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your-friendly-neighborhood-sc00t · 7 years

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Ben 10 Reboot Review/Rant

aka: Why This Show Sucks

aaka: 333 Follower Milestone Special

Ah, how I have absolutely dreaded the day I have to write this review, or at least start writing it. Your boy Sc00t here, and welcome to my review of the Ben 10 Reboot.

Also, y'all too good to me, can’t believe over 300 people actually follow me and like seeing my trash. Thank you all for following, and I hope you guys continue to enjoy the content on my blog, ^^

I’ve been putting this off for quite some time now, for obvious reasons, but it’s time to finally crack down on this shit.

So, surprisingly, I actually did something I NEVER DO for shows I don’t like,

I actually watched multiple episodes for the sake of this review, DESPITE how painful it was to watch. I didn’t wanna judge it based on one or two episodes, so instead, I saw FOUR.

Yup, almost an hour of this horrendous show, just to write a stupid review.

There’s ALOT to cover here, so I’ll try to do it in an orderly fashion, and try to address all of the various issues this show has. For now, let’s start off with:

1: The Length of the Episodes Ben 10 OS (Original Series), AF (Alien Force), UA (Ultimate Alien), and OV (Omniverse), despite their differences, all had one thing in common:

All the episodes were a good 22 - 25 minutes long. This allowed plots to develop and flow at a steady and reasonable pace, nothing was rushed, and more effort was put into the production of them.

In the Reboot episodes average at 11 minutes, like a Spongebob episode, which results in a shitty premise having to move along quickly just to make with the little time they have. This was also very obviously done to save money, 11-minute episodes with simplistic, shitty plots are significantly easier to produce that 24-minute episodes with proper pacing and decent/good plots. Short running time + incredibly cheap animation = profit and easy mass production of trash.

2: The Pacing

As I’m sure you can tell, the pacing of each individual episode is GARBAGE, it moves along so fast, that if you’re not paying full attention to the show, you actually won’t know what the fuck’s happening at all. And the running time isn’t actually the problem at all. We’ve seen shows convey their plot efficiently with the same exact running time, just watch any episode from the first three seasons of SpongeBob, and you’ll know precisely what I’m talking about.

3: The Animation

The animation in this show is the WORST we’ve seen in the franchise, it’s just so simplistic, flat, uninspired, and just down-right stiff at times. Action sequences just don’t flow well at all, and the designs of each and every character looks like it was slapped together in just a few minutes. I mean, just compare to ANY of the previous series’ animation, compare to other cartoons, and then just see it for what it is, and you’ll find that no matter how you look at it, it’s fucking terrible, and LAZY.

4: Forgettable Villains

The various antagonists that appear throughout the series are bland, poorly designed, and are just so damn forgettable. I can’t even remember one name of any one villain from this show. They never left any sort of impact on me at all, and there isn’t anything even remotely interesting about them. The original series had many memorable and interesting antagonists, that had well fleshed out personalities and goals. Vilgax, Kevin, Hex, Charmcaster, Dr. Animo, Ghostfreak, and all these other foes that Ben faced off against posed a real, genuine threat to him, and here lies another problem. The Reboot’s “antagonists” are not intimidating in the slightest, and actually don’t serve as a true threat to Ben at ALL. They’re pathetic to watch, really.

5: Max is Irrelevant

In the Original Series, Max was an extremely prominent character, and was often just as involved in the plot of the episode as Ben and Gwen were, and the plot twist at the end of Season 1 where it was revealed that Max is a Plumber and that he fought Vilgax in the past was a great plot point and reveal, it added more depth to his character, and made him more interesting. But in the Reboot, he is almost entirely absent in some episodes. Basically he’ll just show up at the beginning of an episode, preach about some moral that Ben completely ignores, and then just is either hardly shown, or not shown at all for the rest of the episode. He’s become irrelevant, and doesn’t affect the narrative of the story at all, He doesn’t play any sort of significant role at ALL.

6: Gwen and Ben’s relationship

One of the shittiest decisions made in the design of the show, was to completely fuck up the well-established dynamic of Ben and Gwen, in the Original Series, they’re two cousins who constantly bicker and sass eachother, but they clearly cared for one another, and had many tender and compassionate moments that effectively fleshed out their love for one another. Gwen was also the more rational-thinking and logical of the two, and never actually supported Ben’s utter stupidity or rash decisions. Reasonably so, in the sequel series’ they’ve matured and have grown out of their constant arguing and sass, but still tease each other from time to time. In the Reboot, however, Gwen, more often-then-not, completely INDULGES Ben in his poor decision-making and stupidity, to the point where I’d say she’s nearly as ignorant and doltish as he is. Gwen is simply far too nice and encouraging to Ben, which utterly destroys the original dynamic portrayed in previous series’

7: The Aliens

With all the painful problems with this god forsaken show, I almost forgot to talk about one of the most important parts. The.

Aliens.

They just look so fucking shitty in the new animation style, and some of the new design choices for them just make absolutely no sense. Like, why is Upgrade PURPLE instead of GREEN? The Omnitrix is black, green, and white, so it, y'know KIND OF JUST MAKES SENSE FOR UPGRADE TO BE THESE COLORS. And why the fuck is Stinkfly some stupid-ass looking bug-themed Superhero? Why doesn’t he ACTUALLY RESEMBLE SOME TYPE OF BUG. It just makes no sense, why these things were changed. And to be perfectly honest, one of my favorite Aliens from the Original Series, Ripjaws, was actually taken out from the roster in exchange for Overflow, or Waterhazard, or whatever the hell that water-themed fuck is named. He’s a bland Alien that should’ve never even been involved in this series to begin with, he wasn’t part of the Original 10. ANOTHER, issue with the Aliens is the voice-acting, alot of them are actually portrayed by voice actors I like, John DiMaggio, Greg Cipes, Josh Keaton, Travis Willingham, etc. But the thing is, their voices, don’t even fit them, at all, so whatever they spout out of their mouths, just sounds awful. In all previous series’ the Aliens’ VAs fit them perfectly, and alot of them had some pretty badass voices. Basically, when you assign a VA to a character, it has to sound as if that voice could ACTUALLY come from that character. If the voice isn’t matching the face, then we have a clear issue. It’s not so much as the voice acting is bad in the Reboot, but it’s just doesn’t fit with the Aliens. But interestingly enough, they were sure to find the worst possible voice actor they could find for my favorite of them all, Heatblast. His voice used to be so fucking badass, and that was because he was voiced by Steve Blum, a veteran VA, the voice fit the character PERFECTLY. In the Reboot however? They got some fucking Disney Channel actor, Daryl Sabara. I didn’t even know of this guy’s EXISTENCE, until I looked at the cast of the Reboot. This guy’s, voice is incredibly obnoxious and irritating, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF HEATBLAST’S VOICE IN FOREGOING SERIES’. One more thing I’d like to point out, was them switching Wildmutt out for Wildvine, again, this is another decision that makes no sense. WILDVINE WAS NOT PART OF THE ORIGINAL 10, he doesn’t even show up in way later in the Original, so why is he replacing one that was at the very start of the series? AND FINALLY, we come to our last issue. The transformations are pathetically animated, it genuinely looks as if he is being covered in some large alien suit, IT DOESN’T look as if he’s actually BECOMING that alien, and that’s a big problem when he’s supposed to, y'know be literally morphing into them.

8: Stiffness

One thing to notice throughout various episodes, is that conversations, and the overall voice acting, feel really stiff, and carry absolutely no weight, kind of like a piece of cardboard. There are even extended scenes of pointless dialogue that don’t affect or further the plot of the episode, in any sense of the word.

9: The Intro

Ben 10 (2016) has without a doubt the least amount of effort put into it’s Intro. You see some green asteroid “crash” into Earth, suddenly you see Ben wearing the Watch, he slams it. And we see the 10 Aliens, introduced in a similar, but poorly executed fashion. We hear “BEN 10” being chanted in the background for a solid 11 seconds. Suddenly we see Ben giving Gwen and Max low-fives, and then runs forward.

End of Intro

Now, does it sound like I described alot of shit? Not really, right? That’s because nothing actually happens in this intro, it conveys nothing, and is just lazily slapped together. I remember the Original Series’ intro, it was a catchy theme song that quickly explained the premise of the show in it’s first 18 seconds. The intro goes on and shows actual interesting shit, like Ben transforming into some Aliens, and some nice visuals. The Reboot’s intro shows us the bare minimum of what they could ACTUALLY be showing us, instead of them quickly jumping on screen for a tenth of second, why not illustrate at least one of their abilities with a short clip? The Original’s does this incredibly well in the last 10 seconds, briefly showing us the capabilities of some of the Aliens with incredibly short clips, you could actually be impressed by what you were witnessing. The Reboot’s intro is just so mundane, and devoid of any sort of interesting material, and it’s the only intro in the franchise that’s SLOW-PACED. All of the previous entries’ intros have been fast-paced. And while you may consider Ultimate Alien’s to be slow, it quickly scrolls through a large variety of Aliens while playing epic music, that’s fast enough, and certainly impressive enough for me. The Reboot’s intro is in-fact, so bad, that when my sister watched it, she actually started LAUGHING. And when you’re cackling at an intro that is CLEARLY not trying to be funny, well then, you’ve got a pretty shitty opening.

10: Ben’s Character

Okay, now I know Ben has always done stupid shit in all of his incarnations. However, his character seems ridiculously dumbed down in the Reboot, and he just seems as mindless as ever, in the other series’ we saw how he wasn’t always a goofball kid, he took himself and those around him seriously at times, and we were able to respect him as a character for these moments. Like in Alien Force, in the episode: “The Gauntlet”, there’s a scene where Ben stands up to Cash, not by using force, or the Omnitrix, but with words, he simply calmly and intelligently calls him the fuck out, and walks away. It was a well-written moment, and showed a deeper, more mature side of Ben. And in the episode “Framed”, where Ben doesn’t finish off Kevin even when he has the perfect opportunity to do so, knowing that he isn’t worth it, and showing a more compassionate side, even to a dangerous enemy. Ben doesn’t have any moments like this at all in the Reboot, and it really takes away from his character, he essentially becomes a one-dimensional character, that really doesn’t have any defining characteristics outside of being a goofball kid.

The Verdict:

Ben 10 (2016) is a clear attempt to appeal to a much younger audience, of what Man of Action assumes to be 6 year olds with short attention-spans that don’t give a flying fuck about depth, good animation, and proper storytelling. This show wasn’t made with any genuine thought or care, it was made to sell toys, and make money, while utilizing as little resources and time as possible. Not only does this show fail as a Ben 10 cartoon, it fails AS a cartoon in of itself. It insults every aspect of what makes good animation and a good show, and is just disgusting as a product. And I’m afraid that the only positive thing I am capable of saying about this show is that it isn’t Breadwinners, and that’s about it. So, yeah, don’t watch this show.

End of Review/Final Words Anyway I hope you all enjoyed this review, (if you even read it) and I know I’m late as fuck on reviewing this steaming pile of horse shit, but I promised it months ago, so I wanted to get it out for you guys, plus, I was in the mood to get pissed about something, and believe it or not, I actually enjoy writing these, they’re fun for me, and I hope they’re fun for you to read as well. And if you disagree with every little thing I said, and you ACTUALLY enjoy this show. Then that’s perfectly fine, you’re entitled to your own opinion, and your own interests, but I wanted to get mine out in the open, so I hope you can respect my opinion as I will respect yours. What other reviews can you expect from me in the future? Well, I currently have two game reviews in the works, but it may be quite some time before they are done, considering how incredibly lazy I am. But who knows? I’m sure I’ll find something else I hate, and either review or give my thoughts on it in the future.

Once again, if you actually made it to the end of this review, I heavily appreciate you taking time out of your day just to read me bitch about some stupid cartoon.

And I’ll see ya around, :P

#ben 10 reboot #ben 10 #ben 10 alien force #ben 10 ultimate alien #ben 10 omniverse #rant #reviews #my thoughts #this took me a few hours to compile tho

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