Finally, after decades of everyone just accepting that Scooby-Doo is a dog that talks and likes to eat Scooby Snacks, everyone’s favorite mystery-solving mutt is getting an unnecessary Solo-like origin story. Thank god. Of course, this new movie—Scoob!—isn’t entirely a Solo-like origin story for a talking dog and his perpetually stoned companion (though, it’s odd that this trailer makes a point to explain his name and not… that he can talk), as it also involves a storyline where adult Shaggy and Scooby apparently get abducted by aliens. It’s too early to question what the writers and director Tony Cervone (a longtime veteran of animated Warner Bros. projects, plus The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age Smackdown) were thinking when they came up with this, but aren’t Scooby-Doo stories traditionally about the whole gang being together and solving some kind of spooky mystery? Aliens aren’t spooky. You know what’s spooky? Twisted landowners who are so desperate to make a buck that they put on an elaborate ghost costume and try to murder some high teenagers. The villain was capitalism, people! Wake up!
Anyway, Scoob! stars Will Forte as Shaggy, Zac Efron as Fred, Amanda Seyfried as Daphne, and Gina Rodriguez as Velma, plus Kiersey Clemons as someone named Dee Dee and Jason Isaacs as someone named “the infamous Dick Dastardly.” Also, because you can’t have Scooby-Doo without weird cameos, Tracy Morgan is apparently going to show up as Captain Caaaaaaaaveman, Mark Wahlberg is going to appear as Blue Falcon, and Ken Jeong will play his robot dog sidekick Dynomutt. (Cue adults having to Google “Captain Caveman” to explain to their kids who Captain Caveman is, because nobody will recognize these characters unless they watched Harvey Birdman.)
Really, the most important thing is that Frank Welker is still playing Scooby, as he has done for the past 20 years or so—though, he was actually the voice of Fred in the original Scooby-Doo show, which is fun. Also, he played Megatron! He has nearly 900 credits on iMDB!