Lovetheangelshadow
06-03-2018, 03:43 PM
I’ll be honest, I am not in of itself against remakes and continuations. There are some shows that would benefit from a reboot (like a proper Reboot reboot) while others deserved closure or could have really been something in the hands of different writers (Sonic Underground). However, there are far too many that just scream, “Why?” Like why does this need to exist when there was no need for it? Or heck just no market for that kind of story. I’ll leave the debate on that point for others but I really cannot get my head around Sky Kids: Mission Critical. I mean really, was there a need for this after the disaster that was Spy Kids 4? I mean it wasn’t even a fun kind of disaster from what I’ve heard of it. Spy Kids was no golden cow of a film but it had its own goofy, corny charm to it that made it endearing. No masterpiece to be sure, and yet it is still a fun side trip. Spy Kids 2 was slightly better and 3-D was…okay but skippable. We don’t talk about 4.
However I can’t wrap my head around why Mission Critical even exists. Could a Spy Kids tv show work? Maybe, but this really misses the mark. So the main idea is that the super special Golden Brain that Gregario made and locked up is loose and is out to you guessed it, take over the world (of course!). Because it was once linked to the OSS database, it was knowledge of every agent and every tactical maneuver of the OSS. And because Juni and Carmen were not registered into the system they have a tactical advantage that they can use against S.W.A.M.P. And this Juni and Carmen are leaders of a Spy Kids Team called Mission Critical in order to take out Golden Brain. Honestly this isn’t a bad idea in concept. It is a plausible scenario for the kids to be on a spy adventure again (from what I guess this is between 1 and 2) and wouldn’t even be outside the scope of the rules of this setting. But oh ho does the execution fail.
Let’s get the animation out of the way first. Okay, as I’ve said before I am very on the fence when it comes to cgi shows, especially tv shows. The designs just start to scratch the uncanny valley for me. I don’t know exactly if it’s the too large eyes or just how very plasticky it feels; it’s just off to me. The character designs don’t help in my distaste either. Many of the designs feel very generic. I get it. It’s difficult to create new characters that don’t look like a copy and paste of something else done before, but many of the character models aside from Carmen and Juni feel like they didn’t really try. The only one that has a bit of a uniqueness to her design is Glitch. And don’t get me started on the action scenes. Again, the action scenes were not like Mission Impossible tier in the movies, but it still felt at home given the tone and cheesiness of those films. There is very little excuse here since you have more freedom with CGI than you do with live action. A lot of the times it feels very blocky or just very basic. Then again I might have been spoiled by the likes of TMNT and Miraculous Ladybug.
I can sometimes forgive meh design and animation if the writing held strong and it really doesn’t. It is very generic and hardly any meat to it. There is no chemistry between Carmen and Juni that you had from the movie and instead are your basic bickering tactics vs instinct siblings that we’ve seen a dozen times. Also there is a guy that Carmen likes but Juni doesn’t and vise versa. Again, we’ve seen this before and they don’t even try to do anything with it. The supporting cast isn’t much better. They are very basic character types: the “perfect” guy, the rich snob, the technophile, etc. Also Glitch talks in tech speak, because. Here’s the thing. You can make this kind of team work. Look at Digimon the first season (sub or dub) as an example. You had the reckless guy (Tai), the cool guy (Matt), the tech (Izzy), the worrywart (Joe), the caring mother type (Sora), the upscale (Mimi), and the cute one (TK). Each character was (mostly) a fleshed out person and had different dynamics with different characters. We don’t get that with Spy Kids. And before you say, well they had over 52 episodes to do that and Mission Critical only has ten, Digimon Adventure was able to do the job for the most part within the first arc of the series which was by the way TEN episodes. Back to the topic at hand, the writing was pretty standard for an action kid’s cartoon and pretty predictable where it was headed. You can say the same for movies, but at least the journey was fun getting to that point. There really just isn’t anything memorable within these episodes.
Overall would I say this is Netflix trash? Yes and no. If you’re familiar with the franchise, then I would skip this all together. As a kid’s cartoon, it’s pretty harmless. There isn’t anything offensive or questionable to it, just dull for older viewers. So maybe your kids will like it; just don’t expect anything clever or quotable about it. I’m Noctina Noir, and I think I’ll go dig out the ol’ DVDs for funsies.
However I can’t wrap my head around why Mission Critical even exists. Could a Spy Kids tv show work? Maybe, but this really misses the mark. So the main idea is that the super special Golden Brain that Gregario made and locked up is loose and is out to you guessed it, take over the world (of course!). Because it was once linked to the OSS database, it was knowledge of every agent and every tactical maneuver of the OSS. And because Juni and Carmen were not registered into the system they have a tactical advantage that they can use against S.W.A.M.P. And this Juni and Carmen are leaders of a Spy Kids Team called Mission Critical in order to take out Golden Brain. Honestly this isn’t a bad idea in concept. It is a plausible scenario for the kids to be on a spy adventure again (from what I guess this is between 1 and 2) and wouldn’t even be outside the scope of the rules of this setting. But oh ho does the execution fail.
Let’s get the animation out of the way first. Okay, as I’ve said before I am very on the fence when it comes to cgi shows, especially tv shows. The designs just start to scratch the uncanny valley for me. I don’t know exactly if it’s the too large eyes or just how very plasticky it feels; it’s just off to me. The character designs don’t help in my distaste either. Many of the designs feel very generic. I get it. It’s difficult to create new characters that don’t look like a copy and paste of something else done before, but many of the character models aside from Carmen and Juni feel like they didn’t really try. The only one that has a bit of a uniqueness to her design is Glitch. And don’t get me started on the action scenes. Again, the action scenes were not like Mission Impossible tier in the movies, but it still felt at home given the tone and cheesiness of those films. There is very little excuse here since you have more freedom with CGI than you do with live action. A lot of the times it feels very blocky or just very basic. Then again I might have been spoiled by the likes of TMNT and Miraculous Ladybug.
I can sometimes forgive meh design and animation if the writing held strong and it really doesn’t. It is very generic and hardly any meat to it. There is no chemistry between Carmen and Juni that you had from the movie and instead are your basic bickering tactics vs instinct siblings that we’ve seen a dozen times. Also there is a guy that Carmen likes but Juni doesn’t and vise versa. Again, we’ve seen this before and they don’t even try to do anything with it. The supporting cast isn’t much better. They are very basic character types: the “perfect” guy, the rich snob, the technophile, etc. Also Glitch talks in tech speak, because. Here’s the thing. You can make this kind of team work. Look at Digimon the first season (sub or dub) as an example. You had the reckless guy (Tai), the cool guy (Matt), the tech (Izzy), the worrywart (Joe), the caring mother type (Sora), the upscale (Mimi), and the cute one (TK). Each character was (mostly) a fleshed out person and had different dynamics with different characters. We don’t get that with Spy Kids. And before you say, well they had over 52 episodes to do that and Mission Critical only has ten, Digimon Adventure was able to do the job for the most part within the first arc of the series which was by the way TEN episodes. Back to the topic at hand, the writing was pretty standard for an action kid’s cartoon and pretty predictable where it was headed. You can say the same for movies, but at least the journey was fun getting to that point. There really just isn’t anything memorable within these episodes.
Overall would I say this is Netflix trash? Yes and no. If you’re familiar with the franchise, then I would skip this all together. As a kid’s cartoon, it’s pretty harmless. There isn’t anything offensive or questionable to it, just dull for older viewers. So maybe your kids will like it; just don’t expect anything clever or quotable about it. I’m Noctina Noir, and I think I’ll go dig out the ol’ DVDs for funsies.