Archive for August, 2014

A storm is coming.

“The Gathering” doesn’t pull in every single event that has occurred up until point, but it does cull from a number of them. This two-part episode is about reunions and revelations and reveals, where humans and gargoyles and Oberon’s “progeny” come together and reunite, as tensions mount over one, small child. Gargoyles was built around massive layers of storytelling and mythologies, but by focusing on one simple but very important thing, and letting that thing explode to terrifying levels, the show pulls together, or should I say “gather,” its themes and narratives into one cohesive whole.

Gargoyles 2×44 – The Gathering – Part 1

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First we must re-unite. The first part of “The Gathering” is about re-establishing relationships, where disparaging groups come together, somewhat, in harmony. All of Oberon’s children arrive as predicted, including Coyote, Anubis, the Banshee, and Odin. I like that the Banshee was dragged in forcefully by the Three Sisters and everyone laughs at her; it has a humanizing effect, placing the majesty of the affair into a certain social context. That also includes the sibling-esque fight that occurs between Odin and the Banshee, which includes extraordinary powers. This amuse Oberon for a bit, but when he tires of the conflict, and they fail to heed his words, he unleashes his wrath. He removes Banshee’s voice as well, for punishment for failing to heed his call to the gathering.

I really love Terrence Mann’s approach to Oberon. While most everyone has a booming, slightly over-the-top approach to their voices (akin to the show’s Shakespearean roots), Mann brings a casual, conversational, and even somewhat board approach to his character’s voice, which allows some of his more questionable choices to slide. He’s Oberon, he’s super-powerful, so he kinda just does what he does without thinking too much on it. Note how he just ups and leaves the Gathering to fetch Puck (although part of that is the show kinda forgetting about the Gathering, since we never come back to it, unless this is brought up later). Mann’s request to Princess Katherine for Boudicca’s services is particular of note, in how the casual demanding tone both freaks out Katherine and suggests Oberon’s superhuman abilities.

The best part about “The Gathering?” Xanatos’ dad is back! The guy who went back in time, and is now about to see some powerful, magic shit, is still quipping in generic dad fashion, and it’s fantastic. Unlike all the other characters here – Renard, Fox, Fox’s mother, Owen, Vogel, and Xanatos – Xanatos’ dad hasn’t really been part of the magical/scientific dealings that the show’s been involved in. So to see him react so casually and ambivalently to the show’s more insane events is just amazing, and it feels like an in-joke for the writers. His arrival here is just for the birth of Xanatos’ and Fox’s son for now, although when Fox’s mom mentions she remarried, Owen freaks out and leaves. Thus begins the Owen/Vogel explanation.

Oberon and Boudicca tracks Puck to Xanatos’ tower, but Oberon senses Titania around, which completely shifts the episode in a new direction. Storm clouds gather and lightening flashes as a vague tension mounts. It’s a visual cliche but the episode builds so well that it works. Bursting into the room where the Xanatos family gathered, Oberon pretty much forces Anastasia to reveal herself as Titania, which of course freaks out everyone (except Xanatos’ dad, because of course). You see, Titania, after she was banished by Oberon from Avalon, assumed a human form and married Halcyon, up until he got sick and she got bored of him. Fox’s birth on earth prevented her from developing her magic, but Titania wants to bring Xanatos’ and Fox’s son back to Avalon to raise there properly. A set of parents want to steal a son from another set of parents. Shit has gotten real.

Powerful episodes of TV and several movies have been based on forces trying to steal children from desperate parents, and this is was drives this episode at the end. Oberon doesn’t seem to care too much, but he wants to satisfy his wife, and he can’t even fathom the idea of mortals refusing him. This fits his character from last week’s “Ill Met by Moonlight;” he considers giving the humans one hour (Editor note: It may be one day – will correct this when I double-check) to say goodbye an act of mercy. It’s good stuff, although getting hurt by the laser gun Xanatos fires at him seems off; the parameters of Oberon’s powers are muddled, which becomes more confounding in the second episode.

At this point though, there’s a lot of setting up, based around gatherings. In addition to the Avalon Gathering and the Xanatos Family gathering, the Manhattan clan is reunited, which is just a wonderful moment to watch. The clan hugging and greeting Goliath and Elisa and Bronx, and meeting with Angela, is such a nice scene that I wish it lasted longer. I’m less enamored by the romantic angle budding between Goliath and Elisa when he drops her off at home. The most dated “concept” of the 90s is the fact that a male and female lead pairing in a show falling in love; why writers couldn’t (and still can’t) handle long term platonic relationships is beyond me.

The episode ends setting up for the battle royal. Titania requests the gargoyles’ assistance to take Xanatos’ child, but they refuse and in fact run off to help Xanatos. Owen tells Xanatos that he knew about Titania/Anastasia and helps sets up a security system to hold Oberon back (although with advice about Oberon’s energy source and his vulnerability to iron). When Oberon tries to get into Xanatos’ building and is blocked by (I assume an iron/energy-sapping force field), he puts all humans to sleep, which is really a writers cheat to keep away gawking humans (and it doesn’t work 100%). Oberon grows into a giant and gets himself ready to unleash his power. The show’s biggest fight is about to go down, and it promises to be a doozy…

Gargoyles 2×45 – The Gathering – Part 2

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… or so I thought. I’m not insanely disappointed in the second part of “The Gathering,” but man, with all the intense hype of the first part, this is somewhat of a  letdown. Part of the problem is that Koko Enterprise Animation, which handled the low-key, talk-heavy animations and expressions of the first part, just cannot bring themselves to handle the action-heavy demands of the second part. Particularly when it comes to the changing perspectives of the giant Oberon, which is shot at several angles. His size constantly changes, which makes it really hard to tell that he’s shrinking when his energy is sapped. The action sequences in the air are also boring and choppy, which characters failing to stay on model when things get really intense.

It’s not all the animation’s fault though. The writers really attempt to make an all-out action episode, but it’s clear that they’re struggling to find specific things to do to keep up the bedlam and keep it interesting. Nothing is more obvious than the arrival of Renard’s and Vogel’s airship. For one, they somehow managed not to succumb to Oberon’s sleeping spell. The other thing is that they unleash an UNCANNY amounts of “cybots” to attack Oberon, and it looks kind of silly. Is that all that he had? Seriously? I like that Renard had a real purpose here – protecting his grandson – but once Oberon takes his ship down he’s gone from the episode.

That’s a microcosm of the episode in general. It struggles with contextualizing all the action beats. Instead of bringing all the chaos together in a controlled manner, such as the iron-based gargoyle robots, Goliath’s clan, and Renard’s attack, the battle is very structured. First, it’s Oberon vs. the force field. Then it’s Oberon vs. the iron gargoyles, part 1. Then it’s Oberon vs. the gargoyles. Then it’s Oberon vs. the iron gargoyles, part 2. Then it’s Oberon vs. Renard. It also doesn’t help that Oberon’s abilities are just… random. At one point, the gargoyles fly around Oberon’s head, and he kinda halfheartedly swats at them like their flies, without actually hitting them. I know the guy is weakening, but he still has enough power in him to bring other stone creatures to life and control the weather. It’s somewhat awkward to see him flit about when he could kill everyone with a snap.

I chalk that up to arrogance and anger, though. As the cybots sap his energy, Oberon mentions that his rage has clouded his judgement. I buy it. Oberon is like a magical Xanatos, but without the smarts. Once he gets the chance to think, he takes out everyone with freezing cold rain and goes underneath the force field. (Even as a kid, when I saw this episode, my first thought was to try going underneath it. One of the problems with many action cartoons is that a lot of writers are concerned with booming action sequences instead of characters using the physical action to meet their objective. So even though the episode skirts by with Oberon’s anger admission, I’m not a hundred percent sold that everyone involved were doing their all. I mean, the second Owen told Xanatos of Oberon’s iron weakness, the guy should have had iron EVERYTHING. Yeah, don’t tell me he didn’t have time, since he seem to have time to build iron gargoyles and place them in random parts of the city – and by the way, what is up with that?)

I digress. So Oberon bursts into Xanatos’ building through the ground and destroys the generators creating the force field (?). So everyone comes together to try and stop Oberon, and they fail. (There’s a bit where Xanatos’ dad tells his son that he’s proud of him, and it’s great, not because it’s a powerful, subtle moment, but because the guy took a moment out of facing death against a GOD to do some mediocre fathering. He is seriously the Nick Offerman of the show; he even gets to shoot Oberon with a iron harpoon, because of course he can shoot the magic-super-speed-deity with ease.)

Just when it looks like things are at their worse, Owen arrives, and here’s the kicker: Owen reveals himself to be Puck! Honestly, it’s a big, surprising reveal, although how the reveal is handled is a little weird. He monologues his whole spiel – while attacking Oberon with his living visual aids – and I’m surprised Oberon let him do it, specifically since he mentions how he doesn’t care. It’s just so the writers can explain the reveal, and also to justify Puck’s decision, and to explain why Owen so similar to Vogel – because the trickster was amused by playing someone so straight. It’s a weird, weird beat, and it doesn’t work all that well due to its heavily expositional nature, but it’s a surprise nonetheless, made more so that Xanatos actually knew about it, and opted to choose Puck’s/Owen’s service over his one wish (probably because Xanatos knows all too well that wishes from tricksters never work out).

Oberon had enough, though. After blowing up everything again (including Puck), he teleports into the room to take the baby, but because of power of a mother scorned, Fox unleashes pent-up magic to blast Oberon away. It’s a nice, if predictable, climactic moment, that leads to Goliath convincing Oberon that the child can stay, with Puck as a teacher (a bit too easily, I suppose); Puck, however, is banished from Avalon and stripped of his powers, save when he’s teaching/protecting the boy. At least someone is punished for standing up to Oberon. Puck accepts his fate (as Owen), Titania plays it all like she had this whole thing plan (not sure how many of the “planned from the beginning” plotlines I can take anymore), and Goliath and Xanatos comes to an uneasy but understandable alliance. That third point may be the strongest part of the episode, but with shaky animation and random-for-the-sake-of-random rhythms to the actual fight, “The Gathering’s” second part never comes together as smoothly as the first.

Titania whispers something to Fox before she and Oberon disappear. With seven more episodes to go in the second season, those may be the most important words ever. Time will tell where they will lead.

“The Gathering, part 1″ A-/”The Gathering, part 2” B-

And there you have it.

I’m somewhat reminded of the first season of Marvel’s Agent of SHIELD, which also hard an extremely rocky start until things heated up with the massive [REDACTED] reveal. That immediately came to mind when I watched “Ill Met by Moonlight” and “Future Tense.” Any minor quibbles I had with these two episodes are less quibbles and more fan pondering and cliche acknowledging, but these episodes are so amazingly strong, both visually and narrative, that my criticisms are pretty much moot. It’s clear we’re starting to enter some kind of endgame, as disparaging threads are starting to come together. Kind of.

Gargoyles 2×42 – Ill Met By Moonlight

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We finally get to meet good ol’ OB! That is, Oberon, the father of, like, a million magical children. A blue-skinned Final Fantasy villain, Oberon’s story is told less as a Shakespearean homage and more like a Roman myth, with gods speaking in in lofty manners while mortals look on helplessly, and Titania and the Weird Sisters acting somewhat like a chorus, guiding the narrative beats in an observational manner. But the gist of it is simple: Oberon’s back, and he’s come claim what’s his. Avalon.

The World Tour crew discover this when they return, by Avalon’s graces, to Avalon, and while the gargoyles try to make the most of it, Elisa is obviously homesick. No chance at a respite, though, as Oberon arrives and almost damn well near kills everyone to get his home back. As the mortal creatures sink into the magic mud, Oberon and Tatiana have a little chat. The chat is interesting. We learn that Oberon forced Titania (and their children) to live among mortals for a thousand years to learn humility and garner an appreciation for them, and now Titania claims that Oberon should also be humble and at the very least give the humans and gargoyles a fighting chance. He agrees (less because he cares about his humility and more because he’ll get to be Titania’s husband again), gives a portion of his powers to Tatiana, and the game is afoot.

What stood out for me was the layers of contradictions in that conversation. Oberon sent his family out in the world to teach them a lesson, a lesson he gives little thought to when he damn near kills everyone on Avalon. Also, interesting that a thousand years prior, he lived among mortals himself! I get it, though. He sees these mortals as invaders on his home, which in and of itself a disrespectful act, and never really considers his own thousand years absence as a problem. That’s how gods are, though: arrogant and hypocritical, like so many Greek/Roman/Shakespearean tales, like so many of the tales told within Gargoyles’ lore. Add to that the fact that time is meaningless to such beings, and it makes sense that Oberon would see his progeny needing to learn about mortals but utterly dismissing them himself. We see this kind of behavior with politicians, businessmen, and leaders all time time. Multiply that by a billion for gods, and you get OB. Oh, I like calling Oberon “OB.”

So the majority of this episode is basically a Gargoyles version of The Most Dangerous Game, yet this time the gargoyles chosen – Goliath, Angela, and Gabriel – really have no chance against Oberon, even in a weakened state. It’s mostly a chase sequence – but what a chase! There’s action through forests, across mountains, and even inside an active volcano (even though, at no point, was deciding to fly through this a good idea), and the A-Team of animation is here, making the dynamics of the visuals look easy in their greatness. In particular, the layouts of the gargoyles flying through the tunnels, shot in different, striking angles, over the molten lava, are stunning. The A-Team will be there for the next episode as well, which I’ll talk about very soon.

Goliath, Gabriel, and Angela put up a heck of a fight, but they can’t even put in a dent on the guy. Oberon wins easily, and when he arrives with his prey back home, he discovers the remaining mortals have been up to no good. Specifically, they melted some magic iron and made a bell that, when rung, rendered Oberon weak and almost dying. (The iron came from Magus which he used to hold the Weird Sisters in custody. I’m not sure why iron is weak against Oberon, unless there is some classic tale I’m unaware of. It seems arbitrary.) They almost kill Oberon, but think better of it – Tom says, “I’ll kill no one on his knees,” which is a great line read from Tom’s voice actor Gerrit Graham. This act of mercy wins over Oberon, allowing the mortals to stay and granting Goliath some “super guardian” award (which goes, again, to Oberon’s constant contradictions).

The question remains: why did Titania assist the mortals? After all, it was her riddle within that earlier chat with Oberon that clued them in on the bell. Titania mentions that they have helped her in the past; the event she’s referring to isn’t clear, but we all know there are plenty of them. I think Titania has something else up her sleeve though, what with that chat o’ manipulation and her assistance. She takes Oberon as her husband and they go off together, calling forth their children to “The Gathering.” We’re an episode away from that, which looks extremely promising now the stakes are so high. “Ill Met by Moonlight” had some tiny issues – the volcano, the contradictions, the question of what Oberon’s been up to all this time – but with great action scenes and great dialogue (particularly with the voice work of Oberon’s Terrence Mann and Titania’s Kate Mulgrew), you can’t even fault them.

Also in the chat, Oberon and Titania mention Puck by name, implying that he was a particularly problematic child. This conversation prior to “Future Tense” is no coincidence.

Gargoyles 2×43 – Future Tense

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I feel foolish. I should’ve know something was off with “Future Tense.” Seeing Xanatos as a pure mustache-twirling villain, who, upon finally receiving immortality through “vague” means, turns New York into a dystopia in which he assumes full control, while culling more power to take over the world in his name, is completely against everything Xanatos is, as a character. For one thing, Xanatos has enough wealth and power; global conquest would seem silly. I suppose it follows that, after achieving immortality, that such a thing would be the next step, but keen viewers would know that’s bullshit; most likely he’d be invested in teleportation, space travel (especially after “Sentinel”), or looking into alternate universes (similar to the Avalon stuff). I finished watching Project GeeKeR, and even that show acknowledged the ridiculousness of such an idea, so of course Gargoyles couldn’t really entertain it.

Still, even with a silly idea, Gargoyles brings it. It’s a dark, deadly episode – nightmarish stuff, with Xanatos assuming all the power and sending robot/clone gargoyles to do his bidding. Goliath and his team arrive in the ruined Manhattan, some forty years into the future, where Angela and Elisa are taken by the robots while Goliath and Bronx are saved by Claw (!) and… wait for it… Matt Bluestone! Looks like the rebel alliance took all the Illuminati fight out of him. He’s still awesome though.

He takes Goliath to their home base, where he runs into Brooklyn (who decks him since he was gone for so long), Broadway (who lost his eyes, in the show’s most cruel moment, making the events in “Lighthouse in the Sea of Time” tragically ironic), and Lexington (who has become a dead-inside cyborg). It’s powerful stuff, just to see, and the A-Team animation crew make every reveal and every line count. We learn that Hudson began the rebellion and lost his life for it, that several of the mutates and human allies have died in the process, and… Brooklyn and Demona are lovers.

Demona, even with her brief lines, have perspective now, and while it’s jarring to see her speak with clarity (on the goal at hand, on her commitment to protecting her daughter), it’s amazing, amazing work. Gargoyles smartly ignores any sense of jealousy between Goliath and Brooklyn, because that would be fucking stupid. Instead the show is focused on the obviously doomed execution of an assault on Xanatos’ pyramid complex, and it is a doozy. They watch Xanatos kill his own son in some kind of cyberspace battle, then Bluestone, Bronx, and Claw are killed in the first wave on the complex, then we see Lex taken, Broadway killed (his “see the sun” speech is cliched but goddamn does Bill Fagerbakke sell it), then, in cyberspace, Demona and Brooklyn killed as well. It’s insane stuff, but every single moment is powerful and horrific and wonderful.

The episode plays very close to the chest though, because there are definitely some questionable moments. Besides Xanatos being out-of-character, there’s the “dying in cyberspace = dying in real life” concept that’s not explained, and the various characters asking for Goliath to give them the Phoenix Gate (how do some of them even know about it, and why wouldn’t they ask for Goliath to use it himself?) Goliath wisely avoids it, knowing full well that it’s pointless, since history wills itself into the future it eventually becomes. He fights Xanatos valiantly though, and even though he beats him, saves Goliath, and escapes with Elisa, it’s too late – we see that Lexington was the true mastermind of this entire global, which is both a mindfuck and a “wait, what?” moment. Goliath straight up kills him, though, but the global takeover program has begun its work.

In a weakened state, Elisa mentions that he HAS to use the Phoenix Gate now, and Goliath obliges. Placing it on the ground, he tells Elisa to grab it. But she can’t? Goliath realizes that, finally, this is some crap, and in a flash, the entire scenario disappears, only to reveal that all of this was conceived by Puck! The trouble-maker that Oberon and Titania mentioned in “Ill Met by Moonlight” put this all together just so he could get Goliath to give him the Phoenix Gate, per Oberon’s rules, basically so he could fuck around some more and not go to the Gathering. My only quibble here is that Goliath wasn’t ENRAGED by the deceit, but I can’t fault that too much. Most likely he was relieved it was all a dream, but worried that it may be a sign of things to come.

Goliath sends the Gate out into the timerift, so no one can find it, and regales his nightmare to his tour mates. I suppose we’ll learn of Puck’s fate in “The Gathering,” but for now we have a bit of a rest before then. Everything being a dream was probably the only way Disney let this episode go, but it’s also important to remember that Disney had a lot riding on the show, as the studio was apparently geared to build an entire franchise off it, which gave Gargoyles quite a bit of latitude. That latitude allowed “Future Tense” to work so well, which has me excited for “The Gathering” in ways you can’t imagine.

“Ill Met by Moonlight” A-/”Future Tense” A