Today I watched some Animorphs on the DVD player in my room. The remote control doesn't work with it at all. It turns the TV on and off and changes the volume, but I can't select different episodes or rewind. The pause button on the DVD player works, but it's right below the eject button, so I'm always pushing the wrong one and ejecting the disk when all I want is to pause; and I have to push the Fast-Forward button to get to the next episode. And if there are eight episodes on that disk, and each movie has twenty-four scenes, I'm there for hours just trying to get to the right episode. It's incredibly frustrating.
Anyway, rant aside, I noticed a big mistake in the pilot! We see the main character Jake walking, and we hear the narration: "Half an hour ago I was a regular kid." At this point it's a beautiful, lovely day; so the narration implies that he met Elfangor in the daylight, but he didn't. It was pitch-black.
I actually don't like a lot about that show. Jake, talking to his dog like he understands every word. The way Rachel says Homer. The way the aliens would control the humans, instead of destroying them and having the planet to themselves. But I'm also a big fan of it. It's Rachel, Cassie and Tobias that I can't get enough of. And I must admit, Paulo Costanzo makes a very convincing Ax...in his human form, anyway. The Andalite costumes aren't good. I actually close my eyes when I see Visser Three's ship land because the graphics aren't impressive.
There's a massive debate on whether the books or the show is better. I've always said it was the movies, mostly because Brooke Nevin is in it. Tom always creeped me out, he reminds me too much of Seth Green. I think my least favorite episode is the one where they realize the disk is a tracking device. The woman who says "The signal is going up!" is such a horrible actor. I just want Marco to become a gorilla, pick her up and throw her into space.
Melissa's awesome; she should be in more stuff. I tried watching The Crown - which is despicably awful - and there's a fellow in it who sounds just like Visser Three. Seriously, it's like he went back in time to do that show.
Many years back, I wrote a book, in which Jake encounters Iceman and realizes he was cloned and experimented on, resulting in his twin's mutation. Of course the other Animorphs and X-Men are there. Rachel and Jean Grey form a rivalry, and Marco makes a urination joke. The school burns down and she has to catch Cassie after she's jumped from the window, and Rachel is found out to be a triple agent, and there's something about zombies...It was a disaster, and I was inexplicably proud. There was waaay too much sh1t going on. I called it the X-Morphs, and in my childish, who-cares-I'm-a-kid phase I thought it was the best thing ever. Looking back I'm amazed I had the gumption to continue my writing. I spent half a page writing about how Marco put a strawberry wrapper on a puddle of blood and "making it stick just a little" so nobody would get suspicious! I should have been back then as morbidly em-barrassed as I am now. Compared to how that story went down, Animorphs is a freakin' masterpiece. I suppose I really have to right to criticize.
Anyway, rant aside, I noticed a big mistake in the pilot! We see the main character Jake walking, and we hear the narration: "Half an hour ago I was a regular kid." At this point it's a beautiful, lovely day; so the narration implies that he met Elfangor in the daylight, but he didn't. It was pitch-black.
I actually don't like a lot about that show. Jake, talking to his dog like he understands every word. The way Rachel says Homer. The way the aliens would control the humans, instead of destroying them and having the planet to themselves. But I'm also a big fan of it. It's Rachel, Cassie and Tobias that I can't get enough of. And I must admit, Paulo Costanzo makes a very convincing Ax...in his human form, anyway. The Andalite costumes aren't good. I actually close my eyes when I see Visser Three's ship land because the graphics aren't impressive.
There's a massive debate on whether the books or the show is better. I've always said it was the movies, mostly because Brooke Nevin is in it. Tom always creeped me out, he reminds me too much of Seth Green. I think my least favorite episode is the one where they realize the disk is a tracking device. The woman who says "The signal is going up!" is such a horrible actor. I just want Marco to become a gorilla, pick her up and throw her into space.
Melissa's awesome; she should be in more stuff. I tried watching The Crown - which is despicably awful - and there's a fellow in it who sounds just like Visser Three. Seriously, it's like he went back in time to do that show.
Many years back, I wrote a book, in which Jake encounters Iceman and realizes he was cloned and experimented on, resulting in his twin's mutation. Of course the other Animorphs and X-Men are there. Rachel and Jean Grey form a rivalry, and Marco makes a urination joke. The school burns down and she has to catch Cassie after she's jumped from the window, and Rachel is found out to be a triple agent, and there's something about zombies...It was a disaster, and I was inexplicably proud. There was waaay too much sh1t going on. I called it the X-Morphs, and in my childish, who-cares-I'm-a-kid phase I thought it was the best thing ever. Looking back I'm amazed I had the gumption to continue my writing. I spent half a page writing about how Marco put a strawberry wrapper on a puddle of blood and "making it stick just a little" so nobody would get suspicious! I should have been back then as morbidly em-barrassed as I am now. Compared to how that story went down, Animorphs is a freakin' masterpiece. I suppose I really have to right to criticize.
“Anyway, rant aside, I noticed a big mistake in the pilot! We see the main character Jake walking, and we hear the narration: ‘Half an hour ago I was a regular kid.’ At this point it’s a beautiful, lovely day; so the narration implies that he met Elfangor in the daylight, but he didn’t. It was pitch-black.” — Even in the book, Jake narrates that Tobias was the first to spot Elfangor’s ship in the sky because he was ‘looking at the stars or something’ as they walk. There’s really no excuse for such a big mistake, because the show’s writers can’t have thought that the kids met Elfangor so early in the morning that it was still dark; in the summer (presumably, just judging based on how dry and sunny it is when Jake’s narrating) the sun’s up early, so the kids would have had to be awake and wandering home from the mall in the middle of the night. Naturally, I never caught this mistake ...
ReplyDelete“The way the aliens would control the humans, instead of destroying them and having the planet to themselves.” — Well, the Yeerks never wanted Earth just for Earth; they want host bodies ... and seven billion people who tend to laugh at anyone who claims to have seen a UFO make pretty easy targets. If they wanted to kill people, they’d use orbital cannons and just blast us into glowing mud from space. (I’m such an Animorphs nerd; I know way too much about it.)
Yeah, the graphics — the show aired between 1998 and 2000, but most of the special effects were probably done pre-1998, and they were probably the ‘height’ of their abilities at the time (if I remember right, it took weeks to do a single morph!). Honestly, watching the ‘special effects’ of the past is embarrassing ... but you know, it’s very possible that thirty years from now, kids will look back at the effects we think are brilliant and stunning and laugh at their parents when they say, ‘Those effects cost a billion dollars and we were all in awe!’, just as I did when Mom or Lorne would tell us how ‘cool’ effects in the 80s were. (If you ever need to cringe, watch anything from that time period, or before.)
I’d love it if they made an animated series, or even a better real-actor TV show — with real-looking Andalites, Hork-Bajir ... I don’t think we even got to see Taxxons in the TV show. And instead of just having a bunch of kids caged up in the Yeerk pool, have adults there, too. Plus a Yeerk pool big enough to actually threaten a city, much less a world; the one they had on the TV show couldn’t have threatened my backyard. Dispense of the kid-friendly aspects; the books were actually decently gory and the TV show didn’t do them justice — I love everything Animorphs, but even I can’t deny that the TV show didn’t live up to expectations. Though, the main actors were perfect. Some of the others were definitely awful. And any decent Animorphs fan could pick the show apart all day. One of my biggest peeves, I think, is that Visser Three spends so much time in his human morph. The jerk is the biggest show-off in the universe, the only Yeerk to possess an Andalite host, and what does he do? Morph into a human; just as slow, clumsy, and weak (with no claws or fangs or blades or even poison) as his minions, putting himself on equal footing with them even though he knows better than to trust any of them. It would never happen in the books, but I guess morphing a human instead of keeping an Andalite on screen saved money or something.
The only X-Men and urination joke I can come up with tonight is “Pee-nix” (instead of Phoenix, as if that even needed explaining). Did I guess it? :D
The stories I wrote as a kid were horrible compared to what I can do now — and I still suck. At least I’m not writing all about a Mary Sue now and believing she’s a good character! I’m still tempted to write Mary Sues, though, so I stick to writing stories about male characters only. They seem to turn out far more human than ‘my girls’ do.
No. Jean Grey was having trouble with her tel-epathy and called it a telekinetic leak. Marco says, "It sounds like you went to the bathroom and it began floating." I was trying to keep him in character of his smartass self, but I really don't have a sense of humor.
DeleteI never thought of that before, but you're right; he's only in Andalite form a few times. When he's introduced, when he wants to test the sensors, when he fights Ax, and at the Yeerk pool of course, but he was surrounded by Controllers, so it wasn't a stupid move like when Ax, after hearing about his brother's death, ran from the barn in his Andalite morph.
They messed up, in my opinion. Especially by saying very obvious lines, or always saying "We can't talk here" after they already did. Cassie, acquiring a croc's morph in front of people. The way she repeats herself - "It looks like he's hurt! You're hurt. Jake, give me your shirt, he's wounded." They could have done better. I think two of my least favorite Rachel moments are: When Jake has fallen into the Yeerk pool, and for some reason she has to announce that he's un-conscious. The other is when the Controllers shine their flashlights on them and she says, "They've seen us." Uh, no kidding?
But if you ever ask Mom or Lorne, they will both swear they saw the same UFO at the same time.
I have guy characters, but they're not the stars of the story. I'm not familiar with the male per-spective, so I'm still writing about girls. But, I make them weird, snobby, clumsy, stupid, plain, plump, can't sing to save her life, whatever. I do have beautiful characters, but they're the ones who are flawed elsewhere. It's not that I don't believe in total perfection - I'm just tired of it. All it is anymore is a cliché.
Oh, I didn't mean to say that people never say they've seen UFOs, just that the majority of people laugh at the idea or think the people who see UFOs or claim to have been abducted by aliens are insane - with so many people unwilling to believe in aliens either because it's just unbelievable or because they don't want to be judged as 'crazy', we would make pretty good targets for aliens like the Yeerks.
DeleteI'm not comfortable yet writing my own male characters, so I stick to writing fanfiction starring men someone else created. It's a lot easier ... and still very difficult.
I watched the one with the disk earlier this mor-ning, and the entire episode seemed pointless. The Yeerks steal Jake's disk, which should have been in Tobias' possession, just so they can take the guy who had it in his pocket.
DeleteI guess I'll have to rewatch that one, I don't remember much of it - unless that's the one with the pet store? I really don't know ...
DeleteYeah, it is. After I wrote my last comment I remembered Rachel saying, "This isn't the disk", so my last comment really has no point to it. But I came up with a new flaw, a real one: How did the Controllers know exactly when Jake lost the real disk?
DeleteI really don't know how to answer; I'll have to re-watch that episode before I know anything :)
DeleteDo you know the name (or season and episode numbers) of that one?
I think it was "On The Run."
DeleteThanks, I think you're right; I have to go to the dentist again today (third time this month) so I may not be able to watch it for a while, but when I do, maybe I'll have some answers...or be surprised by all the plotholes I never noticed despite reading and watching Animorphs obsessively. :)
DeleteIt's not perfect, but I still love it. I think Brooke Nevin is the main reason; I might have to see what else she's done. I actually tried recently, but the video wouldn't load.
DeleteThis month? Is everything okay?
I like most of the characters, except Ax's human morph and Erek the Chee; as much as I'd like to see a high-tech version of the show, I think I'd really miss the characters I've already gotten to know and like - especially if they go animated and end up using stupid voices like they did for the Archie comics show :s
DeleteThat one makes me cringe so hard, just for the way it sounds; I don't think I've gotten five minutes into the first episode :s
Meant to answer your question - things are mostly okay, I think, but I didn't go to the dentist for five years, so I was overdue for a cleaning and I got a lot of cavities / am still a high risk for cavities. It took two appointments just to get the upper left teeth all fixed; I guess it'll be at least six more before my whole mouth is done. Fortunately, after all the fillings, I'll be at less risk of future cavities, so they say I won't have to come in every week, just once every six months for a cleaning and checkup.
Delete(And to think I was once impressed because I had six cavities at once!)
I always thought Ax looked more like an Alvin than a Max. Actually, in my totally terrible fanfic The Expiration Malfunction, he was the guy I had in mind to portray Alvin, Howard's cousin; and Allison Dubois in mind to portray his mother. I still like the combination of those two, and the title for the book; but it did not turn out well.
DeleteWell, that's nothing horrible; glad to hear it. Cavities really bite. I remember storing my wis-dom teeth in a tooth-shaped container. Wonder what happened to it.
Hah! We almost had a bird fly into the house! He was just sitting on the top of my window, and he could have easily just swooped on in. :D
I still have two of my wisdom teeth, and one that was pulled out at the end of March; I should have three more (two other wisdom teeth and one that was just painful enough I had a dentist yank it), a total of six adult teeth. Luckily most of them were wisdoms and I'm not going to be without my fangs for a while yet :p
DeleteHa, awesome! Kinda. I don't want things in my space unless they belong there, and so few things do :p
Tell me about it. I have a dining room table in my closet because I needed shelving. I'm putting a lot of stuff to the curb next week.
DeleteI had an oral issue myself a few days ago. A root, I hope, got left behind and began cutting through my gums. While it hasn't hurt since then, I'm still going to the dentist.
Ouch! I hope it's a quick, easy fix!
DeleteI hope so, too; though I really don't want them to cut my gums open. :(
DeleteWell, they would numb you first, but the numbing can be uncomfortable itself :|
DeleteSorry, I never got notified about your comment. They said it was a piece of bone and totally harmless, and it would dissolve over time.
Delete