Venture Movie announced

[gkscotty]

Guys. Guys. Hey guys.

https://tv.avclub.com/the-venture-bros- ... 1846874279

[SirMustapha]

Okay, that is good. Very good.

[Stretch_Dude]

Venture and Metalocalypse! Someone at Adult Swim grew a brain cell!

[archonix]

Finally!

I was running here to post this, but I am slow. This is awesome!

[c_nordlander]

Yes please.

Ve just vant closure!

[missy_misery]

Pretty excited about this!

[c_nordlander]

Rambling, review-ish thoughts on Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart:

The short of it: I'm very happy with it. I don't think it was *quite* as funny as the show at its best, but part of that might be the bigger format and more higher-stakes plot. Which is good.

On the other hand, it doesn't quite feel as the crowning triumph to put a definite end to the show. It does give closure to a lot of things, but if you come into it expecting some super epic MCU rubbish just because it's a feature film, you'll probably be disappointed. (Which you shouldn't expect from VB anyway, but then, there are all sorts of people on the internet.) Except the visuals: they are a clear step up from the original show, doing full justice to some really cool action and technology scenes. Hank's psychedelic vision at the old Compound was a visual high spot.

Yes, yes, I'll get straight to the "where was MY favourite character?" Actually, I won't, because we know by now that the writers could never fit in all the major characters and do justice to them in a single film. Instead, I'll say what I did like in terms of character focus:

I like that the plot focused on a showdown between Rusty and the Monarch. Don't get me wrong, I love the various characters and detours this show has taken... but it did kind of Kingdom Hearts out from just being about a super-scientist on a compound and the butterfly-themed villain plotting against him. This film returned to the basics, after so many seasons of the Monarch being prevented from arching Rusty for one reason or other, and mad respect for that.

I like that we finally got a good outing for Dr. Orpheus and J-T (even if the Alchemist only got to appear in one scene). I like that we got a lot of moments between Hank and Dermott: their friendship was always one of the simple, wholesome, likable things about this show, and I'm happy it never decided to subvert it. I like that Sheila and 21 got big parts in the plot, seeing that it was focused on the Monarch. I like that Red Death had an important role: he was always my favourite of the New York cast. (Though he's never become quite as funny to me as he was in his first appearance, where it seemed like he just alternated between "sweet old guy" and "torture-happy psycho" completely effortlessly.) I like that we finally got to see Hunter Gathers (together with a bunch of other OSI agents): he didn't have a huge role, but he was on form. Hunter-focused spinoff when?

I was delighted that the Monarch got to use his "Feel the sting of the Monarch!" line again. (I would also have been satisfied with, "The Monarch spins his deadly web!")

I was honestly expecting HELPeR to play a more important role, given that so much of the plot hinged on the HelperPods. Not sure how I feel about the fact that he didn't. HELPeR was always a bit of a weird character to me, since he's just sort of... there. A superscientist has to have a robotic companion, so he does. It means that HELPeR could basically be either shunted off completely, or turn out to be the MacGuffin of a massive story arc (see the S7 opening episodes), and it still kind of works. So I can't say I'm disappointed, just vaguely surprised.

On a character note: let's talk about Mantilla/

Spoiler

Debbie.

I've always felt that one yardstick of the quality of a spinoff movie is whether it takes the risk of introducing new major characters. The Futurama movies... didn't, up until the fourth. The Simpsons movie did. I found Cargill bland, but hey, they took that risk. By and large, I found Mantilla great as a new antagonist, though I'm also a bit frustrated by her.

To start with the great... okay, elephant in the room. I've never felt that VB was a sexist show (OFF and Futurama have offended me a lot more in that regard). It was always a bit low on female characters, but that's because it's an homage to old Boy's Own stories and adventure cartoons, which were always pretty homosocial. But... there were some things I couldn't help noticing. Like how Triana got written out, or how Sirena

Spoiler

cheated on Hank

and then got written out. Or how Molotov barely had a dozen lines in "O.S.I. Love You", which was focused on her, and then never appeared again. Or how the Blue Morpho's wife was treated as more of a trophy than an acting subject in the Monarch's backstory (this film actually makes that element a bit less disturbing. I'll be getting to that). Er... there is Warriana, I guess? Who was introduced as a fairly major character... and then wasn't even mentioned in Season 7. Folks, I'm starting to see a theme here about what happens to female characters who aren't voiced by male actors.

So from that perspective, Mantilla was a relief. Sure, she's easy on the eyes and wears a sexy (though not ludicrous) suit, and did have a romantic backstory with the Monarch, but her entire character was refreshingly free from being motivated by sex or romance. (And her outfit actually becomes a little poignant, when you learn what you learn about her.)

Spoiler

Maybe I misinterpreted this, but I assumed she's completely invisible below the neck. Which means that she wears a skintight-but-covering suit because that's the only way anyone, herself included, can see her body any more.

I love her creepy, hyper-efficient technology. Making her a bit of a techbro archetype was a stroke of genius; it's the kind of character type that would fit well in the VB universe, and hasn't really appeared so far (well, I guess Billy and Pete kind of are techbros, but they're not good at it).* In short, we got a villain who felt like a legitimate threat escalation, while still fitting well in the universe, and once again, mad props.

Spoiler

And while this is a minor point, I like that she survived at the end and kind of came out on top. I like villains who don't get killed.

At the same time...

Spoiler

After a super cool introduction and establishment, and an admittedly successful strike against the VenTech building... that was about it? She's a good new villain all right, but at the end of the day, that was all she was: a good new villain. She didn't represent any big new plot arc, or a larger-scale threat to the setting at large, or have any kind of connection to the main cast. From her futuristic aesthetic and super-technology, I originally thought she'd turn out to be a time traveller from the future, possibly a descendant of one of the main characters. (I initially guessed she might be the Monarch's and Sheila's future daughter, due to her slight insect-looking design, but that was kind of killed with the reveal that she and the Monarch had been dating.) She does turn out to be the daughter of two other characters, but one of them only appeared on-screen in this episode, and the other of them has only ever been of nominal importance on the show, so I couldn't give that much of a damn. No, she's just a good villain who was helping other villains get revenge, and that's it.

Apparently (and SERIOUS spoilers ahead, I am not kidding, if you haven't seen the movie you can still turn back), according to the writers' commentary, she was the egg donor for Hank and Dean. Which does give her the personal connection to the main cast that I wanted. PITY YOU COULDN'T HAVE WORKED THAT INTO THE ACTUAL FILM, NOT LIKE IT WOULD HAVE NEEDED MORE THAN ONE MINUTE OF SCREENTIME OR ANYTHING.

And the ending of her plot thread was pretty anticlimactic. Again, cool that she didn't die or even really lose, but... Sheila convinced her to join the Peril Partnership, and that's it?

Love the scenes with Hank's alter egos. You can tell how much the writers actually love and know their show... sure, most of us would have guessed that Enrico Matassa and The Bat would be there, but detective Hank? RUSSIAN GUYOVITCH? He got consistent laughs from me. The fact that he wore an Adidas tracksuit and was introduced while squatting was mwah.

I feel like they missed a trick by not having Destiny be one of Hank's alters. There is precedent for depicting part of someone's soul as a different gender, after all, and you could hardly say that "she" is less important as a side of Hank than Russian Guyovitch.

The vampire battle was tense and cool, but had nothing to do with any of the plot threads. Which... means it was filler, really. Which is unfortunate, since only the other day I pointed out approvingly that The Venture Brothers don't seem to do filler, even in longer instalments. It did lead up to

Spoiler

Dean being turned, but then that turned out to be subverted anyway.

So we're finally introduced to the elusive Bobbi St. Simone. And she... turns out to be a normal character. Her backstory was kind of a lot of her being sexually exploited, but she still came off as just a normal person, again not particularly defined by sexiness or romance (well, except insofar as her potential past liaison with Rusty was why the characters sought her out to start with).

Feels pretty iffy hearing a female character refer to a man as an "alpha," even if she was making a low-effort wolf pun. Well, she's an animal conservationist, so I guess she knew what she was talking about.

I mentioned how much the writers clearly care about their lore. This has its good and bad sides. On the good side, it's when they bring back things like Russian Guyovitch (that was, what, Season 2?), or the "Dawn? We're going to see our long-lost sister!" from the S3 finale. On the bad side... sometimes I get the feeling they care more about their lore than we, the viewers, do. So here we have an important character turning out to have a history with Force Majeure, former leader of the Guild of Calamitous Intent... except, I don't care about Force Majeure. I only know his name because the satellite of the Guild is named for him. Possibly the writers realised this and threw in some scenes of him in this film, because he hasn't even appeared on-screen before now. We also got a one-second shot of the Sovereign. It will, however, live on in my heart.

Spoiler

You know what I think would have been nifty, if they were going to go the "Mantilla is the daughter of someone important" route? Have her be the daughter of the Sovereign! Her looks would fit, chronology wouldn't be a problem since, y'know, the Sovereign, and any near-Mary-Suish powers could be explained with "hey, she's the offspring of DAVID FUCKING BOWIE!"

Sheila spent most of her plot wearing nothing but a negligé under her coat. Subtle. Also, while I again like that she got to play an important part in her husband's story, it felt a bit like (after some admittedly cool detective work at the start) she spent most of her plot kind of passive, moving to the next plot point by being rescued or captured. Nothing to do with my ranting about the female characters earlier, it just felt faintly disappointing.

Spoiler

Rusty and Malcolm turn out to be clones, rather than brothers. I like this. I already liked the "brothers" fake-reveal, but it feels suitable that they've essentially been battling themselves all these years. Does that make the rampant foe-yay of the Monarch for Rusty somewhat less icky? Strangely enough, I think it does, to me.

Incidentally, finding out that the Blue Morpho's wife (did she ever get a name?) was used as a surrogate mother rather than actually impregnated by Jonas Venture Sr. is... a little less horrible. I was always squicked out by that part of the Blue Morpho family's backstory... it felt like unironic sexism to me. Like, our hearts are supposed to bleed (and rightfully so!) for the original Blue Morpho being blackmailed into pimping his wife out to his toxic friend, but we don't even get to see the woman's opinions on the matter, let alone whether she consented or was raped, which you'd think would be the rather bigger issue here. Almost makes me wonder if the writers realised it came off as kind of vile, and that's why they changed it. Idunno. Probably not.

A suitably epic action finale. Everything is back where we began.

Spoiler

I actually wasn't sure whether the Monarch would die. That would have been ballsy. I'm glad he survived, though. And hey, the statue fell!

Some favourite quotes (quoting from memory, may be mixed up):

RUSTY (trying to convince Dean that Hank will be safe): There was that time he went away, and he'd just gone to find that circus and... oh wait, turns out he was dead in a ditch that time.

BROCK: Follow that... skyscraper!

HANK (seeing Dr. Orpheus in a Zardoz homage): Dr. Orpheus! Why are you dressed like Borat?

Not a line, but I love that the song Mantilla was using to

Spoiler

activate the levitating HelperPods

was titled "Gettin' High".

To their credit, the title did actually refer to something in the film. It wasn't really relevant to the major plots, but still.

The reveal of Hank's and Dean's parentage does put Rusty in a new light:

Spoiler

I, and I think many of of us, always assumed that he wanted to get laid, and was left holding the babies when the woman died/left him for whatever reason. The fact that he willingly went through super-science pregnancy, not to mention however many decades of single parenthood (granted, he had Brock to do most of the scut work) implies that... he really wanted kids. Heartening stuff. It can't just have been him wanting test subjects, because we know he has no problem finding orphans.

*Is it me, or does it seem like she could get along well with Hank Scorpio?

[missy_misery]

I really loved the movie for hitting all the right emotional notes. I loved the way the majority of the plots tied up, and I love that the door's open just in case they want more movies/a series revival.

THANK YOU for talking about the show's completely mixed report card on female characters. For every Dr. Girlfriend, we've had *gestures at everyone you mentioned,* and you do wonder if she only lived this long because of doc We've definitely needed a consistent woman on Team Venture forever, too.

Spoiler

I think they got rid of Triana because she was voiced by Doc's ex, right? So even worse.

Re the ultimate revs here:

Spoiler

I love that in the end, Rusty actually did want to be a dad. I wonder if his sarcastic impatience with the boys over the decades was developed as an emotional callous at first, which made it easier to watch his kids die over and over and be reborn clone style. The current pair has managed to love this long, and there's something touching about that.

Spoiler

Everything about Brock's loyalty to the family.

Spoiler

Sheila and Malcom are back together firmly!

Made me want more TBH.

[c_nordlander]

Made me want more TBH.

Oh, you and me both!

But if this is the end, it ended on a good note.

[missy_misery]

It did indeed!