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Genndy Tartakovsky is an animator that got his start in the 90s, and has since risen to prominence as one of the greats of modern American animation. He first started out working on various shows in minor roles like doing inbetween animation for Batman: TAS before his first major show was greenlit for Cartoon Network: Dexter's Laboratory  The show was about a young boy genius named Dexter who had a massive secret lab that only his older sister knew about. The show is primarily a comedy, but it does serve as a showcase of Genndy Tartakovsky's various interests that would influence his latter shows as well. Things like mechas, superheroes, 80s action movies, time travel plots, and all kinds of references to sci-fi classics like Tron and Star Wars. The episodes are largely comedy focused, with episodes being able to be watched in almost any order due to there not being much of a continuity to follow. The series also continues past it, but the TV movie Ego Trip is what was intended to be the finale of the show, serving as an examination of what kind of a character Dexter is (arrogant, self absorbed, delusions of grandeur), and works in a way that really shows Genndy's talents for direction that would become a defining feature of his shows. Out of all his shows, it's probably the most "standard" of them all. His next show was Samurai Jack:  This is my personal favorite of his shows, as I think it shows off his unique direction the best. Most episodes involve Jack in the future, traveling the world as it is ruled by an eldritch despot who allows aliens to take parts of the world in return for tributes to him. It has a bent of comedy, but action is clearly the focus, and the direction really lends to some breathtaking works of animation. A highlight episode for me is the Ninja episode, where Jack challenges the ninja to a showdown and the art style shifts to pure black and white  With the sun lowering, the amount of white and black space is shifting throughout the fight, allowing the visuals of the fight to be far more dynamic than most of the fights featuring more complex detail. The show is an achievement in western animation, breaking many conventions for children's cartoons. The show features many quiet moments, where Jack just walks across the land in near silence. Compared to, say, 90s Spider-Man, the show is almost complete silence. Aku is also one of my favorite animated villains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRsl7stBGDI The show eventually returned for a fifth season a few years ago to finally finish the story. This time with a TV-14 rating and with blood and swearing. At the same time as Samurai Jack, Genndy was also tapped to direct an animated Clone Wars cartoon  Like Samurai Jack, it serves as an excellent showcase of his talents for animation direction. It tells a lot with minimalist dialog and action. I won't spend too much time on it, but just know that it's about 2 hours long, and you can watch it all on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIWHe20HnpY  Next is Sym Bionic Titan, a show I just watched recently  Tragically cancelled because of a lack of interest by the creators in making toys, Sym Bionic Titan had a lot of potential to really be a big deal. It's basically Battle of the Planets mixed with Giant Robo. Watching through the show, it became pretty clear that it wasn't really supposed to be a "kids" show because it gets pretty adult. Body horror, giant monsters get mutilated, and some very raunchy jokes pretty much sum up it up. Also this happens  It's a really fun show, and I encourage everyone to watch it's 20 episodes if they have Netflix. Also there's a faction in the show that's a bunch of Power Rangers led by Alucard. Finally we have Primal  This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with sci-fi, but with what's been shown so far, who knows what could happen? Primal is the most extreme Genndy so far. No dialog at all, it's just a caveman and a dinosaur traveling the prehistoric world and encountering some gnarly poo poo with some of the most stunning TV animation I've seen in a long while   
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May 26, 2020 06:33
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 04:21 |
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Samurai Jack was great. It’s a shame the final season and ending were poop.
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May 26, 2020 12:23
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Dexter's Lab is maybe my all time favorite TV show (not counting the post-Genndy episodes). It does a good job sidestepping the "why doesn't this super genius solve all the world's problems" by making Dexter kind of a dipshit and also a cookie.Zesty posted:Samurai Jack was great. It’s a shame the final season and ending were poop. Nah
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May 26, 2020 12:49
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I got to see the first four episodes of Primal in a theater and while they are really good I do have to admit it's a bit "ok so?" Like it's really well done but also falls a bit short of that transcendent style Samurai Jack is renowned for. It's nice to see Tartakovsky cut loose after a decade of making Hotel Trannsylvanias (which are actually very good if you watch it solely for his directorial flourishes), but I'm not really sold on the show as a whole. Also that twerking scene in Symbionic Titan is still very  . It doesn't really work on any level beyond "get a load of this bullshit." That show had real potential though, it's a shame it got axed. I'm a big fan of how they used Flock of Seagulls during a fight and the characters/lore were shaping up to be interesting.
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May 26, 2020 13:39
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Yeah, I wasn't all that find of the direction Jack took in the final season. Some really good stuff that season, but it really needed a couple more episodes.
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May 26, 2020 22:20
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No but for real why does every Genndy Tartakovsky series made in the past decade have a subplot about an underage girl with light skin and dark hair falling in love with a man way older than her? Samurai Jack made me acutely aware of it when half the series was Jack grooming his teen assassin but now I can't un-sse it.
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May 27, 2020 01:05
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Are there any besides Jack?
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May 27, 2020 01:18
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mind the walrus posted:Also that twerking scene in Symbionic Titan is still very She's trying too hard to seduce Octus because she's used to doing that to get out of doing homework. It does not work because he is a robot, but then works later when she kisses him and he learns love. Storytelling 101!
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May 27, 2020 01:38
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Roth posted:Are there any besides Jack? Sym-Bionic Titan, Hotel Transylvania. Also Dexter's crush in Dexter's Lab was a younger girl with pale skin and dark hair. And there was the multiple episodes about people falling in love with DeeDee's feet...
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May 27, 2020 01:46
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I've only seen the first Hotel Transylvania, and I just watched Sym Bionic Titan and don't recall that happening. Also feels weird to level that at Dexter when he's a 4th or 5th grader
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May 27, 2020 01:51
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In Hotel Transylvania the girl is 100 years older than the guy, Unless you count hotel transylvania 3, in which case dracula IS several hundreds of years older than his 40-50 something love interest
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May 27, 2020 02:27
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I guess I'm just a bit confused because ageless being x mortal has been a thing for forever.
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May 27, 2020 02:29
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nothing ever really beat dexter's lab for me. i always felt like that show was a bit underappreciated in the Big 90s Kid Cartoons pantheon but maybe it's just me typical of tartakovsky, it would sometimes have nice little animation showpieces with very little dialogue, like the beginning of this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYv4AtCz2Js
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May 27, 2020 06:22
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Genndy has always been one of my favorite animator, Dexter was my jam as a kid. I thought Samurai Jack had a good enough ending, but to be honest I was probably just happy that it got one at all after all those years. I would have watched more seasons of it if it kept going. Genndy's clone wars was incredible. One of my favorite segments in it was the Mace Windu ep. The whole miniseries felt more "star wars" than most of the prequels. Also it was kind of strange how they took his style over to 3d for the series even though he wasn't working on it. I'm still bummed that Sym-Bionic Titan didn't get more seasons. Primal was great but it felt shorter than it actually was. I don't know if it's because the first few episodes are about Spear (caveman) and Fang (dinosaur) establishing and working out the kinks in their relationship and just sort of blended together. Regardless, what we got was top notch. I haven't heard anything about season 2, I assume it's going to happen. I would be down for a sci-fi, twist like op said, but I'm not betting on it happening since the whole inspiration of the show comes almost exclusively from caveman pulp stories. Not sci-fi related but Genndy's Popeye movie that was dropped in favor of the emoji movie got picked up by another studio. You can check out the animation test for it on youtube, it looks pretty good.
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May 27, 2020 06:49
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FunkyAl posted:In Hotel Transylvania the girl is 100 years older than the guy, Unless you count hotel transylvania 3, in which case dracula IS several hundreds of years older than his 40-50 something love interest
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May 27, 2020 12:15
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Sleeveless posted:Sym-Bionic Titan, Hotel Transylvania. The Samurai Jack poo poo did seem odd though, like inserting the sexuality was more of a "oh yay we're allowed to" thing than any actual thematic relevance. ---------- One thing that Tartakovsky doesn't get credit for is being one of the action directors for Iron Man 2, and it's a shame that movie has a relatively bad rep because I thought he did really good and wished he would have continued to do action work for Marvel. The shots of Iron Man charting a course through the expo on his way to fight the robot army was tight, and the Whiplash racecar fight is really memorable.
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May 27, 2020 12:40
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I don't really understand the problems people had with Season 5 of Jack, especially the love plot. I thought it was sweet! Daikloktos posted:Why am I vaguely upset I let this generic plot detail to a cash-in sequel get spoiled for me Eh, HT3 isn't so great. It's no HT2
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May 27, 2020 21:20
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What is this "Ego Trip is the end of Dexter's Lab" poo poo, Last But Not Beast is CLEARLY the ending furthermore 
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May 30, 2020 22:16
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Thread tag changed to Art because that's what cartoons are!
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May 30, 2020 23:44
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May 31, 2020 17:45
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This thread coerced me into watching Sym-bionic Titan again. I'm amazed at the sheer destruction caused to that city again and again yet they choose to stay there to watch it get destroyed when the next monster shows up.
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Jun 2, 2020 04:56
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Probably drives the rent down like crazy and there's always good construction jobs
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Jun 2, 2020 05:44
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Dexter's Laboratory was a great show. And Primal was ridiculously well done.
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Jun 2, 2020 06:00
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Primal is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a while. There's 2001 imagery and it's all original somehow
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Jun 3, 2020 01:37
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