Clever premise, stupid premise
Into cartoons? Oh yes. And thanks to an art department gig that put a TV at my desk, I got a huge dose of daytime television, right through the Eighties and Nineties.
My goodness, how most of it sucked.
I loved the premise for Thundercats, though. This planet of martial-artist-cat-people blows up, and everyone evacuates by space ship. Except, only one ship makes it out, and it’s the ship with the royalty on it — including the boy-cat who’s destined to be king.
Finally, the ship lands on a planet (Earth, as it happens), and it turns out their suspended animation thingie was gefukt. They’ve been asleep, but they’re decades older. Including the king, who is now unimaginably huge, powerful and in charge…and still has the mind of a seven-year-old.
So the others have to grow him up, without pissing him off too much. Must have been fantastically appealing to seven-year-olds who weren’t impossibly powerful.
On the other hand, there was Captain Planet. Brainchild of Ted Turner, with voice talent from every famous person who ever lived and surely one of the dumbest cartoons EVARRR.
See, there are these five children with power rings: an African boy in tune with the earth, a Malaysian girl with a deep understanding of the ocean, a South American Indian shaman boy with the ability to communicate with animals telepathically, a Russian girl computer genius, and an American boy whose special ability is hitting on the girls and being an irritating retard.
I’m loving this already.
Together, they can summon this warty superhero guy of indeterminate powers, to fight pollution. His one vulnerability? Pollution.
Oh, but the best bit is the cartoon’s complete and utter fail as propaganda. The villains aren’t greedy capitalist bastards whose money-grubbing activities cause environmental damage — an eco-villain with some kind of real-world meaning. No, the bad guys pollute for the sake of polluting. It’s their whole deal, no reason given. Hey, let’s pour shit in the ocean, ha ha ha!
It never ceases to astonish, how large pools of money and talent can come together and make infinite suck.
July 13, 2010 — 10:34 pm
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