Netflix's The Cuphead Show! wastes its video game inspiration, though it's perfectly "fine"

Mashable

"It's hard to tell if the glass is half-full or half-empty when it comes to The Cuphead Show!" says Alison Foreman of the Netflix adaptation of the Cuphead video game. "On the one hand, Netflix's new animated series shamelessly wastes its video game inspiration — shoehorning iconic characters Cuphead and Mugman into a bland universe that could've been occupied by anyone or anything. On the other hand, the predictable program is so unimpeachably 'fine' that seriously objecting to it feels like an equally silly misuse of energy. So what if some kid doesn't get why this cartoon is sort of a bummer? Let them live." Foreman adds: "Ultimately, The Cuphead Show! makes the same mistake as other misguided Netflix adaptations: it fails to grasp what made the thing that prompted its very existence good (see Cowboy Bebop.) For this particular series, that doesn't mean game over."

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• The Cuphead Show! has perfected the original video game: "It might sound complicated – a cartoon based on a game based on a different cartoon – but go along with it. Because The Cuphead Show! feels like Cuphead reaching its most perfect form," says Stuart Heritage, adding: "All in all, The Cuphead Show! is an overwhelming success. It’s fast and funny and knowing, and you almost certainly won’t die 188 times watching it. What’s not to like?"
• The Cuphead Show! is simply not funny: It's a "weak-tea homage," says Kambole Campbell. "The Cuphead Show! makes more sense as an animated show directed at children because its jokes require little in the way of thought," says Campbell. "There are some fun visual tricks like Kettle having a Kettle-shaped skeleton, or musical moments with King Dice’s 'Minnie the Moocher'-style introductory number, or one real standout set-piece where Devil tries and fail to paint a fence in a sequence riffing on Fantasia. But these moments are isolated, and the rest of its hyperactive episodes feel a little forgettable otherwise." 
• Not only is The Cuphead Show! a loving expansion its source material, but it’s also a family-friendly homage to an era of animation that has too often been forgotten: "Anyone of any age can watch The Cuphead Show! and have a great time," says Kayla Cobb. "During a TV era that thrives on specialty shows for every person, that sense of universal enjoyment is high praise."
• The Cuphead Show! used the "daunting' and "expensive" stereoscopic rotary animation process: “It’s something that’s been dormant for decades, and to get to do things like that as somebody who works in animation (now), we savor every moment of it,” said The Cuphead Show! art director Andrea Fernandez of bringing the vintage animation to Netflix via 2D animation tracked over a 3D-sculpted miniature background. “It’s painstaking and it’s expensive; that’s why it’s not done anymore,” explained executive producer Dave Wasson. “But it’s such a signature of those 1930s cartoons. The Fleischers invented this process. (We said), ‘If we’re doing a 1930s show, it has to have that.’”
• Cuphead video game developers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer conducted extensive interviews before landing on Dave Wasson to lead The Cuphead Show!: The brothers instantly knew Wasson and co-executive producer Cosmo Segurson would be able to translate their game for TV: “We knew that was going to be the key, that we could find talented people that understood the same kind of language, talking about these early cartoons,” Chad Moldenhauer says. “We interviewed a lot of people, and Dave and Cosmo stood out as the perfect team, where it got to a point where we knew they knew how to roll with it without needing much input.” Before The Cuphead Show!, Wasson was known for creating Time Squad for Cartoon Network and working on Mickey Mouse shorts for Disney. Wasson says the "rubber hose" style of animation is defined by characters who lack shoulders and knees. “That animation style is really no-holds barred,” Wasson says. “It’s real animation, the backgrounds are all hand-made watercolors. So we basically had to figure out how to digitally pull that off.”
• Wasson had to embrace modern technology of Toon Boom Harmony to create a 1930s look on a modern TV schedule and budget: “Basically, inside Harmony you can build a two-dimensional rig for a character, but if you use the rigs as they are, they can look a lot like puppets," says Wasson. "They don’t really feel like traditional 2D animation. But if you add hundreds of very specific individual drawings to each frame, you can ‘trick’ the system into making it look like traditional hand-drawn animation.”
• Wasson, who isn't a gamer, recalls the "huge splash" Cuphead had on the animation community: "It really looks like if they had video games in the 1930s, that’s what one would’ve looked like," he says. "So yeah, not really knowing anything about gaming. I was super aware of Cuphead when it came out. And was a big fan of the animation. I probably checked out the whole thing on YouTube before without ever having to play the game, because it’s way too hard for me. When I heard that there was interest in making a show. I was like, man, I got to figure out how to get involved in this thing."
• The Cuphead Show!'s infectious theme song almost didn't get approved: “There was a lot of discussion about do we even really need an intro on a streaming service where a lot of people skip intros?” says Wasson. “I was like … my kids, if they’re watching a show, and they really love the intro, they don’t skip it. I think if we make this thing right, this could be something that everybody really loves. And then we (Wasson and co-executive producer Cosmo Segurson) wrote the song. They were like, Well make it 15 seconds long. And we wrote a song that was 45 seconds long. We were like, We can’t! We shortened it a little bit. We can’t be shorter than 45 seconds long! It has to be that.”