Friday, July 17, 2015

Review: Fantastic Four: WGH "World's Tiniest Heroes"

Well, at the very least, I can't accuse this episode of having any false advertizing.

When you're smaller than Ant-Man, there's probably none smaller.
Plot
Shrunken people trying to get unshrunk. Classic shrinking plot. It's executed well, at the very least. I appreciate that this episode managed to express exactly how terrible and terrifying shrinking down would actually be.

Simple plot.

What more can I say? The Fantastic Four shrunk down. A lot. Not exactly Shakespeare, is it?

Of course, a simple plot often leaves room for some nice character interactions. And I'd say that the character interactions were nice, but they weren't anything special. Ben and Johnny traded insults, Reed was being an absent-minded professor, and Ant-Man was... well, I'll get to him.

But in all seriousness, what was with that dog? I mean, I get that it was supposed to have been affected by the green goo in Reed's lab, but what was with it continually showing up to do weird things during random parts of the episode? The Thing even looked at it while it walked up a wall! Why didn't he feel like bringing it up?

Honestly, I started feeling like I was going crazy; like something weird was happening, but I was either the only person to think it was weird, or I was the only person to notice it.
 
I feel your pain, dude.
Themes
Uh....

Huh.

Much like "Doomsday," I can't think of an underlying theme to this episode.

At its heart, this episode was a romp through the perils of shrinking down uncontrollably. Hey, I'll take no moral over ham-fisted moral any day of the week.

Characters
Hank Pym/Ant-Man (John Payne)
Wasted.

All he did was save the team once and open a single door. Heck, he didn't even show up for a decently-sized chunk of the episode.

He's given no characterization, he barely does anything, and they couldn't even get his basic appearance right. We know nothing about this guy, other than the fact that he's really smart.

Is he funny? Is he serious? Is he a team player? Is he a loner?

Does he have a little man named Mr. Bimble living in his finger?
I really don't understand the point of having a guest character you could write out so easily. Actually, if Reed and Susan hadn't turned around to try and fail to attract Alicia's attention, then Reed could have unshrunken the team that much sooner. Ant-Man wouldn't have even shown up. Talk about useless. Which is what people usually say about Ant-Man.
"Dude. Not cool."
Which is also what people usually say about Ant-Man.

"You know, if my movie's successful, then all your 'People think Ant-Man is lame' jokes are going to be really dated."
That's why I'm getting them out of my system now.
 
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up while you can."
AnimationThis show uses a lot of CGI, and it was really obvious in this episode. The Fantasticar, some of the backgrounds, the robo-arms... it was more jarring than usual to see CGI poke its head in just to remind me that it's there.

Final Thoughts
This episode is harmless. If you like WGH's basic style of humor and adventure, then this shouldn't disappoint you. But don't expect anything spectacular. This is a middle-of-the-road episode which didn't do any favors at all for its so-called "guest star."

Oh, well. At least they'll do the Hulk justice down the line. See you then!

4 comments:

  1. Why does Hank Pym look like Bumi from Legend of Korra?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because both were heavily influenced by anime?

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    2. yeah. feels like a hard to believe coincidence though.

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    3. I wonder if there's any fanon or fanfic on the matter?

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