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Ben 10 over the years [Part 2 of 3]

Henry Atkins
Nov 15, 2017
4 min read

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: Alien Force

More Toys! Is my point sinking in yet?

To continue this short series into Ben 10 we'll take a gander at the sequel series.

5 years after the events of the original Ben 10 series, Ben is now. Well, I'd say all grown up but he looks like he's 18 or even 20 by now.

In fact 10 year old Ben looks more like he's 13 or 15 now that I think about it.

Ben's thrown back into things as he digs up his old Omnitrix which for some reason changes its own design and now has a completely new line up of aliens.

iOS update?

We had, what? 18+ aliens by the end of the first series? And now we've got 10 again. Thanks. It's as useful as removing the audio jack.

Also Kevin's on the team now.

Sorry for not mentioning him but now he's a main character and not just a villain. In this series he can take on any material he touches. In the last series he does something similar with electricity but after absorbing the Omnitrix's energy he becomes an amalgamation of the original 10 aliens.

In this series he later makes the same damn mistake again but takes the newest lineup of aliens.

How did he even change back the first time? I have no idea and I don't know how he did it again. The point I mentioned this character inconsistency is because of all the other character inconsistencies.

In the original series Ben was a bratty and arrogant kid. This new Ben is incredibly polite and doesn't even remotely act like his younger counterpart. I mean, I suppose that's what you do when you grow up. You become better behaved but Ben just doesn't seem himself now. Gwen was always somewhat mature even though she could be childish. New Gwen is an exception. Grandpa has seemed to have ditched them all together!

This is for the first few episodes of course. Further into the series and what I say still counts to a certain degree but it at least gets a little better.

By the way, did I mention that despite how Kevin Levin was 11 years old and now 16 he drives a car!?

The story has somewhat taken a darker turn and the animation has stayed relatively the same but because of the changes of the characters it seems lame. It looks like the creators have just forgotten about the main cast and spent more time on the aliens. The aliens which suck by the way. Some of them at least.

Humongasaurus replaced Fourarms, Swampfire replaced Heatblast and Chromastone replaced Diamond head.

However plenty of new aliens have taken up the mantel with interesting abilities like freezing powers and anti-grav.

Ben 10: Ultimate Alien

Alien Force made a sequel series. It added some new stuff like new aliens, a new Omnitrix design... again, and the new Ultimate form mechanic that gives specific aliens more powerful forms. It's like Mega evolution from Pokemon but lamer.

Ben gets the "Ultiimatrix" through story reasons. It's not exactly his watch anymore at this point!

The story is just continuing from Alien force except dumber.

The new Ultimate forms are mainly just either more stronger or opposite versions of their first forms. But in some cases, though few, do they add anything new.

Humongasaurus has cannons, Bigchill now breathes fire, Cannonball is more durable I suppose, Spidermonkey is now gorilla but Echo gets disk things to throw.

It's not great.

But fear not, there's more alien merging characters that nobdy asked more of!

I don't fully understand why they keep doing this. Oddly I do now this guys story even though I have barely watched Alien force or Ultimate alien.

There are 5 aliens that this guy, Aggregor, is trying to capture to merge himself with them or just steal their powers.

And that's about it.

Ben 10: Alien Swarm

I apologise for this but I've never even watched the movie all the way through. I found it incredibly boring and incredibly dark. I'll spare readers the joke that the author amends their comment that they didn't mean the film was dramatic and brooding but literally dark because it's practically eternally night.

As expected we have the new Omnitrix in it:

It had half as many aliens as the last movie but it does introduce for the first time a new alien as an added 3rd alien to include:

The movie doesn't even have any flashy Ben-to-Alien transformation sequences. The part of the last movie that I enjoyed the most!

The last film had terrible acting but everything else was pretty good. This film was terrible on almost all accounts. The characters are terrible, the action was terrible, the story was terrible and the only parts I enjoyed was looking at Kevin's car. The aliens sucked when they did something but their models weren't too bad if it weren't for the grotesque models they had.

I've already mentioned I don't exactly love the 2 Ben 10 Alien series' as it is but this film pretty much kills all of it for me. I only like the concept at this point. All you can do to improve it is get better actors, get better writers and add more aliens. The aliens are the main selling point for the series and hold alot of potential if put into a live series. But you have to write them right.

This is the start of the franchises decline. That is all I will say for now.

To be concluded...

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