I grew up watching the original 1994 Reboot. In fact, I still have episodes of it on my computer that I enjoy watching and that my daughter will watch when she's older. So let's just go ahead and say I'm a fan. I was super excited when I saw that Netflix had picked up Reboot. After all, they've done great things with Voltron and Magic School Bus (2 other shows I grew up watching).
Then I saw that it was going to be live action and you can imagine some disappointment that set in. Especially given they've done perfectly fine with animated series like those mentioned above. What was Netflix thinking? Honestly, if they had stuck with what the original Reboot gave them this would be an entirely different review.
The first episode is about as bad as you can get. It's kind of like if you took a 5 year old, showed them Power Rangers and then gave them computer backgrounds to play with. Record all of it, stick it on TV and you've basically got the first episode of this show. I don't dare even call it Reboot. It's like Power Rangers In Cyberspace.
So why the 6 stars rather than just 1?
Because the second episode introduces Megabyte and we see other aspects of Mainframe as well from the original including Dot's Diner. Episode 10 brings back old characters from the original series and in between you've got little throwbacks from the fortress design to the incompetent minions.
So yes, Netflix did bring back some aspects of the Reboot series that we all fell in love with. Combine these small things with the okay acting (they're teenagers so it's about what you'd expect, honestly) and the interesting CGI usage? Well, you've got yourself a show worth watching when you've watched everything else.
Is it Reboot? No.
Does it have potential? Sure. I would be willing to give Netflix another chance to get things right.
Review of ReBoot: The Guardian Code
