Scoob!, the first full-length CG-animated Scooby-Doo feature film to receive a theatrical release, is a chance for the iconic Hanna-Barbera characters to be animated “like no one’s ever seen,” according to the film’s director, Tony Cervone.
Joined by producer Pam Coats, Cervone recently presented footage from Scoob! to IGN and other press outlets invited to the movie’s edit bay. Cervone, who has been working on Scooby-Doo projects since 2008, called Scoob! “a great opportunity to make a big, big fun movie, and animate it in a way that that’s never ever been done before.”
In Scoob!, we first meet a young and very shy Shaggy (Iain Armitage) alone on the beach. He encounters a stray dog that can talk to him, and he names him Scooby-Dooby-Doo after the snacks Shaggy was eating at the time. (They also bond over sandwiches.) Later, they run into a young Daphne (Mckenna Grace), Fred (Pierce Gagnon) and Velma (Ariana Greenblatt) on Halloween where they team up to get Shaggy and Scooby’s candy back from a haunted house. Years later, the gang is trying to turn their mystery-solving hobby into a real job.
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It’s been previously reported that Scoob! aims to kick-off a possible interconnected Hanna-Barbera film universe. Cervone and Coats said that if Scoob! does well then fans might get to see more characters down the line, but that there are already quite a few notable Hanna-Barbera icons in this film. For example, the movie includes an appearance by Captain Caveman (voiced by Tracy Morgan), though we didn’t get to see any footage featuring him.
There’s also Blue Falcon, the cartoon superhero (voiced by Mark Wahlberg) who young Shaggy has a shrine to in his childhood room. However, this version of Blue Falcon is the son of the one fans are familiar with, and he’s having a bit of a crisis in terms of getting the recognition that his father had. When he appears, it’s with great fanfare, and his Dad’s robot dog companion Dynomutt (voiced by Ken Jeong) isn’t very impressed.
We also get a grownup version of Dee Dee Skyes (voiced by Kiersey Clemons), who is working on Blue Falcon’s ship, the Falcon Fury. Cervone described the interior of the ship as “so beyond the state of the art that there isn’t a single button or switch in the entire [ship]. Everything is a working surface. Everything’s holographic, it’s actually manned by a holographic crew working [with] other holograms. We took a lot of inspiration from super luxury yachts. And so this is all cool and super-futuristic.”
“And if [the Falcon Fury] is an Apple store, that’s the inside of an old PC,” he said, pointing to a drawing of the villainous Dick Dastardly’s steampunk-style ship. The Jason Isaacs-voiced Dick Dastardly also has his own dog buddy, Muttley (who has the best laugh ever). Cervone said the triple pairing of man and dog was no accident, comparing them to the three stages of a marriage. Shaggy and Scooby are a new relationship where everything is about love, Blue Falcon and Dynomutt are the maintenance stage, and Dastardly and Muttley are the end, where things are not so great.
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Scoob! marks the first time we’re going to see this much of the mystery-solving gang in 3D animation. Changing things from 2D to 3D presented a lot of challenges. “The design [was] whatever you wanted it to be at that angle,” Cervone said of the original 2D animation. “That was the demand of the day.” He said that an old Hanna-Barbera artist told him that it was hard to animate Scooby-Doo because “the profile of Scooby-Doo and the front view of Scooby-Doo are two different dogs, and the three-quarter is maybe somewhere in the middle, but probably not.” He told us that he had to draw the character “12 billion times in 2D so I understand that we get to 3D and it’s the same thing. … He’s the ultimate movie star, he only looks super good [at certain angles].
Though there were some changes in the classic characters’ looks, there is something about the gang that is so familiar, it never feels jarring. Even the young versions in Halloween costumes were instantly recognizable. You know Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne, visually, the way you know Batman or Spider-Man, even when the style slightly changes. They’re iconic. A different animation style doesn’t take away from that. This CG-animated version still feels like Scooby-Doo. Shaggy still walks like he’s got very loose joints. Velma still squints the way she did before. Also, unlike some of the originals, they have whites in their eyes.
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In the war room where the concept art was, and in the edit bay itself, there were posters of characters such as Grape Ape, though he didn’t ultimately make the cut. Cervone and Coats said we could see them in future movies if they happen, but that there just wasn’t room this time around. The Mystery Inc. gang is the emotional core of the film so the filmmakers said the audience really needs to spend time with them and fall in love with them in order to make the movie work.
That said, Coats said fans should keep a sharp eye out as there are over 100 Easter eggs in the film so far, including a certain Hanna-Barbera pet store fans will recognize. Cervone said that there aren’t any randomly-named streets, and that many of the Easter eggs pay tribute to the original Scooby-Doo creators and artists, many of whom have passed on. There will be cameos here, something that Scooby-Doo has a history with.
Cervone added that he also sees his film as a love letter to Southern California, with the movie opening on Venice Beach. “As a longtime L.A. resident…I want L.A. to be represented. It very much is, kind of the way Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was set in New York,” he said.
Scoob! opens in theaters in May.
Source: IGN.com Scoob! Movie Revamps the Classic Characters for CG Animation