GEN 13 (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I suppose if I were trying to impress new viewers with an animated adaptation of a concept I had created-- particularly about a group of intertwined characters-- I would have favored the old "who they are and how they came to be" approach. Yet it's not a certainty, since I would have to make that decision knowing that two live-action movies adapting comics' FANTASTIC FOUR-- one of my all-time favorite franchises, BTW-- had taken that approach and had utterly failed to capture the appeal of the series. As a reader, I didn't follow GEN 13 from its beginnings in 1993, and only started picking up issues a few years later. While the series was never even close to the excellence of Classic FANTASTIC FOUR, it was a better than average formula superhero feature, so maybe an "in media res" strategy would have worked better.

The one-shot animated film GEN 13, though, goes the full origin route-- though it cuts down the membership of the team from five adolescent heroes to three. These teens belong to a group of "lab rats" who agree to let "Gen 13," an isolated scientific facility, research their reactions to a series of tests and training, without knowing that the administrators plan to instill super-powers in these subjects. The only three who get "Gen-Active" powers-- better known as "automatic X-Men mutations"-- are Caitlin, Roxy, and the comically nicknamed "Grunge." Caitlin, a skinny bookworm-girl, is the first to undergo transformation into a super-strong muscle-babe, and as soon as she does, all three of these tentative friends find themselves fighting for their lives against the evil manipulations of the Gen 13 bosses.

This plotline means almost the whole story is either action, or scenes leading up to action. The animators handle the kinetics well enough, though I can't say anything stood out for me. I appreciated that the script allowed for a few "adult" touches-- Roxy sneaking smokes, a few seconds showing Caitlin's boobs when she grows out of her clothes-- but for the most part the story is standard tame superheroics. The climactic fight allows the trio to get clear of Gen 13 with the help of a potential mentor-figure, which conclusion could have set up either a sequel or an ongoing series.

The least interesting aspect of GEN 13 is a character named Threshold, who works for Gen 13 and has super-powers himself, though he has a rather obvious secret familial relationship with one of the heroes. He's a dull character either as an outright enemy or as one of the facility's victims. Threshold may have appeared in some of the GEN 13 comics I didn't read, but he didn't deserve even this much exposure. Curiously, two regular members of the original team make token appearances in the video, with Bobby Lane getting only a visual cameo while Sarah Rainmaker gets a cameo with a couple of lines.