Right up there with Howard The Duck

But it wasn’t one of those shows I was hugely into as a kid. Still, I got the jist. Prince Adam, who is secretly He-Man, battles the evil Skeletor. Lots of gay innuedos for adults and you have wacky characters like Beast Man, Man-At-Arms and so on. There’s also Orko, who’s a fucking annoying incompetenet wizard or Jester. He never decides.

So like most hit cartoons of the 80s, of course He-Man would get some sort of reboot. So, in 2002 along comes He-Man and The Masters of The Universe, which basically rewinds everything back a bit. You see the “origin” of Skeletor (he had an origin?) de-age Prince Adam a few years and include characters seen in the toy line but not in show, and bam! He-Man lives again!

So here’s the surprising thing: The setup isn’t terrible. I mean the original is goofy as fuck and has it’s charm, no doubt. But for what would probably be sacrosanct to fans of the original, this plays it pretty close to the chest Teela is still pretty kickass, Orko is still annoying. Adam is a bit of a coward, but tries to be a hero without always relying on He-Man on occasion. Evil-Lyn is basically Starscream, which is great. There are ongoing story arcs. It even has a heartfelt lesson at the end of every episode. The animation isn’t spectacular but better than you’d expect from a lazy update of an old show.

Where He-Man and the Masters of The Universe falls flat is like 90% of the dialogue and actual plot execution is goddamn painful. A perfect example is in one episode Man-At-Arms and He-Man are trapped in a giant fish thing. He-Man is desperately trying to carry Man-At-Arms up the stomach before Skeletor wins the day. Man-At-Arms tell He-Man to just drop him because he’s too heavy with his armor. TAKE OFF YOUR HEAVY AS FUCK ARMOR, MAN-AT-ARMS. He-Man says some bullshit about not leaving friends behind later, but he’s just as fucking dumb for not telling his buddy to lighten the goddamn load. There are numerous examples of this. I’m not expecting something on the level of Mad Men or anything. but even in a kids show some goddamn logic and basic common sense has to be at play (unless you are purposely going for no logic or common sense, and this isn’t doing that).

At the end of the day though, much like G.I. Joe: Renegades, I have to ask: Who is this for? I guess it was originally to help launch a whole new Masters of The Universe line along with a movie (that’s still in development hell to this day) but since that never really materialized it just stands on its own as a weird oddity that probably hung around for 3 seasons because they had nothing else to put on in it’s time slot.

Final Rating: 2/5-Guys who had their face melted off with acid and still survived

The post Animation Quick Look: He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe (2002) appeared first on screensnark..

Welcome to animation quick look, you know the drill. In short Fate/Zero is Dragonball Z, but extremely fucked up. Before I get to that, let me lay down the basics.

Centuries ago, powerful wizard families created a powerful artifact that granted wises called “the holy grail”, the problem was, it only granted one wish to one person, so of course the families went to war over it (they couldn’t just wish for infinite wishes? It’s not a genie). Why is the series called Fate/Zero? I have no clue.

This eventually leads to what is known as the “holy grail wars”. Seven mages chosen by the grail summon the spirits of ancient legendary heroes such as King Arthur and Gilgamesh to do battle. There have been 3 so far, with no winner (I don’t really understand how there has no winner, you basically use the spirits like Pokemon, last one standing wins). We come in during the fourth one, where goddammit there will finally be a winner.

Now let me explained how fucked up Fate/Zero is. One of the mages is a child murderer. You see him doing things like crucifiying children and having a grand old time of it. His spirit, simply named “Caster” is a like-minded psychopath, which of course only makes things worse. This is after seeing a scene where some old dude convinces a mage to fight for him because otherwise he’s going to continue subjecting a little girl to lying naked in a room and having giant bugs crawl all over her every night. He’s not merely threatening to do this, he’s already doing it, he’s merely telling the mage he’ll stop doing it if the mage wins the grail war for him. The I laughed very inappropriately at the little girl being excited later about one night not having to sleep naked with the bugs because it was just so goddamned absurd.

But hey at least the child murderer is something relatively interesting. Fate/Zero is mostly filled with boring stock one-dimensional characters like Rider, who is your usual “I FIGHT EVERYTHING BECAUSE THAT’S MANLY” type. Or Saber who is your normal chivalrous type but with a twist-see she’s King Arthur! It’s not really clear whether they were implying Arthur was actually a woman all along or he just happened to be re-incarnated as woman for this war. Doesn’t matter though, they do nothing interesting with that.

Pretty much the only high compliment I can pay to Fate/Zero is that the animation is pretty top notch. The character designs are pretty cool (which makes the boring personalities all the more disappointing) and the battles are slick and fun to watch. But like many anime series that promise lots of epic battling, Fate/Zero spends a whole lot of time building up to said battles and it’s just not worth dredging through the exposition.

Final Rating: 2/5-Naked girls covered in bugs.

The post Animation Quick Look: Fate/Zero appeared first on screensnark..

A pilot can obviously make or break a series.  In most cases, this refers to the actual survival of a show, as establishing an initial audience is often life or death when it comes to modern network programming.  In the artistic sense, this refers to tone setting, character establishment, episode format, etc.

When it comes to the pilot for a show like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (the one and only time I will be properly typing out the official title), the stakes are a little different.  With its built in fanboy audience (OMFG It’s Maria Fucking Hill!!!), along with the potential to grab a percentage of the millions who have seen any or several of Marvel’s post-Iron Man movies, the show’s survival past the first 6-8 episodes should be virtually guaranteed.

Theoretically, this should allow the show creative and artistic freedoms that aren’t typically enjoyed by network shows in their infancy.  Instead of making a standard network pilot that lays out basic plot elements, introduces stock characters with little nuance, and crosses its fingers that it won’t get cancelled, Agents of Shield should be able to jump right into “good”, rather than skewing “safe”.

And there is some of that in the pilot (note to show producers: don’t name your pilot “Pilot” unless there are pilots.  I guess there are pilots here, so, whatever.  Fine, I guess.  Maybe it was meant to be semi-ironic).  There is certainly an assumption that the viewer has some basic knowledge of the Marvel Universe, but not so much that anyone jumping on would feel out of their depth.  Also, the show isn’t being written to specifically cater to fanboys, but also isn’t so vanilla as to insult us, which can be an extremely difficult tightrope to walk.  So Joss Whedon seems to have managed to avoid (for the time being) the largest of craters set in his path.

The larger and decidedly unexpected problem, however, might be the comfort level American network television (and admittedly, its viewing audience) has developed with procedural drama.  There were a few times during the pilot that I half expected NCIS-style head slaps to pop up, or Gil Grissom to step out of the shadows to give stern fatherly advice and wax poetic about the beauty of insects.  It’s extremely worrisome that given the opportunity to create some relatively original TV programming (Lou Ferrigno and Linda Carter aside), the creators dropped a short action sequence in the cold open, detective work and tech-savvy forensics in the show’s body, and a satisfying but convenient resolution at the end.  Yes, both NCISs and the jumble of CSIs have loyal followings.  It can be assumed, however, that this is because the audiences are on the verge of brain death.  Fourteen fucking seasons of CSI?  FOURTEEN FUCKING SEASONS?!?!?

Obviously there is a larger picture in the background, but to make the structure of the pilot so nondescript and formulaic makes it impossible to ignore the similarities to NCSIIS (the logical acronym for the inevitable NCIS/CSI crossover).  If each episode follows the bland crusade of a generic cast to contain a vague potential hero/threat, then there’s really not much more to say.  David Caruso and Gary Sinise are both recently out of work.  Why not team them up as a duo of criminal masterminds hell-bent on world domination, always two steps ahead of our shielded heroes?

The rest of the cast is passable, with the only real standouts being Clark Gregg as Agent Paulson (because we’ve seen him before) and Chloe Bennet (because her performance is pretty damn good).  We were promised the spontaneous explosion of this episode’s hero, and I wish the promise would have been kept, to put an end to his screen time.  If that’s the best casting they can do, this might be a long (first and only) season.

I would have been surprised if Joss Whedon had completely fucked this up.  I’ve read his comics, I’ve watched his shows and movies, and they are all generally above average (Dollhouse excluded).  He so far has delivered, if only in not completely fucking up.  But I have high expectations.  If the show ends up being NCIS with superpowers, I’ll be dumping it rather quickly.  The potential here is for high espionage drama (a proven entertaining commodity) with otherworldly elements mixed in.  That is what I expected going in, and that is what I’m hoping we still might get.  I’m decidedly on the fence.

The post Marvel: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pilot Review appeared first on screensnark..