Headscratchers / Scooby-Doo! The Sword and the Scoob

• Am I the only one who feels like the What Could Have Been and Executive Meddling entries are going to be large on this one when someone at the studio talks? Given the film appears to have been pushed fast to make up for the previous movie's delay and multiple writer and director credits, a lot of things don't really add up. For Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island we had Word of God from Tim Sheridan that WB viewed continuity that the old series happened in the past but they retconned the ages to fit the current status quo. References to the modern tv series were small or background to the point we had debates here which continuty they were supposed to be. But we then had Word of God that Maxwell Atoms viewed there was no continuity and he picked and choose what he wanted for Happy Halloween. But here it seems to be all over the map. Daphne's Be Cool mannerisms seem to come and go from scene to scene. Velma jumps from more recent hyper cynic to the previous skeptic but with curiosity. Fred gets his Adaptational Dumbass brought back at times as well. At some points you'd assume Mystery Incorporated was their actual past rather than the original continuity. And in Curse of the 13th Ghost we couldn't even see Scrappy Doo but he was here in the time travel montage. And speaking of that Captain Caveman is there which makes one think he's real, but Barney Rubble and Thundarr the Barbarian are fictional characters? They also wouldn't let Asmodeus or the Cat God get to be called out to be totally real without some skepticism, but Merlin is seemingly made out to be real pretty well. I know this movie was probably in production around the time WB was learning they were getting away from their Turner problems but I'm just not seeing this movie as being exactly what some of these various people who worked on it wanted it to be.
  • As it turns out the first draft of this movie was made years back in an earlier point in the series but was sat on. They revisited it and let Maxwell Atoms script-doctor it up to make it more modern. Explaining a lot of the inconsistant tones and characters. Some parts apparently we're in the original script, others were completely new insertions in the present.
• Hang on: shouldn't Shaggy's genetic relationship to the inhabitants of Norville o'er Morgania prove he can't be Sir Norville's descendant, even if the town's old legend had some basis in fact? The Sir Norville in the story didn't come from Camelot/N-o'er-M; he "appeared" - presumably from elsewhere - during the town's Darkest Hour to save it. He wouldn't share any biological relationship to the locals, or at least not one close enough to let Shaggy's ancestry be traced to that specific town. And the hero from the old story couldn't have stayed there long enough to father an heir among the townsfolk, or else his kid would've become the new monarch by default (probably with Arthur as regent) immediately upon his disappearance. So most likely, Shaggy's mother descends from some non-royal locals who started naming their sons in honor of the town's vanished hero, or perhaps in memory of the town itself, when they left it to emigrate to America. The "heirloom amulet" could've been something that a long-dead ancestor of Shaggy's had made to remind the Norvilles of the family about where their name came from, a story that eventually was forgotten.
  • That assumes that the bit about him just appearing during the Darkest Hour is historically accurate and not part of the myth. Stories can get corrupted and changed over time. It happens. If there was a Sir Norville, he could just be a normal brave knight who got mythologized into a mysterious badass later.
    • Maybe so, but if the legend's content isn't trustworthy on that account, it's definitely not reliable enough to sustain a claim for ownership of the town in court, either.
• So...could Shaggy have actually laid claim to the town if he wanted to? It doesn't seem like there's any proof that the town legend is true, but even if it is, that wouldn't automatically mean that King Arthur's centuries-old decree holds any force of law in the present day.
  • Certainly not, considering how many other royal bloodlines have reigned rightfully over the land in question in the centuries since, whether by force of arms, treaty, or inheritance. That aspect of the story is clearly ahistorical out-of-'verse, and designed to appeal to viewers who don't know and/or care about what's actually legal ... which is perfectly in keeping with it being themed around Camelot in-'verse, in the first place.