Powerpuff Girls: From Small Screen to Big Screen
Dedicated fans of Cartoon Network's top animated show The Powerpuff Girls don't have to be told how the three little waifs got their unusual powers. All Powerpuff fans know that, when Professor Utonium first cooked up the girls in his Townsville laboratory, he wasn't trying to give them superpowers. The good professor only wanted to create the perfect little girl. You know, sugar and spice and everything nice. But along came the professor's mischievous monkey lab assistant, Jojo, who knocked a dose of Chemical X into the mix and puff! The Powerpuff Girls were born! All of this is compactly depicted in the opening title sequence of the new Powerpuff Girls feature-length movie. So, if you're not a diehard fan, fear not. The opening titles will bring you up to speed in about two minutes.
There's More to This Story
But back to the story. After Professor Utonium created the girls, he discovered that they had incredible powers such as laser beam eyes, superhuman strength and the ability to fly at the speed of light, but they weren't superheroes -- yet. They were just cute little girls with incredible powers. Did I say cute? I'd better add the word tough and even more appropriate, bizarre. Then something happened in their lives to change them just like it changed most of us -- Kindergarten. And, as you'll find out in the feature, the girls were never the same after that.
Creator and director Craig McCracken explains how the story evolved, "I realize there are a lot of people out there that only know Powerpuff from the shorts they've seen. So, I wanted to introduce the concept to new audiences, as well as give our fans something that they can get out of it. So, we came up with the idea to tell the story about what happened in the girls' lives to make them decide to become heroes as opposed to just another adventure. The girls were born with their powers, but they weren't superheroes then. They were just kids with powers. The story is about the events that happened to make them decide to save the day."
The Powerpuff Girls are a unique combo of tough and cute. All images © AOL Time Warner.
But, what fans and general audiences alike do not know is what made The Powerpuff Girls -- Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup -- become superheroes, the loyal protectors of Townsville. That is the point of The Powerpuff Girls, Movie. Well, actually, that's the point of the story. The point of the movie, of course, is to make money for AOL Time Warner by leap-frogging off the TV series and inducing young fans and old ones alike to bring mom and dad and whoever with them to the theater.
"There's only so much of a story you can tell in eleven to twenty-two minutes," McCracken adds. "I've always wanted to explore the possibilities of a feature-length format, where you can really sink your teeth into a good story and tell it the way you really want to tell it. We'd been cutting our teeth on the television show and learned a lot of tricks, and we were eager to branch out onto the big screen."
History Lesson Time
The Powerpuff Girls made its debut as a short on Cartoon Network in 1995 as part of the World Premiere Toons project and quickly became an audience favorite. But the actual creation of The Powerpuff Girls occurred a couple of years before when McCracken made a student film entitled, The Whoopass Girls. "It was my second year of film at Cal Arts," McCracken explains. "I knew I wanted to do the hero genre, but I didn't really have a character cast yet as a hero. And I just drew these little girls one afternoon. And I went, 'That's great! They're going to make better heroes than any guy in a cape or whatever.' When I finished my student film, Spike and Mike paid to have it colored, and then they aired it in the Festival of Animation (1994). So I had a real nice demo reel. And I took that to Hanna-Barbera and said I wanted to make this into a show."
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The Mayor's "usually" headless secretary, Ms. Sara Bellum, was being visible entirely with her face being shown on screen for the first time in the new show, beginning with the three-hour six-part made-for-TV movie, is becoming one of the most noticeable differences in the new show.
Craig McCracken & Company, the staff who worked on Cartoon Network's "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", are relocating to Billionfold Studios to meet Butch Hartman & Company, the staff who worked on Nickelodeon's "The Fairly OddParents" by the next year. They are all working on THE POWERPUFF GIRLS X, a Canadian/American co-production being produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation, and will also be the very first Billionfold Inc. production not produced for Nickelodeon. All of the characters from the original PowerPuff Girls and with new characters added - many from the Japanese anime remake and most that don't appear in either of those incarnations at all - will all appear on the new show, whose designs consisted of Danny Phantom-like touches (five digits on each hand and on each foot, heads with faces, and necks), DC Comics-like leg and arm designs, FOP-like eye color designs, Foster's-like eye shape designs, FOP-like ear designs, and FOP-like hair color and hair style designs - with the most notable exception made for those of The PowerPuff Girls, The RowdyRuff Boys and PPG Hotlines, who have the same designs as they were in the original incarnation. In addition, the show will also use backgrounds in vector graphics similar in style to Danny Phantom. The show was being broadcast on Cartoon Network [U.S.] and Teletoon [Canada] by fall 2012, first as a three-hour, six-part made-for-TV feature-length movie, and then later as a full television series on both of those networks around spring 2013.
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