State Hornet’s March Madness season is over

Scooby-Doo conquers all

Jennah Booth

Scooby-Doo was voted the number one movie franchise for The State Hornet’s 2022 March Madness. The final results show that Scooby-Doo beat the MCU by more than 2:1. Graphic by Jennah Booth

Kris Hall, Opinion Editor

The State Hornet’s March Madness season is over after some meddling kids on Twitter voted Scooby-Doo as the number one movie franchise.

Scooby-Doo personally defeated the Pirates franchise, Godzilla and King Kong, Jordan Peele’s Get out and Us and finally the Marvel Cinematic Universe by more than twice as many votes.

The MCU has put in work this last decade with its own internal franchises including Spider-Man, The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy in the recent decade, but Scooby Doo has a plurality of decades being the number one movie franchise, dating all the way back to 1972 with “The New Scooby-Doo Movie.”

Thanks to you, Scooby-Doo remains the number one movie franchise. Even with other champions like Jurassic Park, Nolan’s Batman and Star Wars, Scooby-Doo won with nearly 3,000 votes.

The final results show Marvel barely pulling 281 votes with Scooby absolutely dominating with 657 popular votes, mostly from fans on Twitter.

The MCU earned their spot in the finals by defeating respectable franchises like “Men in Black” and “Ghostbusters.” Perhaps the most surprising and disappointing challenge, the MCU also outvoted the ‘Meme King’ Shrek.

Scooby-Doo is very much a television franchise, but their movie lineup has some of the greatest films ever made.

The 1998-2001 films “Zombie Island,” “Witch’s Ghost,” “Alien Invaders” and the series finale “Cyber Chase” defined many of the childhoods of today’s 22-26 year olds. The one-dimensional ‘60s characters were written as reflective, flawed and nostalgic gang of buddies on their last adventures together.

Following the animated films, “Scooby-Doo: The Movie” refreshed the franchise in 2002 with a modern film with ‘90s style, culture and music.

The movie challenged the 30 years of stereotypes that the mystery gang represented. Over the years, Shaggy is always a loyal underachiever, Velma is smart and nerdy, Daphne was always just a damsel in distress and Fred represented ‘60s misogyny and bravery.

But in the 2002 film Shaggy turns his back to his best bud, Fred and Velma’s confidence and ignorance lead to their getting captured and role sare reversed when they are saved by Daphne’s detective skills and bravery. All the while, Scoob never loses his doggy loyalty.

The film maintains the classic tropes with obvious misgivings, creepy suspects that distract the viewers attention, wholesome spookiness and underlying clues throughout the film to let viewers feel like they too are solving the mystery with the rest of the mystery gang.

“Scooby-Doo: The Movie” taught us that even if we disagree, we can still rely on our friends.

Thank you, everyone, for participating in this year’s March Madness. There’s nothing like some wholesome competition to bring a little light into students’ lives before we walk into finals.