Archive for category Writing
CHILDHOOD REVISITED – SWAT KATS
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Childhood Revisited, Television, Uncategorized, Writing on January 7, 2013
Swat Kats really, really strove to be different.
In the wake of the huge popularity of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, studios and networks scrambled to create the next “badass talking animal superhero” group. Street Sharks, Dinosaucers, Biker Mice from Mars (which they tried TWICE), Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa, and Bucky O’ Hare. Large, broad-shouldered, fine specimens of male machismo with animal attributes spout cheesy one-liners as they beat the crap out of embarrassingly incompetent villains within stories of questionable coherency and consistency. None of these really succeeded, and on the occasion I do look back on them, it’s easy to see why.
Swat Kats, however, really tried to be different. Utilizing an anime-inspired character design, darker and muted colors, variable body-types, and slightly-meatier plots, Swat Kats sought, at some point in its development, to change the game around, to bring a more tense and legitimately exciting experience to young kids. And, in all fairness, it worked. It was the highest rated kids show in 1994 and plans were laid for more episodes and other commercial products.
But suddenly, it was cancelled.
Why? They were in the midst of three new episodes when it was unceremoniously shelved. It was shoved into part of some Hanna-Barabara animated block of TV, then dropped of the schedule, before a half-assed DVD set came out in 2010, some four or five years later. Why did one of the highest rated kids show ever get canned so quickly?
After watching the two aired seasons, I can hazard a guess: Swat Kats must have been a FUCKING ordeal behind the scenes.
Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron – (1993)
Director: Robert Alvarez
Starring: Charlie Adler, Barry Gordon, Gary Owens
Screenplay(s) by: Glenn Leopold, Lance Falk, Christian Tremblay
I can only describe Swat Kats as a well-oiled, wonderfully organized mess. And I mean this as a positive. The titular show, in which Chance “T-Bone” Furlong and Jake “Razor” Clawson, disgraced Enforcers (kinda like a police/military government unit), team up in a totally not-gay way as masked do-gooders with masterful technology developed from a junkyard, seems egregiously stuck among the fantasy-tale-trappings of 70s animation, the ultra-male-heroism of the 80s, and the “EXTREME/RADICAL” facade of the 90s. It liberally bounces between time-travel, magic amulets, giant monsters, out-of-control robots, mutated vicious flora, invading aliens, violent underground creatures, doppelgangers, mad scientists, zombie mummies, ghosts and possessions, curses, parallel worlds, and threats of nuclear fallout. The sheer variety of adventures isn’t necessarily the problem; it’s that Swat Kats swiftly rips through them in such a short time period (23 episodes) that it’s impossible to get a sense of what kind of world the actually Swat Kats live in (especially since most of the characters hardly seem particularly phased by these events).
Swat Kats is best thought of as a comic-book-as-animated-series, each episode being a different issue within a different set of circumstances. Some episodes are just paced better, while others seem so forced and calculating and radical that I suspect there was a quite a bit of tension between the creative staff and the executive heads. Christian Tremblay, Glenn Leopold and Robert Alvarez wanted to make a straight-forward, decently action show with a bit of depth and nuance. The studio wanted to shoehorn in previously established popular tropes, like medieval fantasy stories (which aren’t too far outside the realm of the show, but should not have been the THIRD episode), a ridiculously bombastic KISS-esque soundtrack (which was thankfully toned down in the second season), and miles upon miles of exposition.
Oh. God. The exposition.
I’ve seen many, many cartoons, both old and new, but Swat Kats takes the cake in exposition. They explain what they have to do, explain what they’re doing, explain what they’ve done, whether it worked or not, and if not, what will happen if the threat is not neutralized. They do this over and over again. Repeatedly. Other characters will lend their voices to YET AGAIN explain events that are obvious. Not even the worst Hanna-Barbara or Saturday morning cartoons went to the lengths this show did. No writer or director worth their salt would think this is a good thing; I can only suspect that some overzealous executive felt kids wouldn’t be able follow what was going on.
And yet, despite Swat Kats’s frantic, bi-polar, over-explanatory nature… it’s easy to like. Not necessarily enjoy, but there’s stuff along the surface to really engage in. The aerial battles and fight sequences are really well done, and the hand-to-hand, ground-level action sequences are quite exciting. People are flat-out killed on the show; there is no mandated “red shirts jumping out of helicopters with parachutes” creed when they’re destroyed. It has a fairly dark tinge – perhaps not as dark as nostalgia might believe, but I have had moments where I exclaimed, “Oh shit!” in seeing a feline citizen killed under toppled barrels, and a mutated scientist blown-up into goo.
When the cast does anything other than explain the plot, we get some pretty fun characters, although they’re a bit one-note. T-Bone and Razor have a decent “more than just bromance” interplay between each other, although their casual, just-hanging-out conversations work much better than their attempts at one-upmanship. Mayor Manx is the comic relief, a literal scaredy-cat that laughably raises taxes due to the sheer amount of destruction that occurs in their city. Deputy Mayor Calico Briggs is the female “love interest” who keeps the Mayor in check and can contact the Swat Kats at any time. She’s feisty but kinda pointless, although she has her moments. Second season newcomer Felina Feral is more useful as an Enforcer without getting too stereotypically butch, but there’s nothing beyond that. And her uncle, Commander Ulyssus Feral… well, he’s just frustrating. He and his Enforcers are so ineffectual, constantly being destroyed by the threat of the week, yet he always tries to solve every problem by throwing more Enforcers at it. But when the Swat Kats save the day, he gets mad at them for destroying city property, even though the Enforcers cause half of it themselves. Yeah, sure, you can say it masks a seething jealousy, but it doesn’t exactly come through on the screen.
As mentioned above, Swat Kats’s core issue is that it shoots for the stars, piling on conflicts that grow more and more fantastical. It fails to ease viewers into its world; instead, it assumes kids for the most part will just accept every event thrown its way. If you can manage that, then under that surface are some pretty interesting ideas, such as “Razor’s Edge,” where Razor loses his nerve after he believes he maimed an innocent couple. In “The Dark Side of the Swat Kats,” Swat Kats calls attention to the non-lethal weaponry used by the team by warping them to a parallel world, in which the Swat Kat doppelgangers utilizes lethal and deadly force (probably the best piece of brilliant subtlety in a show that isn’t really known for it). And kudos to the show for its willingness to show origin stories, for heroes and villains alike. Although lacking in clarity, we even learn why T-Bone and Razor left the Enforcers:
I spoke with Christian Tremblay via email, who also graciously participated in this reddit Q&A, who said the show was cancelled due to the toy line coming out too late (full interview will be forthcoming). While I can’t argue with one of the show’s creators, a part of me can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else here. A late toy line is one thing, but the show’s popularity should have been able to withstand that. More likely it was a combination of that, with parental complaints and executive concerns, that led to the sudden cancellation. Whatever the case may be, there does seem to be a bit of hope of the show returning, according to Mr. Temblay himself.
Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron threw excitement at you like it was going out of style, but had a love for its premise and characters that can’t be denied, even if that love didn’t know when to be quiet once in a while. Still, it’s a fun show, and after swallowing up some of the groaner gags, it’s almost impossible to hate; any other reaction would be less than radical.
(Side note: The show changed visual styles within the second season, making the character designs more angular and sharper, and producing a much cooler, stylistic opening credit. While working solely with the animation studio Mook, Inc. in the second season was a great decision, I personally believe Mook worked better with the first season’s slightly toonier designs. This is much more apparent with the female characters; Callie and Felina’s flat faces are disappointing to say the least.)
The Beauty and Art of Screwing Up
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Film, Television, Uncategorized, Writing on October 1, 2012
Phyllis Diller died a few weeks ago, and in memorandum, a tweet was sent out linking her to a Muppets performance, where she played a saxophone to upbeat version of a familiar ragtime diddy:
Let’s be honest here. Diller isn’t good with her mini-saxophone. From a musical standpoint, she pretty much messes up every time she plays, and it’s very, very noticeable.
But watch Diller’s face and expression. She doesn’t care. She KNOWS she’s not doing well. I especially love how much she gets into playing poorly towards the end, mugging for the camera with the classic showmanship that a talented stage presence can muster. It gets the crowd going, and it gets her going. She messes up, but she messes up with class.
The old adage, “if you mess up, mess up big” doesn’t seem to apply here. In the 70s, if you messed up, you messed up with grace and charm. Diller doesn’t mug harder or begin to overdo her musical prowess. She lets the moment speak for itself. She lets the audience enjoy it for what it is. Messing up and playing through it is truly a real skill, and Diller does not disappoint.
Watch an old episode of Match Game. Watch this awesome interview with Tom Waits. Watch any episode of The Carol Burnett Show. The charisma of the actors simply playing the moment is all that’s needed to entertain the audience. Match Game is particularly interesting, since it almost seems like the celebrities have little to no interest in actually help the contestants win, nor do they have any real desire to play up certain gags and moments to get a rise out of the audience – unlike Hollywood Squares, which reeks of pre-written, hammy gags for the celebrities to perform. Comparing the two, it’s almost sad.
Why is this? Partly, it’s stylistic. “Raw and gritty,” staples of 70s hard-boiled entertainment, wasn’t just regulated to dramas. Humor and comedy also benefited from that raw and gritty aesthetic that the audience, frankly, expected. It’s a style that only the best performers and hosts can walk sans flop-sweat or jitters, especially in trying to power through the actual meat-and-potatoes of an actual skit. Compare that Muppets video to pretty much any Saturday Night Live skit starring Jimmy Fallon. While he may have found his niche in hosting late night, his inability to hold in his laughter essentially ruined skits, but as a greater affront, he had no stage presence to control the ruined skit without his stammering reflecting his fucking up – unlike Diller, who poorly plays that saxophone with the discipline of a master. I’d rather watch her screw up at a thousand things then watch Fallon struggle through another mediocre SNL bit. (SNL, in fact, seemed to have issues with its players powering through non-winning skits, but that’s a write-up for another day.)
It’s rare these days to find an entertainer that can work with ease and comfort in front of an audience, whether a routine goes swimmingly or erupts in flames. It takes a real skill to screw up and make it look wonderful – to be high, or drunk, or on drugs, or just not very good at all, and still win over the crowd with sheer charisma.
Godspeed, Sly Cooper and mascot gaming
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Uncategorized, Video Games, Writing on September 4, 2012
Sly 4: Thieves in Time essentially the last of a dying breed – the high-profile mascot platformer. Can Sanzaru Games resurrect a promising gaming model, or is the genre dead in the water?
It might not seem like it, but there’s a lot of pressure on Sanzaru Games and the upcoming Sly 4: Thieves in Time. For one, Sanzaru took over from Sucker Punch as game developer, so it’ll have a different look, feel, and gaming sensibility. It’s up in the air whether this is a good thing or a bad thing – we’ll see come October. But my bigger concern is that, in this day and age of super soldiers fighting in futuristic wars, alien invasions, or zombie apocalypses, of explosions and shootouts and humans involved in the fray (if we’re lucky, we’ll see some robots or sophisticated AI), Sly Cooper is essentially the last of smart, well-characterized “mascots” – non-human characters involved in a silly yet complex situation, all within a silly yet complex world.
The 3D mascot platformer took off in the wake of Mario 64. Developers and designers followed a very simply template – cute character, items to collect, bad guys to fight – and unloaded a sheer number of them onto us. We went through this before in the wake of Sonic the Hedgehog, substituting 3D for 2D, and very few of them survived or lived on in the collective conscious – Rocket Knight may be the only exception. Likewise, of the sheer number of 3D knockoffs we got, only a handful of them really survived: Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Spyro the Dragon.
Naughty Dog essentially stopped with Jak and Daxter, especially since their Uncharted property took off. Ratchet and Clank was going strong right up until All-4-One, an ill-advised multiplayer game that sacrificed the wonder of a single-player, expansive adventure for an insular, complicated, too-many-players experience (it also surprisingly narrowed down the expansive cast and focused on a few key character who, while fine, were way overexposed). Insomniac Games claims to return back to basics with the upcoming new game Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, although emphasis on “tower defense” doesn’t bode well. Spyro had a complex go of it, starting off as one of the many 3D platformer clones (yet still a good game), only to revamp into a questionably dark series of games that many considered okay, but lacked the whimsy fun of the first series. Then there was attaching the name to the Skylander games, and his awful, awful redesign. It was a classic case of burying someone alive.
Sly Cooper wasn’t immune from diminishing returns. The third game of the series was fun but way too wild, although it had a meekly satisfying end. Still, it was a strong series of games, and it’s nice that the fourth game will be a direct sequel, not a revamp or reboot or some way-off-the-mark followup, all things that tainted the franchises mentioned earlier.
Beyond that, Sly Cooper’s success will determine whether the mascot era is ultimately dead and buried, or if there’s still life and energy in the concept. Personally, I think there is: it’s simply a matter of taking those types of characters and settings and building them up to be larger and more detailed, similar to a mascot version of something like Uncharted, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or even Gears of War. Focusing mascot games on stylized-yet-straight-forward platforming, or as the occasional outlandish RPG, is limiting already, and given the rarity for developers and designers to find inspiration in well-trodded ground, there’s little hope for that road to be in any way interesting. I even over-explained an idea I had here.
So here’s hoping Sly 4: Thieves in Time get the critical and commercial plaudits needed to resurrect a dying breed of games with immense potential. If it fails, I guess I’ll have to learn how to curse like a twelve-year old. Again.