Friday, July 29, 2016

Gen13

In the past I was that kid that bought a bunch of comics and didn't know what was inside them, that I just grabbed them because they had neat covers, but I never read them till I was in high school. This was a problem, since I had a ton of comics with awesome art, but nothing that I read for fun I just looked at the pictures. And what fine pictures they were, since it's J. Scott Campbell at the helm and producing a well illustrated story. Jim Lee and Brandon Choi at the writer's chair constructing the team and their adventures as far as the 90's will let them go. Though let me introduce this series originally published by Image Comics, then was published by the DC imprint WildStorm, Gen13. A group of teenagers living in a house together, trying not to be noticed by the government or the shady organizations that want to use them for their own purposes. Each teen has their own power or mutation that makes them very valuable for an assortment of reasons. My favorite member of the team is Grunge, love his tattoo and his powers, though there were other members of the team, but the issues I had never focused that much on their talents. Sadly, I wouldn't find out that Fairchild was smart, strong, and super tall, reflecting my love of She-Hulk till later in life. Then there was the transfer to the DC imprint WildStorm, a lot of different artists and writers have come and gone with the teen team, so why not check out the film that never saw light (well in the United States). We're gonna be diving into the Gen13 movie (without the comic origin nor characters in mind, this will be pure film), that's been screened in America, but hasn't been properly sold, join us as we see the comic's limited series be told in a media translation for about an hour.
This is a series that I know about, I've never really read the comic, though I've enjoyed the dynamics and the interesting character designs, so I'm trying this film out. I have a bunch of the comics, but at the moment they're under a mountain surrounded by so many other comics, that sorting through this mess would be another week before I could finally dig myself out of these ivory treasure troves. Anyhow, if you're a person that really wants me to comment or compare these two, then I would gladly spend sometime and hunt down Gen13 numbers one through five, but at this time we're going to take this adventure headlong into the world of animation and hope that this film inspires more independent comics to make animated features.

My initial cover response, this is Floating Heads: the Poster, it is horribly designed. It looks like a gaggle of heads all morphing and turning into forms that seem familiar from this Image Comic flick. It's like Tetsuo (from Akira), all their skin and features are melting into each other to try and build a cover that seems interesting. They failed to gain that interest point, since I feel it's an homage to a lot of classic films with floating heads, though the true difference would be that those floating heads were of famous actors that would draw the crowd. These are characters that were fairly popular of the time and can't really translate to modern time, they're products of their age. Personally I loved this comic, though I haven't really read the comic, I had a bunch of the issues, though never really read the comic till later in life. Still this is a poster of six faces who the majority of people don't know too well, even during this time. Don't get me wrong Image Comics was a big deal during the 90's, animation too was  huge and money making for studios. There's a lot of history that comes from the 90's with animation and comics. The late 80's was ground zero for the boom into the media type, though it's always been popular and still is popular to this day. Anyhow back to this cover, it's a dark lab and six figures, behind the floating heads, which are two of the same people in full body. Yeah, it's just full of problems backwards and forwards, so I'm just gonna stop beating up the graphic designer and move onto the plot of the story based on this poster alone.

In a World where six individuals take on science the only way they can… by posing at it, that's right silhouettes and head shots, they've been genetically altered to disprove science in all forms. Really though this looks like they wanted to jam a ton of faces on the poster, so someone would find something interesting on the cover. The plot looks like three figures are trying to escape an underground facility from putting them in tubes. It looks like Vampira and Red-Eye are the bad guys and Ginger, Freefall, and Scar are the ones that need to leave, sadly Grunge isn't seen on this poster, so he's assumed to be dead. It's not a very good poster, if anything I'd just make a parody of a Hulk cover with Fairchild being transmuted into her taller form, with Grunge and Fairchild being hit with the same explosion. It would be a better poster, though it would still not be great, but a better homage to something that would make more sense of the current character roster.

Well that's enough, I really do like the characters and the creative team that's apart of this series, so it's hard to look at this and think that they just let another party take control of their franchise. Still there's another hour of movie that I'll be watching to change my already negative opinion of this feature film. Though that's only with the poster, I'm bias when it comes to Bruce Timm, so I'm positive it will be spiritually successful to the characters, though a poor representation of the poster gives me worry to it's content. Though that's the problem with this, it's not a Bruce Timm feature, it has nothing to do with him except that people, a lot of, who worked on Batman: The Animated Series also worked on this film. So this saving grace is a little off, but for the most part Jim Lee, J. Scott Campbell, and Brandon Choi the creators and writers for the comic are heading up the endeavor. Though Kevin Altieri and Karen Kolus are our screenwriters for this evenings, so let's dive back into the late 90's and the first breath into the far off year of 2000.

We open with the Elite Forces incoming transmission, some level 5 stuff, then we find out about Stephen Callahan, seems he was apart of the Gen12 group of testing. Though is now considered armed and dangerous, also it's about 6 years before Civil War and the registration act, but in this world they have an Internal Operations that keeps tabs on Super Powered Being (S.P.B.). Though this is your classic shady government group, so it's expected that something like this would be up, since micromanaging is their forte.

After a little bit of foreshadowing, oh I'm very much sure we'll see Stephen, though for the time being we can only assume that he'll be apart of the climax of this feature. Next we see a mundane family car stroll down a tree covered cliff side road, then stop and zoom off into a dirt path in the middle of the night, or early evening, since either the Sun is going down or coming up. Then the music picks up as the spot of the wagon was the focus of a floating light, an interest point for a flying machine of some sort, since it didn't have a sound. The car feels that it's being shadowed, speed brakes from the station wagon as it speeds up, kicking dust and mud along it's new path. The car's window comes down as we hear the first sounds of the helicopter, they open fire on the car as it crashes by the stream onto rocks, the four people in the car get out (two parents and two children) the car explodes as the chopper closes in on them. Their baby starts crying as does the Mother to her child to run, her little blonde boy to get away from this mess. The father holds their baby as the Mother confronts the chopper, as the soldiers drown her in bullets. The boy ran to his Father and not the woods, they stand strong, though worried about the next action these men will take. They demand the kids, though Stephen (since they referred to him as Callahan) becomes infuriated, his eyes turn crimson with burning fury and his body glows with white pyre, the shockwave of his voice knocks into the helicopter, shaking its balance. He calms himself for a moment and demands that his son takes his sister and get as far from this world that they can. Stephen then starts to vomit blood, his body begins to flex again and his eyes change once more, the helicopter is in the air, looming over this man turned monster, then they pour bullets over his form, as his children watch in horror. Then we cut to the title screen, in classic mutant or altered being fashion we get a swirling background that implies the double helix. This is a pretty powerful scene for a cartoon, though given that there's been cartoons just as violent on MTV, it's never came to the big screen, well in a feature length film that there's been strong adult themes and superheroes that can be placed in these types of mature situations. It's only been 16 years and it's something that's now accepted, though was a BIG risk within the media at this time.

Oona Kulte seems like she's not over what happened a few reviews ago.
 Dressed as Roxy aka Freefall from Gen13.

Anyhow we see a redheaded woman just waking up after the credits (they get me sleepy too). Then she screams herself awake, her roommate gives us a reason for the mature rating and we join our lead into the first four minutes of the film. The sleeping, now awake, Redhead is Fairchild, though this is before she becomes our tall strong leader type. We see that Fairchild needs glasses and is in college since she's at a dormitory. Then she finds out her roommate (who's voiced by Pamela Adlon) turned off her alarm, so she's gonna be late. It more or less was a pointless scene that could have just had her in class dosing off or something, since it was honestly a transition from the past to the present. Well she makes it to the steps of her building for studying and is stopped by the stiffest stiff army type I've seen in animation. This guy makes oil paintings look like NSACAR. Anyhow he offers her a full scholarship if she joins Project Genesis, it's a very forward scene, though not as forward as the Generation X movie recruitment, but still a recruitment that really wasn't convincing, though tempting, especially in the present.

Moving on to the classroom, and we're talking about Caesar, well not really "we" it's not a conversation, it's a lecture class. The down side of this is if it's not foreshadowing it's unneeded and boring, though on the positive side it allows us to really see the wonderful animation of our lead character expressed well in this caring absorption in the pamphlet that was given to Fairchild before entering the classroom. Then she's snapped out of it and teaches the teacher a little about the Romain Dictator, as she gives more facts, showing her amazing brain and the ability to multitask. And in cartoon fashion the class is dismissed and we see the classic college struggle of carrying books and having a roommate. The door is locked for one reason or another and in this case it's because of, ahem, intimate studying… in the dark. Pretty much the conversation floats in and out with Caitlin Fairchild, she isn't the fun loving type, she's a goody goody and will always be the straight arrow of a group. That's not a bad thing, though it really comes off as a negative, but the counterpoint of this is that someone who's a bit strict on themselves needs friends that can be a little more loose. Though this roommate is totally not the type that wants to be friends, well not friends that don't want to have sex with her, so Fairchild is on her own in that dorm. And with the 15 minutes that she's given while her roommate finishes mating, Caitlin makes an important phone call to a very inanimate man… in an animation.

And we're off into the vast nothing of the rocky mountains (well not THE Rocky Mountains, but an undisclosed rocky mountain scenery), the setting Sun in the background and a helicopter progressing the plot along with our lead. One thing that's glorious about this film is the music score, it's lovely in every turn of the page. I can't get enough of this music, it's extremely impressive for such an unknown film in the states that so much time and effort was put into making it this Class-A piece of work. And at the eleven minute mark we're at the new location, the ominous tower in the middle of the base and a German woman to greet our heroine. Helga is the instructor of this facility, and the welcoming comity of this militant organization. Then we get to a flight of stairs and meet Grunge, all muscles and no grace. It seems we're going with the boiled down route to these characters, just the basic idea of who they are and nothing else, but it's still early in the movie with thirteen minutes. I'm not so sure about Flea as Grunge, though I think it's the writing more than the acting, since I do enjoy his acting work here and there. Also E.G. Daily is in this flick as Freefall or Roxy, I think she went a bit too deep with her character, but that's my opinion (sounds like Rudy Tabootie, that was a good voice for her). So after meeting these three characters on the base we're immediately switched over to a guy with blonde hair and one eye. He's sweaty and training with another man, less hair, though two eyes, looks like Goro with less arms. They spare for a moment then we see that the evil looking blonde guy is bad and has powers, which he puts into effect by snapping the leg of the other man. Then a phone call comes from the other evil looking person on the base, I don't think this place is for learning. Anyhow the blonde guy's actor seems slow or that was the direction given to him, and the writing is a bit heavy handed, most of the moments in the film have not reflected well in my opinion to society. They talk about our lead and it's implied that this could be his sister, meaning that he's the son of Stephen and she's the daughter of said family.

Montage Time!

We see an assortment of clips implying that this facility is training/testing all of the teenagers in this group. Everything from the physical to the mental, from each character showing off their skills and talents, then a mopping scene. No real reason for there to be a mopping scene, but here's Grunge mopping, enjoy. It's one of the better montages I've seen, but it's still off, not sure what's off about it, but there's something that feels imperfect. Anyhow the three (Caitlin, Roxy, and Grunge) characters are all friends, we see that there's time passed and their friendship bloom.

Okay calling it, 18:53 that's the amount of time it took me before I wanted to stop the movie and get out of here. I love animation and I love comics, but there's just something about combining the two that creative teams just don't get, well at this time. I think we've, no I know we've come a long way from this point in comic movies, especially when it comes to animated features. Though there are still flicks I'll see of animations that don't really get the idea behind characters, like they just started writing a script and there aren't really names attached to the characters, so they just pasted on folks from a comic they liked and hope that the spirits transfer. That's not always the case, sometimes it really does work, the spirit of the character and the World combined together well, but most of the time it's a hodgepodge of bits and pieces of other things with a little research of the source material sprinkled into the mix. This tangent brought to you by the horrible acting of a character out of breath from beating Fairchild up with a combat cotton swab.

Lucky for us it's a quick scene that shows something is wrong with Fairchild, she starts to have a horrible headache and instead of sending her to medical, Helga sends her to the showers, Grunge and Freefall help her up, without a word that medial might be the better idea, since she could have a concussion. Then we're in the showers, it's all steam and implied nudity, soap and cigarette smoke. Nothing better than showing by not showing. What I mean is they have the characters nude already, it's implied that they are naked, but they're not just showing us the nudity, then why not just have them in towels or the camera angle so they're floating heads, why distort the footage or have them in a setting that would make more sense like the dressing room or the medical bay… she should really see someone about those headaches. Did, did Caitlin just cut off her friend when she was going to tell us an interesting backstory to create depth within another character? Again 21:49 I just want this movie off or remade.

After seeing that this place is plastered with cameras, we see Fairchild working on something, then a ball of gas starts to flood the room. She's knocked out and is then placed into a chamber, not too unlike the one they used on Deadpool in the Deadpool movie. Then we have a montage of Freefall, Grunge, and Fairchild all being loaded into a Batman Beyond science room, red lights and accenting alternate colors to pop within the space to give it depth and curiosity that makes the machines and certain portions of the scene more Science Fiction like. Anyhow, we're in the command room of the true Genesis Program, our Femme Fatale is smoking in her lounge singer dress while Helga is wearing Fairchild's classic costume from the comic, well all the women in this flick have been wearing that one-piece swim suit, though it just looks out of place on Helga.

Now we come to our Nick Fury like character, our one eyed overseer of this organization as he lands his ship and wants to speak with Ivana about this whole project. Jack Lynch is against the idea of what the Gen program is, it seems that he's a Gen 12, though this whole thing is a means to experiment on people with their consent, but it's a shame to grab past Gen offspring and see if they have latent powers. And with that uncomfortable conversation we see the past again, the brother running away from the soldiers that were chasing him and his family as he gets pulled by the waterfall, losing his eye in the process, also his freedom as a solider takes him back to base. It was all a dream again, which is weird how Fairchild the baby in those past explorations. How does she remember this? Now we're in the present as she woke up, barely able to walk since the evening experiments. The palette of this film is wonderful, it's something I forgot to talk about, they really know how to present a scene and have the proper elements pop. It's the next morning and they all collect in the mess hall.

Gom defies gravity for a moment, new experiences are his forte, Tea Steeping tries to help the bot down.
Tea is dresses like Fairchild, while our floating Gom is dressed as Grunge.

Colonel Lynch and the Blonde guy (I'm not gonna learn his name, I don't care about the character, the actor is great, it's the character, I just don't care what happens to him) share a pointless conversation, though together they have a set of eyes, tiny pupil eyes. Then we cut back to Fairchild and it seems her head's a mess, a thinly veiled plot device later she's at the table with Lynch. Oh, it seems we're at exposition alley today, conversations that bring us deeper into the mythology and plot, but stay so thin that nothing really comes from it other than expanding time, so it reaches the hour and a half time stamp. Again more build up to a pay off (that I'm hoping is worth all this!), also why are the bad guys allowed to smoke and not Roxy (Freefall), it's a little weird.

It's around two in the morning now, just after a full day of testing and exercise, it's weird, the amount of emotions and pain slipping and releasing it's self within Caitlin's body. The pain seems too much for her and is reacting in a way that's expected of anyone and not. It's odd to say the least, since the organization is doing all they can to make sure that she finds her way into airlock 15 (I'm assuming they were going with a space ship theme when designing a stationary building). Fairchild finds her father's records, it seems that he was not Stephen Fairchild and the opening report was on another in Alex's family, though who is Stephen to Alex and Caitlin?

Caitlin finds out more information about her father and whatever the government did to him, she starts to cry at the images and reports, also she has learned to type in air. Then Grunge comes out of nowhere, sounding like his mouth is stuffed with socks or large marshmallows. Caitlin overreacts, like totally goes off model for this extreme moment, the actress does a good job, but doesn't. She keeps going back and forth with me, something about her seems like she's used to cameras and less about acting with one's voice. Anyhow Roxy shows up too for a smoke and Grunge for ice cream, then a solider comes in with weapon ready. Then he starts busting heads, slamming the butt of his gun into skulls. Again this is where the actress's voice is perfect for the character, the reflection of that hulk-like character. Fairchild's anger gets the best of her, in her emotional state and the pain growing in her head, pounding, and pounding sounds like a good idea. She rips the gun from the soldier punches the jerk through a glass window, his helmet looks like it imploded into his face as he flies into the next room at a speed one would see a baseball thrown. Then Fairchild's pain manifests its self into a physical form, she starts to grow, taller, more muscular, and other parts that need to be seen in animated form for best expression of exaggeration.

Anyhow, Caitlin is about a foot taller and one shirt less, though Grunge give her his shirt, requested by Roxy, like any teen he wants to watch her change or studying her body, it's a curiosity the human body. Based off of what I've seen it's all interest and no action, I mean if Fairchild was a mop that would be different. Moving on the guards finally come to the room where they are and try to detain our leads. It seems that Caitlin has really improved in every way, since she's become a bit more durable and a ton more strong. Single handedly taking out all of the guards and still not quite comprehending the situation. This seems wrong to me since she's an extremely smart young woman, not sure why she hasn't understood the concept of her powers or that she has super powers.

The plot seems to be moving full steam at this point, we start to see all sorts of technobabble as the camera spins from person to person, showing that everything is going to plan except the three leads and their capture. Tanks are put in motion, it's weird that they want Fairchild captured, but have tanks. The whole facility is being searched top to bottom literally every tile being examined. Then we have our fart joke for the cartoon, it's either a song or farts, your choice in what makes you happy, but there's at least one of these per film. The trio talk for a bit about what's happening, then a grenade is dropped on them, literally a grenade from the shaft above them. The locker room is blown up and there's a cartoon sized hole in the wall where Fairchild was flung into and out of the base.

Caitlin wakes up in a junk hep, she's fine from the explosion, though needs to get away before she's spotted. We have a chase scene, it's interesting that she's able to run faster than 60 mph, since she's being chased by jets, well Johnny Quest like jets. Then Fairchild stops the jet and slams the pilot into the ground, the second one opens fire on her, he's pissed about losing his partner, though is dead now, so his pain is gone for the most part. Anyhow they use a person in a mecha suit with a RPG to fire on her, they're riding a skyboard, it's like a hoverboard, though only for the sky. Now we find out that it's Helga in the suit and that she's there to kill her, since she's killed so many of the soldiers, then Helga descends down the mountain like Wile E. Coyote, she's hurting something bad though, since Fairchild checks on her.

Then Caitlin feels something, something horrible happening in the facility, it seems that Roxy and Grunge are being tortured, electrified to talk, it's not working. So I just realized that this is the character that Mark Hamill plays, there's something about Mark Hamill and being evil, he's just the king of being naughty. So the blonde guy (still not gonna learn his name, even if it is Mark Hamill) starts to hurt the pair, since it will help them develop their powers, not sure why he's so interested in destroying the organization from the inside, though it seems he wants out.

Cut back to outside, the jets are being scrambled and we see the mecha suit moving once more, crawling up the side of the mountain. It's Fairchild trying to Trojan horse her way into the base. It fails horribly and she's on the run for her life. The soliders coat this faux ally with bullets, they blast into that machine producing every other gun noise, some that make sense, most not so much. Then the tanks show up and they fire into a jet after Caitlin rams into said machine. Pacing seems to have improved, the tension and plot are being well taken care of, since it seems more organic and written. Now back to the torture chamber we see that Grunge can take a lot of electricity and Roxy can't take the pain he must be feeling, she begs that Threshold (since he just said it) stops. And he complies, though takes his curious nature and focuses on her instead. The pain and energy surround our smoking purple haired lead, though that's when Grunge is able to open his eyes, when he hears the screams of his friend. Roxy is being torn limb from limb and this activates Grunge's Gen factor. In short he's the Absorbing Man, he becomes the material that he comes in contact with, then proceeds to punch the blonde man across the room. Outside it looks like someone dripped gasoline over the land and threw a match to see what would catch the flame, it seems that more or less of everything is ablaze.

Not much is left to burn, so Fairchild goes into the base and is immediately surrounded by guards. I just wanna point out that from the first moment of her powers developing to this very second in the film, she's been very violent with everything and anyone that got close to her. It's true, not many people would be able to pull a punch expertly with that much strength, just appearing out of nowhere. Still from point one, she's been casted as a person that's a bit gentle, as a character that wouldn't react this way, even after "One Punch Man" a guy to death, she was horrified at the mistake (on an animation side note, she clearly stepped into the man's blood and ran out the door, though no blood was seen). Anyhow, she tries to sneak back out the way she came, and is stopped, tanks and gunned soldiers are pointing their weapons at our heroine, and we get the kid's movie duo back. If there was a cliche counter for how many cliches Grunge and Roxy accounted for just in this film alone I'd be even later with this article than I am now. So the pair start throwing everything they can find at the guards that will shoot them on sight, the only thing protecting them is their costume change into their iconic wardrobe.

Then we move on to the fight scene, it's not horrible, it's a bit slow in places, but it holds up. The good guys (amateur combat fighters) beat up the bad guys (experienced elite soldiers) like they were plastic army men. Super powers or not, this organization doesn't seem like the type of people that just hand guns to night guards, these guys seem like they're trained from the best to be the best, though a couple of kids with powers are too much, I don't know, that just doesn't seem correct. One point I want to make is why doesn't one of these guys have armor piercing rounds. They have tanks, but not bullets that can shoot through tanks. Anyhow we see a side of Grunge that I think is mentioned in the comic, but wasn't established in the film, unless that fact that he's part Asian means he knows Kung-Fu. Then someone fires a tank shell at him, knocks out our hero, though our Femme Fatale takes a second shot at Fairchild, who thinks like David and Goliath by slinging a helmet at the tank, stopping the shell in the shaft and exploding the machine from the inside. This action immediately puts Roxy, who's overhead into danger, dangling from a broken handrail. We take a look at One-Eyed Blonde who wakes up from his name bring mentioned and flies away… I guess he returned to his planet. Roxy falls into Fairchild's arms, then complains that she's not special like the others. As she whines about not having powers we see that the Femme Fatale is really a Gynoid.

That's right folks, she's a cyborg in this cinema, nothing better then it happening in a cartoon!

Anyhow she rips the flesh from her arm and slashes the face of Fairchild, it seems that her fingers are made from razorwrire that has the durability to slash steel like tissue paper. Caitlin goes into action, jumping and dodging all of the whipping strikes, then as she jumps a little too high (learn from Icarus) she's grabbed. The metal is tight and strongly grappling her ankle. Roxy finally gets Grunge up and he grabs Ivana's arm as Caitlin struggles to keep her foot, though the muscle bound Gen active dude of the team chops right through her arm. She staggers back, then runs away, she doesn't know what to make of the moment as the three celebrate their victory. Then we cut back to the dog fight in the sky, tons of gun fire and explosions, though no clear point to the mess. Anyhow, the trio start to fly away from the base. Though it seems that Big brother blondie didn't let them out of the tour and wants them to come back on the bus as he ascends to their level of the canyon. Also he murders the pilot, so their chopper is useless, somehow Roxy pushes herself to the limits and actives her powers. She's able to control gravity, more or less. Then we're back in the base, everything is cut and burn, most literally our Femme Fatale wants no one to remember or know about anything that went on in this base.

Oona apologies for her actions and Gom has a new desire to be a more respectful friend.
Tea is just proud of her friends working out their differences.

Now we're back outside, our one eyed fiend talks to our group, his godly voice echoing on the walls and the ears of the canyon. They detest him and what he stands for, though have been just as reckless as him, but he's had his powers longer, where as they just gained them this day. It's a good reflection, since it shows that they're just as wild, but it's a wonderful dichotomy, since they know what they'll become if unchecked. He continues to talk and retell that same damned story that's been seen all through out this film so much that I wonder how close they wanted to get to Batman's origin story. Though the point is taken, since he was a boy when his parents were murdered in front of him. Then Threshold starts talking about a new beginning, a world of Gen Active only, a holocaust of humanity, an extremist view of Magneto's fantasy island.

The banter is as witty as a rock and a brick, so we'll move on to the fighting. Ol' one eye attacks them with a psychic attack, sending waves of him mind into their's, picking and fussing inside their most intimate thoughts. Oh, it seem Fairchild is a Fighting Psychic type, I haven't seen one of those, though I wouldn't try to throw a Pokeball at her, well not right now… the psychic recoil is too much for Threshold and it knocks him back. She tries attacking physically next, though is thrown back by a telekinetic blast, Grunge is hit with that flying peach, while Roxy is open for any and all danger. Her face says it all, though his threat is what stops her anxiety and awakens her determination to protect herself as energy and light emits from her body. The area becomes lighter and so does the assorted scrap on the ground as she sends it flying at our villain. He's impressed as his blast is blocked by her, then he tests her strength more with a fully charged emitted beam. Roxy keeps blocking the attack while Grunge absorbs the stone around him and Fairchild attacks with a fastball special. Rage becomes our fiend as he blindly strikes at our heroes, his grace and poise disappears as he is humiliated by this rag tag group of teens.

Lych appears, grandly on his jumbo military jet, he speaks to the teens and tells them that they are more than weapons and individuals that are bred for fighting. They are family, if not by blood (which the film has made VERY clear Caitlin and Threshold are), but by genetic bonds. Being a Gen active person means that they are rare and the most sought out people on the planet, meaning they only have each other if they want to live in peace. Then we cut for a moment to our Femme Fatale Cyborg Villain as she sends a relay to the explosives in the base. We pop back to all the heroes boarding the jet and trying to escape, though Threshold stays under the mountain. Caitlin tries to save him, but he sends her back and allows his suffering to be covered by rocks and rubble. They sweep the area and try to find anyone alive, but there is only blood and fire. Lynch gives the trio an offer, an adventure, a lot better than a lot I've heard, and amazingly better than the replies. And with a positive moment Caitlin learns more about her life as they head to a new home and a new future.

If you're like me you came for the animation and character design, though you've heard rumors along the grape vine that this isn't the best feature film. You'll be surprised that the music is stupendous and the attention to the characters and their character animation is highly respected. The long and short of everything is that it's a good film, though its problem is something that a lot of superhero movies have, the struggle of keeping true to the source material and having as many character as one can fit into the flick. Personally if they condensed the cast and supported the setting and plot down to its prime core. Teens with powers take down a shady organization that could be seen as a reflection of teenagers of the 90's against retail business of the time. It was a moment of wanting to break free from the poorly run society and create something that flexes and grows over time. Though that wasn't truly conceptualized, but it was something that was agreed with by the majority, make your own way and stamp your face into the history of the world. Gen13 on the other hand reflected teens of the time more than the teens of intent. They were more about hanging out and introspective while trying to deal with urges and emotions. This was more or less unheard of in superhero comics, especially independent superhero comics. The film doesn't have any of this within the feature, it's a movie that has action and plot that creates curiosity in a viewer to want to see more or read about what wrongs were created in this movie. I'd tell you to see it for the animation and acting, but if you want good writing, then you might want to try another flick Kevin Alteri was involved (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm 1993, Directed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski).

I trust you enjoyed the inspection, thank you for reading.
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