This article was originally posted on Kakuchopurei.com
Ubisoft has been around the video game block for 37 years, so naturally, it has a slew of intellectual properties and characters to tap from when it comes to creating a brand new Netflix adaptation fit for the TV episodic format.
The company’s bright idea for 2023’s tail-end schedule? Just feature their most popular and fan-favourite characters in a brand-new scifi dystopian plot that mixes in espionage, political unrest, and anime-sized fights. The result is a show that’s uneven, chaotic, shocking, and daresay entertaining.
Laser Focused
Captain Laserhawk: Blood Dragon Remix is focused on titular character Dolph Laserhawk. After a botched heist, he gets recruited by The Warden to do Suicide Squad-style missions alongside other captured characters -an anthropomorphic frog named Bullfrog who is an assassin of a particular creed, the duo of photojournalist Jade and her uncle Peyj the hybrid human pig, and Cody Rhodes of AEW/WWE wrestling fame. Elsewhere, Ubisoft mascot Rayman is a TV personality who is pushing propaganda as a TV host for megacorporation Eden, struggling to deal with specism of his kind and his standing with the company who just treats him as an asset; nothing more.
Both stories do play out well with one another, with the best scenes involving Rayman and Assassin member Bullfrog. Yes, you would believe a short green assassin who blows “future thought bubbles” from his mouth is one of the highlights of the entire 6 episodes of the Season. We also get a deep dive into the Warden’s history who is tied in with another surprise Ubisoft character we won’t spoil; it’s a helluva reveal.
Beyond Good & Evil
The whole 6-episodes are arguably one of Ubisoft’s most memorable gaming(?) experiences, given the company’s slew of large-but-banal and mid-sized-but-banal games with assassins and ghost recon units. When the French game makers’ film division actually put in the effort, they really go all out. It comes with its many twists and turns, some of which are genuinely unexpected. The action hits when it counts, and comes with an appropriate amount of build-up. And the cute transitions from animation to 16-bit gameplay for some segments, to even some involving heavily compressed digitized live-action portions, do help keep things visually interesting while also not wearing out their welcome. In fact, one of these transitions and media switch shows us that it can be an insidious use of torture for prisoners; an ingenious one, if I say so myself.
My only gripe for the Season is they did one character dirty plot-wise: Beyond Good & Evil’s Jade. True, the rest of the cast and the Season overall took quite a bunch of twists and warped a lot of potential main players to irreparable states, but my girl Jade only had one-and-a-half episodes to shine and make an exit. Still, with the way the show capped off, it’s possible that we may see a “reset” of sorts happening. Who knows?
All I can say is that Captain Laserhawk: Blood Dragon Remix is what happens when Ubisoft just says “f*** it” and goes ham with its many IPs and characters to create a dystopian future liberation scifi show. It spares no dignity and thought in how it tells its story and just caters it to an above-18 gaming and animation-consuming demographic, filled with seamless transitions between animation and other styles of presentation and keeping you on your seat with its balls-to-the-wall action.
