I did "Rank 'Em" posts for the first two seasons of "What If…?" but I don't have much to say about the individual episodes of the third season. And since this is also the concluding season, I thought I'd put down some final thoughts on the series as a whole.
So, this season of "What If…?" feels like an afterthought. Most of its eight episodes are spent on oddball pairings of characters from the MCU's Phase Four, like Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, and Agatha Harkness and Kingo the Eternal. We get another original character, Byrdie the Duck (Natasha Lyonne), who is the daughter of Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Howard the Duck (Seth Green). The episode explaining how Darcy and Howard got together is far and away the best episode of the season, because it's something so weird and nutty that it could only happen in this series. The slapstick humor premise, where all the biggest baddies in the universe end up chasing Byrdie's egg, actually works.
Like the previous season, there's an ongoing plot involving the Watcher that ultimately turns into another big multiverse-spanning fight involving Captain Carter, Kahhori, and other recurring characters. It's completely unnecessary, but in the interest of giving the series a definite ending, I guess it's fine. I have more of a bone to pick with the lackluster individual plots this year, like "What If… the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?" which spotlights Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) in a post-apocalyptic universe, or "What If… the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?" where a motley collection of second stringers fight kaiju. The ideas aren't bad, but the execution is lackluster, and it's very apparent that the show is trying to boost the profiles of some characters it wants us to care about. Meanwhile, hardly any of the original Avengers lineup even show up for a cameo. There are a few surprises and the humor is generally better, but this season of "What If…" appears to have been severely limited in its choice of material, and it's something of a relief to see it go. The series as a whole has been an interesting experiment, but always felt very constrained by studio politics.
Meanwhile, over in another comic book universe, the animated "Creature Commandos" on Max is the first official project to come from James Gunn's new creative leadership on the DC superhero franchise. It's essentially "The Suicide Squad" with monsters. Under the command of Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), Task Force M is made up of dangerous individuals who aren't technically human but capable of heroism. These include G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), the radioactive Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), Frankenstein's monster (David Harbour) and the Bride (Indira Varma), the amphibious Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), and the Weasel (Sean Gunn). James Gunn wrote every episode and is very gung-ho about this being a launching point for all kinds of media to come. Unfortunately, "Creature Commandos" completely failed to win me over.
I think if I had seen this series a few years ago, before the "Harley Quinn" series and before "Invincible," I would have found it more interesting. Unfortunately, after the most recent batch of edgy animated series based on comic books, "Creature Commandos" can't help but feel derivative. None of the characters particularly stand out. The production values are decent, but nothing special - the animation, action scenes, and level of violence are all fairly middling. Despite the big names in the cast, I didn't particularly like any of the characters. They're all extreme personalities who eventually learn to get along and bond with each other, while fighting much less interesting villains. Each episode fills in the backstory of one of the Taskforce M members, which are all predictably tragic and violent.
I've liked most of James Gunn's comic book movies up to this point, but the tone is something I've had to get used to. There are always a lot of juvenile assholes and hostile reprobates trading one liners, and everyone seems to have a lot of pent-up aggression. While everyone eventually becomes like family to each other, the learning curves can be pretty steep, and the universe is far too grim and mean for the show to be a good time. This approach is perfect for "Creature Commandos," a show aimed at angry adolescents, where everyone has an awful backstory and plenty of excuses to behave badly. However, I'm not an angry adolescent, but a bored elder Millennial who has seen this kind of thing too often. Good luck to Gunn, but I can recognize when a piece of media is definitely not for me.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment