Gen-13 - a lost film that needs to stay lost

Gen-13 is a source of mixed emotions for me. Though I loved the original comic book in my late teens and early twenties, I now realize the story was ridiculously derivative and immature. The first Gen-13 mini-series was released at the same time I was finishing up high school and for some reason I found the inane story absolutely compelling. Maybe it was because the characters age was the same as my own, or perhaps the idea of trading mundane student life for superpowers and government conspiracies appealed to me, heck it could've just been Jeffery Scott Campbell's titillating artwork ... whatever the reason, I was hooked on the series after just one issue. Following its release, Gen-13 rocketed up the sales charts and become one of the most popular comic books on the market, before long an animated adaptation was in the works.

Produced by Buena Vista (Disney), Gen-13 the animated movie is based on the original five issue mini-series that started it all. Directed by Kevin Altieri (of Batman the Animated series fame) this planned DTV seemed to have everything going for it; popular source material, an experienced director and a good studio. Then ... nothing happened, the movie just never came out. According to Wikipedia, the reason Gen-13 never made it into stores was because DC acquired Wildstorm Studios (the publisher of the comic book) while the film was still in production. Being that Warner Brothers (the owner of DC) is a rival studio of Disney, the idea that the latter studio would be releasing a film starring the property of the former was an unappealing one for Buena Vista. So instead Disney shelved the movie and fans were left with nothing. Now, over ten years later, I've finally gotten to watch this lost film and I have to say ... it was in NO way worth the wait.

The story of Gen-13 begins with Caitlin Fairchild, an 18 year old college freshmen who doesn't "fit in". You see, Caitlin wears big glasses and doesn't dress well and is real smart and awkward and ... well let's just call her what she is, an archetypal bookworm. One day - out of the blue - Caitlin is offered a full scholarship to the government run program called Project Genesis. Realizing that her life at college is anything but desirable, Caitlin accepts the offer and quickly finds herself living at a secret military facility in the middle of the desert. Despite her surreal environment, Caitlin actually starts to fit in and even makes a couple of friends by the name of Roxy and Grunge. Like just about everything else in this story Roxy and Grunge are cliches. Roxy is the classic "tough chick" who always talks trash and tries to sneak a smoke. Grunge, on the other hand, is one of those typical "slacker surfers" who suffer from both mild retardation and bad hygiene. Along with Caitlin, this mismatched band of stereotypes soon discover the real goal of Project Genesis isn't to hand out college credit, but instead to find the children of super-powered soldiers and turn them Gen Active (basically that means turn on their powers). It all begins one night with Caitlin suffering a severe headache. While trying to make her way to the infirmary, Caitlin comes across an open door to a restricted area complete with a computer terminal revealing classified information about her father. Naturally(?) Roxy and Grunge stumble into the same room and before you know it the trio is discovered by the base's security. Her head now pounding uncontrollably, Caitlin becomes angry with the abusive guard who is threatening both her and her friends and decides to do something about the situation ... she punches him through a wall (actually I think it was glass, but whatever). After this display of superhuman strength, Caitlin realizes she has grown almost seven feet tall and her body ... well let's just say it "filled out". From there our story becomes one of escape as our heroes (Roxy and Grunge go Gen Active as well) try to flee Project Genesis and its evil wardens Ivana and Threshold (who himself is a Gen Active).

Surprisingly, the story of Gen-13 the animated movie doesn't stray all that far from the original comic book mini-series I enjoyed in my youth. The biggest change is probably the removal of two central characters from the source material; Burnout and Rainmaker. Though it's true that Caitlin, Roxy and Grunge received more focus in the original mini-series, I was disappointed with the exclusion of both Burnout and Rainmaker, even if they weren't instrumental to the story. That said, I can certainly understand why the films creators wanted to streamline the cast to just pivotal characters. Sadly, the focus gained from the absence of Burnout and Rainmaker does nothing to make this story more intelligent or classy.

When I say the writing of Gen-13 lacks intelligence, what I really mean is that the story is incredibly generic and overly familiar. Seriously, it's just a mishmash of tired ideas, settings and archetypes with no surprises and plenty of deja vu. Secret government experiments on soldiers, nefarious plots to unlock hidden superpowers, sadistic bad guys with their own agenda, cliche teenage superheroes ... my god, this story is so unoriginal it makes the latest NCIS show seem fresh by comparison. Even worse, the crass humor and gratuitous near nudity that may have appealed to me as a young man, now seems incredibly patronizing and unsophisticated. Fart jokes, swearing, vulgar hand gestures, steamy shower scenes, countless pantie shots and the ridiculous transformation of Caitlin into a fanboy wet dream, does nothing but expose Gen-13 for the lowbrow T&A that it is. Now these comments may seem a little prudish or even conservative in nature, but therein lays real kicker. I'm not a prude or a conservative! Yet, still I find the mindless writing of Gen-13 incredibly annoying and immature, not insulting per se, but definitely grating.

Exacerbating Gen-13's numerous problems is an excessively long run time. Clocking in at a staggering 90 minutes, this film takes way too long to tell a story with such little depth. In particular, the desert battle of Caitlin could have completely been cut from the film. Looking back at it now, I'm actually a little ashamed to admit that I - in my younger years - enjoyed Gen-13's tasteless antics and derivative story. Sure, most of us have enjoyed stories that pander to our less intelligent fantasies of youth (how else do you explain Twilight?), but I still have to judge this film on its own merits, and as an adult. That being the case, I'll just say that Gen-13 offers little to nothing of substance in the writing or storytelling department.

Visually speaking, Gen-13 looks ... well it looks terrible. Everything about this film - from the animation to the character designs - screams low budget DTV. I'll start with the character design. Stylistically, Gen-13 uses the popular "streamlined" look that Bruce Timm developed for Batman the Animated Series. Unlike Batman, however, Gen-13's characters appear to have been designed for a kids cartoon. Ironic when you consider that Batman's target demographic was children (yet the show was very visually mature) and Gen-13's audience was supposed to be teenagers. Anyway, the original artist of Gen-13 was Jeffery Scott Campbell, a very talented individual whose body of work is sadly small. Campbell's art was clearly based on the Jim Lee school of comic books, and despite his penchant for objectifying the female form, I was impressed with the detailed characters and environment that Campbell created. Absolutely none of this visual styling makes it into the animated adaptation of Gen-13 however. Where Campbell used curves the film used sharp edges, where Campbell emphasized detail the film went minimalist. In short, the source material and the movie look nothing alike. Of course, you can't expect to see a direct visual adaption of Campbell's style, but something along the lines of X-Men Evolution would have worked far better than the generic style used here.

The uninspired look of Gen-13's animated world also undermines any effort by the film's writers to establish a dark tone. While the movie has plenty of blood and violence, none of the sequences involving this subject matter feel right. This is because the look of the film is so childish and immature that scenes of death and destruction appear out of place in it. It would be like Dora the Explorer gaining psychic powers, then using them to blow up Diego's head. Unless you're trying to purposefully juxtaposition the extreme violence and innocent character appearance for comedic effect, it just doesn't work.

Besides my aversion to the film's visual style, Gen-13's designs just look lazy. Caitlin is supposed to be mousy and thin when the story starts, but in no way does she appear to be frail prior to her transformation. Heck, her body type doesn't even look all that different from any of the movies other female characters before going Gen Active. Then we have Threshold's hair. I know it may seem like an odd thing to complain about, but if you saw the laughable mane sported by this guy, you would understand why I had to call it out. All in all, I found the design work done on Gen-13 to be uninspired, inappropriate and apathetic.

As for the animation itself, it is decidedly cheap looking, even for a DTV. With boring staging, awkward movement and crappy fight choreography being the norm, I have a hard time believing anyone put much effort into Gen-13. Though I really don't know why this would be the case, I'd like to offer up two theories regarding the poor craftsmanship of the film. The first is simply that not enough money was put into Gen-13. If Wildstorm was trying to get a 90 minute movie made on a shoestring budget, then it is very possible that too many corners were cut and the end result was this. My second theory hinges on the sale of Wildstorm studios to DC. If indeed this film was still in the process of being made when the sale of Wildstorm went down, a lot of uncertainty regarding the productions future could've come about. In the end the film's creative staff may have just been "getting it done" instead of trying to craft something worthwhile. Of course I have no insider knowledge regarding Gen-13's production, so this is all just speculation. Regardless of the cause, the half-hearted effort being put into this movie was obvious, shocking when you consider Kevin Altieri was directing.

What's not so shocking is the abysmal voice acting of Gen-13. Outside of Mark Hamill's work on Threshold, none of the performances in this film worked. Caitlin's voice was droning, Lynch was off the mark and Grunge ... well let's just take a minute and talk about Grunge. Performed by Flea (that's right, the guitarist from Red Hot Chili Peppers), the voice of Grunge personifies every surfer stereotype I've come to hate. To give you some idea of what I'm talking about, imagine if Keanu Reeves' "Ted" character from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure had a child with Sean Penn's "Spicoli" character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High ... that's Grunge. Fortunately the film tries to keep Grunge's dialog minimal whenever possible. I'm guessing the producers edited out anything that wasn't completely necessary to help reduce the number of brain aneurisms brought on by Flea's egregious acting. Like I said before, the only voice acting in this film that holds water is Hamill's. Though his work on Threshold doesn't even approach his quintessential Joker performances from BTAS, it still holds up pretty well.

I had originally planned to comment on the lackluster musical score of Gen-13, but at this point I don't see the need. When it's all said and done this film is - simply put - a mess. Poorly written, cheaply animated and horribly acted, I can honestly say that I found nothing of worth in Gen-13. Even if you're a fan of the original comic book I would not recommend watching this film. Thankfully Gen-13 has never been released here in the US (a merciful act we should all be grateful for), so steering clear of it really isn't all that difficult.

Transformers - a surprisingly enduring franchise with so-so beginnings

When you talk about Transformers these days everyone (understandably) assumes you're talking about the blockbuster movies from the last couple years. But before Michael Bay brought us humping dogs, racist ghetto robots, mechanical testicles and - of course - more humping dogs, there was actually a child friendly version of these famous robots in disguise. Premiering in 1984, the Transformers cartoon was an instant hit with children of my generation, and went on to sell millions of dollars worth of toys, comics and other paraphernalia. The show itself was awful of course (like most cartoons of the time), but despite its typically terrible origins the Transformers franchise continues to endure the fickle mistress that is pop culture better than any of its peers.

Growing up, Transformers was one of two shows that consumed the imagination of me and my friends (the other being GI Joe). I watched it every day after school, and probably saw most of - if not all of - the episodes as a kid. Of course, who could blame me? You had giant robots fighting other giant robots, and they could all transform into cars, trucks, airplanes, guns, cassette decks and even a microscope! For whatever reason, this fascination with shape changing mechanical warriors has endured the test of time surprisingly well. Besides the original Transformers cartoon - which lasted 98 episodes - there have been numerous reboots and re-imaginings of the franchise over the last 25 years. From the Michael Bay movies to Transformers Beast Machines to Transformers Armada to Transformers Animated and most recently Transformers Prime, there have been a half-dozen versions of Optimus Prime and pals ready to enlist new fans for parent company Hasbro. Still, it all started with that cartoon in 1984, and that's what I'm here to review. Or at least the first 65 episodes anyway (I'm saving the movie and the final 33 episodes for later).

Given the popularity of this series, I don't feel that an involved synopsis is necessary. Basically there's a planet called Cybertron where two factions of warring robots have been doing battle for millions of years. The good guys are referred to as Autobots and are led by Optimus Primes, the bad guys are Decepticons and their leader is Megatron. Given the enormous amount of natural resources necessary to wage this seemingly endless war, the planet Cybertron finally ran out of energy and groups of both Decepticons and Autobots were forced to leave their home in search of new fuel sources. While battling one another in space, these Transformers crash land on earth where they lay dormant for millions of years. Upon their reawakening, the Decepticons (in typical bully fashion) set out to steal earth's energy from us weak humans. At the same time Optimus Prime and the Autobots set out to protect humanity from Megatron and his evil cohorts.

Conceptually, this is a pretty solid idea for an 80s action-adventure cartoon. The parallels between our own energy crisis and the situation faced by the Transformers is surprisingly relevant for the time, and remains so today. Equally impressive is the fact that the whole premise behind Transformers was written around an existing toy line. For those who don't know, the Transformers started life as Japanese toys with no background story whatsoever. When Hasbro decided that they wanted to repackage these playthings for American consumers, they thought it would be best to create an overriding mythology to get kids interested, thus Transformers was born. Despite this solid premise, however, the overall writing for this series is about what you would expect from the time period, insulting to its audience and merchandise driven. I was especially amazed by the overwhelming number of new characters introduced during the initial 65 episodes in this series. Within just the first 13 installments you not only had a relatively large cast of Autobots and Decepticons to keep track of, but you got Dinobots, Insecticons, Starfire and then more Dinobots almost right away. After that things only got worse with Constructicons, Stunticons, Aerobots, Combaticons, Omega Supreme and plenty of other robots being shoved down your throat. This was - of course - a sales driven decision, and just one more example of how cartoons of this time were ultimately controlled by people whose passion was selling toys, and not telling good stories. Still, the fact that Transformers was probably the worst when it came to introducing new characters for the sake of merchandise (GI Joe would be a close second), this was not an uncommon practice, and I try to only compare properties of the 1980s to one another, and not to the current standard. So, with that said I'll move on and start discussing the writing of Transformers, as related to its peers.

I've reviewed a couple 1980s action-adventure cartoons, and one of the side effects of this (besides the massive loss of brain cells) is that I find myself saying the same things over and over. While this is personally frustrating, it's also unavoidable since most of these shows used the same writers and followed the same formula as their contemporaries. So, like GI Joe, Thundercats and others, the stories from Transformers have very little good, mostly bad and far too much ugly writing.

Let's start things off with the ugly. One obvious problem with Transformers is continuity. Early in the series all of the robots (Autobot and Decepticon) were able to fly, regardless of what vehicle/object they could transform into. As the show progressed, however, it was revealed that Autobots could fly, but not very well. Finally, by the time season two got going none of the Autobots could apparently fly unless they were capable of transforming into an airplane or spaceship. Basically, the writers just couldn't seem to collectively make up their minds about when Autobots could, and could not take to the air until they were half way through the series. Another example of bad continuity can be found in the building of the Dinobots. During season one Optimus Prime okays the creation of Dinobots, Transformers whose physical appearance and strength stems from the dinosaurs who roamed earth millions of years ago. Later, during season two, Megatron decides to create Stunticons, Decepticons who could transform into cars and thus challenge the Autobots domination of the roads. When it came time for Megatron to give the Stunticons life, however, he had to travel to Cybertron and petition Vector Sigma, a long dormant piece of mysterious technology to give his creations personalities (or souls I suppose). The reason for this is that all Transformers were given life by Vector Sigma, and without its help the Stunticons would never be anything except mindless automatons. Unfortunately, this little bit of mythology completely ignores the fact that the aforementioned Dinobots somehow received unique personalities without the aid of Vector Sigma. Like I said, inconsistent continuity.

Equally ugly were the episodes that just should've never been made (even by 1980s standards). Like GI Joe and Thundercats, Transformers has a handful of stories that are just so bad it's insulting to audiences of all ages. The worst offenders were City of Steel (a story were Optimus Prime is cut into pieces, and his body parts turned into weapons against the Autobots), Attack of the Autobots (which features the insanely overused plot device of mind control) and Kremzeek (an episode so surreal, I can't even describe it). I'll spare you any further details concerning the plots of these animated abominations, but take my word for it, these are some of the worst cartoons of the 1980s.

As for the "good" episodes of Transformers, I found that almost all of them had the same thing in common, they didn’t take place on earth. Though a little strange given the strength of the energy crisis premise, I found episodes like "The Search for Alpha Trion", and "The Secret Of Omega Supreme" far more enjoyable than any of the stories based around earth and the show's central themes. I can't say for sure, but I think that the writers of this series enjoyed doing stories set on alien worlds and plots delving into the history of the Transformers more than they liked the show's primary mythology. Of course, this could just be my own personal bias as well. Either way, I think this show was better suited for fantastical outer space science fiction than urban street gangs and worldwide car races.

Another positive thing about the writing of Transformers is that the violence - though hideously tame - did have more intensity than most of its contemporaries. This was apparently the result of the main characters being robots. For whatever reason, the idea of robots punching, kicking and shooting one another didn't bother censors - or parent watchdog groups - back in the 1980s, so the writers of Transformers were able to take things a little further than other cartoons of the time. Speaking of parent watchdog groups, I'm shocked (in a good way) that the episode Microbots slipped by these ever diligent and overprotective outfits. I say this because the second act of Microbots featured a group of Decepticons getting drunk on Energon Cubes (Energon is the fuel used by Transformers) and clearly stumbling around intoxicated before passing out! Though showing inebriated individuals was done in other 1980s action-adventure cartoons, the act was primarily reserved to show the negative consequences of drinking underage, or drinking and driving. Such was not the case here, so I guess the writers slipped one by, good for them.

At the end of the day though, the writing of Transformers was - more often than not - mediocre (which would be considered bad by today's standards). The stories had tons of bad science and logic gaps (how do the Autobots manage to drive almost anywhere in the world within a matter of minutes?), plenty of preachy PSAs (don't steal, be nice to others etc.) and a plethora of awful one-liners. I wish I could get excited - or even angry - about the work done by the writers of this show. The first 65 episodes are just so typical, however, I'm stuck with the meek acknowledgement that Transformers is simply "par for the course". It's kind of like the Ben 10 of the 1980s, haphazardly written, shamelessly geared at merchandising and lacking substance, yet somehow not completely evil.

Visually speaking, Transformers - once again - has some good points, bad points and a whole lot of in-between. On the positive side, a handful of episodes in this series looked really good. Notables include, Atlantis Arise, Microbots and Megatron's Master Plan. Each of these stories had some really impressive and ambitious animation, the kind I wish we saw more of during this time.

Another excellent aspect of Transformers would be the design work. I really liked how Cybertron was built entirely out of metal, with seemingly endless corridors and buildings stretching clear down into the bowels of the planet. Also impressive were the general Autobot and Decepticon designs done for the show. Though based on the Japanese toys, the actual animated versions of all the Transformers were changed a lot for the cartoon. True, they still resembled the toys themselves, but anyone who actually owned Megatron or Optimus Prime knows that the cartoon renditions of these characters looked a lot better than the toys themselves (to be fair the cartoons didn't actually have to transform in three-dimensions though). The thing I liked most about the design of Transformers, however, were the "classic" Cybertron Transformer designs. Characters like Alpha Trion, Aleta-1 and Devcon all had cylindrical styling and rounded corners that were fantastically alien and nothing like the boxy designs of the earth based Transformers. It was just so different looking (probably Japanese) and original I would have personally liked to seen more. Fortunately the remaining 33 episodes of Transformers - along with the movie - use this style a lot, so I have that to look forward to at least.

Negatively speaking, Transformers has more animation glitches than any action-adventure show I've ever seen. Things like the wrong character talking, or a character that wasn't supposed to be in a scene showing up in the background are omnipresent throughout the first 65 episodes. This usually happened with Transformers that were near identical in appearance to other robots in the show. For example, Starscream looks just like Thundercracker, the only real difference is the accent colors for each character. Given this similarity, it's very common to find scenes where the individual being shown was supposed to be Starscream, but the studio accidently used the color scheme for Thundercracker. Though I imagine it must have been very difficult for the producers and directors of these cartoons to keep track of this sort of thing - especially given the demanding schedule of the show - one cannot ignore the fact that Transformers has far too many of these animation mistakes.

Another issue I had with the visuals from this series was the background looping. Anybody who's ever watched the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons has probably noticed the way HB looped backgrounds while characters were walking, running or driving. This technique is used to save money and it involves having the same background go by over and over again. As you can probably imagine, this cost cutting trick was also popular in many of the action-adventure cartoon of the 1980's as well. Its effectiveness, however, varied depending on the execution. Sadly, the use of looping backgrounds in Transformers was not good. The biggest problem was that the beginning and end of the loop just didn't match up very often, thus the film appeared to "jump" every time the background began a new cycle. Though other shows of the time may have had the same problem, this issue was only exacerbated by the fact that a large percentage of the cast was made up of cars that spent a lot of time - shockingly enough - driving around in settings were backgrounds could easily be looped.

Poorly looped animation wasn't the only problem stemming from the Transformers general nature though. Radical shifts in scaling were also commonplace thanks to the Transformers ability to ... well, transform. I'll give you an example, Megatron (the leader of the Decepticons) is one of the larger robots in the show. He stands several stories tall, and very few of his minions can equal his stature. Yet, when Megatron transforms into a handgun, anyone of his soldiers could hold and fire him like a normal weapon. Now I'm no expert in physics, but even I know that a machine as large as Megatron can't just shirk himself down to an object 1/100th of his original size, not unless there's magic in those Energon Cubes they drink. This same problem shows up with characters like Astrotrain as well. Despite being the same general size as other Decepticons, Astrotrain could transform into a space shuttle and easily transport a number of his evil comrades with room to spare. Now, to be fair the producers of Transformers really didn't have many options outside of "magically" scaling robots. Since the characters in Transformers could change into such a wide variety of objects, making those objects exist in the same space with one another required a "leap of faith" by the audience. Unfortunately, this unusual variance in proportion - coupled with poorly executed cost cutting techniques and constant animation mistakes - take away greatly from anything Transformers did right visually.

When it's all said and done, the visuals from Transformers standup okay for the time period in which they were created. The show had a couple of standout episodes (though very few), and some of the styling and character design was pretty good. Sadly, the overall presentation of the series does suffer greatly thanks to the very nature of the show itself. I suppose it's a little ironic that the thing that has helped keep this franchise popular the last 25 years (transforming robots) is the same thing that made the execution of the original cartoon so frustrating and distracting.

In terms of Audio, Transformers has very solid voice acting. The show was recorded with an ensemble cast (which is a good thing), and veterans like Peter Cullen and Frank Welker gave distinct personalities to the characters they voiced. Cullen in particular was so iconic as Optimus Prime that Michael Bay was forced to cast the actor for the same role in his live action movies.

Musically speaking, Transformers was - at best - average. The opening theme was pretty weak, and the in show music was typically redundant and overused. The show also shared some music with its "cousin" program GI Joe (both shows were produced by the same outfits for Hasbro), so originality wasn't a strong point either. Interestingly enough, the considerable amount of "sharing" that took place between Transformers and GI Joe led to a pretty funny mistake in the Transformers episode "The Autobot Run". Every time this story went to commercial, the bumpers (that's the lead out and lead in sequences) used the GI Joe music with the Transformers animation. At first I was confused and had to rerun the commercial bumper, but upon further review this was indeed a production mistake, funny stuff.

If it sounds like I was disinterested when writing this review, that's because I was ... and for that I apologize. The truth is I've gotten a little burned out on the 1980s action-adventure shows, and I need to recharge my batteries with something a little less ... well, crappy. So for the foreseeable future I'm going to be watching cartoons that came before, or after 1980 (I'm actually watching some classic Popeye and Looney Tunes right now). As for Transformers, it's a decent 1980s action-adventure show. Though mostly average in execution, the show did have a couple bright spots, and the premise is one that continues to find new fans, even today. Still, the negative aspects of this cartoon are glaring, especially when viewed with older eyes. If you're a big fan of this show, pickup one of the slim pack sets and give it a watch. They’re pretty cheap and have some fun extras including: original commercials, PSAs and interviews. People who have never seen this show - or don't have a strong sense of nostalgia for it - should stay away, nothing about this show has aged well.

Treasure Planet is a decent little gem

Though mostly remembered as another post 2000 Disney flop, Treasure Planet is actually a much better film than most people give it credit for. Released in 2002, Treasure Planet takes Louis Stevenson's classic tale of Treasure Island and adapts it into a science fiction adventure set in space. The film was directed by the solid team of Clements and Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules and The Princess Frog) and cost a whopping $140 million dollars to create. Sadly, Treasure Planet was unable to make back its production budget during the initial release (even with the world wide box office) and has been written off as just another Disney mistake.

I'm little ashamed to admit that I didn't even see this film in theaters when it was released in November of 2002. I had a lot going on at the time (buying a house, getting married ... you know, little things) and I was still feeling burned by the whole Titan A.E. and Atlantis fiascos from 2000 and 2001. Basically I just didn't see anything in Treasure Planet's advertising that made me think this story could succeed where other animated sci-fi features had failed in previous years. Upon its release on DVD in 2003, I decided to pick the movie up and see if its story was as bad as I feared. Much to my (pleasant) surprise however, Treasure Planet featured excellent animation, some superb character dynamics and a good (albeit not great) story.

Our movie begins with fifteen year old Jim Hawkins getting into trouble when the local authorities find him solar surfing through a restricted area. Upon his capture Jim is returned to the local inn run by his mother - whose name is Sarah - and is given a stern scolding for his repeated run-ins with the law. Shortly thereafter, a mysterious alien crashes on a nearby landing pad and Jim helps the mortally wounded stranger back to the inn. Once there the alien tells Jim, Sarah and family friend Dr. Delbert Doppler (he's an anthropomorphic, dog-like astronomer) to "beware the cyborg" and hands over a golden sphere to Jim before dying. Within moments a gang of pirate-like ruffians attack the inn forcing Jim, his mother and Delbert to flee the once peaceful establishment. After escaping to (what I presume is) Delbert's observatory, Jim unlocks the newly acquired golden sphere and discovers it's a holographic map leading to Treasure Planet, the fabled world where legendary pirate Captain Flint hid all of his treasure. Though difficult to convince at first, Sarah allows Jim to undertake an expedition with Delbert to follow the holo-map and see if it does indeed lead to Treasure Planet. In need of transportation, Delbert commissions a space vessel called the "RLS Legacy" and its commander Captain Amelia (she appears to be half cat and half human), to provide passage during their journey. Once aboard, Jim is relegated to "cabin boy" and put into the care/service of John Silver, a cyborg cook that Jim is initially skeptical of. So begins the journey to find Treasure Planet.

Taken at face value, the story of Treasure Planet isn't exactly overflowing with originality. It's based on a novel from 1883, and the formula of pirates riding the high seas while following a map to hidden treasure is a well worn one, even if the film is set in outer space. This decision to use outer space as a location was actually declared "gimmicky" by some critics, or at least the ones that wanted the story to stay closer to its origins (admittedly, I did sense a bit of old man "curmudgeon" from those critics). Personally I had no issues with the overall story - which made for a good adventure vehicle I thought - or its cosmic setting. Still, neither of these ideas really endeared the film to me when it was all said and done (which is one of the reasons I didn't go to theaters to watch it).

So why did I like Treasure Planet so much? Well, despite its derivative nature, Treasure Planet does one thing very, very well. It develops the father-son bond of Jim Hawkins and John Silver magnificently. The best example of this would be in the film's second act montage when we see a young Jim Hawkins being neglected, and eventually abandoned by his biological father. These somber moments are interrupted by scenes of Hawkins and Silver bonding over various chores and learning experiences aboard the "RLS Legacy". The result is a fantastic montage that quickly - and convincingly - establishes John Silver as a surrogate father to Jim, a role Silver finds himself conflicted over given his true intentions. This is the driving force of the film, without Hawkins and Silver's perfectly executed father-son relationship, the rest of this movie just wouldn't work. Luckily, directors Clements and Musker understood the importance of this character dynamic and nailed the execution.

The decision to focus on the dynamics of Hawkins and Silver does have its consequences however. Delbert - who appeared to be an important character during the films first act - all but disappears during the middle portion of the film. Even his reemergence in the third act doesn't quite bring about the characterization the story obviously wanted to give him. Still, the movie does manage to keep its secondary characters alive. While predictable, the bickering romance of Dr. Delbert and Captain Amelia does have its funny moments. The relationship is of the "opposites attract" variety, so while Amelia is a confident woman of action, Delbert is an awkward intellectual ... oh and he's a dog/human and she's a cat/human, so there's that too. Anyway, I liked the decision to hammer home the father-son relationship of Hawkins and Silver, even if it required secondary characters like Delbert to fade into the backgrounds at times. This is what good directors do, they figure out the stories main thrust and do what it takes to get it across.

Overall I think the story of Treasure Planet is good. The movie is well paced, the plot is nicely executed and the main character dynamics are awesome. When compared to the plot hole riddled Atlantis, the horrible characterization of Titan A.E., and the awful character dynamics of Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas (all films released around the same time), this movie is great. By itself, Treasure Planet my not shine quite as bright, but it's still a good story.

As you would expect, the animation of Treasure Planet is excellent. Being a Disney film, it should come as no surprise that the traditional portion of this movie is expertly crafted and beautifully designed. Since it was created during the turn of the century, it should also come as no surprise that CGI was used extensively in the film. As I've mentioned in past reviews, the early days of CGI and traditional animation merging were a crap shoot. Some of the films did it well (Tarzan, The Iron Giant), others did it terribly (Sinbad, Titan A.E.). Overall I think Treasure Planet's creators did a good job of marrying the traditional animation and CGI imagery. There are some scenes where I felt the digitally rendered backgrounds lacked the detail of their hand drawn counterparts, but even at its worst I was never taken out of the moment. On a more positive note, the CGI used for John Silver's mechanical hand was awesome. Not only did the traditional and computer portions of the character blend seamlessly, the decision to use CGI for Silver's bionic prosthetic was completely appropriate and helped enhance the film in a tasteful way. I only wish other directors of the time had been this fastidious with their projects.

Besides the excellent animation, Treasure Planet also has some really nice design. The overall look of the film is very much inline with traditional pirate-colonial stories, the kind you would see in old movies and storybooks. Because the film is set in space, however, various objects and locations are "tweaked" in such a way that they reflect the sci-fi environment. Things like flintlock laser pistols and spacefaring sailboats make for a fun combination of classic and futuristic technology. Though not quite the animation milestone you would expect for $140 million dollars, Treasure Planet is still a very impressive looking movie all around.

When it came to voice acting I felt Treasure Planet's cast did a very good job overall. Nobody really stood out as exceptional, but all of my expectations were met. The film's music however, was a source of mixed emotions for me. On the one hand I thoroughly enjoyed the score of Treasure Planet. Beautifully composed with just the right amount of celtic influence necessary to evoke an "old world" sensibility, I thought that James Newton Howard nailed the sound of this film. On the other hand, Disney's decision to include two modern songs in the movie was ill-advised. Written and performed by John Rzeznik (of the Goo Goo Dolls), these two songs ended up dating Treasure Planet noticeably. Even worse, the song "I'm Still Here" is played during the aforementioned montage sequence involving Jim Hawkins, and takes away (ever so slightly) from the scenes impact. Though the inclusion of these numbers doesn't ruin the film in any significant way, I definitely felt their age during my latest viewing. If I could change just one thing about Treasure Planet, I would have Rzeznik's songs replaced with celtic scores similar to what Howard did throughout the rest of the film.

Treasure Planet will never be a Disney "classic". The film just doesn't have enough magic to be mentioned in the same breath as Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. Make no mistake though, this is a good movie. On its own merits, Treasure Planet is a well executed story with excellent production value. Compared to most of the other animated features of the time however, its straight up awesome. In fact, I would rank Treasure Planet as the best post 2000 animated Disney feature after Lilo and Stitch. I won't go as far as to say you should run out and buy the 2003 DVD - which is still available since Disney never even bothered to put it in the "Vault" - but if you haven't seen Treasure Planet it's worth at least a rent (heck, you can probably catch it on the Disney channel for free).

Ultimate Avengers is ultimately abysmal

When I first heard that Marvel was teaming up with Lionsgate to create animated DTVs of their popular comic book characters, I was cautiously optimistic. Though Marvel was inexperienced with direct to video productions, they had chosen good source material to adapt (Mark Millar and Bryan Hitche's "Ultimates" comic), and they had good road maps to follow with DCs existing DTV films. Upon the release of "Ultimate Avengers", however, I found myself disappointed by Marvels lack of effort, both with the stories adaptation and visual presentation. Still, I held out hope that things would get better and purchased "Ultimates Avengers 2" when it was released several months later. After watching this planned sequel I can definitely say that I wasn't disappointed again ... I was just pissed.

The story of "Ultimate Avengers" is really the story of Captain America (one of my favorite comic heroes). It begins in WW2 with Cap leading the assault on a Nazi military base. The purpose of this attack is to stop the Third Reich from launching a nuclear missile at the United States, unfortunately our hero is unable to stop the rocket from lifting off. With no other options available, Cap hitches a ride aboard this doomsday weapon and disarms the device in mid-air ... with a grenade. The resulting explosion hurls Cap into the Atlantic Ocean where he is subsequently frozen into ice for the next fifty plus years before being found by S.H.I.E.L.D. This is all well and good, and though it does take some liberties (Buckey isn't a superhero sidekick, there's no Baron Zemo and the Avengers don't find Cap) it doesn't stray all that far from the original 1940s story ... except for the aliens of course. Oh, did I forget to mention there were aliens? Apparently Hitler and his "master race" were receiving aid from an alien race known as the Chitauri. These generic looking extraterrestrials are led by a shapeshifting Chitauri by the name of Herr Kleiser, and I guess they want to take over earth, or steal vibranium, or something ... it's kind of hard to tell. Anyway, once Cap gets thawed out by S.H.I.E.L.D. he soon discovers that the Chitauri are still on earth doing ... something bad I guess. Our only chance of stopping these dastardly aliens is for Cap to form a team of super powered heroes called the Avengers to fight them.

The first Ultimate Avengers film is loosely based on the first thirteen issues of the "Ultimates" comic book. With a contemporary re-imagining of the Avengers origin - not to mention massive popularity - this selection of source material made perfect sense for Marvel. Unfortunately, the challenge of adapting this mature subject matter proved too great for the movies writers. The biggest problem was probably the decision to combine two different story arcs from the comic book and turn them into a single plot (the first arc was in issues 1-5, the second was in 6-9 and the third was 10-13). At a glance this may not seem like a bad idea, but when you take the alien centric third arc of Ultimates and infuse the first arc - which is mostly about Cap and the Hulk - with it, you get a very muddled narrative. One that loses a lot of its credibility because it introduces aliens far too quickly into the story. It all comes down to pacing. The comic book allows you to immerse yourself in the world of the Ultimates before it introduces Herr Kleiser and the Chitauri, an intentional decision that helps set the proper tone of the series. By contrast, it doesn't even take five minutes for aliens and spaceships to show up in Ultimate Avengers, thus the film takes on a completely different - and quite frankly silly - feel. Obviously the writers did this because using two separate story arcs in the same film wouldn't work as a single narrative. This is an understandable concern, but ignoring the source materials pacing was a huge mistake and ultimately the movie suffers greatly because of it.

Not helping matters is the fact that none of the Chitauri aliens seem all that scary. They're just too bland and expressionless to feel like a real threat, kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon. Don't get me wrong, the movie tries to make them look badass by blowing up space shuttles and killing army guards, but it just doesn't work. I'll have more to say about this when I get to the films visuals.

As I said earlier, Ultimate Avengers 2 was a planned sequel meant to tie up the hanging plot threads from the first film. The big difference between this story and its predecessor, however, is that Ultimate Avengers 2 was based solely on the previous movie, and not on any of the "Ultimates" comics. This then begs the question; does the writing of Ultimate Avengers 2 suffer because of the lack of strong source material, or does it benefit from the freedom of not having to adapt it? Well ... to be frank, this movie benefits about as much from an absence of source material as a boxer does from not wearing an athletic cup ... right before getting punched in the balls. In other words, the story of Ultimate Avengers 2 is worse off for it.

Continuing the alien invasion theme from the first movie, this film introduces us to the isolationist nation of Wakanda and its leader the Black Panther. Apparently the Chitauri have been trying to steal Wakanda's greatest natural resource - a giant Vibranium meteorite - for decades, and now the conflict has come to a head. Of course, this in no way explains why the Chitauri got involved with the Nazi's in WW2, or why they're just now stepping up efforts to take possession of the meteorite. But hey, who needs logic when you got the Black Panther? Anyway, this plot - while melodramatic - isn't terrible or anything, it's just boring. To find the real problem with Ultimate Avengers 2, you need look no further then the film's horrible characterization.

I mentioned before that the writers of Ultimate Avengers weren't up to the challenge of adapting the stories mature subject matter. Nowhere is this more prevalent then in the films characters. In the original Ultimates comic books Mark Millar took the strongest - and often darkest - attributes of all the different founding Avengers members and amplified them ten fold, thus we ended up with a cast of very flawed - and even despicable - heroes. Unfortunately, due to the intensity of this subject matter, the films writers chose to tone down these characteristics in the first movie, then they just crapped all over them in the second.

In the original world of the Ultimates, Hank Pym (Giant Man) is a bipolar disaster. Not only does he beat his wife Janet (Wasp) when he becomes frustrated, he's been doing it ever since they were in college. Worse, Janet's self-esteem is so low she constantly returns to her abusive spouse despite knowing he'll never change. Obviously these character traits lack heroism, so the writers of Ultimate Avengers try to tone things down a bit when adapting the story for film. In the first Ultimate Avengers movie Hank isn't a wife beater, he's just a jerk who talks too much. Meanwhile his wife Janet isn't portrayed as self-loathing, but simply loyal to a fault. I understand why the writers chose to do this, but to be honest, the dumbed down versions of Hank and Janet just aren't all that interesting. Similarly frustrating, the original Ultimates story has Tony Stark dying of a brain tumor. Faced with his impending demise, Tony begins to liquidate his assets and make the world a safer place as Iron Man ... all while drinking himself stupid of course. Here again the writers of Ultimate Avengers sought to alter the character in a way that made him seem a little less bleak. To do this they made Tony a non-dying playboy who moonlights as Iron Man, but doesn't like the idea of being a part of a team. To be clear, I didn't hate the changes to Giant Man, Wasp and Iron Man, I just felt they were misguided and generic. As I said earlier, it's more disappointing than terrible. The same cannot be said about Ultimate Avengers 2 however.

Now free of the source material, Ultimate Avengers 2 takes the already pared down versions of Giant Man and Iron man and tries to set them on a path to redemption. I don't want to say exactly what happens, but basically Hank and Tony selflessly sacrifice themselves in one of the most pathetic displays of contrived heroism I've ever seen. Now this may seem like a crass assessment of the situation, but after watching the road traveled by these characters (and knowing the road they should have traveled), I cannot help but get angry when I see something this uninspired (especially Iron Man's heroics, talk about slapped on). Oh, and did I mention Black Widow? I should probably do that. As much as I disagree with the adapted versions of Giant Man, Wasp and Iron Man, none of them sucked as bad as Black Widow. Beginning with the first film, the Black Widows only real role in both Ultimate Avengers stories is that of sympathetic ear. Seriously, she just goes around listening to peoples problems and gives them a hug if they need it. I'm not even going to complain about how far off base this is when compared to the source material, the fact that the Black Widow has been reduced to nothing more than a expository plot device is all the reason I need to throw a %$@* fit. Anyway, the first Ultimate Avengers film certainly wasn't good, but the excellence of the source material helped keep the characters from becoming a complete disaster. Lacking this guiding light, however, the characterization in Ultimate Avengers 2 becomes cliched, contrived and just plain awful. To be fair not all the characters in Ultimate Avengers were bad. Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Bruce Banner (Hulk) were actually pretty good in the first movie. Not so much in the second film mind you, but you take what you can get.

Misguided in its adaptation, and hampered by a mostly boring cast with uninspired characterization, the writing of the Ultimate Avengers duology just doesn't work. Had I been ignorant of the source material I probably wouldn't have been so upset after watching both films. That said, I have no doubt that my opinion of these movies would've still been extremely negative.

A lot of the problems experienced by Ultimate Avengers stem from the stories uneven tone as well. The film tries to take itself seriously while at the same time playing things safe, a problematic situation only exacerbated by the movies subpar visuals. Let's start with the movies technical missteps. Ultimate Avengers uses one of the ugliest shading techniques in the history of animation, soft shading. Instead of using the hard edged shading style found in most animated films, Avengers went with a soft, almost airbrushed edge. The result of this is that a lot of the characters and clothing lack the crisp lines and definition needed to give the film polish. This same mistake is repeated with soft hi-lights being used in many of the characters hair. I am not exaggerating when I say that there were times when the hi-lights used in this film looked like something an amateur did in photoshop, absolutely hideous. Then there's the color pallet. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but the colors used in Ultimate Avengers are so poorly chosen, designed and coordinated that it can actually become distracting at times. Basically, the whole thing comes off looking cheap and unprofessional, more like a poorly made Saturday morning cartoon than a mature themed DTV. Sadly, this isn't the end of Ultimate Avengers visual woes, far from it.

Keeping our unfortunate trend of poor craftsmanship alive, the design work done on Ultimate Avengers was abysmal. Outside of the character costumes (which were thankfully based on Bryan Hitches Ultimates art) the rest of clothing, costume and alien design in Ultimate Avengers was both uninspired and generic. Equally unimpressive were the vehicle designs (both terrestrial and extraterrestrial), and the hilariously disproportional guns used by characters like the Black Widow and Nick Fury. Overall, I just didn't see enough effort being put into any visual aspect of either movie. Besides the Hulk fight from the first film (which was actually ok), the rest of the execution in Ultimate Avengers looks decidedly half-assed.

The rest of the films production is pretty standard. I was neither impressed nor offended by the musical score or voice acting in Ultimate Avengers. Yes, there was room for improvement in both areas, but even if things had been better it wouldn't have saved either film. Not to sound trite or anything, but given all the other problems found in these movies I'm willing to write this off as "no harm no foul".

So it's pretty obvious that I didn't like Ultimate Avengers. Yes, a lot of my frustration stems from the affection I have for the source material, but I feel confident that this bias only amplified my displeasure, it wasn't the source of it. Sadly, being burned by these two films resulted in me ignoring subsequent Marvel DTV releases. I just couldn't imagine films like "Doctor Strange" and "Avengers Next" succeeding where Ultimate Avengers failed. Thankfully, Cartoon Network aired these movies soon after there release and I quickly realized that both films (as well as the Hulk Vs. and Planet Hulk) were excellent. So don't let the ineptitude of Ultimate Avengers dissuade you from checking out Marvels other DTV offerings, they got their act together now. Just make sure you stay away from this debacle.

Heavy Metal 2000 - No cult classic here

Heavy Metal 2000 is a DTV sequel to - appropriately enough - Heavy Metal, the 1981 animated cult classic. Like the original film, Heavy Metal 2000 gives us lots of rocking music, plenty of violence and - of course - cartoon boobies. Unlike its predecessor, however, Heavy Metal 2000 fails to deliver its hardcore content in a way that entertains - or even amuses - the audience.

I was actually pretty stoked to watch this movie in 2000 (hey, that's the same year in the film's title ... what a coincidence). Though I wouldn't say I "loved" the original Heavy Metal, I certainly enjoyed it and welcomed the opportunity to see more mature themed science fiction-fantasy. Unfortunately Heavy Metal 2000's hideously poor execution prevents the film from succeeding on any level.

The story of Heavy Metal 2000 goes something like this. There was once a race of creatures called the Arakacians who created a fountain of immortality that allowed them to ravage the universe. Upon their defeat, however, the fountain was locked away and its key cast into deep space. Years later, the key is uncovered by some asteroid miners, one of whom touches the mysterious object and is driven insane by it. This man - whose name is Tyler - begins killing his fellow workers indiscriminately and eventually takes control of the mining vessel - as well as its crew - so that he can begin his quest to find the fountain of immortality. During his travels, Tyler comes across the planet of Eden (which really doesn't look like much of a paradise), home to a small settlement of people who - unbeknownst to them - have trace amounts of immortal water running through their veins. Having devised a way to distill this precious liquid from living organisms, Tyler lays waste to the peaceful settlement and either kills or kidnaps its populace so that they can be harvested. The only person to escape this fate is Julie, the film's obligatory bad ass hot chick who sets out on a journey to find Tyler and take revenge for her people. Obviously, this story lacks depth. That said, I won't condemn it because were talking about Heavy Metal. It isn't supposed to be intelligent or original, it's supposed to be violent, bloody and over sexed, all things that Heavy Metal 2000's creators understood. Unfortunately, what they didn't understand was how to make a good movie.

The first problem with Heavy Metal 2000 is that it foregoes its predecessors formula of using short stories in favor of a single narrative. Though I normally prefer my movies have a singular plot, the decision to move away from vignettes was a mistake in this case. One of the strengths of the original Heavy Metal was its variety. The film had noir, horror, comedy, fantasy and a variety of other genre combinations to enjoy. Even if you didn't like the story you were watching, that was ok because a completely different one would follow it. Had Heavy Metal 2000 continued this tradition, the film would have stood a much better chance of success. Instead Heavy Metal 2000 was based on a graphic novel titled "The Melting Pot" by Kevin Eastman, Simon Bisley and Eric Talbot. I've never read the source material for Heavy Metal 2000, so I honestly don't know how closely the film follows it. Regardless, the overall plot of this movie is pretty weak, but as I stated earlier that's ok. Heavy Metal isn't about intelligent or original storytelling, it's all about music, sex and violence, in other words it's supposed to be cool. Sadly, the use of both sex and violence (I'll save the music for later) in this film isn't just uncool, it all too often sucks.

I'll start with the violence. Heavy Metal 2000 delivers plenty of blood, beheadings, disembowelments and other general gore synonymous with the franchise. Unfortunately, these scenes don't really feel all that brutal or creative by todays standards. With the plethora of action and horror films now available, directors must work harder than ever if they want an audience to squirm, even in animation. Instead of doing this, however, Heavy Metal 2000 just kind of goes through the motions and the violence feels cold and distant because of it. Perhaps I've just become desensitized to such things, but outside of the gladiatorial lizard-man battle and Julie's final showdown with Tyler, I found most of the blood and guts in this film uninspired and boring. To be clear, I'm not saying this movie should be more violent - it's got plenty - I'm saying that it needs to be more creative with its use of it. Of course, a lot of the blame must go to the movies animators. These people clearly didn't have the creative vision necessary to bring a Heavy Metal film to life, and the pedestrian - albeit gory - violence is just a result of that.

Ok, before I go any further I just want to say that the next paragraph deals with the sexual content of Heavy Metal 2000. Normally I don't care for female exploitation in my entertainment, but with Heavy Metal one must accept such things without complaint, to do otherwise is just naive and pointless. Alright, so lets talk about sex baby! There's so much sex in this movie that ... wait a second, what do you mean there's no sex? Well, unlike the original Heavy Metal film - which had numerous sex scenes - Heavy Metal 2000 has none. There's plenty of nudity mind you, but nobody ends up doing the deed when it's all said and done. Now this isn't really a problem for me, but for guys who expect to see the same level of naughtiness in this film that they got in the original, you will be sorely disappointed. That little warning aside, I found most of the titillation in this movie either random or slapped on. It's like the writers were just reading over the script and said "We've gone five minutes without smut, better throw some in". Examples include the shower scene from the start of the film, the sex robot (whose only purpose was to set up a horrible one liner) and Julie's unwilling make-out session with some kind of river troll creature. None of these scenes had any purpose within the larger context of the story. Worse, their insertion into the film feels random and awkward. Once again, I don't have any issues with the subject matter being portrayed here, I just think the writers attempts to titillate are lazy.

Other problems related to Heavy Metal 2000's storytelling include the general dialog and flippant one liners. First off, the dialog is atrocious. I don't know if this is the same script as the graphic novel, or revised dialog done specifically for the movie. Regardless, it doesn't work at all when spoken aloud, most notably with the film's main character Julie. Almost all of her exchanges with the various other characters in this film are unbearable, especially when she's trying to act tough. Making matters worse is the fact that the one liners in this movie stink. Now I know there is a certain charm to cheesy one liners, but whatever that appeal is, this movie doesn't have it. I think the one that made me want to vomit most was the aforementioned sex robot one liner "Was it good for you?", Jesus Christ on a pogo stick that was awful. Seriously, was this a piece of fanfiction? I know that the graphic novel was done by a bunch of artists (two of which created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but wasn't there a screen writer around to fix this? Anyway, I may not expect brilliant dialog or clever humor from Heavy Metal, but I do expect a certain level of professional pride and competence, neither of which I found here.

So, up to this point we have some uninteresting violence, inept attempts at erotica and terrible dialog. Not exactly a rousing start for this review, but the visual side of Heavy Metal 2000 can't be that bad ... right? Wrong, the animation in this movie ranges from generic, to amateurish. Say what you will about the low-budget animation in the first Heavy Metal movie, it had style. A visual flair that helped carry the film past its budgetary limitations. Such is not the case with Heavy Metal 2000. The overall look of this movie is so uninspired and generic, it's just sad. The only real effort I saw to make this movie look like Heavy Metal would have been with Tyler. You could see some attempt to give Tyler a distinct, almost caricature styled appearance. Unfortunately, these attempts fall woefully short of being successful because the animators don't take the exaggeration far enough. As I said before, the animation crew for Heavy Metal 2000 just didn't have the creative vision necessary to do this movie. There's supposed to be an indy type vibe with this franchise, an exaggerated style that visually matches the outrageous subject matter. Instead, Heavy Metal 2000 appears to be holding back, like it's afraid of going too far so it ends up looking like any other DTV film. More bloody and full of cartoon boobs sure, but otherwise indistinguishable from the rest of its cousins.

Then there's the CGI (oh god the CGI). Just about everything that could be done wrong with the computer animation in this film was done wrong. The overall look and execution is like something out of an internet video, the application was far too abundant and the merging of computer animation to traditional is awful. Now truth be told, there are plenty of other DTVs from this time with similar problems. Heck, one of my favorite movies from this era is Batman Subzero, and that thing had the ugliest CGI Batwing in history. So it is possible to make a good movie with bad computer animation. The problem with Heavy Metal 2000 isn't just one of poor quality though, the bigger issue at work here is the inability of the films creators to show restraint with its use. Examples include numerous traditionally rendered buildings being burned by CGI fire, characters being knocked forward by CGI explosions and an Arakacian alien animated entirely in CG! What are you doing here guys? Why would you take a tool you clearly don't understand and use it everywhere, can't you see how terrible it looks? When it's all said and done the execution of Heavy Metal 2000's computer animation looks like something you would see in a YouTube clip, amateurish and unrestrained.

The voice acting of Heavy Metal 2000 is mostly middle of the row. The only standouts would be the performances given to the films two main characters, Julie and Tyler. Tyler is voiced by Michael Ironside, the veteran actor who gave life to Darkseid in Superman the Animated Series. With a wealth of experience - not to mention talent - Ironside manages to overcome the scripts hideous dialog and pulls off the roll of Tyler relatively well. Conversely, Julie Strain Eastman delivers an absolutely egregious performance as Julie. Known primarily for her rolls in B movies, Strain Eastman clearly has no talent for voice acting and only worsens the films already bad script. Being that she was married to Heavy Metal Editor and Chief Kevin Eastman at the time, many a disparaging remakes have been made about Mr. Eastman's obvious desire to tailor the films female lead around his wife. Given the unfortunate results of his misguided affections, I have to agree with these haters.

Musically speaking, Heavy Metal 2000 has - shockingly enough - a lot of metal music. It features songs by Coal Chamber, Apartment 26, Billy Idol, Monster Magnet, Pantera, System of a Down, Queens of the Stone Age and Puya. Now I'm not much of a heavy metal aficionado, but even I recognize these band names, and overall I think they complement the Heavy Metal franchise nicely. Truth be told, this is easily the films strongest attribute.

When it's all said and done, Heavy Metal 2000 just isn't worth your time. The film's plot is (justifiably) anemic, the violence is unremarkable and the sexual content tepid. Couple that with some horrible voice acting of awful dialog, and you got a pretty F'd up movie. Sure, the film has a good soundtrack, but you can always buy that separately and spare yourself this animated mishap. So I guess there just isn't any good reason to watch this flick. If you're looking for some animated Heavy Metal, stick with the original; if you're looking for some outrageous violence, checkout anime like Afro Samurai; and if all you want is some good cartoon titillation, I recommend the first six episodes of Stripperella (I'm serious. Kevin Altieri's work on the first six episodes of that show was great).

DC Showcase - If you don't already own them, these short stories are worth your time

A while back it was announced that Warner Bros. Animation would create a series of animated shorts featuring some of the lesser known heroes of the DC Universe. The plan was to have a different short included on the two-disc and Blu-ray releases of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Batman: Under the Red Hood and Batman/Superman Apocalypse. The reason for this was pretty obvious of course. By including these vignettes on the more expensive DVD and Blu-ray versions of their films - but not on the cheaper single-disc versions - Warner Bros. hoped to upsell buyers and increase their profit margin (which is a goal I have no problem with). That being said, I decided to stick with the cheaper DVD releases and forego these short stories, even though I really wanted to watch them. Why, you ask? Because I was pretty darn sure that Warner Bros. would repurpose this content into a standalone DTV I could buy for far less money than upgrading to the Blu-ray or two-disc DVD versions of the films mentioned above. Heck, I thought they might even throw some new content into the collection if I was lucky. Well, it turns out I was right (for once) and DC Showcase - which collects all three, previously released, shorts and includes a new 22 minute Shazam story - is now available for purchase.

Now before I go any further with this review, let me just say that anybody who already owns these DC Showcase shorts should not pay full price for this DVD. A single - 22 minute - story about Shazam, Black Adam and Superman is not worthy of a full price purchase by itself (after all you already have the other shorts). If, however, you do not own any of these stories, you're getting over an hours worth of new content, so it's actually a pretty decent deal.

Alright, so the four short stories featured on this DVD are: Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam, The Spectre, Green Arrow and Jonah Hex. Being that none of these stories is feature length, I think it would be easiest to talk about each individually.

Let's start with Shazam. This 22 minute story (by far the longest of the collection) is awesome. The story begins with Black Adam's return to earth after 5,000 years of banishment. Upon his arrival, Black Adam seeks out Billy Batson, a young orphan who has somehow retained his innocence despite being a child of the streets. Unbeknownst to Billy, he has been chosen by the wizard Shazam to receive great power so that he can become the protector of humanity, a fate Black Adam intends to prevent by pre-emptively killing the boy. Fortunately Superman is there to help protect Billy as he learns of his mission and assumes the role of Captain Marvel. Obviously, the short running time of this story requires that the plot move at a fast pace. Luckily, the writer does a good job of getting us set up early on so that we can dig into some fantastic action throughout the rest of the film. Besides the beautiful animation and excellent fight choreography, the thing that really impressed me about this shorts visuals was the use of slow motion. Given the inherent difficulties of doing slow motion in animation, I was really amazed by some of the great action shots done in Superman/Shazam. Expertly crafted from start to finish, this story is tied with Green Arrow as my favorite in the set.

Next up is DC's most prolific source of supernatural punishment, The Spectre. Set in 1970s Hollywood, this story is all about murder and vengeance. Though not an especially mysterious - or original - story, the thing that makes this short work so well is the look and sound. Perfectly executed in a retro style, both the music and sound from The Spectre feel like they're from a 1970s murder mystery film. Complementing this superb audio is animation that not only looks good, but also looks aged with intentional dust and scratches being added throughout the story. A fantastic homage to 1970s cinema, The Spectre is another solid addition to this collection.

The third installment to DC Showcase is Green Arrow. I'll be honest, I've never been a big fan of Green Arrow. It's not that I dislike the character or anything, I've just never been all that interested in him and I wasn't really all that excited to see his short. So imagine my surprise when I finished this story and thought to myself "Wow, that was as good as Superman/Shazam!". While picking up his girlfriend (Black Canary) from the airport, Green Arrow soon finds himself protecting a pre-teen princess from multiple assassins who have targeted her for execution. It's a lot like Die Hard I guess, but with more arrows. Anyway, this is a great short. The animation is excellent, the staging, settings, choreography fantastic and the ending ... perfect.

The last - and in my opinion least impressive - short in this set is Jonah Hex. The story basically revolves around a female prostitute/tavern owner who tricks men flush with cash into coming up to her room with the promise of a good time, but kills and robs them instead. Eventually, Jonah comes looking for one of these men - who has a bounty on his head - and soon finds himself squaring off with the aforementioned prostitute and her cronies. It's not a bad story by any means, but when compared to the other three of the set it just doesn't feel all that special. That said, the animation in this installment is good and the directing (all the shorts are directed by Joaquim Dos Santos) solid.

So there you have it. DC Showcase my not be the most substancial DTV release to come out of Warner Bros. Animation, but it still gets the job done nicely. Personally, I hope to see more of these short stories by Bruce Timm and company. It's obvious we won't be getting full fledged animated features starring characters like the Atom anytime soon, so bite sized films like this are as good as it gets. Once again, I must emphasize that people who already own The Spectre, Green Arrow and Jonah Hex shorts from previous DVD releases should not buy this at full price, doing so would be a rip-off in my mind. Additionally, I would advise most consumers to purchase the single-disc version of the film. I just don't feel that an overly expensive Blu-ray is necessary considering the amount of content you're given (if you really want to see it on Blu-ray, rent it).

ThunderCats season one - probably not a good as you remember

There were a lot of action-adventure cartoons made during the 1980s (and I mean a lot), some were successful, others fell to the wayside. Amidst this plethora of animated entertainment a few shows rose up and achieved not only financial success, but a certain degree of nostalgic immortality. ThunderCats is one such show.

Premiering in 1985, ThunderCats ran an astounding 130 episodes before it's conclusion in 1990. Despite its massive popularity, I never got to see much of the ThunderCats during its initial run (that means I have no nostalgia for it). I wanted to watch of course (what young boy wouldn't?), but the show fell into a difficult time slot for me and I was never able to get home from school fast enough to catch it. Years later, after my graduation from high-school, ThunderCats reappeared on Cartoon Network's Toonami block and I was excited to see what I had missed in my youth. Unfortunately I had not yet realized how bad 1980s action-adventure cartoons were and was instantly turned off by the childish stories and hideous voice acting. Now, more than ten years later, I can finally say that I've seen ThunderCats, having endured the first 65 episodes (season one) of the classic action-adventure series on DVD. I say "endured" because despite its visual excellence, ThunderCats features rarely good, often bad, but mostly average stories throughout its first season.

The story of the ThunderCats begins with a group of anthropomorphic cats fleeing their doomed planet of Thundera and traveling to a new homeworld. While escaping this Krypton-esque situation, the ThunderCats are attacked by a band of bloodthirsty Mutants from the planet Plun-Darr. These ruthless marauders destroy nearly all of the escaping vessels from Thundera, the exception being a ship carrying the Thundercat nobility, including future Lord of the ThunderCats, Lion-O. Once this Mutant assault is repelled, our small group of refugees realize they cannot reach their new home due to the damage sustained by their ship during the battle, instead they must venture to "Third Earth" a planet that will take many more years to reach than their previous destination. With no other options available the ThunderCats - which include the aforementioned Lion-O (young boy destined to lead the ThunderCats), Tygra (science guy), Cheetara (female speedster), Panthro (engineer and inventor), Snarf (Lino-O's nursemaid), WilyKit and WilyKat (twin troublemakers) - go into stasis sleep while Jaga (Lion-O's mentor) pilots the ship to their new home. Years later our heroes arrive at their destination relatively unscathed, unfortunately Jaga has died of old age while piloting the vast distance to Third Earth, and Lion-O soon discovers that he has grown into a man while in stasis (thus you have a child's mind in an adult's body). Before the shock of this unexpected development can wear off, Lion-O and his comrades - none of which have aged at all - are attacked by Mutants ... again. Naturally the ThunderCats are more than a match for these bumbling villains and quickly drive them off, what they don't realize however, is that an even greater force of evil - Mumm-Ra the Ever Living - is watching their every move and plans to take the ThunderCats most prized possession - the Sword of Omens (which contains the Eye of Thundera) - for himself. Can the ThunderCats thwart Mumm-Ra's dastardly plans? Will Third Earth prove to be a good home for our heroes? Can Lion-O mentally grow into adulthood before his first prostate exam? Only time will tell.

The writing on 1980s action-adventure cartoons is notoriously bad, so it should come as no surprise that ThunderCats suffers from many of the pitfalls found in similar shows of this era. Whether it's the tame action (the kind where people aren't even allowed to punch one another), the overabundance of exposition (please Lion-O, tell me what you're doing again, I can't remember), the awful "moral lessons" (many of which don't make sense within the context of the story) or the dime store philosophy (Wow Tygra, you're so deep and insightful), the writing of ThunderCats is typical for the time. While these "average" stories make up the bulk of season one's 65 episodes, there were occasions where the writing did exceed its mediocre boundaries, a couple times for the better, but far too often for the worse.

Let’s start things off on a positive note. Leonard Starr does a great job when writing the ThunderCats. With his fantastic attention to detail - as well as his respect for the audience - Starr is the kind of writer all action-adventure cartoons should have. To find an example why, you need look no further then the quintessential ThunderCats story "The Anointment of Lion-O". In this five-part story arc Lion-O has to prove his worthiness as Lord of the ThunderCats by besting all the other ThunderCats at what they do best (strength, speed, cunning etc). While facing Tygra, Lion-O discovers that his opponent has the ability to create illusions using his mind, something that we had never seen the character do prior to this episode. Most writers wouldn't even bother to explain this new power, after all this is just a show for kids. Starr goes the extra mile here, however, and reveals that the mental energy required to create these illusions takes a great deal of time and effort to store up, so much so that Tygra has been saving his mental energy for months just so that he could use it during Lion-O's trial. This respect for both the intelligence of the audience and the shows continuity, make Starr the best writer on ThunderCats by far. Though not quite on the same level as Michael Reaves (from Dungeons and Dragons) Leonard Starr definitely deserves recognition for going above and beyond what was expected from action-adventure writers of the time.

Unfortunately, where Leonard Starr sought to raise the bar for ThunderCats, other writers like William Overgard simply churned out egregious and even insulting stories for the show. Two examples of this can be found in Overgard's Mandora: Evil Chaser duology. Featuring a laughable female heroine by the name of Mandora, these two stories paired Lion-O with the galactic "Evils Chaser" (or cop) in an obvious attempt to create a spinoff series. Some highlights from this include Mandora defeating an escaped prisoner with soap (amazingly enough this scene is actually worse than it sounds), Mandora and Lion-O conversing in the vacuum of space (I had no idea that the wind could blow through your hair without atmosphere) and robot space pirates (do I really need to make a joke here?). Another hideous episode would be "The Terror of Hammerhand" (written by Ron Goulart and Julian P. Gardner). In what can only be described as surreal, this story had unicorns, monster trees, giant birds and viking pirates that repeat everything three times, Three Times, THREE TIMES (yes, it's that annoying)!!! Now bad stories like this are not a rare thing when it comes to 1980's cartoons, and they're certainly not exclusive to ThunderCats (there was that time when the Defenders of the Earth got turned into animals by Dracula so he could put them in a circus, and the time Cobra Commander tried to carve his likeness into the moon, oh and the time that midget thieves hid themselves in an orphanage in C.O.P.S), but while these unabashedly awful episodes can be excused as an unfortunate byproduct of their time period, what cannot be excused is the poor storytelling found all too often in this show.

When I say bad storytelling, I'm actually talking about two different things. The first would be glaring plot holes born from an inconsistent timeline, the other would be lazy abuse of the three act story structure. So you may remember me mentioning that Lion-O starts this show as a young boy who physically grows into a man while in stasis sleep, thus a man child literally becomes Lord of the ThunderCats. This plot line is used continuously throughout the first twenty or so episodes as Lion-O struggles to mature his mind to fit his body. Then it just disappears, vanishing without a trace. Practically overnight Lion-O becomes a wise and introspective leader, just another adult like Panthro or Tygra. When WileyKit and WileyCat (both of whom are technically older than Lion-O) do something stupid, guess who's there to scold them for their youthful endeavors? That's right Lion-O. When something awe inspiring happens, guess who's there to put it into perspective? Once again, Lion-O. Other timeline inconsistencies include the appearance of various characters who knew both the ThunderCats and Mutants before either party came to Third Earth, yet none of these visitors act like much time has passed since the last time they saw them, or even look very old for that matter (which they would presumable be since many years passed while the ThunderCats and Mutants traveled to Third Earth). In truth these continuity hiccups probably didn't bother their intended audience very much, but I still found the whole thing rather frustrating.

Ok, so my complaints about inconsistent timeframes and dropped plot lines may be a little picky, but this next issue is very much a real problem. I'm no expert on three act story structure, but from what I understand the first act introduces the characters as well as the conflict of a story. With this set up out of the way, the stories main thrust then comes from the second act when characters undertake some sort of journey (internal, external etc) to resolve said conflict. Finally, the stories climax takes place during the third act and our conflict gets resolved bringing the story to an end. Almost all action-adventure cartoons - even the poorly written ones from the 1980s - adhere to this structure, ThunderCats was no exception. That said, what I discovered while watching season one of this show was that far too many episodes of ThunderCats (probably a quarter of them) abuse the second act of this formula in a truly shameful way. Here's how it goes down. The episode will start like a normal action-adventure show with our characters being established and our conflict (or premise) introduced. Skipping to the end the episode, our conflict is resolved (sometimes in a satisfactory way, other times not so much) and our heroes enjoy a cute epilogue. Both of these acts make relative sense and are pretty standard, what doesn't make sense is everything that happens in-between. Again and again I watched episodes of the ThunderCats where the second act was made up of completely random events. Now when I say random, I mean RANDOM. The characters would literally run around, encounter an obstacle, overcome it and start the process all over again until it was time to start the third act. None of these encounters had anything, ANYTHING, to do with the stories central theme or main conflict, they just filled time. This is supposed to be the meat of the story folks, the main thrust, not a loosely connected series of events barely bridging the first and third act. Where's the substance? Where's the struggle as it relates to the main story? I've watched some bad action-adventure stories in my time, but this ... this is just the height of laziness.

With the general writing out of the way I think now would be a good time to talk about the characters of ThunderCats. I've already mentioned the basic cast of heroes, but here they are again: Lion-O, Cheetara, Panthro, Tygra, Snarf, WileyKit and WileyKat. This is actually a pretty decent batch of characters, or it would be if the writers actually used anybody besides Lion-O and Snarf. The rest of the ThunderCats, while not absent from the show, don't really get any significant time dedicated to them, and this is a real shame. Sure, there are some basic character traits like Panthro's fear of fire-bats and Cheetara's sixth sense, but outside of these very superficial fears and abilities the show just doesn't dig nearly deep enough into these characters. What we needed were some interpersonal dynamics. Episodes dedicated to the friendships, rivalries and relationships of Cheetara, Panthro, Tygra and the Wiley twins, instead we got Snarf jammed down our throat time and time again. In case you don't know, Snarf is the "cute" animal like sidekick of the show. He basically provides comedic relief for the other characters by constantly being afraid and repeating his obnoxious catch phrase "Snarf" over and over. Why the writers of this show chose to reward this grating character with multiple episodes - specifically tailored to explore his personality - is beyond me (they probably thought that he was a fan favorite with kids or something). I don't need to see Snarf prove himself to the other ThunderCats (again), I need to see Tygra's reluctant acceptance of Lion-O as leader of the ThunderCats (I made the last part up, but you get what I'm saying). This really is a sad waste, if the writers of ThunderCats had spent more time utilizing and exploring their potentially rich cast I think that this show could have been much better.

Opposing our feline heroes are the villainous Mutants and their occasional ally Mumm-Ra the Ever Living. The Mutants - like the ThunderCats - are anthropomorphic creatures with various animalistic traits. There's the Mutant leader Slithe (who looks like a lizard), Jackalman (a Jackal), Monkian (a monkey) and Vultureman (a vulture). As far as villains go, this band of (mostly) incompetent individuals work well enough within the context of the show. Their constant bickering and backstabbing is a good contrast to the noble Code of Thundera and it helps emphasize the futility of selfishness and greed. The only problem I had with them was the lack of real motivation when battling the ThunderCats themselves. Seriously, outside of their underexplained desire to steal the Sword of Omens, the Mutants have no reason to even stay on Third Earth, let alone repeatedly get their tails whooped by Lion-O and his friends. There has to be richer worlds to plunder - preferably ones not inhabited by magical sword wielding cat people - why not go there? Ultimately this inexplicable obsession to acquire the ThunderCats mystical sword just doesn't add up. Unfortunately the show's primary villain, Mumm-Ra, fares no better in the motivational department.

All and all, I have to say that Mumm-Ra is the best villain in ThunderCats (the guy should really have a doctor check into his overactive saliva glands though). Besides being a genuine threat to the ThunderCats, Mumm-Ra's ability to shift forms between a withered old mummy and a super buff badass, makes for a lot of fun in the show. Additionally I liked how the writers gave Mumm-Ra an achilles heel for our heroes to exploit, in this case the only thing capable of defeating Mumm-Ra is the horror of his own reflection. Again, Mumm-Ra's motivation - like the Mutants - makes no real sense, and in many ways feel counterintuitive to the nature of the character. Before the ThunderCats showed up Mumm-Ra was just hanging out in his pyramid, sleeping in his sarcophagus and enjoying his golden years. Now he spends all his time concocting overly elaborate schemes to steal the Eye of Thundera, and slumming it with a bunch of low class Mutants. Mumm-Ra's an immortal being for heaven’s sake, not a petty thief. Even the cliched motivation of "taking over the world" would have been better than making the show's best villain a glorified kleptomaniac.

I can see how the premise of ThunderCats would be appealing to youngsters during the 1980s. Had I been able to watch the show at the time, I'm sure I would have fallen under its spell like so many others. Since this is not the case, however, I've got to say that there was nothing special about season one's writing. Outside of the superior work of Leonard Starr, the rest of the show was mostly mediocre, and all too often terrible. Poor story structure happens far too often, characters get over and underused terribly, motivations make no sense and plot holes abound. Basically ThunderCats is, at best, an averagely written show whose stories lack the excellence of Dungeons and Dragons, and the outrageous charm of GI Joe.

One area that ThunderCats takes a backseat to no-one, however, is visuals. Benefiting greatly from producers Rankin-Bass's regular collaborator Topcraft, ThunderCats features some of the best animation done during the 1980s action-adventure cartoon boom. The best episodes happen early on - most notably during the "Exodus" story line - with near fluid animation, gorgeous lighting effects and stellar backgrounds. The space battle between the Mutants and ThunderCats from the pilot episode was especially amazing. Of course this visual prowess does not carryover throughout all 65 episodes of the series. Like other shows of the time, various studios worked on ThunderCats. Some of these outfits - like Topcraft - did exceptional work, other studio's produced results that were far more lackluster. Still, when compared to other shows of the time, ThunderCats animation stands out as some of the best.

Another win for the ThunderCats would be in the design department. All of the main characters in the series, good and evil, look excellent and unique. You can see a little of the Rankin-Bass influence with some of the designs, especially Slithe, but that's ok because none of the regular cast members sport the infamous "bulbous nose" look seen in other Rankin-Bass productions. Equally good are the vehicle and technology designs used throughout the series. Specifically I liked the look of the Thunder Tank and Cats Lair (both of which made great toys I'm sure), as well as the Nose Diver and Sky Cutter vehicles. Unfortunately secondary character designs were far less impressive. From the generic looking "Warrior Maidens" to the freaky, Muffit styled "Ro-Bear Berbils", ThunderCats clearly didn't put the same effort into the semi-regular characters as they did into the core cast. That said, I don't feel that this diminishes the show in any significant way. Weaker secondary character designs were common practice on shows like this, and I'm only comparing ThunderCats to its peers anyway.

Now comes the hard part. While ThunderCats may be visually amazing, and the stories mostly average (though problematic), what isn't amazing - or even typical - was the show's voice acting. Featuring some of the worst performances in the history of action-adventure animation, the acting done on ThunderCats was abysmal, even by 1980s standards. Ultimately I would have to name Peter Newman and Lynn Lipton as the two worst offenders, especially given their awkward delivery and inability to emote. To say that Newman's Tygra sounded choppy and stiff is like saying Charles Manson has anger issue, though the statement is technically true, it fails to convey the proper magnitude of the situation. To give you some idea of how bad this delivery was, there was a time when I actually thought Tygra was dubbed by an asian actor, one who barely spoke english. But while Newman's work on Tygra was indeed terrible, I'll also say that the actor's portrayal of other characters is marginally better. Lipton, on the other hand, couldn't even muster one solitary good performance despite being the voice of every single female character in the show! Whether it's the odd enunciation of Cheetara (whose elongation of the letter "O" baffles me) or the hideous - almost old lady sounding - voice of Willa (leader of the Warrior Maidens), Lipton's ability to single handedly ruin just about every scene she was involved in was staggering.

It's not all bad mind you. Earl Hammond does some decent work on Mumm-Ra, and Earle Hyman's Panthro was pretty respectable. Overall though, I have to say that ThunderCats has some of the worst sounding characters of any action-adventure cartoon done in the 1980s (the only other show that comes close is C.O.P.S).

Having just declared the voice acting of ThunderCats to be irredeemably bad, I would like to step back and briefly mention the shows strongest feature. The ThunderCats title sequences is easily one of the best done in action-adventure history. Perfectly storyboarded and beautifully animated, this opening sequence never got old for me when I was watching the DVD sets. Complementing this visual splendor was the heart pounding theme music that - while short on lyrics - was infuriatingly catchy and 100% awesome. When fans of the ThunderCats talk about how great the show was, I bet you what they're really talking about is this opening.

Looking back over this (ridiculously long) review, I have to say that ThunderCats is a series of extremes. The show's title sequence and animation was extremely awesome, the show's voice acting and writing, however, was extremely bad. In short, ThunderCats isn't nearly as good as many fans remember. Obviously my lack of nostalgia for ThunderCats has hardened my opinion of the show more so than cartoons like GI Joe and Dungeons and Dragons. I can't really make any excuses for that, these things just kind of happen when you review really bad TV from your childhood. That said, I would still recommend that hardcore fans of ThunderCats checkout the first volume of this DVD set (it may be bad but it's still a far cry better than Defenders of the Earth or C.O.P.S.). If you can make it through all 33 episodes without feeling like your childhood has been violated, it might be worth picking up the rest of the series (don't pay more than $20 a set though). For what it's worth, the DVDs themselves are pretty well put together with decent packaging and a handful of special features (mostly interviews). Unfortunately they can take up some considerable room on your shelf. It's not terrible or anything, but I definitely would've preferred a foldout case, or even a slim pack to the three standard sized DVD cases found in each set.