Scooby-Doo (2002)
Mystery Inc. went live-action with a CGI Great Dane, a tropical haunted resort, and one performance nobody has ever stopped praising: Matthew Lillard simply became Shaggy. Critics shrugged, kids showed up in droves, and "like, zoinks" had its biggest summer ever.
Warner Bros. released Scooby-Doo on June 14, 2002, directed by Raja Gosnell from a screenplay by a pre-Guardians James Gunn. The dream-cast lineup wrote itself: Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Linda Cardellini as Velma, and Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, with Rowan Atkinson as the proprietor of Spooky Island, the horror-theme-park resort where the disbanded gang reunites to investigate genuinely paranormal goings-on. The tone was knowing and slightly snarky — a live-action cartoon that teased its own 1969 source material while keeping the van, the Scooby Snacks, and the unmasking.
Critics were not kind — it sits at 32% on Rotten Tomatoes — but audiences didn't care: made for $84 million, it grossed $275 million worldwide and spawned a 2004 sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. The consistent exception in every pan was Lillard, whose Shaggy was universally praised as uncanny, affectionate, and pitch-perfect down to the voice cracks.
That performance turned out to be a career-defining inheritance: after Casey Kasem stepped away from the role he had voiced since 1969, Lillard became the official voice of Shaggy beginning with Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and he has played him ever since. For the kids who wore out the DVD, the 2002 movie is the definitive Scooby artifact, early-2000s CGI and all.
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