ThunderCats Fan Recreates Original Series Opening Sequence in Stunning CGI

For a generation of fans, ThunderCats represents a very specific gold standard in the world of animation. The original 1985 animated series has been beloved in the decades since its debut, and have spawned its own sort of multimedia franchise. A new fan-made video from YouTuber Mike Booth takes the love for ThunderCats in a whole new direction, by imagining what the series' opening sequence would look like in CGI. The end result, which you can check out above, is pretty impressive, capturing the energy of the original opening sequence while taking it into a new medium. The CGI for the characters also translates over fairly well, without feeling like the "digital fur technology" used in recent feline-related productions.

"Earlier this year, I thought I'd have a go at learning how to use 3D animation software, really just so I could do some simple effects in my films... but I got a little bit carried away," Booth writes in the video's description. "The ThunderCats have been a love of mine since I can remember and the intro is something I thought would be a fun challenge to recreate and keep my interest while I was learning the software. I've got no plans to make anything else like this... for a few years, at least. I will at some point make a ThunderCats short film, but I'll wait until the software reaches a point where I can film a performance on my camera and just drag and drop it onto my 3D characters."

The canonical future of the ThunderCats franchise has been interesting in recent years, with fans clamoring for some sort of modern-day update on the franchise. This even culminated in an online conspiracy theory that 6 Underground, a Michael Bay/Ryan Reynolds Netflix movie that hit the streaming service last year, was going to secretly be a live-action ThunderCats adaptation.

Earlier this year, fans did get a new incarnation of the ThunderCats franchise, when ThunderCats Roar made its long-awaited debut on Cartoon Network. The animated series has been met with backlash for years, after the character designs took a much more cartoony aesthetic than previous adaptations. The series finally premiered earlier this year, and the whole controversy even earned a parody in an episode of Teen Titans GO!.

What do you think of this CGI take on the ThunderCats intro? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!