By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
Voltron: Defender of the Universe was one of those animated series from the 80’s I absolutely adored along with Robotech. The American producers took the Japanese animated material and successfully adapted them for a North American audience. In both, the heroes have to battle against alien invaders. While Voltron is getting one seriously massive update by DreamWorks to become Voltron: Legendary Defender, which is now on Netflix. This animation company took approximately five years since acquiring Classic Media’s catalogue of titles (which includes Casper and Where’s Waldo?, to name a few) to pump this reboot out. And this amount of time waiting is reasonable to fans in bringing back a love which clearly calls back to other shows like Mobile Suit Gundam.
Any development of the rumoured Robotech live-action movie is languishing. Talks began in 2008 with no word on commitments. According to Harmony Gold’s Kevin McKeever, the Sony Films deal is not finalized.
Voltron certainly saved the day. This reboot is executive produced Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos (better known for their work on Avatar: The Legend of Korra), and they used the same production team to create the style in this series. I am quite enjoying it and binge watched it at least three times since its debut. To improve on what the original series did not do, the producers had a series bible properly developed to outline the development for each of the characters.Pidge gets the most love out. Very rarely do I find myself cheering and I felt like a kid again watching Voltron duke it out with its flaming sword! Lightsaber ho! (yeah, I know, wrong series).