A Few Thoughts on the New 'DuckTales'

Written by Mike Cervantes

Sometimes you don’t realize when a certain franchise is special to you. As a youngster, I admit, I didn’t put a lot of attention towards the original DuckTales (Woo-ooo!). This was a time when Disney was churning out one original animated television series every year, and the scope of this animated trendsetter was lost behind the likes of Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, and Goof Troop. But it was unwise to discount the prominence of DuckTales. The original premiere was a 120 minute movie trimmed into five episodes, illustrating that right out of the gate; Disney knew it had an important property on its hands. After all, this was the first time when decades worth of work on Carl Barks’ and Don Rosa’s Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics would venture to be translated into the format that Disney does best: animation. Original works that sprawled further and wider than the mere theatrical format could provide. It was indeed, because of DuckTales, that I was able to find these classic books, and make them a part of my comic collecting efforts.
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When this reboot was announced, people were virtually jumping for joy. It is my generation’s call back to days when we’d watch TV animation in pajamas with bowls of cereal in our laps, but for as much appreciation there was also trepidation, particularly towards the cable network this was announced for: Disney XD. Of course, Disney XD had provided quality animated entertainment in the past. With shows like Gravity Falls the placement of DuckTales on this network was a sure bet the new series would directly imitate that particular animated tone. The nostalgic among us might see the original series as a direct translation of Barks’ and Rosa’s work, although it honestly isn’t, with the addition of original characters like Mrs. Beakley and Launchpad McQuack, and the prospect that this is going to be at all different frightens some people.

It’s true that this new version of DuckTales is different, and it bears more than a small resemblance to Gravity Falls, but these aren’t things that you should hold against it. The Disney XD approved version of the classic series seeks to change more than its fair share of Uncle Scrooge’s legacy, but there’s still enough here to make this series a worthy successor in its own right. 

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We start in a place the original series rarely tread: the houseboat of Donald Duck. Donald, voiced as always by Tony Anselmo, has to find a babysitter for his three rambunctious nephews. Huey (Danny Pudi), Dewey (Ben Schwartz), and Louie (Bobby Moynihan), all sporting celebrity voices and personalities which are edgier but still shy of their ‘extreme’ Quack Pack personage; have a knack for getting into trouble. Donald naturally wastes no time dropping the triplets in the lap of his uncle Scrooge McDuck (David Tennant). The three are instantly enamored with their uncle, given his reputation as a treasure hunter, but Scrooge wastes no time in leaving them in an empty room with a batch of marbles while he plans an expedition to the Lost City of Atlantis. After getting sprung from their potential boredom by Webby Vanderquack (Kate Micucci), the exuberant daughter of Scrooge’s housekeeper Mrs. Beakley (Toks Oladundoye), they accidentally set off several cursed artifacts inside Scrooge’s garage. Although pushed to the limits of his patience when the nephews unleash a golden dragon capable of eating the contents of Scrooge’s money bin, he couldn’t be happier to see the chaos his nephews can cause, and invites them on his expedition to find the lost city under the sea.
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The second half of the hour, separated by a version of the DuckTales theme sung by Felicia Barton, Scrooge and the nephews are well on their way to finding Atlantis with pilot Lainchpad McQuack (Beck Bennett) in tow. The downside: he’s being tailed by Scrooge’s all-purpose rival, Flintheart Glomgold (Craig Ferguson). Flintheart has inadvertently hired Donald Duck as a sailor in his attempts to beat Scrooge to the Lost Jewel of Atlantis. Amidst the attempts to make it out of the undersea city alive with the treasure, Scrooge and Donald re-ignite some of their old animosities, as the nephews, Dewey in particular; begin to uncover the reasons of their family’s falling out. It all naturally comes together in a place where Donald and his nephews are invited to live with Uncle Scrooge in his mansion, setting the stage for episodes to come.

With this new series, Disney once again shows that it’s willing to bet the farm on DuckTales, given that the series has already been approved for two seasons, and the hour-long pilot alone aired 24 hours straight on its premiere date of August 12th, but the difference between this and the original series is night and day: Instead of an emphasis on thrilling adventure, it relies on the exact same witty and self-referential humor as Disney XD’s other action comedies. It’s all too telling that the duck-ex-machina comes in the form of some randomly placed magic dragon, while the original’s lengthy pilot had enough time to include mystical elements alongside Flintheart and the Beagle Boys. While it has an overall art-style that is reminiscent of Barks’ original comics, it relies too heavily on the heavily drastic and overly angular redesigns of many of the Ducktales standards. It’s a little jarring to see an obese, almost spherical version of Flintheart Glomgold…that sounds exactly like that guy who used to be on Late Night, just as much as it is to hear the voices of former SNL alums as Donald Duck’s nephews. But all these bells and whistles are just that. A series like this can only be judged by the longevity it will inevitably have.  

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