The first pilot for Powerpuff, the CW’s live-action reboot of The Powerpuff Girls, was by all accounts a failure. A second pilot is being made with the same cast and crew in hopes of improving upon the first version and making something worth greenlighting a full series of. Given what the CW’s CEO Mark Pedowitz had to say about the changes, however, there’s reason to be concerned that the new version will be just as bad, if not worse.
Pedowitz’s assessment of the original pilot is that “Tonally, it might’ve felt a little too campy. It didn’t feel as rooted in reality as it might’ve felt.” This may be the only time in history anyone has ever used “rooted in reality” to describe what they want out of The Powerpuff Girls. The cartoon was always campy, parodic and completely absurd — that was part of its appeal. While these strengths were suited for the medium of animation, it’s possible a live-action version could still engage with these qualities that made the original work. Making The Powerpuff Girls realistic, however, makes it no longer The Powerpuff Girls.
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In talking about this, the elephant in the room must be addressed: what appears to be a draft of Diablo Cody and Heather Regnier’s February 9 draft of the old pilot leaked out onto the internet immediately after the repiloting news was announced. While its veracity has not been officially confirmed, the fact that WarnerMedia has been issuing DMCAs against those who’ve posted the script is evidence in favor of this being a genuine leak. The script is a poor attempt at mixing camp elements with gritty realism, but it’s clear that leaning harder on the latter would only make it worse.
The leaked script makes the all-too-common mistake of treating “darkness” and “realism” like they’re the same thing. In this vision of what’s “realistic,” the Professor can’t just be a kindhearted scientist and loving father. So, the script turns him into an abusive, micromanaging stage parent who not only gives his kids no freedom but is responsible for creating all the fantastic monsters they were forced to battle. He’s also responsible for selling off the girls’ likenesses for the cartoon, which the script uncomfortably treats like an embarrassment, in a move that feels weirdly disrespectful to Craig McCracken.
With the Professor turned into the Big Bad, almost all the fun and eccentricity of the cartoon’s original villains has been eliminated. The Rowdyruff Boys no longer have powers, and Mojo Jojo’s been replaced with Mojo, the Professor’s old lab partner whom the narrator flat-out describes as “just a plain, old, boring MAN.” The girls kill this boring man in the opening sequence, giving Blossom PTSD and leading to a Watchmen-esque ban on their crimefighting.
Mojo’s son Jojo goes on to become an alt-right politician. His overcomplicated, evil plots at least have the feverish quality of a classic Powerpuff Girls episode, but the hackneyed attempts at topicality are cringeworthy; an old Powerpuff Girls villain might have also weaponized an army of robot caterpillars, but they wouldn’t have named each individual caterpillar after a different Trump administration official. In one of the draft’s few genuinely fun twists, it turns out Jojo implanted his dead dad’s brain into a monkey. An improved draft could lean into this sort of wacky material, but it sounds like that one redeeming feature might be gone if realism is the goal.
One aspect where some degree of realism might be helpful, however, is the dialogue. Diablo Cody has a very distinctive, decidedly unnaturalistic voice, and while sometimes this works beautifully (she deserved her Oscar win for Juno), it falls flat in the Powerpuff pilot script. Some lines are recycled from older scripts (Bubbles’ “Like, moveon.org” quip is lifted from Jennifer’s Body), and many of the attempts to sound hip are either exceedingly dated or just awkward, and even mean at times.
The problem with the leaked script isn’t that it’s “campy” — it’s that the jokes aren’t funny and the attempts at serious drama rely on turning once-likable characters into jerks for the sake of cheap conflict. One way to solve these problems is to embrace what made the cartoon work and have fun with it in a new format. It is possible to create a good adult Powerpuff Girls, even a good deconstructionist Powerpuff Girls, but the idea should be cleverer than “the Professor is evil and the girls make ‘triggered’ jokes.” After all, fans of the original show won’t be coming to Powerpuff for the realism.
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