Shadow Chronicles Review and Commentary Part I

The Robotech sequel was put into production over three years ago. Why it took so long, I have no guess. The Sentinels fell apart in an economic collapse between the dollar and the yen. What plagued Shadow Chronicles? Distribution deals and Harmony Gold. Well, that is my guess.

As for the wait, I had anticipated the release of Shadow Chronicles like everyone else. I don’t think I took the release delays as hard as some other Robotech bloggers. I figured we’d eventually get it and left it at that. I think I took a passive approach to those delays as I didn’t want my anticipation to impact the perception I would have of the feature when I saw it. Some may understand what I call “the anticipation syndrome” of movies. Does anyone recall the American Godzilla feature film? We saw teaser trailers 18 months before the release. With such an early promotion campaign, the film collapsed under its own weight of hype and anticipation. The audience was geared up for the film so long that they wanted something that would blow the Japanese versions out of the water. And we know how that ended. The film tanked and was thrown in the classification of “worst films of our generation”—riddled with clichés and bad story movement. I’m surprised the Japanese didn’t attack us again just for the slaughter of their iconic character and story.

As for my opinion on the Shadow Chronicles delays, I think this most likely was Harmony Gold’s fault. From recent interviews and articles, it appears that Harmony Gold doesn’t exactly rush their negotiations to do anything. They’re the grannies of deal making. Palladium is suffering the same fate with wanting to release a TSC version of the role-playing game. We can only hope that the July-ish release date of a revamped RPG for Robotech will hold true. If Harmony Gold doesn’t work deals a bit faster, the fans may abandon any future projects or merchandising. You can sustain fans for future releases but you can’t riddle them with delays and deception. The Star Wars prequels had gripped fans with anticipation for Episodes I, II and III but we knew we would get them in 1999, 2002 and 2005. If George Lucas had delayed Episode III to 2006, would he have kept the fans eager and craving Star Wars? Yes, of course. But if he delayed it again to 2007 because he couldn’t find a distributor and then delayed it again to 2008 because he couldn’t decide if he wanted it to be a DVD release or theatrical release, then the fans would have been outraged and interest would have faded. What Robotech needs is a strict release schedule. And do everything to hit those marks this side of a comet smashing into North America. Then, slowly release footage and mecha designs to wet our appetites. One great example of just giving enough details without giving too much away was the Star Wars Insider’s content of the prequels. Since Lucasfilm guarded things so well, gave tiny tid-bits and never strayed from those release dates, the fans flocked by the millions to local theaters.

With the official word that a sequel to the sequel is in production, the first thing that popped into my head was, “so we’ll see this feature sometime in 2009 or 2010. Now that I think about it…2009 would be a great release date! Harmony Gold could use the tie in to the year the Zentraedi arrived. It would be grand….

Oh well, perhaps I should focus some commentary to the actual production of The Shadow Chronicles…. Stay tuned tomorrow for Part II.