Tag Robot Chicken

Cartoon Country: Star Wars Detours

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The recent Star Wars animated series Star Wars: Rebels which is currently airing on Disney X-D brought another animated series back into my memory: Star Wars Detours, an unreleased American computer-animated comic science fiction television series produced by Lucasfilm Animation in collaboration with Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich.  When asked if the series would have any action in it, Seth Green responded with “No more than the average Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry!” I like that response. Star Wars Detours was announced at Star Wars Celebration VI in summer 2012. In March 2013, Lucasfilm postponed Detours while they reconsidered whether releasing a comedy series prior to the sequels “makes sense”. That September, Green said 39 episodes had been completed, with 62 additional scripts finished.

I should be covering this show on “Peeks” since it hasn’t made it’s debut yet. However, the series was produced prior to Disney’s purchasing LucasFilm in 2012, which postponed Detours’ premiere back until ??? All that we have of Star Wars Detours are previews and trailers which have been floating around on YouTube. Here’s one of them:

Naturally, because Detours was created and produced by Seth Green and Matt Senreich, I got a serious Robot Chicken vibe from watching this, even though this series was CG animated rather than being stop motion animated. It would have been interesting to see just how long this series could have milked the comedic take on Star Wars, especially since Detours was G-rated, unlike the TV-MA rated Robot Chicken. Naturally, upon learning of Detours creation, there came the usual whining and rating by hardcore Star Wars fans that a comedic take on Star Wars “Will ruin my memories of the original!!!!” Uh, no it won’t because that’s not how memories work. The original Star Wars movies aren’t going to disappear just because new ones are being made. The new ones will still be on DVD and on television. You’ll still be able to see them whenever you want to.

“This comedy series ruined my childhood!”

No it hasn’t. If you cease to love the original and it’s now not as special to you just because of a reboot that you don’t have to see anyway, then it can’t have mattered that much to you in the first place.

As for the query of how much sense a Star Wars comedy series before the sequels would have made, I must ask; How much sense did it make for Star Wars: The Clone Wars to have 3 seasons of events between Episodes 2 and 3? And I honestly have no idea when in the franchise’s timeline that Star Wars: Rebels is supposed to take place in. And it’s not like Detours would have been canon anyway. Just because a show is on, that doesn’t mean that you have to watch it.

It’s too bad that Star Wars Detours may never see the light of day now that Disney owns LucasFilm. While nothing that I saw on the trailers made me laugh out loud, I still would welcome a comedic take on the franchise, if it’s funny and well written, but then, I’m not a huge Star Wars fan to begin with, so I’m easy.

May the farce be with you.

2 Funny: Olsen Twin Adventures

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Today’s 2 Funny is a classic (?) from Robot Chicken, “The Amazing Adventures of the Olsen Twins”. Given that this is The TWIN Factor, I’m surprised we haven’t shown this one already. It’s gloriously ridiculous. Call me kooky, but I’d kind of like to do a cartoon similar to this about a pair of twins. Plus, any skit that references the Wonder Twins is A-OK in my book. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHbRVdSHgjs

-There’s a slight continuity error, though: originally, Mary-Kate is the one who transforms into a giant eagle a la Jayna, and Ashley transforms into the bucket of water a la Zan, but when they arrive in the city and change back, they’ve switched. Eh, it’s still more entertaining than New York Minute.

2 Funny: Unique Street Sharks

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In the wake of the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I thought this would be good for a few yuks. Robot Chicken‘s sketches are typically hit or miss, but this one made me chuckle. Enjoy Unique Street Sharks.

These guys were totally fresh and original, just like the Battletoads, the Biker Mice from Mars, the Extreme Dinosaurs and the Snailiens. Were you expecting maybe The Addams Family??

Talkin’ Nerdy: Robot Chicken Dungeons & Dragons Sketch Gets an F

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I’m sure that most of us here are already familiar with the Adult Swim stop motion animated sketch comedy series Robot Chicken, created by Seth Green and Matt Senriech (sorry if misspelled your last name, Matt), so I wont go into that.  Anyway, RC has done numerous parodies of popular toys, games and TV shows, primarily from the 1970s through the early 00s, so for a while, I was wondering when is RC going to do a parody of Dungeons & Dragons, the Marvel produced Saturday morning cartoon that was loosely based on the popular card game which ran on CBS from 1983 to 1985? I used to watch the D&D cartoon every week. I even have the DVD of the entire series. There were a lot of elements and tropes about the D&D cartoon which were ripe for parody. Well, in Robot Chicken’s 5th season, we finally get a D&D parody sketch and we get…this:


One word: Lame.

Seriously, Robot Chicken? You guys had the Smurfs engaging in an all out battle to the death with Snorks. You had Archie and the gang reenacting the movie Final Destination. You had the cast of Fraggle Rock in a parody of Watership Down You had the Keebler elves fighting off a rampaging Cookie Monster, and that’s really the best that you could come up for a Dungeons & Dragons parody?

Allow me to break down the reasons why this D&D sketch fails:

First, anyone who has seen the show knows that there were 6 kids who transported from our world into the Dungeons & Dragons realm courtesy of the D&D ride at the amusement park, and yet there are only 3 kids shown in the sketch (Hank, Diana and Eric). So what happened to Sheila, Presto and Bobby? If they weren’t going to be there, there should have been a reason provided as to why they weren’t there.

Second, the kids in the sketch barely resembled the cartoon characters that they were supposed to represent. Now, I wasn’t expecting Willie Aames to come back to reprise his role as Hank (although it would have been great if he had), but the guy who’s supposed to be Hank looked nothing like the Hank on the cartoon. They just took the Matt Tracker figure from their earlier MASK sketch and dressed it in an outfit that kinda sorta resembled the one that Hank wore, even though Hank’s Ranger outfit was green, not brown. And also, Hank had medium length rock-star hair, not short hair. Did these guys even see the show?

Third, no lines for Eric. After having seen how brilliantly Reggie Mantle was handled in the aforementioned Archie sketch, I couldn’t wait to see how RC was going to depict the spoiled, sardonic, complaining Eric, but he doesn’t get a single line of dialogue to utter here! Talk about dropping the ball.

Fourth, out of all the tropes and running bits on the show that RC could have made fun of, all we get is a lame  bit about Venger only having 1 horn on his helmet? That’s been joked about in the actual show. They could have parodied how Dungeon Master was always sending the kids off on dangerous missions and also have him sending them to perform demeaning tasks that he himself doesn’t to be bothered with on the promise the he’ll send them home once they’ve completed their tasks (which could include buying DM’s groceries or taking his car to the shop), only to discover that DM could send the kids back home anytime that he wants to and just like having them do stuff for him, and upon finding out the truth, the kids proceed to beat the snot of Dungeon Master. And that was just something that I pulled out of my pants a couple of days ago!

Finally, the sketch ends with a cut to a caption which reads “Venger never found his horn”. Not funny. RC have ended a few of their sketches this way, but it fails to amuse each time it’s been done.

Bottom line: If you know very little about the show, don’t bother trying to spoof it (and this also goes for RC’s painfully unfunny documentary skit about the 90s cartoons).

Robot Chicken is a mixed bag overall. The show is funny when the team has a good concept, but when the show misses the mark, it really misses the mark. I’ve been waiting since the show began to see Seth, Matt and the team write a parody of another CBS Saturday morning cartoon, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, when of if that ever happens, I really hope that they’ll actually put some effort into it and we’ll get a better result than what we got with this parody of D&D.