The long-awaited Nickelodeon’s feature length film “Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie” premiered on November 24th, 2017 and longtime fans’ questions were finally answered.
The hour-long series finale of “Hey Arnold!” aired in 2002 and left viewers with quite a cliffhanger. On the last episode, Arnold finds his father’s journal and a map of his parents’ last trip to San Lorenzo, where Arnold believes he might find clues to uncover the mystery behind his parent’s disappearance.
The film picks up just from where the finale ends. The plot focuses on what happened to Arnold’s parents when he was a baby, and the journey Arnold and his friends go on to figure out how and why they vanished.
Rumors of the film’s production went on for a few years, but faded away when Nickelodeon canceled it and decided to leave the series unresolved. This upset fans, and the idea of a film seemed only like a fantasy. Luckily for them, Nickelodeon officially announced its collaboration with Craig Bartlett (“Hey Arnold!’s” creator) on November 23, 2015, and their plan to develop a two-hour long movie event set to premiere in late 2017.
(Caution: Spoilers Ahead)
Fans were hit with waves of nostalgia and resolution after finally witnessing the long-awaited reunion of Arnold and his lost parents. Questions were answered, and fans felt closure.
It was great to see a childhood cartoon return to our television sets with a different style of animation, making the characters and backgrounds completely stunning.
The original cast reprised their iconic roles in the film and relationships between characters remained the same, which almost made it seem like the time between the final episode and film hadn’t even passed.
The result of this being that “The Jungle Movie” keeps that 90’s essence by keeping its characters true to who they were as well as the content of the story. Surely, the level of excitement that 90’s kids had over this movie is incomparable to anything else.
The film didn’t just answer questions from the original series, it also left the door open for a potential new season of “Hey Arnold!.” It would be interesting to see new episodes with Arnold’s parents included. Additionally, some fans might want to see how Arnold’s relationship with Helga develops now that there’s some romance between the two of them.
If news about an upcoming season were to be released, fans would forever be grateful to Nickelodeon. Although history has shown that a reboot of an old television series isn’t usually a good idea, “Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie” surely made an example of a reboot done well and for the fans.
