Don Cheadle’s now classic parody sketches of Captain Planet were where most popular superheroes failed, not even Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League – and, in fact, all of Snyder’s entries in the DC Extended Universe – are known for their darkness, both figuratively and literally. Snyder takes a long look at the dark side of superheroes, causing a great deal of disagreement among the faithful of DC. But when it comes to the dark implications of gods walking among humanity, even the Snyderverse cannot compete with Don Cheadle’s overthrow of Capitain planet in a now classic series of Funny or die clips. They became almost nihilists in their desolation, but the comedy was very simple: take the ecological cartoon of the 90s to its logical extremes and turn the absurd into a living nightmare.
Captain planet and the planets first appeared in September 1990 as a well-intentioned effort to teach children environmentalism. It was quite ambitious for the time: Whoopi Goldberg provided the voice of Mother Earth (and won an Oscar in the middle of her run), and Tom Cruise reportedly signed the title role before giving up. Nor was it very dated, presenting heavy speeches about the environment, puns and word games based on ecology and some worrying ethnic stereotypes presented in the name of multiculturalism.
Captain Original Planet was poorly defined, but omnipotent
This left many satirical targets for fun. But underneath these superficial details, the cartoon showed a series of ongoing narrative problems that the Funny or die sketches took unrelenting benefit. Capitain planet he never realized his central idea in an appreciable way. His hero was a generic omnipotent god-being with a wide range of reality-shaping powers that could be altered on a whim to solve any problems he faced at the moment. The show rarely defined these powers other than smooth visuals, like lightning bolts from his hand, and in addition to surface messages, he was simply a blank cipher.
The direct universe of good versus evil in the cartoon didn’t need anything more from the character, so he didn’t bother giving body to his character. As a result, Captain Planet himself felt less like a personality and more like an automaton with an environmental theme, created by the energy rings of the teen heroes of the show and returning to them whenever the villain was defeated. While the Funny or die sketches observed, such a figure can be a pure sociopath, especially when confronted with the true cause of ecological devastation.
Captain Planet of Cheadle pointed out the real problem
The original sketch begins by mocking the show’s many strange elements – from posture speeches to tree-based puns – complete with a smiling Cheadle in a powdered green mullet. Then he begins to turn people into trees: first villains, then normal civilians, and finally the whole world. Initially elated, his young friends are horrified by his actions, so they find themselves hostage to an openly psychotic “hero” who wants to make the world green forever.
Subsequent sketches show an Earth under the relentless control of Captain Planet, with its few remaining human inhabitants living in constant fear of its increasingly erratic whims. It is more like the Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life” than any four-color comic book universe. He kills the Planeters and even Gaia itself, before being pecked to death by woodpeckers in a surprisingly horrible ending. So, in an ironic precursor to Avengers: Endgame, the people of Earth are restored, only to start polluting again as they always have.
The satire remains focused on the cartoon’s simplistic suggestion that climate change can be overcome simply by recycling and sending some bandits to prison. More Serious Comic Movies – Endgame and Avengers: Age of Ultron it was much like Snyder’s films – he also fought with divine beings who could destroy humanity in the name of a greater good. As a work of humor, Cheadle’s sketches could go where more conventional efforts could not, and they could examine the kind of hellish landscape that can emerge under a being that cannot be interrupted. It’s genuinely scary, and that may be why the comedy still has an impact.
About the author
