Ben 10 over the years [Part 1 of 3]

Ben 10 is an interesting series for me. Well... I only watched the original cartoon and the movie all the way through but I did some extra research for this post to help make my point.

Ben 10 is alot like He-Man, Transformers, My Little Pony and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was made to make toys. Even though I didn't even bother getting any quotes to back this up, it's obvious to me it was or was only recognised later that it could be used to sell a huge abundance of merchandise.

Ben 10 [The original series]

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This image of some of the toys made for the show are just the beginning of explaining what I mean in my opening statement.

The whole Ben 10 franchise revolves around 10 year old Ben finding an alien watch like device known as the Omnitrix that gathers alien DNA and allows the wearer to transform into any of said aliens for 10 minutes even though the cartoons are never faithful to this time limit what with the cuts between scenes or just laziness.

Next time you watch a scene with a countdown, count with it and see for yourself how accurate it is when they cut away for a moment and cut back again. It's disappointing.

Although for some reason he can only access 10 of these aliens but overtime unlocks more. Frankly I didn't pay much attention to how until the finale's and special episodes when the creator of the Omnitrix unlocks the rest for him.

An interesting setup with alot of potential. Both creatively and profitably.

An action show offering a large cast of differently designed aliens with varying powers. I mention this because I used to have a small collection of Ben 10 action figures which all did specific functions that partly reflect their powers:

(In the order of the image)

• Ripjaw bends over the becomes a water pistol

• Heatblast tilts his head back violently to become a torch/flashlight

• Fourarms has a compartment in his back (only unlocked by an enclosed key)

• And Wildmutt has extendable arms, hangs on your door handle and roars loudly when it detects motion when the aforementioned door handle is turned

These toys accurately portray in some way all these aliens (except for Fourarms and Grey matter who is a pair of binoculars for some reason).

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I've always thought that the animation was somewhat reminiscent of the animation style to the Teen Titans cartoon (Not Teen Titans Go). It's very human in design rather than having round heads and only pupil eyeballs to see with. Even the stories can be both fun and dramatic at the same time. Speaking of which, each episode is mostly just filler. There's little consistency between episodes unless they're making a change in the story. New aliens or new enemies. Small changes that mostly don't carry over every episode.

The show played with different ideas and enemies and even time travelled a little. Hell, it even had a Twilight zone episode!

It had a movie and a 3D movie a few years after this particular series ended which was based on this series. It even had a Live Movie.

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Ben 10: Race Against Time

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This movie is on and off. Mostly off on its acting. Especially its acting but the effects were pretty decent even though you can tell it was fake. In fact the effects and how faithful it was because of that is the only reason I enjoy this movie at all.

It has what the original Ben 10 series had. The Omnitrix:

Aliens (albeit, just 4 of them):

And even some transformation scenes of Ben turning into these aliens:

It had all the best parts of the cartoons catch except it had terrible actors playing the roles. I was about to say something about child actors being terrible in many cases but as I did some research into Graham Phillips (who played 10 year old Ben) I found that he was 14 years old on release and probably 13 during filming. Either way it was awful.

A shame the whole cast sucked since all the main characters have their stories and abilities to contribute. I didn't mention this earlier but Ben Tennyson's Grandpa (yes, that's their last names. I'd rather ignore that part of the show when I talk about its "creativity") is part of an organisation known as the Plumbers. It's basic M.I.B stuff with alien technology. Even Ben's cousin Gwen has magical powers. Unfortunately they both lollygag and leave me disappointed.

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To conclude this post I'd have to say that Ben 10 started off with a really interesting idea that could spark alot of imagination and the ability to have an expanded universe if aliens are involved. And they did...

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To be continued...

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