Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: TobiasMasonPark on December 04, 2010, 10:27:22 PM
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I think we can all say that the Animorphs television series was, for lack of a better word, a flop. But I doubt that one can completely despise any show without liking at least ONE thing about it (music, actors, etc). And, I think we can all put aside the many, many, many inconsistencies resulting from such an attrocity; as this thread would get very long, very fast (there must be about 300 in the entire series). So, to make this thread much, much shorter, I'll simply list somethings I liked about the show; or, at the very least, tolerated.
I'm not going to lie. I didn't mind Christopher Ralph and Paulo Constanzo as Tobias and Ax respectively. I always imagined Tobias as having dark hair when I read the series. For some reason, I never did picture him blonde. And I guess Ralph's acting isn't completely terrible (not when Nadia Nasimento and Brooke Nevins are on set, anyways), and I think Paulo was spot on when acting out Ax. Seriously, everytime I read Ax, or write Ax, I can hear Paulo Constanzo's voice in my head. It's either the way he talks, or the odd way he walks, but something about Constanzo just screams Andalite-impersonating-a-human. Again, that's probably just my humble opinion.
I didn't mind Shawn Ashmore as Jake. Though, that's not to say that I would have picked Ahsmore to play the fearless leader. I think his delivery is a bit wooden, and he is nothing like I pictured Jake to be (nor does he have any of the qualities of a leader [thus explaining his role as Iceman in the X-men]) but you can live with him. It's like bubble rap you get in packages: dull....but you can't resist popping one!
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The actors they had for Marco's dad and Cassie's mom were both very good and should have gotten more screen time. And when they're angsting, I like Boris Cabrera as Marco and Christopher Ralph as Tobias. Neither of them can deliver more lighthearted lines at all, though.
I adore Eugene Lipinski as V3, but for probably all the wrong reasons.
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I've only watched a few episodes of them, but I really like the actor for Jake and Rachel, and the opening theme. I disliked the poor quality, the bad dress styles, and the Andalite...the programming for them, I mean. They didn't look that real.
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The opening song wasn't so bad. And yes, I didn't mind Christopher Ralph and Paulo Constanzo.
But I can't forgive the flashlight Dracons and the thermos-Yeerks and...and...zombie Controllers. No.
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I liked the opening music sequence. It sounded kinda Animorphs-like. And I agree with Tobias and Ax. In fact, the only two actors I could find fault with were Cassie and Jake, for the listed reasons. I liked SOME of it, but the rest just didn't pan with me. I see the TV series as a separate universe, not the REAL Animorphs. It feels a lot better if you watch it like that. But, seriously? No mention of the WORD Animorphs? No Crayak, Howlers, Chee, Cassie getting the morph allergy, FLASHLIGHT Dracon beams, ships that all look alike? NO, uh-UH!
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wasn't the actor for Marco's dad Hector Suarez from Ugly Betty
or am I just fabricating memories
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Fabricating, unfortch. This is the guy. (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0671022/) I liked him, and generally thought he and Boris Cabrera played off each other well.
I could not at all stand Brooke Nevin as Rachel. Granted, part of it was that she was working with a terrible script, but Rachel read as so gutless and insecure. It was painful. Shawn Ashmore blatantly used a teleprompter at times, Nadia Nascimento had the screen presence of a log. I feel like as much as Boris Cabrera occasionally got it right with the more serious scenes, he tended to play Marco as just a class clown, not really conveying that Marco's a sarcastic little jerk because he's an exceptionally cynical, pessimistic kid. Christopher Ralph in the early first season had one facial expression (O.O) but gradually improved over the series, which was nice. I can't say I'm a big fan of Paulo Costanzo but my God, it's not his fault most days, the script goes out of its way to make Ax look like an idiot sometimes. The kid who played Tom was alternately good and horrid.
Honestly, half the time the problem was the script. So many inconsistencies, general idiocy and senselessness. Like the one where Jake chases Tom's car yelling "I know all about the Sharing" - and then this gets portrayed as a totally reasonable thing to do instead of the super stupid act it is. The script really tried to have the best of both worlds with the book's tone, which is tricky, because Anis balances lightness with really dark ideas - under a less skilled hand, we ended up with Visser 3 getting hit by a water balloon. Which then made it into the opening credits. Ouch.
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The Chee were in it. S2E1 I think. It was a horrible episode though.
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Oh God the My Name is Erek episode...so much wrong with it.
- What is up with the kid they got to play Erek? He seriously couldn't dye the roots of his weird orangey-purple hair?
- What is Boris Cabrera wearing and would a jury find me guilty of vandalism if I destroyed it?
- If Erek can project holograms, why does Ax need to deliver a hologram projector? Just...what?
- Ax is so stupid in this ep it gives me a headache.
- In one of the few episodes that they write Marco as sufficiently paranoid, it's written off as him just being a jerk to Erek, who at that point had given them no reason to trust him and was only distinguishable from random joe on the street by his gross grown-out orangey-purple hair.
- "If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead" *twenty minutes later* "Bee tee dubs that was actually a lie, I'm a programmed pacifist" "Gee, Marco, why didn't you trust him?"
- The crux of the plot is Erek's ability to ventriloquize. Seriously.
- Isn't this also the one where they sneak into a movie and have that truly horrendous green-screen shot of the mice flying in a box of popcorn?
- The moral at the end of the episode is "TV makes you stupid", and having watched this ep, I could not agree more.
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Despite the fact that the writers totally goofed up and gave Tobias a pretty decent homelife, the episode about Tobias's life was one of the better episodes.
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I loved the Visser One episodes. Even if the ending leaves you with a total "what happened to the ship?" hanging plot.
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I wonder how Christopher Ralf felt when he found out that he would mostly be doing voice overs for most of the series. I doubt the actors read much farther than the Invasion.
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I think they all had their star moments, but the budget made everything suck.
I did like Ax and Tobias, though. Heck, the episode Changes where Tobias finds out Elfangor was his father had GREAT moments. I made a music video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_plxDR5q_k) and I kept one of Elfangor's sound bytes because he had one of those epic lines you just can't stop thinking about. (Ironically, the voice for the show is pretty close to what I imagine his thoughtspeak sounds like anyhow!)
He said: "I would gladly sacrifice forever with strangers for a single moment with someone I love."
Sound file: http://www.box.net/shared/y099zjre82 It's a .wav file so you can make it a computer sound if you want.
It's too bad the show never panned out. A lot of people who only saw the show and not the books were probably confused as hell about how an Andalite had a human child.
There really COULD be a souped up movie like Power Rangers got--maybe if they have to tweak it, it could be the kids finally figured out how to open/read/download/whatever Elfangor's Hirac Delest and the movie becomes a frame story, beginning and ending with the kids reading the disk.
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You'd have to release a film about the invasion before, so the third generation kids would get it. People who read the books back in 1996, and those of us who started after the series ended, then something like that makes sense. But to a ten year old, it would just be confusing. It wouldn't be like the Power Rangers, since the series is still airing ten years later. Animorphs has been out of print for nine years.
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I meant old school Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. They got a movie.
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Alright, makes sense. But you'd still have to reintroduce the series. The MMPR film came out while the [original] series aired.
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something i hate about this show is that in one episode visser 3 complained about how the human form was weak.... well why don't you go andalite when your around yeerks? also he proved hi point by showing that the andalite arm is ,uch stronger than the human arm... *facepalm* another thing is that they morph so damn quickly! and all in a predictable order... it ruined something that makes the animorps universe authentic. and the realation to the book series is a bout 66% percent i geuss... animorphs: best book series, worst tv series.
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Well, not all the morphs are quick. Jake's morph to Homer when hiding out took some time. Or Cassie's bad croc morph.
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I think morphing had to be sped up because of time constraints. Last I remember in the book it could take several minutes to morph, and in a 30 minute show they couldn't spare like ten minutes of just morphing. So I can understand that. (I liked the sequence where Ax was doing his Frolis maneuver btw. He was all sweaty at the end which shows it took him effort to get that shape.)
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or maybe it was his brother making him sweat... btw if you have no idea what i'm talking about just look at your siggy.
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I see the TV series as a separate universe, not the REAL Animorphs. It feels a lot better if you watch it like that. But, seriously? No mention of the WORD Animorphs?
I agree with treating books and TV shows like two seperate entities, if the TV show is at least entertaining. True Blood comes to mind as a show that does things vastly different from the book series but manages to retain it's originality. The first major failing (or sorry, it's called "Epic Fail" now) of the AniTV show is that it treated it's audience like idiots. Forget that we read the books and know all the rules. It was those major brain burps that you'd have to be under five or suffering from brain trauma not to notice.
Example 1: They find the oatmeal addiction before Tobias gets his morphing ability back. They go into the Yeerk Pool using mole morphs but never explain how Tobias gets there. For that matter, why did Tobias get shot? Why is he alive in the next episode without any adequate explanation?
To me, the best episode in the entire series of the TV show was one of the last ones. It involved a teacher giving a lecture about survival in the wildnerness. His Yeerk dies from the Kandrona starvation and the host tries to round up more hosts to build a resistance.
Who ever wrote that episode had better have gone on to do better things because it was brilliant. For one it was an original story that didn't try to adapt the books. Jake's Tiger morph was an actual trained animal in the classroom and not an embarrassingly obvious green screen effect, so the actor playing Chapman was believably terrified. The teacher was a believable character and the lesson he gives in the beginning ties in with how the story ended.
Everything was there and if they could have just managed that level of creativity and writing skill from day one the show would have had a much longer run. Or, if it still got cancled as was the case with Moonlight and Firefly, the fans would be justified in fighting to get it back on the air.
And that is my beef with the series. *Gets down off the soap box*
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Were we watching the same episode? Because that episode, to me, was the most horrid barring My Name is Erek or Changes pt 3. Or the escalator episode, which was just full of lame.
- Abysmal dialogue ("I saw him feed Tom soup" and Chapman's "you have the upper hand now!" to a frigging tiger, as if Jake didn't before)
- Marco should have shanked Jake the instant the latter started chasing Tom's car yelling "I know all about the Sharing!". Seriously, Jake was alternately an idiot and a total jerk, and yet the episode bends over backwards to try and make Jake look like he was in the right.
- The guy who plays Chapman is just terrible. He had the least convincing yelp of all time. Alikat and I have taken to imitating it for our own entertainment.
- The opening scene with the cricket is horribly framed, horribly shot, horribly acted, just...awkward.
- Just bad acting all around. I'm usually ambivalent about Cabrera as Marco but he can't deliver laughter at all, and there are points when Ashmore is just shamelessly using cue cards.
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Yeah, but the points you've mentioned are pretty much standard in a show created by Nickelodeon past the 95. The few clips I saw of "My Name is Erek" had me wondering what horse they cloned that actor from as he looked like he was chewing something when he spoke.
I'm not saying it was perfect. I'm just saying out of a large steamy pile of what the Anitv series turned out to be, that was at least one fragment of a gem.
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I love how the Animorphs are discussing the fate of the world in the Cafeteria--you know, where everyone could hear and see them--and Chapman walks right by, looking like he was sucking on a lemon. Seriously, he always had this unpleasant look on his face. And what the hell was with all of those little "give-aways?" You know, how they made the controllers OBVIOUS! LIke, the Chapman-twitch, the blank stares on the faces of teenagers. And what were those controllers wearing in the Face/Off episodes? They looked like...I don't know what to compare them to, wearing their bland grey clothing. It didn't scream covert-alien-invasion; it shouted "I ran from an institution just know, and I THINK I'm part of an alien invasion!"
How come Jake introduces himself four times in parts one and two of "My name is Jake?"
How come it's Cassie with the allergy and not Rachel?
Why is Marco so bland when he's trying to be funny, and funny when he's not trying to be funny?
Why was Christopher Ralph so cool?
How come all the controllers looked like they were trying really hard not to pass gas?
Why did Tom look like he was Jake's dad, not his brother?
Did Shawn Ashmore really read off cue cards? :P That's hilarious!
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My favorite was how so much of Chapman's dialogue was like "cat." "Andalite." "cat." "student." Yeerks learning English?
Yeah, but the points you've mentioned are pretty much standard in a show created by Nickelodeon past the 95. The few clips I saw of "My Name is Erek" had me wondering what horse they cloned that actor from as he looked like he was chewing something when he spoke.
I'm not saying it was perfect. I'm just saying out of a large steamy pile of what the Anitv series turned out to be, that was at least one fragment of a gem.
Nope. That one was horrible! :D Seriously, it was more egregious than most of the others to me.
I did like the one they did of The Alien (bar the weird Andalite...grapplin g?), and The Leader 1 and 2. And the first season finale had its good moments. Christopher Ralph using facial expressions, oh my!
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Well as long as we're talking about the major brain burps, how about Ax rigging a computer in a busy and very public cyber cafe so that Jake could call Tom. In the middle of a mall where the Yeerks are known to frequent. And leaving all of his equipment beind where anyone can find or trace it.
Seriously, if the Animorphs had been that careless in the books the series wouldn't have lasted past The Visitor.
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Maybe the Yeerks were celebrating a civic holiday that particular episode.
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I hated when Ax fought visser 3, it looked like they were bumping into each other instead of slashing.
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Not to mention that at one point you can hear a horse neighing as a sound effect during their grappling. Really, Nickelodeon?
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Ooo Ooo Ooo! I got some more!
Tobias' aunt actually LOVES him!
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That really blew the Tobias character in my mind. That episode made him seem like an ungrateful emo kid, when the books show that it's way more complicated than that.
But, okay. For me, there is one major thing I liked and one that I didn't.
The thing I liked: The themesong. I think actually nailed the overall theme of the Animorphs. "It's only us, but we have to take a stand." Easy.
The thing I disliked the most: Where the frick were the Taxxons?
I mean, you have to give credit to Hasbro. When they put out the line of Animorphs toys, they knew the readers were ravenous and they actually gave us a Taxxon action figure. That was the smartest move on behalf of a toy company in my opinion.