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Everyone hating on the hyper-campy live-action 'Powerpuff Girls' trailer is dead wrong

The CW

Yana Perrault, Chloe Bennet, & Dove Cameron in the unaired 'Powerpuff' pilot for The CW

Where has all the media literacy gone??

rachelkiley

The trailer for the ill-fated live-action take on The Powerpuff Girls unexpectedly leaked online late Wednesday night — and no matter what you hear anybody else say, it’s perfect.

A pilot was ordered by The CW back in 2021, with Maggie Kiley (Riverdale, Scream Queens) brought on to direct. Scripted by Diablo Cody and Heather Regnier, the story begins after the popular superheroes left their lives of fighting crime behind. Blossom (Chloe Bennet) suffers from panic attacks brought about by her former life, Bubbles (Dove Cameron) is still seeking the fame and attention she lost, and Buttercup (Yana Perrault) is pursuing a career fighting fires (and she’s queer).

After their "father," Professor X (Donald Faison), asks them to return to Townsville, something inevitably goes terribly wrong, leaving them to decide whether they’re willing and able to pick up the mantle of becoming the Powerpuff Girls once again.

When images from the set and the pilot script itself leaked online, people were merciless — absolutely ripping it apart. And now that the trailer has hit the internet, the same thing is happening all over again.

"And once again the day is saved," the top comment on YouTube read before the video was struck down with a copyright claim. "Thanks to whoever decided to cancel this."

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In the words of a wise friend who texted me about the trailer this morning: "You’re all just too stupid to recognize camp."

Because that’s exactly what the Powerpuff trailer is — absolutely perfect camp. It’s giving D.E.B.S., it’s giving Josie and the Pussycats, it’s giving low budget Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). It has the exact kind of vibe that sparks articles calling it an "misunderstood" and "an enduring cult classic" a decade after it flops.

"I didn’t want to bring this up yet, but I have reason to believe the darkness may be returning," Professor X casually announces over a family dinner, right before the trailer cuts to a small child plotting chaos and destruction.

The jokes are goofy and over the top, with some serious undertones (all of which was equally obvious in the script). It mimics the cartoon in ways that look so silly in live-action, and my god, people, that’s the point. Have we gotten so accustomed to gritty reboots that we don’t even recognize satire when it smacks us upside the head with Chemical X?

In this world, the Powerpuff Girls are wildly famous, even to the point of having their own cartoon series and merchandise lines. It looks as though it’s marrying the tone of the original kids’ show with the reality of what being a childhood superhero would be, and anyone who thinks Diablo Cody of all people would not have been able to pull that off in a long-running series clearly learned nothing from Jennifer’s Body.

The era of streaming has resulted in series that are essentially long movies with little room for the exploration or growth that gave us so many beloved characters, spin-offs, and shows that needed a bit of time to find their footing. The CW was arguably the last bastion of network TV aimed at teens and 20somethings before it was bought by Nextstar and underwent a programming shift, around the same time Powerpuff was yanked to be "reworked" before quietly disappearing altogether.

And quite frankly, it’s an absolute tragedy that we’ll never get to see what this show could have become. Because it sure looks like it would have been a whole lot of fun — and sometimes, that’s all a show needs to be.

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