To the misfortune of everyone’s eyes and ears, a trailer for The CW’s failed live-action Powerpuff Girls reboot has found its way online – and suffice to say, it’s very easy to see why the series was binned before it could properly get off the ground.
RELATED: The CW Officially Axes Live-Action ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ Reboot
For those either unaware or who have fully repressed their memories of the project, Powerpuff was set to deliver a ‘mature’ re-imagining of Craig McCracken’s original IP, therein revealing that the girls were real-life superhumans whose childhood exploits had been milked for fame and profit by their abusive creator, Professor Utonium.
However, after a mission goes awry and results in the death of Mojo Jojo – who is revealed to be not a monkey, as the cartoon is said to be an in-universe animated adaptation of the girls’ actual adventures, but rather Professor Utonium’s old lab partner – the girls retire from the skies and proceed to go their own way: Blossom tries to live a ‘normal life’, Bubbles becomes a washed-up celebrity trying to cash in on her name, and Buttercup is a lesbian who turned to a life of fighting fires to prove herself a ‘real hero’.
Penned by Jennifer’s Body scribe Diablo Cody and starring Chloe Bennett (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D) as Blossom, Dove Cameron (Disney’s Descendants) as Bubbles, newcomer Yana Perault as Buttercup, and Donald Faison (Scrubs) as Professor Utonium, the series was originally announced as in-production in 2021 but ultimately cancelled following roughly two-years of development hell.
And with the 2023 news of its canning, that was the last audiences would hear of the ill-fated series.
RELATED: Alleged Script Leak From The CW’s The Powerpuff Girls Depicts Them As Broken Adults
Or so they thought.
On the morning of March 6th, the aptly-named Lost Media Busters group of media archivists revealed that they had not only acquired a copy of Powerpuff‘s main trailer, but that they had also made it available for viewing to the general public.
And while their efforts should certainly be applauded, after viewing it, one almost wishes that they had let this one lie, because the brief three-minute preview shows by and large one of the worst things to hit the internet in recent years.
Featuring all the worst ‘modern writing’ tropes you can imagine, from the girls having the most generic CW personalities ever (Blossom is neurotic, Blossom is a ditzy-party girl who drinks too much, and Buttercup is oh-so-rebellious and edgy!) to the most tired and uninspired one-liners ever put to paper (at one point, Buttercup can be heard refusing to wear ostensibly her green ‘superhero outfit’ on the grounds that it’s “gender-normative and ass ugly”), the trailer perfectly encapsulates the ‘detached irony-slash-audience subversion’ mindset that has currently infected pretty much every type of popular entertainment.
In fact, if this trailer has any redeeming qualities, it’s that after watching it, you’ll definitely be able to understand why this was canned in favor of three more seasons of Superman & Lois
At current, Warner Bros. appears to be copyright-striking every upload of the trailer made to such popular social media sites as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
As such, anyone wishing to view it will have to do a little digging of their own – though throwing the term ‘powerpuff trailer’ into any given search bar should probably return a recent upload, as the internet is not a place that lets such discoveries fade into obscurity.
(Oh, wait, did we drop something?)
NEXT: New Set Photos Give First Look At The CW’s Live-Action Powerpuff Girls Series