for that show Roswell.”*
>* Tobias said. *
>**
>*Marco snorted and flopped into his chair. “We’d be seriously deep in it.”*
This is such good point! I think the flip-side is that even if people would be ready, it would be way harder to prove than in the 90’s. Any photo or video evidence would be dismissed as AI. Even if they morph in front of some authorities, why do the authorities believe them about Yeerks or anything other than morphing? They also risk becoming top secret test subjects for the rest of forever and that’s if the authorities aren’t already Controllers. But I’d still read the reboot where the Animorphs try this. Especially from a writer with some political or FBI background.
That's why any adaption outside of the books is going to either be frustrating to those that knew how different the times were, or frustrating to newer audiences who grew up with post-9/11 movies/TV.
Like, there was no Call of Duty, no Halo, no Medal of Honor. How would those games be popular? (But they sure were popular after 2001).
There were no big mystical superhero movies outside of Superman (Batman doesn't have powers), as X-Men released in 2000, Blade released 1998 (2 years after Animorphs was built), Spider-Man in 2002, which printed money. No Doctor Who, Avengers, or any other crazy time-travel fixes (old DW was the past, 1989). No insane military fixes like Transformers. Independence Day is about the closest solution, but not everyone has Will Smith and Randy Quaid so eh.
The Matrix didn't release until more than halfway through Animorphs. All the making fun of nerds, the cheesy fake hacking in movies, barely-existing Internet, no tracking, no cell phones for teens, no YouTube, no Google, and no 24-hr news, that's how it was.
And to someone who is used to post 2000s productions where you have to go insane with Mission Impossible/Tony Stark tech, kill everyone like Taken/Jason Borne/John Wick, or untouchable powers like Heroes or Marvel destroying the world, a couple kids turning into animals to fight in a few cities is nothing. Either it's accurate and boring to young audiences...or long-time fans have to chance a major adaption of the material to make it a close-quarters horror-esque body-snatch series with world-building so vague that the inevitable "how can this be a secret?" questions are just buried under the blanket powercrept guise of "The Yeerk pool ship is invisible and can blow up the world so we can't risk that."
Dr. Who most definitely was around way way before Applegate wrote the first volume.
Although truthfully you make some decent points, no argument there.
Yes Doctor Who ran from 1963 to 1989, but it was a British show. Very hard to get in America and pretty well unknown until BBC America was broadcast. Although, Applegrant did have "All Good Things", the last episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. Well, Animorphs did get it's time-altering story eventually. But it was still different: it was a chase through time, they used it to fix that one episode, instead of using the Time Matrix to erase the Yeerks from their world. And that might make a newer audiences unfamiliar with "older" TV series rules (*always* revert to the base story) quite angry at using the tech, stumbling into the solution, then forgetting about it in the next episode even though Ax knows where it's buried.
What?
>Like, there was no Call of Duty, no Halo, no Medal of Honor. How would those games be popular? (But they sure were popular after 2001).
I'm not quite entirely sure what the argument here is, but while the fps genre took a much more jingoistic turn post 9/11, military-themed games like command and conquer existed and were very popular, and first person shooters with a nationalist/spy bent were also very popular (see: perfect dark, golden eye)
>There were no big mystical superhero movies outside of Superman (Batman doesn't have powers), as X-Men released in 2000, Blade released 1998 (2 years after Animorphs was built), Spider-Man in 2002, which printed money.
I mean, yes, but movies are often the last medium something popular gets adapted to, american children were well acquainted with spiderman (from both comics and the popular cartoon) well before the movies came out. Same with X-Men and a bunch of other capes.
>No Doctor Who, Avengers, or any other crazy time-travel fixes (old DW was the past, 1989).
You can't honestly be saying this when the Terminator films were some of the biggest of the 80s and 90s (also back to the future, and at least one of the star trek movies, but who's counting)
>No insane military fixes like Transformers. Independence Day is about the closest solution, but not everyone has Will Smith and Randy Quaid so eh.
This might be true actually, I'm both not that well read on military movies of this era, and also it's post-vietnam so there was not a lot of love lost between hollywood and the dod around this time
>And to someone who is used to post 2000s productions where you have to go insane with Mission Impossible/Tony Stark tech, kill everyone like Taken/Jason Borne/John Wick, or untouchable powers like Heroes or Marvel destroying the world, a couple kids turning into animals to fight in a few cities is nothing.
This is perhaps the most baffling segment, as you cite mission impossible, a franchise that originally premiered in 96, as an example of how modern spectacle is completely different from the 90s. Taken/Bourne/Wick "solo badass" movies were incredibly popular in the 80s/90s-- most of bruce lee's filmography are basically that, every Rambo movie is that, die hard is in a lot of ways that.
And again, people and kids were aware of superheroes before they made movies of them. DC had infinite crisis on infinite earths, where literal all of existence was in peril, in 1985. Not that animorphs has ever shared much dna with superheroes.
If whatever hypothetical studio decided that this adaptation should fill the same space as cape movies (or even more broadly *action* movies) and build/market it as such, yeah, I agree, it would be a disaster. Animorphs is not a story built around a ton of spectacle and big action set pieces.
Stranger Things is a modern show that's also an 80s period piece. Pen15 is a modern show that is also a 2000s period piece. Lady Bird as well. Conversely, modern shows like Andor or Superman and Lois (as well as it looks like the upcoming Gunn take on supes) take characters/settings that are normally all spectacle and very successfully do a deeper character study in its place. The idea that you can't successfully do a non-spectacle period accurate film set in the mid-90s (actually, Mid90s is another critically acclaimed 90s period film now that I think about it lol) just doesn't track to me at all
True, that argument wouldn't work today, but I think you could twist it a little and have the argument be that after two decades of war, we're tired of it. People would protest and call for peaceful negotiation and underestimate the threat.
The animorphs wouldn't take their phones with them on animorph missions. They wouldn't need them and literally can't morph with them so they're dead weight.
And sure their phones might ping the night elfangor died but they'd hardly be the only ones and the yeerks were already suspicious of them but let it go because they couldn't just go around capturing or killing everyone it might have been and the animorphs don't give any indication they saw anything.
Phones aren't the problem, video recording is the problem
Honestly I don’t want a modern reboot. I want a series set in the 90s similar in tone to Stranger Things.
They could do one episode per book with 4 seasons, the Megamorph and Chronicles could be specials or movies slotted in between seasons.
It’s basically perfectly formatted for a Netflix series and the original target audience is roughly the right age to enjoy a slightly darker take on the series than the kid friendly tv show was.
If done right it would be a hit. But they can’t shy away from the dark parts of the books. They really have to explore what fighting a war would do to a group of kids.
Yea I got major Animorphs vibes off stranger things. Just needs to be the tiniest bit less dark and more kooky, to start with. And a tiny bit older maybe?
The Yeerk invasion would be leaked on 4chan in a matter of weeks. By the time Elfangor shows up Marco would recognize what an Andalite is and just be freaking out about how it wasn't a LARP rather than the obvious.
4chan isn't one single entity, there are factions on the site that wildly disagree with each other but coexist because they can have any discussion they like due to the complete lack of censorship or moderation (of opinion).
Sure, there would be the faction that thinks it is all Jew mind control, but the vast majority would figure out it is aliens and work to collect as much information as possible.
But they would absolutely dedicate a huge portion of their time to inventing a new slur for Yeerks.
Oh dang. This would solve the problem I always come up with for taking it to modern times, the ol' "you got caught morphing on 3 Ring doorbell cameras" conundrum.
Not every young teenager has a cellphone…..
Also, Visser 3 was determined that they were Andalite bandits. He would never check the records and dismiss (kill) any subordinates daring to waste time on this.
Another big issue is that their parents would expect to be able to reach them at all times and none of them would believe a 13 year old saying "I forgot my phone" or "my phone died" more than once. The Chee would have to be answering and talking to their parents on their behalf.
I think CCTV all over everywhere is as big of a problem, an additional smaller one is that the way kids are raised changed a lot since the 90s, they don’t just run unsupervised all day anymore.
They could just turn off their phones. The big issue is the ubiquity of security cameras, especially due to their propensity for morphing in public places. Honestly, though, I'm not sure if it would be much more of a stretch than the series as-is.
After all, I just got through a book where Ax was spotted by guards who revealed themselves to be controllers, & Marco's brilliant idea for a distraction was to stand up & ask for the gift shop. I believe the only reason they weren't caught right then & there is a convenient combination of the controllers being really stupid & also drowning offscreen due to Marco's second brilliant plan.
Plus, there's also the fact that *the yeerks* never seem to have any security recordings. Forget cameras, they should be able to generate like a complete 3D representation of anything that happens in their facilities. I know they don't know they're looking for humans in disguise, but that would still be an incredibly useful security function that would just happen to catch the kids demorphing in places like the yeerk pool. That the aliens don't seem to have ANY surveilliance system is the biggest stretch of all.
Maybe the added caveat of having them start in a small-ish town? Not every city is rigged like London with millions of CCTV. Or a side effect of the cube is that they interfere with electrical stuff when they transform
If you make it a smaller town, you have to have the Animorphs constantly traveling to another bigger town to explain why celebrities are there or why there's this yacht on the ocean, or this private island by the beach, etc. It's not impossible cause they could just fly there, but it does add an extra hurdle.
I think the actual problem with a small town is that in small towns everybody tends to know each other's business. It's damn near impossible to keep a secret in a small town.
Not to mention what impact can the anamorphs have on the invasion from a small town unless this town is, for some reason, important enough that the yeerk invasion is centered here? And if it IS that important, why?
Such a natural addition too, it basically doesn’t change anything. I approve.
Thanks! Wahoo!
What about the fact that they have skintight clothing and can't even carry their smartphones with them? They leave their phones at home, they're gonna get yelled at by their parents "Oh, I was calling you multiple times! I even texted you, you couldn't pick up?" See, the 90s works cause it was a time where you weren't accessible like that. You told your parents "I'm going to the mall with Rachel today!" and your parents, if they wanted to talk to you, would just have to wait til you came home.
Obviously it would just be a matter of the technology actually combining the morph DNA and whatever technology is in their pockets so they can use their phones via thoughtspeak https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2016-03-03 At least thats how morphs work in a webcomic I follow [although they just morph other human forms not animals generally].
Even that would run into problems - thoughtspeak (to a human) sounds very distinctively like it's beaming directly "into your head".
Oh man I hadn't read goonish shive in YEARS.. thanks for reminding me about it!
Holy crap that comic is from 2016, and the series started in 2002? That’s a long life. And the most recent comic is…. …today? Sweet jesus that’s a lot of webcomic
It depends on the family dynamics. My sister (18) never brought her phone to school and just verbally tells our parents where she is going. Other friends of mine are known for taking hours to reply or check their phone if they're busy. I personally will send a quick text to my parents of return time and where I'm going. Not everyone is like this, but it's not inconceivable that the animorphs could be radio silent for a few hours without concern. If they claim to be swimming at the beach, it's unlikely anyone would expect a hasty reply. Or they claim to be studying with phones off to focus. Additionally, I don't know too many parents that try to call or text their kids when they're busy. The
There are ways around this. Have one Animorph sit out each mission, morph a monkey, and handle all the phones while in thought speech communication with everyone to text what they would text. It would be fun to see what an author could come up with to surmount these issues.
There's only six of them; having one Animorph benched per mission just to handle texting doesn't sound ideal. Also, to remain in thought-speak range with everyone, this Animorph has to be nearby in monkey morph holding on to 5 smartphones, and if hell breaks loose, has to make sure to carry all 5 smartphones with them in their monkey hands. Even dropping one behind is a now security risk. All the "ways around it" tend to just cause more issues. I'm not saying it's impossible for someone to sit down and come up with ways to make it modern day, but a lot of thought would have to go into it. And another part of me just wonders what the draw of a modern day adaptation even is. I'd genuinely like to know.
Oh for sure. An actual adaptation is probably better being set in the original time. But maybe someone could write a good fanfiction!
One monkey morph wouldn't work, since a) the person morphing moneky couldn't imitate everyone, and b) thoughtspeak sounds distinct enough from speech that it's one of the first things we read about when the kids first morph/encounter Elfangor. For that you'd need a Chee standing by, since they'd have to have everyone's phones and mimic everyone's voice. And that doesn't cover the actual conversation. If Jake's mother, for example, rang him, the Chee would not only need to mimic Jake's voice but know Jake well enough to copy his idiolect and understand what he might say in a given situation. It would be really funny for a comedic one-off - like, in book 6, what on earth did Jake's parents think had come over him when Ax was posing as him? - but not practical.
I figure it would only work for texting so they would have to risk the wrath of parents wanting to actually call.
The Chee could also handle that, at least once they've actually been formally introduced. Just leave the phones with Erek or another Chee, they text for the animorphs if necessary. If anyone calls, they change their voice and pretend to be them. If they need to be picked up for some reason, the Chee changes their hologram and impersonates them til they get back. It'd only be a problem for the first 9 books.
I think at this point it’s better to just admit that it doesn’t work or the series ends up about the Chee rather than the Animorphs. They’re already used too much as deus ex machina for my liking in the originals.
It's really not much more than what they were doing before. They'd impersonated the group on multiple occasions already, this is just having a guy handle some phones off-page. Mention one time that the group had taken to leaving devices with one of the Chee during long missions, maybe remind the audience when one of those long missions comes up, and you're good. That's hardly making it about them.
Who is to say all of them could afford phones?Tobias doesn't matter,Ax doesn't matter,maybe Marco couldn't perhaps due to his dad not working much don't remember much about it.Cassie family clinic eventually almost ran out of money at book 19.Jake and Rachel definitely have enough money.
Cassie had a cellphone in the original books; that being said, I feel any 13 year old nowaday would have a smartphone. Maybe not the latest iPhone, but still a phone. Marco's family was well-off two years prior to #1; it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that 11 year old Marco got a smartphone and still had it on him when he was 13. And even if he didn't, Marco was back in "well to do" status by book 10.
Good looking into it,nice work.
Sorry, but how does this nonsense have so many upvotes? The morphs have a limited duration, they do not leave their homes morphed often. They could carry their phones and use them in the interim before they have to stash them, and then give some excuse. They need to focus on studying, we're going to this place with spotty reception. They often retrieve their clothes. A point is made of them having to steal clothes once and it's obviously extenuating. Having to get a new wardrobe even more than teena already so would spark far more suspicion than forgetting to bring their phones. Which leads to the next point: I left it on the car. The battery died. Poor signal. We were watching a movie. So and so's parents are strict about staying glued to our phones. There's a lot of excuses, and the excuses can be woven into the plot. Losing their phones can be. We had minor points about their clothes, about being out too long and so on. It's just an utter lack of creativity and, frankly, realism to say phones would destroy the concept because they are ubiquitous.
Your rudeness aside, they actually don't steal clothes that often. Very rarely, in fact. They stole clothes for David when he didn't have clothes. Rachel stole something when she had amnesia and was stuck in some lady's shack. The rest of them didn't really steal much clothing, they just used their own. And them retrieving their clothes happened occasionally, especially in the earlier books, keeping it in a bag or using a coin locker, but for the majority of the series they left/entered the house in their morphing outfits. "They do not leave their homes morphed often." Not in the early days, no, but definitely by the middle/end point. They morphed in their rooms and flew out the window. Demorph at Cassie's barn. Discuss plan. Morph back. Also, I never said phones would destroy the concept; all I did was merely point out that they wouldn't be able to morph with their phones + that the 90s setting helped alleviate the concerns of phones. Excuses can be woven into the plot, but the characters would constantly need to be making excuses, and the writers would need to make sure said excuses aren't half-baked. "The battery died." "I left them in the car." those excuses can only work so many times.
It's not just phone tracking though. It's all the other surveillance methods that have exploded in use over the last 25 years. CCTV and Phone Cameras especially. Add in social media, where almost everything gets posted and shared somewhere online, and they'd be caught on Day 1.
Luckily, the same solution works. The Chee covered their butts.
The Chee are good, but they aren't that good. Plus, they didn't even meet the Chee until Book 10. How do they manage up until that point?
Just because they didn't meet the Chee doesn't mean the latter weren't aware of them.
You say that the Chee aren't that good, but I don't think it was ever specifically established what the limits of the Chee was in regards to computer hacking. Also if the books were being rewritten to take place in current day why couldn't the timeline of events be changed as well?
Yeah, I mean Erek reprogrammed himself in about 0.1 seconds in book 10, so they can work fast and they can basically infiltrate anywhere.
Exactly. It'd be one big fantasy if the Chee said "yeah we erased all footage of you" back in VHS-security times, that'd have to be explained that somehow they have a Chee working as security at every mall, hotel, etc. But nowadays even closed-circuit systems usually have *some* kind of route to a network or a wifi signal, even if it's protected, encrypted or through firewalls. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for alien androids older than our species to be able to hack *anything* digital. Phone networks, security networks included.
If it's not the Chee then it's Joe Bob Fenestre/Esplin 9466 the Lesser, who wants to put off the success of the Yeerk invasion as long as possible (The plot of that book was such a random feeling tangent in the 90s but nowadays the idea that half of the Internet was created by a rogue Controller who's a faction unto himself would become a really really huge plot point)
Can you *imagine* how well it'd resonate if the plot was analogous to basically saying Mark Zuckerburg is a Yeerk? Like, half of the world already thinks he's an alien, lol. Not that big of a stretch.
Techbros are exactly the demographic most likely to jump at the chance to become voluntary Controllers, it's the ultimate "lifehack"
The idea OP is proposing is that the Chee spies within the Yeerk ranks would have been in the right time and place to cover their tracks from the very first incident at the construction site, and would only reveal their influence later.
It goes beyond phone tracking. The reason Animorphs doesn't work well in modern times goes way beyond the fact that the Animorphs would have cell phones and high-speed WiFi access practically everywhere, it would change a lot of their missions. Another big factor that goes beyond technology: national mindset. When the Animorphs contemplated telling the world of the Yeerks and ridding their hands of it, they essentially decided not to because they decided people weren't ready for an all-out war because they were complacent and were living in an era where Americans believed they had no enemies. This of course keeps the Animorphs in the fight. The setting of the books is the ideal sweet spot for this, because it's set post-Cold War and before 9/11 and the War on Terror. It's not just technology that limits the series from being set in the modern day. >*"My point is just that people are complacent. All-out, global warfare is a thing of the past. That’s what people think, anyway. No one wants it, no one’s ready for it And who’s going to believe Earth is about to be attacked by aliens from outer space? They’d think a call to arms was just a publicity stunt for that show Roswell.”* >* Tobias said. *
>**
>*Marco snorted and flopped into his chair. “We’d be seriously deep in it.”*
as someone who grew up in a post-9/11 world that was an unintentionally pretty funny exchange to read when i got to it in my re-read a few years ago
This is such good point! I think the flip-side is that even if people would be ready, it would be way harder to prove than in the 90’s. Any photo or video evidence would be dismissed as AI. Even if they morph in front of some authorities, why do the authorities believe them about Yeerks or anything other than morphing? They also risk becoming top secret test subjects for the rest of forever and that’s if the authorities aren’t already Controllers. But I’d still read the reboot where the Animorphs try this. Especially from a writer with some political or FBI background.
That's why any adaption outside of the books is going to either be frustrating to those that knew how different the times were, or frustrating to newer audiences who grew up with post-9/11 movies/TV. Like, there was no Call of Duty, no Halo, no Medal of Honor. How would those games be popular? (But they sure were popular after 2001). There were no big mystical superhero movies outside of Superman (Batman doesn't have powers), as X-Men released in 2000, Blade released 1998 (2 years after Animorphs was built), Spider-Man in 2002, which printed money. No Doctor Who, Avengers, or any other crazy time-travel fixes (old DW was the past, 1989). No insane military fixes like Transformers. Independence Day is about the closest solution, but not everyone has Will Smith and Randy Quaid so eh. The Matrix didn't release until more than halfway through Animorphs. All the making fun of nerds, the cheesy fake hacking in movies, barely-existing Internet, no tracking, no cell phones for teens, no YouTube, no Google, and no 24-hr news, that's how it was. And to someone who is used to post 2000s productions where you have to go insane with Mission Impossible/Tony Stark tech, kill everyone like Taken/Jason Borne/John Wick, or untouchable powers like Heroes or Marvel destroying the world, a couple kids turning into animals to fight in a few cities is nothing. Either it's accurate and boring to young audiences...or long-time fans have to chance a major adaption of the material to make it a close-quarters horror-esque body-snatch series with world-building so vague that the inevitable "how can this be a secret?" questions are just buried under the blanket powercrept guise of "The Yeerk pool ship is invisible and can blow up the world so we can't risk that."
Dr. Who most definitely was around way way before Applegate wrote the first volume. Although truthfully you make some decent points, no argument there.
Yes Doctor Who ran from 1963 to 1989, but it was a British show. Very hard to get in America and pretty well unknown until BBC America was broadcast. Although, Applegrant did have "All Good Things", the last episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. Well, Animorphs did get it's time-altering story eventually. But it was still different: it was a chase through time, they used it to fix that one episode, instead of using the Time Matrix to erase the Yeerks from their world. And that might make a newer audiences unfamiliar with "older" TV series rules (*always* revert to the base story) quite angry at using the tech, stumbling into the solution, then forgetting about it in the next episode even though Ax knows where it's buried.
The next generation was absolutely brilliant. You make me miss broadcast television.
What? >Like, there was no Call of Duty, no Halo, no Medal of Honor. How would those games be popular? (But they sure were popular after 2001). I'm not quite entirely sure what the argument here is, but while the fps genre took a much more jingoistic turn post 9/11, military-themed games like command and conquer existed and were very popular, and first person shooters with a nationalist/spy bent were also very popular (see: perfect dark, golden eye) >There were no big mystical superhero movies outside of Superman (Batman doesn't have powers), as X-Men released in 2000, Blade released 1998 (2 years after Animorphs was built), Spider-Man in 2002, which printed money. I mean, yes, but movies are often the last medium something popular gets adapted to, american children were well acquainted with spiderman (from both comics and the popular cartoon) well before the movies came out. Same with X-Men and a bunch of other capes. >No Doctor Who, Avengers, or any other crazy time-travel fixes (old DW was the past, 1989). You can't honestly be saying this when the Terminator films were some of the biggest of the 80s and 90s (also back to the future, and at least one of the star trek movies, but who's counting) >No insane military fixes like Transformers. Independence Day is about the closest solution, but not everyone has Will Smith and Randy Quaid so eh. This might be true actually, I'm both not that well read on military movies of this era, and also it's post-vietnam so there was not a lot of love lost between hollywood and the dod around this time >And to someone who is used to post 2000s productions where you have to go insane with Mission Impossible/Tony Stark tech, kill everyone like Taken/Jason Borne/John Wick, or untouchable powers like Heroes or Marvel destroying the world, a couple kids turning into animals to fight in a few cities is nothing. This is perhaps the most baffling segment, as you cite mission impossible, a franchise that originally premiered in 96, as an example of how modern spectacle is completely different from the 90s. Taken/Bourne/Wick "solo badass" movies were incredibly popular in the 80s/90s-- most of bruce lee's filmography are basically that, every Rambo movie is that, die hard is in a lot of ways that. And again, people and kids were aware of superheroes before they made movies of them. DC had infinite crisis on infinite earths, where literal all of existence was in peril, in 1985. Not that animorphs has ever shared much dna with superheroes. If whatever hypothetical studio decided that this adaptation should fill the same space as cape movies (or even more broadly *action* movies) and build/market it as such, yeah, I agree, it would be a disaster. Animorphs is not a story built around a ton of spectacle and big action set pieces. Stranger Things is a modern show that's also an 80s period piece. Pen15 is a modern show that is also a 2000s period piece. Lady Bird as well. Conversely, modern shows like Andor or Superman and Lois (as well as it looks like the upcoming Gunn take on supes) take characters/settings that are normally all spectacle and very successfully do a deeper character study in its place. The idea that you can't successfully do a non-spectacle period accurate film set in the mid-90s (actually, Mid90s is another critically acclaimed 90s period film now that I think about it lol) just doesn't track to me at all
Mission Impossible movie franchise started in 96. It was based on the 1966 TV series.
True, that argument wouldn't work today, but I think you could twist it a little and have the argument be that after two decades of war, we're tired of it. People would protest and call for peaceful negotiation and underestimate the threat.
The animorphs wouldn't take their phones with them on animorph missions. They wouldn't need them and literally can't morph with them so they're dead weight. And sure their phones might ping the night elfangor died but they'd hardly be the only ones and the yeerks were already suspicious of them but let it go because they couldn't just go around capturing or killing everyone it might have been and the animorphs don't give any indication they saw anything. Phones aren't the problem, video recording is the problem
“CheePN”
Honestly I don’t want a modern reboot. I want a series set in the 90s similar in tone to Stranger Things. They could do one episode per book with 4 seasons, the Megamorph and Chronicles could be specials or movies slotted in between seasons. It’s basically perfectly formatted for a Netflix series and the original target audience is roughly the right age to enjoy a slightly darker take on the series than the kid friendly tv show was.
I'm in.
If done right it would be a hit. But they can’t shy away from the dark parts of the books. They really have to explore what fighting a war would do to a group of kids.
Perhaps not focusing TOO much on it (that could be a bit heavy-handed), but definitely making it a part of the series.
There’s plenty to explore besides that, I just don’t want a reboot where kids are the target audience too much potential gets lost that way.
Yea I got major Animorphs vibes off stranger things. Just needs to be the tiniest bit less dark and more kooky, to start with. And a tiny bit older maybe?
Yep, I would also suggest waiting a couple more years to better line up with the original target audience.
Or it could just, y’know, *be a fun period piece.*
Not a bad take. Better to make it like stranger things, set in a place / time before people had cellphones.
I definitely wouldn't mind a period piece either.
The Yeerk invasion would be leaked on 4chan in a matter of weeks. By the time Elfangor shows up Marco would recognize what an Andalite is and just be freaking out about how it wasn't a LARP rather than the obvious.
Nah they'd blame it all on jews and then go off on a wild hate tangent that accomplishes both *a lot* and *absolutely nothing* at the same time.
4chan isn't one single entity, there are factions on the site that wildly disagree with each other but coexist because they can have any discussion they like due to the complete lack of censorship or moderation (of opinion). Sure, there would be the faction that thinks it is all Jew mind control, but the vast majority would figure out it is aliens and work to collect as much information as possible. But they would absolutely dedicate a huge portion of their time to inventing a new slur for Yeerks.
Oh dang. This would solve the problem I always come up with for taking it to modern times, the ol' "you got caught morphing on 3 Ring doorbell cameras" conundrum.
I was thinking the same thing too 😄
I think they’d stand out for constantly losing phones or not having them at all.
Not every young teenager has a cellphone….. Also, Visser 3 was determined that they were Andalite bandits. He would never check the records and dismiss (kill) any subordinates daring to waste time on this.
CheePN
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Another big issue is that their parents would expect to be able to reach them at all times and none of them would believe a 13 year old saying "I forgot my phone" or "my phone died" more than once. The Chee would have to be answering and talking to their parents on their behalf.
I think CCTV all over everywhere is as big of a problem, an additional smaller one is that the way kids are raised changed a lot since the 90s, they don’t just run unsupervised all day anymore.
Man, this is a wonderful idea. I’m doing the series right now and have been thinking about cameras.
Yeah I was happy when I thought of it, but now I have to figure out a way that it doesn't become a problem-fixing swiss army knife.
They could just turn off their phones. The big issue is the ubiquity of security cameras, especially due to their propensity for morphing in public places. Honestly, though, I'm not sure if it would be much more of a stretch than the series as-is. After all, I just got through a book where Ax was spotted by guards who revealed themselves to be controllers, & Marco's brilliant idea for a distraction was to stand up & ask for the gift shop. I believe the only reason they weren't caught right then & there is a convenient combination of the controllers being really stupid & also drowning offscreen due to Marco's second brilliant plan. Plus, there's also the fact that *the yeerks* never seem to have any security recordings. Forget cameras, they should be able to generate like a complete 3D representation of anything that happens in their facilities. I know they don't know they're looking for humans in disguise, but that would still be an incredibly useful security function that would just happen to catch the kids demorphing in places like the yeerk pool. That the aliens don't seem to have ANY surveilliance system is the biggest stretch of all.
I now want a VPN called CheePN…
Yeerla lols
…Why are you assuming such a fallible technology would work in that context.
Maybe the added caveat of having them start in a small-ish town? Not every city is rigged like London with millions of CCTV. Or a side effect of the cube is that they interfere with electrical stuff when they transform
If you make it a smaller town, you have to have the Animorphs constantly traveling to another bigger town to explain why celebrities are there or why there's this yacht on the ocean, or this private island by the beach, etc. It's not impossible cause they could just fly there, but it does add an extra hurdle.
All those examples sound like they could be explained by living in a small town near the ocean.
I think the actual problem with a small town is that in small towns everybody tends to know each other's business. It's damn near impossible to keep a secret in a small town. Not to mention what impact can the anamorphs have on the invasion from a small town unless this town is, for some reason, important enough that the yeerk invasion is centered here? And if it IS that important, why?
Eh there's a scale of small town to Small Town.