She wanted me to destroy humanity.
I think I'll start with you.
They come to life when the sun goes down.
They lurk on building tops.
They survey the teeming masses of New York City from on high.
Who are they?
They're Disney's one and only attempt
at capturing a grim and gritty show.
They're Gargoyles.
But with die-hard legions of fans
expecting ducks, singing princesses, and cartoon mice,
who exactly was this show for?
All of my kind are dead.
And now you two will join them.
In the '90s, Disney's TV efforts included exclusively
squeaky clean projects like "Ducktales," "TaleSpin," "Chip
'N Dale Rescue Rangers," and "Darkwing
Duck," but times were changing.
Things were getting more extreme by the day.
Kids liked grim and gritty vigilantes,
not cutesy talking animals.
This was the era of "X-Men--
the Animated Series" and the animated adventures
of the Dark Knight.
After this revelation, Disney execs
started putting together a show specifically
to compete with Batman.
They started by hiring three pivotal people--
Greg Weisman and the Batman writing
team of Michael Reaves and Brynne Chandler Reaves.
Weisman, a former Disney exec himself, took the project,
which had originally been conceived by a prior regime
of the studio, as a fascicle comedy and completely
reimagined it as a show filled with pathos, action ,
and a highly original premise.
Face me, human, if you dare.
The show centers on the heroic living gargoyle Goliath.
You see, in this world, gargoyles
come alive at night and work as protectors of the castle
they perch upon.
However, after Goliath and his friends
are cursed to stay frozen in stone for 1,000 years,
they wake up in contemporary New York City.
They quickly find that their castle has literally
been hoisted above the skyline by a dastardly businessman,
David Xanatos.
Originally from the Scottish Highlands, Goliath and his crew
befriend an NYPD police officer Elisa Maza,
who teaches about their new home.
Eventually they decide to defend the innocent from sundown to
sun up.
If we're to defend the castle, I suppose
we need to be prepared for whatever's out there.
Weisman, the Reeves, and Batman director Frank Paur
set about turning this show into something
that would hopefully chart a bold new course for Disney
animation.
There's only one problem.
They needed to get it past the chief executive
of the company, Michael Eisner, a Hollywood mogul himself.
Weisman and company constructed a pitch video and sent it off.
Eisner saw the vision of the show
and thought the project would be a bold and dynamic way
to distinguish Disney in an ever crowded marketplace.
The show was picked up with an order of 13 episodes,
but despite Eisner's signoff, the show
was bumping against an army of execs and standards
and practices people.
Could a Disney show feature gothic visuals,
an adult human POV character, guns, and monstrous creatures
of the night.
This just wasn't what Disney did.
Yo, taxi.
[GASPING]
[TIRES SCREECHING]
Looks like we walk.
Weisman and company were so dead set
on making "Gargoyles" something to remember they even went
so far as to incorporate curse words into the scripts
for episodes to attempt to distance themselves
from the traditional Disney image.
In the episode, "Awakening--
Part Two," David Xanatos says--
Pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into hell.
This might seem tame by today's standards,
but back then, this was further than any Disney
product had ever gone before.
Everything was working as the creatives had hoped.
The change in tone, the violence, and the brooding
atmosphere of the show was connecting
with children and adults.
Again in a divergence from the standard of the day,
"Gargoyles'" opening five episodes are all a serialized
storytelling of their origins, coming to modern day,
and their first conflicts with the contemporary world.
It's a freaking monster!
Get him!
[YELLING]
Hey, what are you doing?
The first season did so well, in fact,
that it was greenlit for a second season encompassing
a gargantuan order of 52 episodes.
In order to reflect this shift in scale,
the 13th episode of season one titled
"Reawakening" features Goliath altering his worldview
and making a choice to be more proactive in his efforts
to help people.
He and the rest of the gargoyles are no longer
going to sit back and wait for bad things to happen.
They're going to actively seek out people who need their help.
From this day forward, we protect all who live here,
human and gargoyle alike.
This led to an era that the fans have dubbed The Gargoyles World
Tour where for a bulk of season two
the stories feature the gargoyles traveling the world,
learning about different cultures
and meeting new antagonists and supporting characters.
Many of the episodes for season two were sequential in nature.
The show worked diligently to treat the audience
with respect.
It constructed carefully plotted character arcs
that would play out over many episodes,
and this proved to be the first faltering of the show.
Things began to get a little rocky.
"Gargoyles" was airing opposite the new kid
on the block, "Power Rangers."
There was just no competition.
"Power Rangers" was unstoppable.
As if that wasn't enough to fight off as they move deeper
into the second season and the show
grew more and more complex, many of their episodes
were preempted by breaking news coverage of the OJ Simpson
trial.
This caused the previously mentioned world tour arc,
which was only supposed to last a few weeks in actual air time,
to literally take six months to come
to completion, something the fans were quickly
growing tired of.
The second strike for gargoyles, according to Greg Weisman,
was the choice to include a--
Previously on "Gargoyles"--
At the beginning of every episode.
The segments literally had the exact opposite effect
they were intended to.
They alienated the viewing audience
who thought the show seemed too complicated and just tuned
out immediately.
And here's where we get the third strike
for our beloved stone monster crime fighters.
In 1997, Disney bought ABC, and with that,
many of the Disney execs and loyalists
moved on to work at DreamWorks.
So when it came time to do a third season,
many of the new ABC execs that were now en charge of the most
un-Disney show ever produced thought
that Greg Weisman was just biding his time
until a job at DreamWorks opened up.
I suppose you're waiting to be forgiven.
I'll wait as long as it takes.
Believe it or not, they actually offered Greg Weisman
a job on season three of the show but with a demotion.
They would only let him be a story
editor not primary producer on the project.
As such, the show was a wildly different tone,
objectively worse animation and a new title, "Gargoyles--
The Goliath Chronicles."
Every time I think we have arrived at a safe and stable
life, it is abruptly torn away.
The first episode of this third season titled "The Journey"
is actually very well thought of in "Gargoyles" circles.
The episode written by Greg Weisman--
and his one and only time getting screen credit
for writing--
circles on the public revelation that the gargoyles are alive.
It also introduces the central running bad guys
over the season, the Quarrymen, a group of hooded anti gargoyle
racists.
The climax of this episode is so well respected
that many consider it to be the canonical ending to the show.
I have been waiting to arrive at some kind of final destination,
but life is about the discoveries
made on the journey itself.
For the rest of season three, the show
diverges from almost everything that made
it great in the first place.
Each episode begins with an opening monologue from Goliath
now where he basically tells you the moral of the story you're
about to watch.
The human passion for money is an emotion
that gargoyles do not understand.
Many of the beloved characters from the season's past
are just not present, and the show
switches to a villain of the week approach.
With fans losing interest, the show
was canceled after the conclusion of its season three
finale.
"Gargoyles" stands as something wholly original
in the Disney catalog.
Who was it for?
Not Disney fans of the day but instead legions
of modern day animation devotees.
While "Gargoyles" was basically the odd one
out for much of its life, the show
has garnered a massive devotion from almost two generations
of fans so much so in fact that it's been brought back
multiple times in comic book form for content
renewing adventures, usually with Greg Weisman at the helm.
The longevity that "Gargoyles" has sustained
serves as tangible proof that when creative people
put their heads together and attempt
to make something unique despite the odds being
stacked against them, sometimes the good guys really do win.
Well, that's all we have for this episode.
What do you think?
Will we ever get a new "Gargoyles" show?
Comment down below.
And as always, please like and subscribe for more videos
just like this.