The title of the article is a reference to the work of the Maggotron Crushing Crew. And the name is the only thing I had no problems with. How do I write an article about a masterpiece? How can you describe something that, in your eyes, is an absolutely unshakable standard? Any review must remain unbiased and objective. Personally, in the case of Motorcity, I categorically do not fit these parameters. That’s why I’ve postponed this article year after year, but fate has it that I’m writing it anyway.
Anyway, once upon a time there was Chris Prynoski. In the early 90s, he worked for MTV, and even then he had the idea of animation about cool cars and Detroit – after all, Chris, according to his own words, grew up surrounded by automotive culture and got hooked on this rock’n’roll and monstrous engines breathing fire in his youth. By the end of the 90s, Comrade Prynoski had managed to work on the iconic work that became Mike Judge’s “Beavis and Butt-Head,” and even directed his own animation called “Downtown”. In the wake of his successful career, Chris made the first serious sketches for Motor City, apparently confident that his idea would become the next MTV animation.
Of course, cars make up a significant portion of the concept art for Motorcity. To be more precise, almost all those sketches that have reached the public are cars.
But Pepsi became more expensive, pagers went out of fashion, and MTV turned into the cesspool. Therefore, the early blanks of Motorcity walked around the studios, were rejected everywhere, and after all these events, Mr. Prynoski decided to create his own animation studio called Titmouse, Inc. The backbone of the studio was, in fact, the entire team that worked with Chris on the series “Downtown”. And over the two thousand years, Titmouse has been the main generator of animations of our type: Chris Prynoski’s studio has produced such things as Megas XLR and Metal Apocalypse. And everything would be just bombastic if it weren’t for the fact that a studio is just a studio. And every studio can draw anything – it will remain on the tables of artists if the painted pictures do not have a distributor.
For Titmouse, that was Cartoon Network. Yes, even Adult Swim broadcasted Metal Apocalypse, was just a block on Cartoon Network. Capitalism is such a thing; always look at the strings that run behind the brands. And what I want to tell you about is the revealing story of the aforementioned Megas XLR series. The fact is that in the middle of the second season, Titmouse received a unilateral notification of the end of the broadcast.
And the caveat, of course, is that all the rights to the series belonged (and still belong) to Cartoon Network, and not to the studio that created and drew all the animation. The fans were furious, Titmouse was trying her best to snatch the rights back to herself – or at least get a license for another season – and all in vain. Cartoon Network clamped down on everything and didn’t give anything to anyone. In this regard, George Krstic, one of the creators of Megas XLR, who worked on Motorcity as a screenwriter, said the following:
..Obviously, when any project is completed, it’s by no means wonderful, but it’s part of our business. Downtown was completed for us, and Motorcity was recently completed for us. Every show ends, and it’s not as heartbreaking as you might think, it’s just part of how things work, unfortunately. Maybe one day, we’ll get to the point where we can make the show as long as we want it to be, but we haven’t reached that balance yet.
To the quote above, in the same interview, it was added:
..Distributors also use an outdated system for collecting information about what is popular and what is not. I have a feeling that sometimes they are right. Sometimes, we fail to create a connection. And sometimes, they’re terribly, terribly wrong. And in the three shows that were completed for us, they were probably terribly wrong somewhere. I’m not sure if they were wrong every time, but they probably didn’t make the right decision every time.
Against the background of the overwhelming support of the fan base, it seems obvious to me personally that all these words are nothing more than a neat hatred of a person under the sauce of corporate ethics, in order to avoid the possibility of being kicked out of hell specifically and irrevocably, after which no one will show his work anywhere.
Blues Saraceno – Blood Shot
In general, I was a little ahead of myself, but plus or minus in such an environment, a few years after the sudden completion of “Megas XLR” (but with the success and continuation of “Metal Apocalypse”), Chris Prynoski was suddenly contacted by Eric Coleman, one of the people who saw the blanks for Motor City back in the 90s. That’s it. In the late 2000s, Coleman worked for Mickey Mouse, and he asked Chris something along the lines of:
“Hey, do you still have that cartoon with cars in the future? We need a plus or minus adult show for Disney XD.”
Comrade Prynoski asked in response: “What?” He really couldn’t believe that Disney suddenly wanted a cartoon from the Titmouse studio, whose best project at the beginning of the 2010s was a Metal Apocalypse with blood and dismemberment. But the offer was serious, and although the vision of Motor City definitely had to be adjusted to meet Disney’s expectations, Chris agreed. It’s not surprising: It was a cartoon that he had been wanting to draw and broadcast for twenty years. Offering the Mouse House was probably the only way to make his dream come true in any form.
Motorcity and its characters
What is so good about this animation? Honestly, it’s easier to list what it’s not good at. And only one thing comes to mind: the plot seems to be sagging. This was clearly due to the fact that Prynoski wanted to realize Motor City as an independent feature film, rather than a TV series; the narrative eventually turned out to be clearly uneven in favor of the new format.
But in all other respects – including the whole plot as a whole – Motorcity seems to be a masterpiece. And I don’t even know where to start talking about him. It’s probably worth just listing some of the works that Chris was inspired by when creating Motor City. This list includes: Robocop, Escape From New York, Mad Max, The A-Team, and even The Warriors from 1979.
With names like these as the basis, it’s no surprise that Motorcity, despite its bright colors, crazy designs, and whirlwind action, has an inherent amount of brutal down-to-earthness and brutal realism. The confrontation between good and evil on the screen is presented in the form of a new, snow-white, eco-friendly and plastic Detroit Deluxe, for the sake of which growth it is necessary to erase the old Motor City located under it – dirty, iron, along the streets of that several cars with internal combustion engines still drive.
In addition to the obvious juxtaposition of the inevitable future and the stubbornly resisting past, simple human problems that many works avoid are shown in full screen. The main characters don’t have superpowers, and even the elusive avengers aren’t very good at the beginning of the season. The burning ones are just learning how to work together, and each of them has their own problems. And, I must say, these problems are sometimes revealed very beautifully.
In addition to personal problems, there is also the simple fact that Detroit Deluxe and Motor City do not exist in an independent vacuum, but are side by side. And many of Those Burning in Deluxe have friends and even relatives. In general, in many animations, evil is simple and understandable, and of the people familiar to the main characters, no one ever turns out to be on the enemy’s side. In Motorcity, everything is much more ambiguous – and at the same time, I can’t say that it’s much more complicated.
This is perhaps the strongest side of this series: most of the films and animations in our time, although they sometimes try to say some complicated things, in fact they remain extremely simple and do not really show anything serious. Motor City does exactly the opposite: behind the simple plots and the animated mayhem on the screen, it’s not difficult to discern extremely serious topics, just think for a second.
The complexity of the narrative can be compared, for example, with Star Wars (those Prynoski also noted as one of the sources of inspiration). Yes, the relatives of the main characters are fighting all the time, but every such case is a huge drama. The fall of Anakin Skywalker was generally given three full-length films. At Motorcity, the problem that the people you shake hands with today will want to kick your ass tomorrow is everywhere and regularly. The heroes just have to live in these conditions, and continue – truly heroically – without becoming angry and paranoid, again relying on people who are not the most reliable. In general, the atmosphere of the civil war in Motor City feels much better than in Star Wars.
In the episode on the eve of the Day of the Dead, all cars get a fresh coat of paint. And I especially like the alternate werewolf character aboard the Mongrel Car of the main character, Mike Chilton. The werewolf, of course, doesn't refer so much to Ed Roth's drawings, but maybe that's why I like him-there's a little more to him... your own style.
And yes, not least of all, the fact that the city around the main characters is alive contributes to all of the above. In addition to Burning and Deluxe, there are half a dozen other factions in Motor City. Other car gangs that are just trying to survive. More radical fighters against the Deluxe future, who want to destroy the upper city as ruthlessly as he tries to destroy them, without caring about the safety of the people living in the Deluxe. And, of course, he:
It’s so rare for films and animations to actually have a third party, and so rare for it to be as well-written as the Duke of Motors. A narcissistic goat with endless money, who is not interested in anything except cars, which he restores from the skeletons that are in his endless landfills. His first words when he appeared on the screen? “They don’t make cars like this anymore!”– and this is said through the mouth of Dee Snyder. Yes, the singer of Twisted Sister. Yes, he’s voicing the Duke, and that’s a huge reason to watch the series in its original voiceover.
No one wants to trust the Duke, but he’s simply too big a player to ignore. And yet, the Duke is a showman. In addition to Snyder’s excellent voice acting, the Duke is animated in such a way that his every movement, every gesture literally attracts and captures. It’s very hard not to feel any sympathy for him at all, even when you not only know, but literally see how the Duke creates obscenities on the screen. A great neutral character, of which there are not just a few on the screen, but very few. You never know what to expect from him or which side he’ll end up on.
And, of course, the main antagonist, Kane, the sole owner and ruler of Deluxe, is also far from a one-sided personality. He has his weaknesses, his human feelings, and you can even feel a certain amount of sympathy for him. After all, a lot of his words don’t make sense. And one hundred percent of his words are voiced by Luke Skywalker, aka Mark Hamill. Another reason to watch the series in the original.
Style and plot in Detroit
But Mark Hamill is not the only one who recalls the biker quest from the 90s. The design of the cars in the series reminds me subtly of Ben Throttle’s bike: visually, the functionality of every detail seems to be clear, but overall it turns out to be an absolutely insane and unrealistic jumble of pipes, superchargers and air intakes, and they have one real task: to look cool! And they perform this task perfectly.
And if Full Throttle is just my imagination, then there is one thing that I haven’t mentioned yet, but which the animators were inspired by from the bottom of their hearts. The fact is that at the time of the release of Motor City, the best anime of all time had already appeared:Redline. And the guys who worked on Motorcity really liked it. At least once, a new animated series was positioned under the slogan “Redline every week.” And a few scenes are direct homages on Redline.
Car action is also reminiscent of “Redline” – in the sense that it must first look cool, and only then reflect on how much it obeys the laws of physics. Do you remember how the cars in the Red Line started jumping and tearing from side to side when the racers used all sorts of fantastic analogues of nitrous oxide? It’s about the same here: cars drive calmly on steep and vertical surfaces, do somersaults when necessary, and the roads sometimes turn into a dead loop – just because.
The soundtrack is three words: endless guitar solos. Especially epic is the minute-long composition playing in the very last episode, during the inevitable clash between the antagonist and the protagonist. Well, the plot – damn, the plot is so good. Well, how else? I was praising the characters and the world, what, three paragraphs? And how can there be a good world and good characters without a good plot? It’s like there’s no way. There is, for example, a series in which Burning people find a warehouse of old cars – and they are all perfect. Without thinking twice, they decide to distribute the cars to the residents of Motor City.
– People can’t fight Kane, they can’t run away from his robots, and all because they don’t have cars.
– You’re right. Let’s give them control over their own lives, take them out on the open road.
– Let them feel the wind in their hair, feel the roar of freedom.
– Cars were the soul of Motor City. We have to return it to the people!
And there’s also a series where the main characters meet nerdy role-play characters. And she is absolutely imbued with a love of role-playing games. Watching each of the main characters gradually join the game brings tears to my eyes. And yes, the Nerds are one of the few people in Motor City who own a car. And what this means is mentioned above.
These two drawings are nothing more than murals on role-playing vans. One of the animators generously shared the source code with the Internet, and they look extremely cool.
And I can’t get past the ending of the sixth episode. There is an irony of fate: this is exactly how Disney wanted to end the second Lion King. But, of course, the corporate cockroaches didn’t have enough rock’n’roll in their blood to make such a powerful ending. But Chris Prynoski and his team had enough. And if any of Mickey Mouse’s slaves were against it, they were pushed through. So, the end of the sixth episode. Obviously, it contains spoilers (and guitar riffs).
But, yes, as I said, the plot still sometimes sags. Not least because of the serial format. Actually, now about the most important and sad disadvantage of Motor City, which I casually mentioned at the beginning.: Disney ended the series. And on the very first season. Titmouse fought for the rights with all their might, but in vain.
The Mouse House always wins
If “Megas XLR” was closed in the middle of the season, and the development team was able to take this into account and bring the series to a more or less logical end, then “Motorcity” was closed at the end of the season and very suddenly, and therefore a lot of questions were not answered. Kane says, “You have no idea what I’m protecting you from.” At one point, it is mentioned that there is a scorched wasteland outside of Detroit. Or are there other cities? One of the third parties disappears into nowhere, although they clearly should have returned. And anyway, they say that at the time of the closing of the first season, the second was already painted, if not completely, then by three quarters. Which is not surprising, since – let me remind you – the idea of animation and its plot were relatively clearly sketched back in the late 90s.
Some of the remaining questions were described in a little more detail in the so-called Bible, part of the design documents that one of the good animators posted on his blog. I am attaching this Bible below. I won’t translate, I’m sorry, but in our time of automatic translators, I’m sure that even those who are not familiar with English will be able to get acquainted with it.
In addition to the diesel docks, I can only offer a so-called animation preview, which contains early versions of some scenes, one deleted scene from the very first episode, and some other small things. In general, I would not recommend watching this preview before watching the series, but if you are not afraid of spoilers, then you can check it out to have a clearer idea of what awaits you in the series itself.
And, by the way, the reasons for the closure of the series are infuriating to the point of indecency: the Disney management constantly changed the show time, sometimes removed Motor City from the grid altogether, and showed episodes out of order… As a result of all this, the number of views dropped to zero. Either someone suddenly thought that the series was too serious for the Disney XD channel, or they leaked a great series out of banal stupidity. And this is in the presence of excellent pre-release interviews and thematic PR (they even promoted it in specifically adult automotive magazines, such as Motor Trend), as a result of which Motor City already had a fan base at the start.
In general, what can I say? Megas XLR and Motorcity are two excellent but unfinished series, which currently remain mostly a bright spot in the memory of teenagers of the noughties. Both have earned cult status and places in the list of “15 Excellent Cartoons Completed For No Reason” according to ScreenRant, the fourth and second. What are the conclusions from this? Who the hell knows. And Motor City is a great series, that’s it. I advise everyone.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150215064043/http://geek-news.mtv.com/2012/05/18/motorcity-creator-chris-prynoski/ https://reviewordie.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/george-krstic/ https://www.animationmagazine.net/2012/04/watching-the-wheels/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190506034425/https://screenrant.com/cartoons-canceled-terrible-reasons/
