Archive for category Writing
The Hub’s Non-My Little Pony Shows – Reviews
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Television, Uncategorized, Writing on February 16, 2012
This ISN’T called the “My Little Pony” Network?
Hey! Did you know that The Hub has TV programs that aren’t My Little Pony? It’s true! The brand new network is actually trying to cater to a large variety of demographics by exploring all sorts of ideas! And I watched them! Was it worth venturing outside the MLP-sphere to engage in the network’s other shows? Read on and find out! Ratings are based on a percentage of MLP enjoyability.
Strawberry Shortcake: I suppose this was going to be the secondary, young-female-aimed show that was geared to compliment My Little Pony, but Cartoon Brew and the internet thought otherwise. Still, on it’s own, Strawberry Shortcake is flat, stuck in its limited CGI animation and first-grade sensibility to do anything even kinda interesting. This episode involved Orange (all of the characters are named after fruit) being obsessed with re-creating a resort setting at home, since the resort they planned to attend was closed. It’s somewhat amusing to think that Orange was losing her collective shit trying to match a pitch-perfect makeshift resort in their own backyard, but it wasn’t nearly as crazy as one would hope, and Strawberry gave her a typical “we’re friends, so whatever we make will be fine” speech, which calmed her down. They sung and stuff and all was well.
MLP Percentage: 8%. The main issue seems to be that this show should be two 11-minute segments instead of one full 22-minute episode. There isn’t enough “stuff” for that length of time. Rainbow Dash’s and Pinkie Pie’s voice actors are present, so you can kinda imagine those two ponies clopping around as well. But there’s no “there” there, and I suppose young girls would be coloring or playing Barbie’s while this show played in the background.
The Twisted Whiskers Show: The first animated show aired on The Hub, The Twisted Whiskers Show is a bizarre attempt to re-capture the random-compilation shorts era of the 90s, but with new, cheap CGI content. The results are mixed. It’s practically impossible to adequately create the squash-and-stretch timing and pacing of hand-drawn classics, so the voiceless, wacky shorts suffer greatly. The 30-second visual gag-teasers were forgettable, and a short involved a dog protecting his master’s garden from a genetically-altered rabbit had no hope pushing past its graphical and comical stiffness (also, it didn’t make sense most of the time). However, one short, involved a talking, sophisticated cat who gets locked out of his master’s house, was crazy enough to be enjoyable. Focusing on smaller character quirks seems to work better for the CGI, and it was interesting to see the contrast of knowledge the cat had about his home inside vs. the world outside. Not great, but strangely appealing – if creator Bill Kopp knew any better he’d focus on making odder shorts instead of trying to capture the charm of the classics.
MLP Percentage: 38% This rating is kinda off, due to how the show is segmented, but to clear it up: it’s one semi-enjoyable short with 3 other mediocre ones.
The Super Hero Squad Show: This show is goofy, and it’s hard to imagine young boys actually admitting to their friends that they watch this. The character models are disconcerting; they’re adults masquerading as kids, creating this kinda dwarf-midget effect. The plot of this particular episode was problematic, which involved Silver Surfer redirecting a lasershot fired by Dr. Doom, which inadvertently hit their airship. Everyone blamed Silver Surfer directly and quite dickishly, but NO ONE knew that the redirected shot would hit their ship prior to the occurrence. It wasn’t his fault, but everyone bullied him like it was (man, don’t we have a campaign against this behavior? It gets better, Silver!), and he ran away to find a place to fit in. Then plot happened, he got caught, then… well, stuff, but it ended with no redemption of either the Silver Surfer (which wasn’t needed) or the other heroes (which was). It has a clever comic book/geek sensibility with some fun references here and there, but it’s has a very “man, I can’t believe I’m watching this” vibe.
MLP Percentage: 39% While I would need another episode to confirm, this show seems to have trouble in defining it’s core themes and lessons for children. There’s a reason why rote-learning-experiences are reused so often in kids shows; trying to break that mold actually seems to create more problems then not. MLP has the same issues at times (“Over a Barrel”, anyone?).
Transformers Prime: This is one of the shows The Hub probably expected the boys to flock to. The CGI here is a little tighter, and the close up shots of the various Autobots are surprisingly detailed, with light reflections, dings and scratches, and variations of paint colors. I was immediately turned off by the random inclusion of three human kids, though. There’s no reason for them; in fact, they actually create MORE problems by their own inclusion in the plot, which consisted of the Autobots transporting a dangerous weapon across the country. This episode seemed to involve introducing a new enemy outside the Decepticons, called MECH, which is kinda cool and actually justified why humans* should be involved in a show involving fighting robots. The action was pretty flat though, but I think that has to do with the straight-forward plot and less with the animation.
MLP Percentage: 56% I actually realized by watching this that I have, and always had, little interest in the fighting robot scene. There’s really nothing too it other than watching metal clang and explode. Don’t get me wrong, I love shit exploding and fighting as the next guy, but watching robots do it is kinda monotonous and silly. If Transformers Prime involved more human* conflicts, there maybe a deeper show in the works.
*ADULT humans. Those kids need to die.
GI Joe: Renegades: I’m aware a lot of people hate this show by the change of its premise: The Joes should not be outlaws, but awesome AMERICAN soldiers. Still, looking past all that, this is a fairly ambitious if bogged-down piece of entertainment. I happened to catch a 2-parter which created an origin for the ninja Snake-Eyes, and developed a backstory for a new anti-Joe squad. I kinda enjoyed the increase in overall stakes, and the animation worked, in a sub-par-Avatar-but-still-passable kind of way. The story kinda huffed and puffed its way through, and it was hilarious how everyone kept asking Snake-Eyes questions despite the fact he COULDN’T TALK BECAUSE HIS THROAT WAS CUT. It mistakes a gross misunderstanding as a complex conflict, and while it’ll create some interesting villains in the long run, it reeks of “we’ll be laughing about this later!” goofiness.
MLP Percentage: 60% All the characters were cookie cutter but this was the first cartoon I’ve seen where Duke, the leader, acted like a real leader. He didn’t just spout commands and save the day. He reacted to the constant and changing situations of the mission and his crew. The last time I’ve seen this was in Whedon’s Firefly with Malcolm Reynolds. It’s in good company.
Dan Vs: This show seems completely anathema to The Hub’s overall direction. This show is also what Allen Gregory should have been like. Dan, the main character, is a paranoid psychopath, who, upon getting annoyed with something, immediately wages an unholy war against it. It’s a funny premise, although it’s tricky to pull a 22-minute length comic bit against a concept, especially when you already beginning at level 10 in terms of reaction. (Ex: In “Dan Vs. Dancing,” it begins with him trying to blow up a dance studio. How do you get bigger than that? By kidnapping him and tossing him in a ghost town filled with dance-talented zombies!) But Dan is relentless in a sub-Master Shake kinda way, and the secondary characters are soft/crazy enough to “stick” with Dan despite his insanity – which is always hard to maintain in the realm of “why would anyone hang out with this guy.” There also seems to be some attempt to continuity, as the last episode simply ended with his cat missing. I would think they’ll be coming back to explain that.
MLP Percentage: 76% It’s a pretty crazy show, goofy enough to work fairly well, although it seems scatterbrained at times.
Pound Puppies: It takes a while – and I mean a WHILE – to stomach the awful Flash animation style, but if you can get past that, and the pretty basic premise, there’s actually a really charming show here. What makes this reboot work so well is that it doesn’t skirt the “orphan” angle here. The various canines that emerge from the Pound Puppies HQ are simply eager to be loved and accepted by their new owners, and that love isn’t always reciprocated. The dogs are innocent, and mostly are made worse by their owners, which is true in real life. One episode included a dog who believed his value as a pet was only in winning dog shows; another consisted of a dog who cheered on a newcomer pet despite the real fact he’d be replaced by her. It’s surprisingly deep for something that shouldn’t be, and on occasion has even more depth that MLP at times. (Yeah, I said it.)
MLP Percentage: 94% If you ever lost a pet due to a tough decision or because of higher authority decreeing it, it’ll hit close to home. It’s also somewhat amusing (in a cute, classic way), and I actually will add this to my MLP weekly watch. Speaking of which…
SURPRISE REVIEW: MLP, Season 2: I’m actually really surprised people are enjoying this season in any way, despite the fact that it’s slowly becoming the pandering, shallow show that season 1 did such a good job to avoid. “Secret of My Excess” and “The Return of Harmony” were charming and inspired, but all the characters, who were more than their stereotypes, are becoming their stereotypes, to the point that they’re putting people’s lives in danger; Twilight’s insanity in “Lesson Zero,” Pinkie’s lack of responsibility in “Baby Cakes,” Applejack’s pride in “The Last Roundup,” and Rainbow Dash’s eccentricities in “May the Best Pet Win” AND “Mysterious Mare Do Well.” Rarity didn’t threaten any lives, but she’s definitely went from caring-with-high-tastes to arrogant drama queen. And Fluttershy… well, not for nothing, but she was fairly one-note in the first season. I kinda figured there wouldn’t be too many episodes starring her in this season.
MLP Percentage (based against season 1): 42%. Sorry, I’m not feeling this season at all save for one or two episodes. Conflicts should come from ponies coming into conflict with each other or legitimate forces, not childish personal issues based on life lessons – that’s what the annoying Cutie Mark Crusaders are for.
Thundercats and the Elephant on Third Earth
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Television, Writing on January 23, 2012
Heh, heh, sword-fighting. Seriously, though, this cartoon is lame.
In the hour-long pilot for the recent reboot to Thundercats, which aired on CN in 2011, we see the feline inhabitants of a prosperous Thundera openly hassle two lizards locked up in stocks in the middle of town. There’s no mistaken these people are supposed to be drunk; after all, they are in the midst of a celebration when this happens, and the arrival of a missing and celebrated soldier only heightens the light and festive mood. Well, not so much for the lizards, who are abused and mistreated up until the point that the inherently noble Lion-O rushes in and protects them (along with Tygra’s and Cheetara’s assistance).
In a desperate plea by Lion-O, his father and ruler of Thundera lets these lizards go, albeit reluctantly. He clearly cares little for these creatures. In addition, there’s no telling how many lizards are still stuck in prison, otherwise tortured or abused – or other species, for that matter, as Thundera’s walls keep our questionably moral citizens cut off from the rest of the planet. Thunderians are hated by the rest of the world.
To make matters worse, Thundera is eventually invaded, Trojan-horse style, and conquered. Here’s the kicker: not only is Lion-O’s father killed, but EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CITY. The whole entire population is straight-up massacred. (There’s a chance that two or three cats fled, but by the show’s own portrayal, everyone else is a rotting corpse.) In a day, a lavish and bustling city is reduced to death and destruction. The survivors are only Lion-O, Tygra, Cheetara, WileyKit, WileyKat, and Snarf. (We learn later that Panthro is alive, too.)
Every moment in this pilot is heartbreaking. But also filled with dramatic potential. The cats are left wandering Third Earth to stop the evil Mumm-ra by finding some magic stones and a book and other generically powered items. The real story, though, is the tragic remnants of a ideal city forced to deal with a planet of creatures that hate and/or distrust them, coming to terms with the personal and horrific death of millions, and essentially finding their place in a world they don’t understand, while coming to grips with the past atrocities of their people.
I’m sorry. That would be the show we actually expected from the pilot.
Instead, we got a Moby Dick-parody. We got a lot of flashbacks and a pretty uninteresting romance. We have two young cats who don’t seem to be too traumatized by being survivors of a mass genocide. There was an episode of about learning the art of defense, or something. The episode with the singing flowers had dramatic promise, but then the cats dealt with robot Ponyo-esque creatures, so I guess that fell by the wayside. When they started racing each other with the pieces of the ThunderTank, cat drag-racing, Thundercats completely lost me.
It’s absolutely inexplicable that at no point did this show address the amount of harrowing depth showcased in the pilot. Believe me, I understand that it’s a kids show, but it’s definitely aimed at older teens and an audience cognizant of the classic series, two groups of people who understand nuance, stakes, death, and consequences. And even if we are focused on kids, you cannot tell me that they, the readers of the Harry Potter series, would have dismissed the stakes established by the pilot. A 10-year old, upon watching the sixth episode, probably asked him or herself, “Fine, but when are they going to deal with ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE?”
Every waking moment watching the series, you can’t help but wonder when the results of Thundera’s torturous past will come to focus for our crew. The reality that they have NOTHING to look forward to, even if they do succeed, doesn’t seem to faze them. They only talk about their father, while understandable, but the massacre of all of Thundera is nary mentioned. Hell, even when Lion-O introduces himself as “Lord of the Thundercats,” no one goes, “Oh, you’re a refugee?” or “Oh, you mean the city that was wiped off the face of the fucking map?” or
“Oh, the people that tortured and ignored half the planet?” Viewers keep expecting these points to be brought up, and they never come.
[Were the elephants in the final three episodes the creators’ way of saying “Yeah, just forget everything that happened at the beginning”? With their forgetful ways, and my oh-so-clever pun in the title of this post, you’d think that’s exactly what they were doing.]
Film and TV are best when they implement the “show-don’t-tell” mantra, but Thundercats would benefit from a serious increase in conversation. I understand the need to budget, cutting down on the need for lip-syncing, but DAMN. The show is a black-haired character way from being an emo-action fest without necessarily dealing with the elements that would justify that emo-ness. When the biggest issue brought by the season finale was a “betrayed by a kiss” moment, (oddly downplaying Pathro’s appendage sacrifice), all potential stakes have sizzled into nothing. Lion-O failure to get his jollies off was portrayed as such a huge disastrous dramatic moment, despite him sucking at everything and the utter need to focus on progressing forward in his destiny and dealing with all the terrible shit in his life. (Also, the whole moment was extremely unearned.) It’s such a pervading question and concern that we’re asking the emotional/dramatic equivalent of when they’re going to get to the fireworks factory.
The show is so straight-forward it’s a mess, when being a “mess” is essentially what the show needs. It sounds like a contradiction, but the circumstances in which the show puts itself into demand a complex, Battlestar Galactica-esque commitment, but instead portrays something akin to a laughably-serious take on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which was already done with the CGI movie a few years back, and look how well THAT turned out). It’s a show where more would actually be more, and it’s unclear if the writers actually grasp that. The stakes are high, but no one actually seems to care.
If a season two is indeed in the works, I’m hoping that they’ll have the Thundercats actually face the adversities that are established in the pilot. If not… well, we’ll be right back to the 1980s, only in HD.
Accolades with an Asterick
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Comics, Film, Music, Television, Uncategorized, Writing on January 11, 2012
The Black Luigi
Andre 3000’s hit single “Hey Ya!” is a gleefully hyperactive song, fusing a classic rock sensibility with a modern, funky chic. It exploded on the scene in 2003, in a strange moment, when Outkast, a duo with a string of underrated, entertaining albums from Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik to Stankonia, decided to release separate ones. They weren’t splitting; they were exploring different things. Speakerboxx/The Love Below was the outcome. At the time, critics marveled over Andre 3000’s The Love Below’s eccentricity and random energy, and casually accepted Big Boi’s Speakerboxx. What makes this particularly weird is that Speakerboxx was inherently the better product, a fact that’s much more obvious today by most mainstream musicphiles. The Love Below is a nifty experiment, but there’s a really blatant truth here, which is most obvious on “Hey Ya,” but has yet to be quite understood: Andre 3000, while a great rapper, isn’t a good musician.
“Hey Ya” bounces and rolls with the immensity and grandeur that a great pop song can be. It works well in clubs and parties, and brightens the spirits as it bounds through its synths, basses, and fake guitar/xylophonist melodies. It’s great as a wonderful 50s-esque rock homage; not so much as a modern rock song. Andre 3000 cut his teeth as a rapper, so his voice is barely registering in this song (mainly due to the fact he can’t hit the notes, choosing to drown his voice out instead). I don’t hate “Hey Ya” (although I never loved it). It’s good, but it’s good with an asterisk.
The middle of aughts was a really, really strange period. It was around that time that Youtube REALLY hit its stride and entertainment across the board started to pick up. Artists were finding success in niches, and it seemed that executives were trying to find the formula for recapturing the splitting markets. Options? Catering to new demographics was an idea – Desperate Housewives, The Sex in the City movie. Another option was experimentation. It worked in the early 90s, when animation ripped into the TV landscape with new, bold stuff. And in desperate times, why not try it again?
Lost was such an experiment, the ABC, 6-season mindfuck that, well, didn’t turn out to be a mindfuck. A moment in time, the perfect moment for a drama to break the landscape for what could be shown on TV. It was, essentially, an art film as a TV show. Expertly acted, crafted, designed, and displayed. A buffet of skilled workmen behind the scenes, who, despite what the most hardened critics say, left viewers and audiences unsatisfied. Period.
What happened in the post-Lost TV world was, well, nothing. The real TV-game changers were The Office, Adult Swim and 24. The Office defined Thursday night comedy for NBC, and while not a ratings-smash, defined new niche comedies that a network could expunge. Adult Swim opened the niche of singular voices in animated and non-animated comedy. 24, while ridiculous, pretty much defined serial television, showcasing the ability to not possess self-contained shows to be a hit. In the advent of DVRs, Netflix, streaming, and torrents, it seems strange that television is still marred in the classic mode of storytelling. Although, it is starting to break.
The truth is, Lost did not end well. It failed to tie in its plot lines, it failed to define a followup (some people suggest Fringe, although that’s more akin to X-Files), and, well, even as a casual fan of the show, there’s no desire to go back to it. The strange thing is, Lost, like “Hey Ya,” had so much raw impact at an individual level, but came to mean nothing in the end. “Hey Ya” falls in being sung by a not-good singer on a weird but not-that-great of an album. Lost, with no strong narrative and no real endgame, failed as a TV show. Good, but with asterisk.
I also humbly submit Pan’s Labyrinth as the film equivalent of good, asterisked media. Guillermo Del Toro is an craftsman director, a visionary into the heart of creations and monsters – a modern day Henson, more or less. And while Pan’s Labyrinth had the rich fairytale rhythms and acting that hit all the right notes, it was a not-so-consistent story. The “fairytale” theme became more of a gimmick, an excuse for characters to randomly act out of character. Looking back on the question of its dream/non-dream settings, I keep wondering why and how the film managed to get to certain points without acting wildly out of sync. I can’t imagine re-watching this without a rub of the chin and a cock-eyed expression. Who has it in their top fifty films? What did we really like about this again?
The asterisk is there because I want to be clear: this is different that the typical cultural embarrassment that we’re usually engaging in. This isn’t the Macarana, 80s power rock ballads, bland raunchy comedy, 60s animation, or other forms of entertainment that was terrible content-wise AND media-wise. “Hey Ya,” musically, is solid, just as Lost was masterful television and Pan’s Labyrinth visually arresting. But as “music,” as “game-changing TV,” as “the cinematic experience,” these three mid-2000 reeked of some missing element, a lack of commitment to the real core issue – entertainment that was aggressively “forest for the trees.” In other words – Andre 3000 can’t sing, Lost failed to have an endgame, and Pan’s Labyrinth’s characters made too many uncharacteristic decisions.
Today’s entertainment seems to have taken the lessons ultimately learned from this and created… well, not better-quality material, but better contained material. Although if Terra Nova, the DC comic reboot, and Thundercats (more on this later) are the norm, then we may just be coming back full circle.