All things considered, I was impressed with how nicely Titan Maximum built over the course of the season, and I was really impressed with the first nine minutes of the finale with the way everything was coming together, and then I was baffled at the story choices made in the last minute.
This is the finale. This is the ending your audience is left with for the next year (assuming you got renewed). This isn't anti-heroic like the Venture Brothers or anti-narrativist dada like Aqua Teen Hunger Force; you've been steadily strengthening the heroic narrative across the course of the season and peaked it in the finale. And then that ending? I just don't get it what good it's supposed to do.
[Oh, pleasepleaseplease someone come at me with a "it's more realistic and interesting when the heroes aren't perfect and don't always win" argument. My card in our Invalid Response to Criticism Bingo game depends on it.]
Posted by Greg at November 23, 2009 11:57 PM
What's Titan Maximum? I gather from your post that it's a TV series, but I've never heard of it.
It's part of the Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network late Sunday nights. From Seth Green and the rest of the Robot Chicken guys (which is also an Adult Swim series).
Titan Maximum has convinced me that the giant robot genre has been so "deconstructed" and satirized post-NGE (and by the way, BOTH ENDINGS TO THAT ARE SHIT) that the only real way to go forward is to play it straight, and like you said, Greg, have them be heroes.
Tsk. They won in the only way that mattered...they kicked Beardy McEyepatch's ass (and crotch). The ending "oops" moment does not in any way diminish that victory for, well, 3/5 of the team. :)
Well, they may have won in the only way that mattered to the majority of the team ... but I, and perhaps the rest of the audience, have a different metric of victory.
I have not seen TM, but I have a few ideas.
Case 1) It may be less a question of realism and more a question of thematic consistency for the story to end as it did. Did the ending make narrative sense, or sense in context?
Case 2) Maybe the writers are planning to be renewed. It would not be the first time a series had a "bad ending" because it was not renewed. Remember "Exo-Squad"?
Dom
-actually wants to see TM now.
"It's more realistic and interesting when the heroes aren't perfect and don't always win".
Don't say I never do anything for you.
What show are we talking about? Why should I care?
What show are we talking about?Titan Maximum. See, it says right up there in the first sentence.