It feels like the right time for a look back
at the Captain Planet cartoon. After rewatching
it through the jaded eyes of adulthood, we're
here to bring you all the strange hanging
plot threads, surprising facts, and head-scratching
moments that we completely breezed past as
children.
When you rewatch Captain Planet as an adult,
you'll be startled how many times you'll find
yourself saying, "I know that voice!" That's
because many of the biggest stars of the early
'90s lent their voices to this animated series.
What makes this even more delightful is that
most of the star power was concentrated in
the villains, so these normally respectable
actors really get a chance to have some fun
as they portray the delightfully hammy Eco-Villains
that oppose the Planeteers.
Meg Ryan played the megalomaniacal scientist
Dr. Blight...
"I did it! I really did it!"
...and her talking computer MAL was played
by Tim Curry during most of his appearances.
The oil baron Hoggish Greedly was voiced by
Ed Asner, while his sidekick Rigger was brought
to life by John Ratzenberger. Martin Sheen
played Sly Sludge
"I'm Sly Sludge! I'm Sly Sludge! I'm Sly Sludge!"
James Coburn played Looten Plunder, and the
evil rat mutant Verminous Skumm was played
by Jeff Goldblum.
"I'll pollute the whole river with my scummy
brew, and soon the whole city will be mine!"
Perhaps strangest of all, the evil spirit
Zarm was played by the rock star Sting.
There are fewer household names among the
ranks of the heroes, as most of the Planeteers
were played by veteran voice actors, rather
than live-action A-listers, but there were
two notable bits of stunt casting among the
good guys. The team's mentor, Gaia, the spirit
of the Earth, was played by Whoopi Goldberg...
"On the side of good, you are a team. Now
and forever: The Planeteers."
...and Kwame, the wielder of the Earth ring,
was played by LeVar Burton.
"No! It is not possible!"
Yes, Kwame, it is.
In the first episode of Captain Planet, we
meet the villainous Hoggish Greedly, an amoral
oil baron who starts illegally drilling in
a wildlife sanctuary, unconcerned with the
massive damage his operation is doing to the
local wildlife. It's a surprisingly realistic
motivation for an antagonist that's nonetheless
clearly evil, and it makes Greedly an easily
understandable villain for a young audience.
Everybody loves seals!
"For he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody
can deny."
However, in most subsequent episodes, far
less work is put into coming up with three-dimensional
villains whose plans can survive even the
most cursory of examinations. Oftentimes,
the villains seem to be polluting for its
own sake, without actually gaining anything
from it. For instance, in the episode "Deadly
Ransom," Dr. Blight kidnaps Captain Planet
as part of a plan that would seemingly result
in her own demise, as well.
"I'm going to learn the secret of your power
and then use it to destroy the Earth."
Some villains do better than others in this
regard. Looten Plunder, for instance, is always
clearly motivated by money. The most consistently
nonsensical villain of the bunch is definitely
Verminous Skumm, who wants to spread disease,
cause acid rain, and transform everyone in
the world into mutant rats like himself. Y'know,
just cuz. That's all well and good if you're
just making a dumb kids cartoon, but Captain
Planet is ostensibly trying to teach kids
about environmentalism. It's not exactly clear
what real world evils Verminous Skumm is supposed
to represent.
Let's face it, when you played Captain Planet
with your friends as kids, nobody wanted to
be Ma-Ti. Gi summons tsunamis. Wheeler is
a human flamethrower. Ma-Ti can...talk to
animals? To a child, Ma-Ti's ill-defined power
of Heart definitely seems like the weakest
of the five.
"You weak, pathetic fool."
However, rewatching through adult eyes, you
realize that Ma-Ti might actually have the
scariest superpower of all: mind control.
In "Two Futures," Wheeler travels to a dark
alternate timeline in which the Planeteers
fail to stop humanity from destroying the
environment. In this reality, the rainforests
have been destroyed, most animals are extinct,
and New York City is underwater. Ma-Ti has
also fallen on hard times, becoming a homeless
beggar. And interestingly, this version of
Ma-Ti uses his powers in a way that we've
never seen present day Ma-Ti use them before:
convincing rich people to donate to poor people
like himself. This is still clearly a fairly
benign use of his powers, but it opens up
a whole can of worms about just what the limits
of Ma-Ti's powers actually are.
Let's just put it this way: if we ever get
that gritty Captain Planet reboot that absolutely
no one is asking for, we could see a world
in which the littlest Planeteer goes dark,
a mind-controlling supervillain in the vein
of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones.
"You'd like to invite me in."
"Absolutely."
Good thing Ma-Ti is such a pure cinnamon roll
of a human being, and we never have to learn
the answers to these kinds of questions.
Perhaps the most surprising thing that you'll
feel when you rewatch Captain Planet as an
adult is a profound sense of sadness. Despite
all the warnings it gave us about issues like
deforestation, extinction, and climate change,
we still haven't really solved any of these
issues.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers is often
extremely optimistic in terms of how simple
it is to solve the problems that threaten
our world. On one hand, it can be refreshing,
in our increasingly complicated and cynical
age, to personify all the world's environmental
issues as a single cackling villain, and then
watch a flying blue man with a mullet punch
that villain in the face. On the other hand,
given how impossible it seems for the world
to muster up the willpower to solve even the
most basic of problems, it's also completely
understandable that this simplistic outlook
might strike you now as hopelessly naive,
to the point of being useless.
But despite how ham-fisted it could get, nowadays
our world could stand to have more cartoons
like this one. Captain Planet and the Planeteers
was undeniably brave, and decades later, it
generally landed on the right side of history.
That being said, rewatching the series with
adult eyes, it's difficult to not always feel
at least a little tinge of bittersweetness.
It just goes to show that once you grow up,
you can't really go back to seeing anything
from your childhood how you did before.
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