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| Turbo Kid: Apple's Lost Adventure by Mischief Maker 05/29/2016, 9:49am PDT | ||||
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I just found out that RKSS did a crowdfunding campaign to create a bunch of Turbo Kid swag to promote the movie and it included a comic book prequel about the character of Apple. Written by the writer-director trio behind the movie! I found the comic online for a measly $2 and snatched it up this morning! * I'm gonna spoil the movie to discuss the comic so for the love of God go stream the movie off Netflix before you read any further. * And... ugh... this is the first thing Turbo Kid-related that really disappointed me. I am now giving even more credit to actress Laurence Leboeuf for the success of the character in the movie because she is annoying in the most anime way possible in this comic book. I guess she's supposed to be annoying at this point because it was her relationship with The Kid that makes her grow warmer and more human over the course of the movie. But if that's the case, find a different time and subject matter to write your comic about! I wanted a prequel story about Apple! I wanted to learn more about the world where she was manufactured, see the nuclear apocalypse through her eyes, see the other side of the wasteland where she came from. You get none of that in this comic. It starts with her last best friend the water hunter dying, then follows her carrying his rotting corpse around the wasteland looking for a new friend, and ends with her inadvertantly causing a three-way war between a gang of cannibals, a gang of mutants, and a killer robot. That sounds cooler in concept than it is in execution. Truth be told this comic reminded me of that line in the Redlettermedia Star Wars prequel reviews where Mr. Plinkett says he doesn't think George Lucas even understands Star Wars. Same thing here with RKSS. This comic reads like fanfiction. In the movie there's a great little joke where they shelter for the night in a ruined video rental shop and The Kid uses the old VHS tapes as kindling for a fire. In the comic one of the first thing Apple does in the middle of a desert is start a fire, and she uses a bunch of VHS tapes she just happened to have on her. In the movie Apple ends up with her ridiculous Gnome Stick because the Kid is cobbling together a weapon from whatever junk he could find in an abandoned landscaping truck. In the comic Apple finds another silly stick weapon (with a unicorn head) just sitting around. In the movie, Apple may be relentlessly positive, but she's not oblivious to the dangers around her and as she bonds with The Kid and comes to terms with her own mortality she grows as a character. Apple in this comic is a completely oblivious character with zero story arc, running from one dangerous lunatic to another asking them all to be friends. It's bizarre that a character I assume was meant to be a satire of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl trope ends up exemplifying that trope at its worst in the comic. But on a more basic level, the movie is grounded in Munro Chamber's performance as The Kid and his chemistry with Laurence Leboeuf. He's pretty much the only sane person in the wasteland and acts as a straight man for all the nutty personalities that surround him, especially Apple. Part of the reason I consider Turbo Kid to be superior to Scott Pilgrim is Michael Cera's performance was every bit as goofy as the surrounding cast and that movie had no emotional center. Witness the Scott Pilgrim DVD where you can choose which of the two female love interests he stays with in the end and switching between them has negligible effect on the story. This Turbo Kid comic is kinda like that, goofy Apple bouncing off equally goofy wasteland gangs and it all adds up to a big "so what?" The Kid's slow change from being annoyed by Apple, to liking her, to loving her guides the audience's feelings about her, too. There's a part in the movie where Apple pops a random tube of confetti and we get an overhead reaction shot of her gaping in wonder. That shot is earned because the kid loves her at this point and knows she's dying and what a beautiful moment in this character's remaining moments. In the comic there's a part where Apple explodes a crow with her unicorn stick after it started eating her dead friend's eyes and they copy that shot using the crow's falling feathers... but it means nothing because all she's been doing the entire comic at this point is playing schoolyard games next to a decaying corpse. The panel wasn't earned. 
Listening to the Turbo Kid commentary, I get the feeling RKSS was unexpectedly fortunate in the same way a young Steven Spielberg was fortunate when filming Jaws. In Jaws, the shark puppet almost never worked, so the director was forced to make do with much more effective shots that implied the presence of the shark, and to fill time he filmed Quint's speech about the Indianapolis, which ended up being one of the emotional centerpoints of the resulting film. In Turbo Kid, RKSS was planning to do goofball gore from the very beginning, but due to unseasonably cold weather and budget shortages they had to cut most of the early gore scenes and save it all for the finale. I think this worked to the movie's favor because the slow ramping up of the violence allowed the scenes to breathe when The Kid and Apple are falling for each other. This growing connection between the audience and the characters earns the ending where The Kid unleashes Riki-Oh levels of retribution on Zeus and his cannibals for killing Apple. You pump your fist when The Kid finally blasts Zeus in the face with his Turbo Glove. Compare this to the comic where Apple overcomes the odds to defeat a gigantic killbot and save a group of mutants she developed zero connection with, and it all adds up to a "well that happened" shrug. So in conclusion, the movie Turbo Kid is still my favorite of 2015, but I would skip the comic entirely or at least treat it as non-canon. It has tempered my excitement over hints RKSS has dropped about a sequel. And if they can't recast Laurence Leboeuf and Munro Chambers in part 2, I may skip it entirely. |
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Turbo Kid: Apple's Lost Adventure by 05/29/2016, 9:49am PDT  I mean if they can't CAST Chambers and Leboeuf. NT by 05/29/2016, 12:46pm PDT |
