Solarman (1991) pilot review

 

ethics and brevity:

i have no affiliation with solarman, fox or marvel

Copyright:

solarman the character is owned by scout comics,

solarman the cartoon is property of marvel and fox and is based off of the marvel comics comic series of the same name. all rights reserved

Plot:

We start off how I feel like more cartoons should start, in space as we meet our villains. as they approach a fucking sun. The main villain, commander Gormagga Kraal, is trying to absorb every sun in the universe, then destroy them. After they destroy said sun, they see another sun. and try to make course for it. but the creator of the sun absorbing ray protests. Evil commander Kraal is a big bad and does it anyways. The scientist, realizing the evil warlord is in fact evil, takes a circlet of power, which can turn a being into a superhero.

He doesn't take the ray, but a circlet. Now I know it so he can find the right user and all. but like, just a circlet?? it feels really weird for this to be the only thing he takes. especially since if the ray is that powerful, you'd want to make it easy to destroy. 

We cut to a kid drawing a comic. His name is Ben. his dad is kind of a dick weed to him. as he draws he sees the space scientist crashes into the ocean by his house. our hero runs the crash sight and is given the circlet. However Ben' dad finds him and harasses him about drawing comic books and mocks him.

back in Ben' room, he's playing around with the circlet. when the ghost of the alien appears. Said ghost gives him a run down about how bad and evil the warlord Gormagga Kraal is. Ben is really confused on how he's supposed to be able to stop him. the ghost then just kinda goes "lol just press go outside and press the button". He also tells Ben about how his planet was dying, and that's when Kraal came to his planet and offered his help. And that's when the scientist helped make the solar absorbing ray. and then the ghost dissipates. 

Ben is awakened by his dad and is told to go to get ready for school. On his way to school, he's attacked by two random robots. As the mechanical monsters chase him, the scientist's voice rings through his head. telling him to "press the button when it hits the sun"

.and he does become Solarman. he makes fun of the robots as he easily disposes of them. him being a youngish teen he gets distracted by two popular girls. giving the robots enough time to repair themself and take Ben off to space to meet warlord Kraal. 

Kraal tells the robots to kill Ben. but he's saved by the scientists' protege saves our bumbling hero, sadly his hero was injured in the chase and also vanishes. Ben is ganged up on by the robots, one of the robots seems to have defected and opens a window, letting the sunlight hit the circlet. freeing our hero and releasing solar man. Solarman runs into the sun destroying ray but is ambushed by kraal. During combat, kraal hits the button that activates the absorbing beam. keeping it on. The two continue their fight.

Solarman tricks kraal into breaking the wall behind him, giving solarman a chance not even to escape but to be able to stop the beam. how he stops the beam is to redirect the beam back to the spaceship. and it even doesn't feel enough. so he absorbs the sun's energy, using it to push the beam back to the ship. but it doesn't destroy it.. just the ray. but we see the inside of the ship destroyed. it's a confusing mess. that should have been given a once over before letting this go to air. 

but it's ok we get one last scene with solar man as is back into his ben form. doodling a comic as one of the girls from earlier comes over. making fun of his robot. She asks if he believes an alien invasion will happen jokingly, as he looks up into space, showing warlord kraal licking his wounds, vowing revenge. 

good:

The animation is very decent

The voice acting is nice.

The concepts are ok, a little cliched but ok

The pacing is decent for a pilot

bad:

The story itself is very bad. Even for a 90s cartoon based on an 80s comic mini-series it's not very good. It borrows a lot from other things, mainly dc characters, his origin is very green lantern which isn't bad, but it's a lot to be desired without proper build up. Which this pilot did not have. 

While normally a mustache twirling villain isn't bad, Kraal just isn't threatening. Even when he's trying to blow up the sun I find him unthreatening especially if an untrained teenage hero can beat him. Even if we compare him to other mustache twirling villains like dr. doom or even green goblin, he would fall very to the bottom of the listing. 

The ghost of the scientist tells Ben that when his planet was dying, Kraal came to them and tried to save their planet, and had him build a machine to absorb solar energy. Then he used it to start destroying more suns. But we don't see that kind of villainy on screen. Just having your robots kidnap a child.

Overall:

This cartoon is very bad. Its writing is very bland and too simple. I get it as an early 90s saturday morning cartoon so it can't be dark and grimy. But there's a lot to be desired.