As great, and critically properly obtained, as each of Netflix’s Castlevania sequence have been, you would possibly anticipate the streamer’s latest online game adaptation from government producer Adi Shankar to take the same method to translating iconic items of IP throughout mediums. However slightly than merely staying true to its supply materials, or thoughtfully updating characters in ways in which deepen their canons, Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix brilliantly strips its supply materials for components and fashions them right into a postmodern multimedia experiment whose dangerous bets repay large.
Although it’s very loosely based mostly on Far Cry 3’s Blood Dragon standalone growth from 2013, Netflix’s Captain Laserhawk sequence pulls from the lore of a number of Ubisoft video video games like Watch Canines, Rayman, and Rainbow Six Siege to inform a narrative about heroes rallying towards an authoritarian energy construction.
Set in a dystopian, cyberpunk actuality the place the US has turn into a totalitarian technocracy often known as Eden, the sequence revolves round Dolph Laserhawk (Nathaniel Curtis), a disgraced supersoldier turned prison whose explosive heists make him one of many world’s most wished males. As a cybernetically enhanced sharpshooter, steamrolling fleets of Eden’s law enforcement officials is gentle work for Laserhawk and his brick shithouse of a boyfriend, Alex Taylor (Boris Hiestand) — the protagonist of Ubisoft’s 2014 on-line racer The Crew.
Bullfrog, Pey’j, Jade, and Laserhawk. Netflix
It’s lethally embarrassing for Eden’s cops to be rendered helpless as Laserhawk robs the uber-wealthy in hopes of shopping for his and Alex’s means out of Eden for good. However when the boys’ ultimate mission goes left, Laserhawk is unexpectedly disappeared to the Supermaxx governmental black web site and conscripted right into a Suicide Squad-style group of different bomb-rigged prisoners who stay and die by the whims of a merciless warden (Caroline Ford).
The impressively batshit motion sequence that opens Captain Laserhawk’s premiere establishes simply how a lot warmth animation studio Bobbypills and director Mehdi Leffad delivered to the mission. What’s most instantly hanging in regards to the sequence, although, is its deal with exploring how oppressive societies keep management over the lots and the way these techniques of energy will be dismantled. It’s darkly humorous when Rayman (David Menkin) himself pops onto the display because the secretly depressed face of Eden’s nightly information bulletins, and also you’re speculated to snicker as Laserhawk finds himself being compelled to work with an anthropomorphic bullfrog (inventive director Yves “Balak” Bigerel) impressed by Murderer’s Creed.
At a look, Captain Laserhawk’s story and its method to constructing out a multiverse appear each foolish and probably exhausting. However by decontextualizing characters like Past Good & Evil’s Jade (Courtney-Mae Briggs) and Pey’j (Glenn Wrage) from their authentic video video games, the sequence is ready to make nuanced factors about how holding quick to at least one’s id is essential to pushing again towards and in the end toppling tyrannical regimes.
As Laserhawk and his new comrades start opening as much as each other in regards to the multitude of ways in which surviving in Eden has formed their views on life, it turns into clear simply how a lot care the present’s inventive group took to guarantee that every of them might have been lead characters worthy of the approval of diehard followers.
Rayman presenting the information. Netflix.
What’s in all probability going to stay with many viewers, nonetheless, are a few of the extra bold visible gambles Captain Laserhawk makes in its ultimate few (of six) season 1 episodes. It’s value witnessing the best way Captain Laserhawk brilliantly remixes its personal visible language firsthand, however you’ll be able to see a few of its most shocking pivots teased all all through the season in quite a few gags that operate as each worldbuilding and nods to Ubisoft’s huge library of IP.
It goes with out saying that, between the best way it focuses on antiestablishment revolutionaries of colour and revolves round a pair of hunky dudes who continuously mack on each other, Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix is completely going to set off the “it’s about ethics in video games journalism” crowd that may’t cease (hate)watching Castlevania: Nocturne. However of us with style and sense are in for a punchy deal with with Netflix’s newest — one made all of the sweeter by a finale bursting with potential for much more chapters going ahead.
Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix additionally stars Mark Ebulué, Adi Shankar, and Daniel York Loh. The present is now streaming on Netflix.
