

(Click on the image above to read it via PDF)

From CMPA’s recently published Indiescreen magazine (Winter 2018 edition), comes a new interview with Michael Hefferon.

What he says contradicts much of what he said 5 years ago when I spoke with him directly and other interviews over the years.

For example:

The show we eventually created is certainly inspired by the original ReBoot, but I don’t think of it as a ReBoot reboot. Rather, we tried to imagine that ReBoot had never been made, and we were making it for the first time for today’s audience.

Which not only goes against “The ReBoot we all know and love WON’T be tossed aside!” , but acts as a clear indicator that this has ZERO continuation with the original. They’re presenting this series as if it were the very first and only show to have the name “ReBoot”. Not only that but his statement about how “It’s a fine balance between appeasing fans of old, getting networks to agree” was a total farce. Fans of the original aren’t even the slightest factor in TGC’s creation and development. They’re throwing away everything you love about the original into the trash. Not one episode out of any of total of forty seven you watched and enjoyed, has any impact on what is to come in TGC. So folks, you can stop wasting your time crafting theories as to how TGC connects to the original, because it doesn’t. Or what character development over four seasons/47 episodes will be present in this series… it’s all out the window.

YTV also wanted a show with co-viewing appeal, so we wanted to reach kids but also hook parents and older siblings. So we went with a live action–animation hybrid, to expand our audience range by making characters and topics more relatable, because the characters are real kids dealing with the fallout of the cyberverse.

Right, so even though he claims that he “loved” the original, he’s completely forgotten (willfully) that even the early seasons appealed to a wide range of ages. Of course when the show switched to more mature storytelling in Season 3, older fans were even more hooked, but it didn’t alienate any younger newcomers. Justifying the live-action portion as a way to expand the range of the audience, is complete and utter BS.

And while it was an amazing show, I think the biggest thing to come out of it was the CG pipeline—the technology that was used to make it.

So…. that’s the biggest takeaway of the show? Not the unique cast of characters, not the story that didn’t return to “status quo” at the end of the episode, not the character development over multiple story arcs, not the widely creative and elaborate stories….. but the CG-pipeline? The technology behind the show?

In fact, a lot of industry people told me, “Don’t make ReBoot the first project you develop.” But whenever someone tells me not to do something… well, let’s just say I love a challenge.

Arrogant, much?

I’d also like to quote Hefferon from an interview conducted by Arielle Duhaime-Ross for The Verge in 2015:

For me, what is important is kid empowerment. I have a son. My son wants to be Austin (one of the four teens in the new series). He wants to be a Guardian. That’s what I want to do with it. I want to basically inspire kids, and adults. [This is] what the live-action element allowed us to do. We couldn’t do that if [the action] all stayed within a device.

Well folks, here’s the thing… His son doesn’t just want to be Austin, his son IS Austin. I mean it. Literally! Michael Hefferon’s son is named… Austin. Remember that the casting call specifically wanted a Caucasian actor for that role. So with that in mind, take a moment and ponder this question: Is “The Guardian Code” Michael Hefferon’s own personal fan-fic starring a grown-up version of his son? Was this made just to entertain his kid, and in order to get it produced, he attached the ReBoot brand to this, so he could fool everyone (fans of the original and network executives alike) into buying into this re-imagining? If you’re answer is “But isn’t it adorable that he’d make a show just to give his son a strong role-model?”, consider the simple fact that there was nothing stopping him from making a “Austin’s Awesome Adventures” series on it’s own without dragging ReBoot into it.

You can read the full interview in text bellow:





When I took over Rainmaker in November 2012, the first thing fans wanted to know was when ReBoot was going to come back. Of course I was very interested in bringing it back, since I was a huge fan of ReBoot too—I loved that show. It was groundbreaking in a way that’s easy to forget these days. As the first show with 100 per cent computer-generated (CG) animation, it opened up a new world to audiences. And while it was an amazing show, I think the biggest thing to come out of it was the CG pipeline—the technology that was used to make it. ReBoot and Mainframe Entertainment [Rainmaker’s previous incarnation] played a huge part in building the CG animation industry here in Vancouver. I’ve heard endless stories from people about how ReBoot inspired them to go into technology jobs, into IT, even into CG or effects animation.

So the question was: How could we make the new ReBoot as inspiring and innovative as the original? Just moving the story 20-odd years into the future wasn’t going to be enough, because there are plenty of other computer-animated shows now. And I was also aware that some of my predecessors at Rainmaker had tried to bring ReBoot back as a series or a feature film, and none of these projects ever moved forward. In fact, a lot of industry people told me, “Don’t make ReBoot the first project you develop.” But whenever someone tells me not to do something… well, let’s just say I love a challenge.

The show we eventually created is certainly inspired by the original ReBoot, but I don’t think of it as a ReBoot reboot. Rather, we tried to imagine that ReBoot had never been made, and we were making it for the first time for today’s audience. YTV also wanted a show with co-viewing appeal, so we wanted to reach kids but also hook parents and older siblings. So we went with a live action–animation hybrid, to expand our audience range by making characters and topics more relatable, because the characters are real kids dealing with the fallout of the cyberverse.

And, in the spirit of the original, we had to up the animation ante. For ReBoot: The Guardian Code, we’ve done all our modelling, rigging and animation using the animation software Maya. We then bring it into Epic’s game engine, Unreal. I believe we’re the first major series to use a game engine for production. For example (semi-spoiler alert!), Megabyte, the villainous virus from the original ReBoot, is back, and he’s created a sentinel army. We used the artificial intelligence component of the game engine to help us build out that army, so that in a battle scene, there could be 500 sentinels attacking. We could never do that traditionally. The use of AI has allowed us to create massive sets now. We’ve got constant movement. The world of the show is much more expansive, and the impact is much more cinematic.

We’re also creating an immersive mobile VR experience for kids. The gaming engine lets us do that, because now the show’s world exists in a 360 environment. So a kid in their bedroom, using a smartphone and Google Cardboard, can stand in the middle of Megabyte’s fortress, for example. Or be surrounded by cyber-locusts in the middle of a battle sequence. How cool is that for an eight-year-old?

What we wanted to do was blur the lines between linear and game content, since kids today don’t necessarily differentiate between the two; really, they just want to participate in the action. We were so excited to bring some of the things that kids love in games into linear television. And we were also excited to essentially blur the lines between two sectors: animation and gaming.

In Vancouver there is a huge and talented gaming industry, and there is a huge and talented animation and visual effects industry. We’re harnessing both of them, bringing the technical and creative aspects of each together to make something new and special—something that takes advantage of what Vancouver does so well. It’s a testament to the legacy of the original ReBoot that we’ve been able to travel so far on the path it first blazed.

So what are your thoughts on this interview? Is Hefferon a liar, who will say whatever he needs to to get support for the series only to dismiss not only everything the fans have said to him, but the original fanbase entirely? Was Hefferon ever truly a fan of the original? Could a fan have completely disregarded four seasons of a show they claim to “love” so they could make something with live-action tween/teen drama?