Nostalgia For the 2000s?

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty great. I spent time with one of my best friends this weekend, watching Anime, and YouTube videos of old commercials that aired on YTV in the '90s. And because I've known my friend for over twenty years, I got to thinking about the 2000s and realized that I have alot of nostalgia for that decade. So let's get into it.

For the last ten years nostalgia for the '80s and '90s have been a major thing with shows like The Goldbergs and movies like Goosebumps (2015), and has come to a crescendo with season 3 of Star Trek: Picard, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always, and That '90s Show. I'm a '90s kid as all of my earliest memories come from the early '90s and alot of my favourite music, movies, TV shows, comic books, novels, and video games come from the '90s as well, but I have a bit of a soft spot for the 2000s, when I was in middle school, high school, and college, as well. 

Putting aside all of the bad stuff that happened in the 2000s, like 9/11 and things like school shootings, the 2000s was the first step in the creation of the modern world in terms of geek culture, and just entertainment in general. The 2000s saw the rise of superhero and comic book based movies being profitable for the first time, even though superhero movies had been around since the movie serials of the 1940s and TV had adapted comic books since the dawn of Television in the '50s. Movies like X-Men (2000), Spider-Man (2002), Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and Iron Man (2008) were made possible because filmmaking technology had slowly been advancing since the early '90s when Steven Spielberg and Industrial Light & Magic were developing the computer technology required for Jurassic Park (1993). 

At the same time Star Wars was really coming into its own as a franchise. While the prequels ended in 2005 with the release of Revenge of the Sith, the writers, comic book artists, and video game developers were finally able to tell stories set in the prequel era, an era of the Star Wars timeline that had been closed to Expanded Universe creators due to George Lucas getting ready to make the movies in the '90s. Sure these stories had to take place in between the movies, and initially weren't allowed to tackle the Clone Wars since the conflict was going to start in Episode II, but a whole new setting had been opened up to not only the writers and artists telling these stories but to us, the fans, as well. While I don't care for The New Jedi Order (1999-2004) as much as other people do, some of my favourite Star Wars novels like Cloak of Deception (2001), Labyrinth of Evil (2005), Outbound Flight (2006), and Death Star (2007), which takes place between Episode III and Episode IV, were all published in the 2000s.

On top of that you had the franchise expanding into Television for the first time since it had dabbled in it with Droids and Ewoks in the '80s, with two shows that focused on the Clone Wars between Episode II and Episode III. The first was a micro-series called Star Wars: Clone Wars with episodes that functioned as interstitial between standard cartoons and aired from 2003 to 2005. It was a 2-D animated series created and produced by Genndy Tartakovsky, who had produced shows such as Samurai Jack (2001-2004), and The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005). The second was a 3-D animated series called Star Wars: The Clone Wars which aired from 2008 until 2013 before returning for a sixth season on Netflix in 2014 and again for a seventh season which aired on Disney+ in 2020. Developed by Dave Filoni, The Clone Wars was basically the blueprint for what Star Wars would be on Television, in both animation and live-action, for many years to come. Without the prequels and all of the novels, comic books, and video games that came out in the 2000s, Star Wars probably wouldn't exist the way it does today.

Even though Star Trek was still going in the 2000s, its popularity had diminished among casual fans and general audiences, and shows like Voyager didn't do as well in the ratings as The Next Generation had during its first run syndication from 1987-1994. Despite that though I honestly really enjoyed Enterprise (2001-2004). Especially the first couple of seasons, which focused on the exploration aspect of Star Trek which is the big reason many people are fans of the franchise. 

Video games got a huge boost in the 2000s as well. While the GameCube further developed what the N64 had started with 3-D graphics, both the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox expanded video game console storytelling capabilities with Sci-Fi epics such as Halo, which started in 2001, and Mass Effect, which started in 2007. In fact some of my most cherished video game memories happened in the 2000s when I played against Brad on Halo for the Xbox, on top of playing against other friends on the N64.

As for comic books, Marvel started to get more exposure thanks to the movies coming out in the 2000s and DC was putting out some really strong stories. I wasn't reading Marvel Comics in the 2000s, but my love of the larger DC Universe, outside of Batman, started here with random issues of Superman, The Flash, and JLA. But I gained deeper love for the Bat Family characters such as Nightwing, Robin, Oracle, and Batgirl during Grant Morrison's original 2006 to 2010 run on Batman and the post-Final Crisis shuffle of characters that happened in 2009. 

Outside of geek culture though, many other TV shows and movies came out that were extremely popular. Including shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001-2014), Radio Free Roscoe (2003-2005), and renegadepress.com (2004-2008), which I talked about last week. It was also the age of the Disney Channel Original Movie, and many Nickelodeon comedies like Zoey 101, ICarly, and Victorious among others.

This was also the age where people really started to understand how movies were made thanks to the advent of the DVD in the late '90s and the studios starting to release movies on the format, complete with indepth bonus features, including behind the scenes documentaries and commentaries where people could listen to the people who made the movie talk about said movie while you watch the movie. I really feel that had VHS not taken a backseat to DVD, and then Blu-ray later on, not as many people would be major film fans today, since very few people could afford Laserdiscs, which contained such bonus features long before DVDs were invented, and VHS just didn't have the capacity to have too many bonus features without putting out Deluxe Edition tapes or accompanying bonus tapes.

For me personally though, the 2000s was about making friends and growing up as a person. Some of my closest friends today were made when we were all in high school together. And while we're all adults now, when we get back together, we're just as silly now as we were back then. And that is an extremely rare thing. 

That's gonna be it for me for tonight. I barely scratched the surface of what I love about the 2000s, but this is what I wanted to talk about today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the 2003 sequel to The Fast & the Furious (2001), 2 Fast 2 Furious. So until then have a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.