#as an aspiring writer every day I wake up and curse the man of action team 10 times before starting my day

[lousyglitch]

The wildest thing about Ben 10 is that it took until 2005 for someone to have the idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of aliens" like this isn't obviously the coolest and most marketable premise for anything ever. Each design is a new toy. A new powerset. Come on.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

The execution has its highs and lows, but the idea??? Game changing. So self-evident that it seems inevitable. If Ben 10 didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

[ladyblueberrymuffin]

And the best part? The reason this idea feels so realized? Because it did not have to come out of thin air.

The concept of a kid turning into heroes is based on Dial H for Hero, an obscure DC property, about a kid who has a dial that turns him into heroes, but they streamlined the idea and changed it to give it it's own identity. A watch is more handy than a dial, and in a world without superheroes, why would there be a superhero watch? Because they're aliens with powerful abilities, not specifically heroes.

Ben travelling the world with his Grandpa in an RV? That is based on an old Filmation Captain Marvel TV show (DC's Captain Marvel, Shazam). It was kinda moralistic, low budget, and didn't become a huge success, but that's kind of proves the value of """bad""" media. This idea was born from here, and it might not exist if Filmation didn't try it.

The point is, instead of just making a Dial H for Hero adaptation, they did their own thing, inspired by that character, and their original project got more popular than the source material.

You don't need to wait till some big corporation loses the right to a property, or you somehow get the rights for wizard books made by an asshole author. I think taking inspiration from things is gonna be demonized now, because we don't wanna be compared to AI, but you are not a mediocrity machine, you're not uploading Ben 10 into your brain to algorythmically spit out jumbled up old episodes, you have the ability to invent, to add your own flair.

A work inspired by something is gonna be more fresh and creative than just a remake or a reboot. Go make the next Ben 10.

The wildest thing about Ben 10 is that it took until 2005 for someone to have the idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of aliens" like this isn't obviously the coolest and most marketable premise for anything ever. Each design is a new toy. A new powerset. Come on.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

The execution has its highs and lows, but the idea??? Game changing. So self-evident that it seems inevitable. If Ben 10 didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.