Right away we start of with a really.. bland just bland intro, the music sounds almost like a high school band playing discotheque that sounds as if it was recorded on a Victor Wax Reel. The first thing I noticed was this, the title isn't actually "Raiders of THE Galaxy", it's actually "Raiders of Galaxy" and it proudly displays this in red an white during the power-point opening.
Now that those awesome credits are done we get our first shot of animation, and boy.. does this ever look cheap. I understand limited budget means you can use wide matte shots and crop them down to so it it appears things are moving, but this is going too far. It looks as if they had a child paint a picture of the Moth-man in watercolors on an animation cel. Next we see Mr. Moth-man addressing "Andrew" (That's what he calls him) Commander of the solar system, although to be honest he looks more like blue version of Piccolo fro Dragon Ball Z. The acting on Piccolo's part is a real shame, it's sad when you're actually have less charisma than the stagnant animation cell you're voicing. Well, Mr. Moth-man who's name hasn't been revealed yet, orders Andrew, Space Master to conquer to Earth and become toe commander of the solar system.. There's no real reason given, he just commands he conquers Earth, then again if a translucent cardboard cut out was yelling at me I'd probably do whatever he said too.
"These last few days we have had strange interference from unknown frequencies. Have you noticed?" Say that in the most monotone uncaring voice you can muster and you're well on your way to voicing a character in this movie. We are now inside a space station manned by what looks like a woman and the entire national sex offender registry dressed in the old uniforms of Team Voltron. The leader is apparently Captain Mustache, and he stands tall even though the entire base appears to be having seizures. I'd like to point out the piss poor job the betweeners did on this, each frame has slightly different line settings which causes characters and backgrounds to spontaneously bouncing up and down, I'd like to thing this is caused by a DVD transfer but as it only affects certain cels it's obvious the people who credited this just didn't give a fuck. All we gather from the conversation between two satellite communications personal is that there's some kind of communication strangeness happening from an "unknown origin", however we then see through the viewscreen of Satellite Sex Offender-1 a bright ass glowing object. I wonder if that could be the cause, you know, considering its coming right at you and shit.
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| You're going to get raped. |
The station is moving off course! The engineer "doesn't know how this could happen.", again these people are either the worst actors ever or they see this kind of thing happen so much it doesn't surprise them. I'm sure a giant destroyer UFO of death could show up and they'd still bugger on with indifference.
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A giant UFO of death shows up, and finally the crew whip into action by standard around stagnantly with the same facial expression, one woman is so surprised at this she forgets she's in a space adventure and appears to have just gotten a cum facial. The Captain's declaring a state of emergency and in his words, "You know what that means!" apparently it means being hit by space lightning and cutting to an old man on a microphone.
Suddenly, Voltron shows up. No seriously, look. That's team Voltron piloting the giant colour coded robot. Okay, so.. Apparently it's a bunch of little boys flying a giant mecha, or test driving it. They're flying through space on a "flight test" and happen upon our UFO of Death, the lead little boy decide it's time to fight! and so, we get.. Voltron attacking with his laser-sword and the same two reaction shots of the giant robot being hit with lasers and the UFO being smacked around inter-cut with a static picture of the crew bouncing up and down. The giant mecha separates and turns into what appears bad swipes of the vehicles from Gatchaman and start kicking the poorly drawn UFO's ass, deciding it's had enough the UFO retreats to a nearby planet that's somewhere in Solar system. It's a gas giant, yet it turns into a tiny rock planet in shots that aren't painted mattes.
That's the strongest robot from planet Earth, says the frogman, lets find out more from the investigation agency. I can only pray that whoever made this is no longer working in the animation industry. I can appreciate sub-par animation, one my favorite shows was poorly animated "The Adventures of Clutch Cargo" but director Joseph Lai is literally making me hate the fact that I defend cartoons on a daily basis, apparently he not only still has a job but is cranking out more and more schlock at an alarming rate according to his IMDB profile, sure most of it is strictly made in Hong Kong but if this man can keep his job maybe it's a sign I should move to Hong Kong.
Back in the movie we cut to the children pilots of Voltron playing a game of what I assume to be baseball with a rejected design for Mr. Roboto from the Styx music video. The lead child doesn't want to play, and is upset about how he sucks at the game when compared to a fucking robot. Well, Mr Robot will have none of that and scolds the two children for not wanting to play.
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| Totally an alien, not a pedophile. |
The Gunslinger is hiding in the bushes, or is that Indiana Jones? I can't tell. He appears to be an Android judging by his glowing eyes yet he removes a film camera from his pocket to snap photos of Voltron whizzing around. Mr. Roboto uses his processor to deduce that the simplest explanation is that Indiana Deschain is a spy from outer-space. Brilliant, that's always what first comes to mind when I see a creepy guy hiding in bushes near young children playing and snapping photos. "That makes sense!" says the boy, "He was taking photos of the research center, and even taking photos of me too!" Yeah, my first conclusion is still spy.
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| Behold, the USS Land Battleship! |
Back on the USS Land Battleship team Voltron is discussing the incident with Peter Cushing who reveals everyone has known about the space UFO and aliens and shit for a while but they can't defeat them, even though Vehicle Voltron beat it's ass into retreat earlier. Later that night, Peter Cushing is informed that the Korean Space Station has disappeared and he has no clue how it could have happened! Here's a hint, remember that UFO you remember talking about, you know, the one you said was kidnapping space bases and stuff earlier, maybe it's that. Seems the old man is a bit senile in his old age.
The Aliens have made a duplicate of Angie's mom! She's girl who was first a guy and no suddenly a girl again, I get the feeling this was pieced together from various animations and then filled in by bad animators to pad things out. I'm only twenty minutes in and I can't believe it. I have actually found a movie so bad that I want to turn it off. I am literally debating just turning this off and throwing it away. The Ghost of Angie's mom plants a bomb on Voltron's head and jumps off a 100 ft Mecha unharmed and without any movement. Now.. We're at a karate fight, and this is the most amazingly piss poor animation I've ever seen, cels are bleeding together and stagnate frames flipped or reverse.
Yeah, she's an alien alright and look out! That UFO of Death? Yeah. It rushes in and starts attacking, but first it transforms into a Gigantor wearing a viking helmet! Team Voltron waste no time and jump into action and immediately start sucking, they're no match for giant golden Gigantor and neither is the animation department apparently, the battle is yet again the same footage re-used over and over, endlessly it seems. You might be wondering why I keep referring to the mecha and characters by the names of more famous pop culture icons, and the reason is simple, throughout this entire movie they say one characters name and that's after 20 fucking minutes into it. "Angie", Well, they did talk about Andrew lord of space but he hasn't shown up. His role of conquer was replaced my Captain Frogman it seems. This is the point where I'm just going to turn this off. There's no reason for someone to make something this bad. I actually feel like I'm losing my sanity watching this.
It may be a bit of a downer for me to just give up near the beginning, but I feel I'd be better for it. The movie's script is poor, the acting is beyond sub-par, and animation makes me cringe. That's the problem with distributors like Digiview, they do nothing but buy cheap Korean animation and re-dub it, put a dollar price tag on it and hope enough people will buy it. Although, I'm starting to think that no one did buy this as Digiview no longer has a website. I'm debating buying the domain name they had just so I can put a smug little joke up at them. I'm still trying format out as well, maybe I should live blog every second of the film and condense everything down, but that doesn't give the time to properly insert every joke I want to make or criticise everything else. This movie is also rather long for a dollar bin animation, clocking in at around 80 minutes. I'll revise my sentiment. I'm not giving up, I'll continue this next week in another exciting adventure of Tales from the Bargain bin!
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