Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, Ubisoft’s new (very) grownup animated sequence for Netflix, is probably not what you’re anticipating. That’s, until you already know creator and government producer Adi Shankar’s work, which takes beloved, rigorously protected popular culture characters and reinterprets them in subversive, usually graphically violent methods.
Most significantly: Regardless of its title, don’t anticipate this to be a Far Cry animated sequence. Exterior of an look from Far Cry 4 unhealthy man Pagan Min, Captain Laserhawk has little in the best way of that sport sequence’ DNA.
As an alternative, for Captain Laserhawk Shankar has plucked a handful of Ubisoft characters from throughout the sport maker’s catalog and thrust them right into a dystopian technocratic sci-fi future. Beloved mascot platformer Rayman seems as a TV host and propagandist, who’s at numerous factors proven snorting one thing illicit and internet hosting an execution on reside tv. The Murderer’s Creed franchise is represented within the present not by Ezio or Basim, however by a badass anthropomorphic frog murderer. Rabbids are interdimensional interlopers who make an all-too-brief look.
Nearly all fashionable Ubisoft franchises, from Watch Canine and Past Good & Evil to numerous Tom Clancy video games, are thrown into Shankar’s new animated concoction and boiled into one thing shockingly potent.
However Captain Laserhawk isn’t as tonally dissonant because it sounds. It feels plausible that each one these characters, headlined by a cyborg super-soldier named Dolph Laserhawk, might exist in the identical weird world, that their relationships may very well be so intertwined. The present’s breakneck tempo and colourful aspect characters promote the premise of a futuristic world gone mad.
Shankar’s disjointed references additionally assist: Captain Laserhawk is a component send-up of one other video game-inspired superteam present, Captain N: The Sport Grasp, combined with The Soiled Dozen and The Suicide Squad. The titular cyborg captain is the sufferer of a double-cross within the present’s first episode and finds himself compelled to workforce up with a gaggle of convicted enemies of the state. That features Past Good & Evil’s Jade and Pey’j, Bullfrog the murderer, {and professional} wrestler Cody Rhodes, who makes a really temporary cameo earlier than his head explodes. Don’t fear, spoiler-phobes; that’s inconsequential within the grand scheme of Captain Laserhawk’s quite a few deaths, blown-up heads, full-frontal nudity, and wrestling visitor characters. It’s simply as an instance that the present’s Warden — its Amanda Waller — is a stone-cold killer.
It is a satirical Saturday morning cartoon that proves Ubisoft has some fairly laissez-faire model guidelines, fortunately. However the sequence can also be clearly influenced by Shankar’s earlier work on Dredd with Laserhawk’s post-apocalyptic megacities, and Energy/Rangers with its rainbow-colored workforce of mech-piloting ninjas, the Niji 6. Paired with eccentric animation studio Bobbypills, which mixes conventional cel animation with pixelated and 3D sport graphics and even a spot of reside motion, Shankar’s new present lives as much as its “Remix” title promise, throwing a ton of childhood geek influences on the wall and one way or the other sticking the touchdown.
Past the novelty of Shankar’s many mashups, the present’s creators excel at holding viewers guessing, and never only for its narrative twists and turns. Captain Laserhawk’s early episodes are filled with heist plots and police chases, however later episodes pivot the sequence tempo with flashbacks and quiet conversations in jail cells. It’s a mashup of visible types, style, and influences, with a reverence for the cartoons designed to promote toys and video games, Captain N included, one thing that Laserhawk isn’t actually going for.
In certainly one of my favourite late-series moments, a well-recognized character is reintroduced in a method that feels ripped straight out of G.I. Joe or SilverHawks — “Get the brand new [REDACTED] motion determine, now with new flying wheelchair assault car!”
It’s type of outstanding that Shankar has pulled this complete factor off, riffing off a bizarre piece of online game DLC to convey a disjointed universe collectively for a darkly comedic sci-fi sequence (that basically deserves a second season). However the present’s finest trick is making me really feel invested and fascinated about a bunch of Ubisoft characters I beforehand didn’t vibe with in any respect. I’d be far more inclined to play the subsequent Murderer’s Creed if Bullfrog was the star.
Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix is now streaming on Netflix.