Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-16747922-20130907160048

Ben 10 (the original series) was created with a fantastic, creative idea in mind: have an average, playful kid get a watch that can turn him into aliens. Simple. Add a plot behind it, add a villain that will serve as a good match for something as powerful as the Omnitrix, add some friends, some backstory, and there you go. However, Ben 10 wasn't as procedural as some fans may have thought, and expanded into such an amazing, evolving universe.

Then came Ben 10: Alien Force, which was such an amazing sequel series. The change of Ben's age and character appearance actually did improve the franchise, and added a far darker and teenage atmosphere to the series. It made the franchise into something that fans began to take a bit more seriously than some trigger-happy action figure-loving kid running around with a flashy alien watch and throwing cheesy insults at people. Alien Force, at least for me, served more than just entertainment and cartoonish monsters. Ben was more mature, and began to understand more things, which allowed the writers to go for more complex plots that younger kids can still understand, and older kids can relate to. This is what made the show shine, not to mention it's far better look and less cheesy, more badass aliens.

Then came Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, which for me was the best of the franchise. First off, they added one hell of a feature: SUPER-POWERED VERSIONS OF THE ALREADY SO SUPER-POWERED ALIENS!!! But they still retained the animation and feel from before, except now, Ben is even older and has far more up his sleeve. I loved seeing the excitement of the pilot and how the stories had more complex subplots, and that made Ultimate Alien probably the most sophisticated take on the franchise. The Ultimate Aliens were perfect for the show, and even though some episodes were quite similar to Alien Force, the return of the older characters, mature storyline, and great themes were all things I found amazing about the show. And then it ended. WITH A NEW OMNITRIX. Except now, this WAS the Omnitrix, which, according to Azmuth, was the complete version of the prototype he had in Series 1 and 2. I was thinking, "well, okay. It looks kinda crappy, but will the show evolve into something more mature and amazing like this, or will they go old school and start ruining it. I hope not."

But what did they do with the series? You guessed it. A big F*** you to fans of the franchise, and gave us the latter. Ben 10: Omniverse, where Ben gets to screw off with his new Omnitrix and meets by far the cheesiest characters on Cartoon Network. It's almost as though the writers don't care anymore after the tragic death of Alien Force and Ultimate Alien showrunner Dwayne McDuffie. His wife, series writer Charlotte Fullerton, is a great writer, who wrote both video games for AF (Vilgax Attacks) and UA (Cosmic Destruction), both of which I own and think they are amazing games. But if she's still involved in the team, WAKE UP! What happened to the spectacular subplots of Ultimate Alien? What happened to anything? If Dwayne McDuffie was still alive, he'd probably have died just seeing this show. He would not be proud of what the writers have done. Man, I miss you buddy.

Sorry for making the intro so long, guys. I just really wanted to emphasize the downfall of the series and how good the past series were compared to the garbage we see now. It's supposed to be a homage to the original series and have a similar tone to it, and somehow satisfy fans of the old series. Hello? Ben is 16 YEARS OLD and can PROBABLY take more than what he faced back when he was 10. He was the exact same age a series before, and the tone and atmosphere of that perfectly fit. In this, well, Ben, the lovable character from AF and UA, got thrown right back into his 10-year old universe. EVERYTHING in this show looks absolutely FAKE. Even Earth! The humans and the buildings, and the everything look so much like aliens.

And now onto one of the two major problems of the show. One of those things is the GARBAGE they call ARTWORK. Art director Derrick J. Wyatt is either a hardcore fan of the original series and spent his life just drawing characters in that kind of animation, or just feels like punishing the fans, and the money-hungry idiots at Cartoon Network hired him to do just that. I mean, you can't turn Ultimate Alien into the original Ben 10 franchise and reinvate an already existing universe into something entirely different. You just can't. Now some people may wonder, "hey! They did change the animation and tone of the original series in Alien Force, now didn't they?" My answer is yes. They did change it, but IMPROVED it rather than RUINED it. The show was evolving at the time, and they made the animation more realistic. You can't downgrade an entire place. That's just not believable. It's like making something like Call of Duty anime. Except this time, the bad animation was what it started with, but that wasn't bad because that's how it started. Now, even after they make it BETTER than what fans used to like and made them like it even more, they turn it BACK to the LESS BETTER version.

Now, bad thing #2: THE WRITING. Like I said before, both the nightmarish-ly horrendous artwork and the unsophisticated writing make Omniverse a completely different, alien (not this kind of alien, the kind that means unknown) world that no fan can relate to. It's not even like the original series, since that was actually good. The only thing they really have that's like the original series is the flashbacks, and the present-day scenes SOMEHOW relate to those 5-YEAR OLD flashbacks ONLY NOW. I mean, come on! My younger brother and I have been watching Ben 10 for 4 years, and we both think of Omniverse like a fan-fiction spinoff of the series. That's what it basically is, built around a terribly cartoonish story that we're forced to believe. That new Omnitrix seems to have somehow changed everything, because only once he got it, all the themes from the original series have come back. Of course, all this is up to the writers, but they're just plain stupid. And I haven't even gotten to the elements of the story yet! First off, they TOOK OUT GWEN AND KEVIN, and those two working with Ben (just mentioning these things makes me homesick for AF and UA) made the perfect series. Now, Ben some guy named Rook as a partner that Grandpa Max hired. And Rook is basically a dumbass trying to be a badass. Even in the preview. Ben: "My name's Ben, dude." Rook: "Okay, Ben Dude." AAARGH!!! Cheesy and clichéd dialogue absolutely KILLS ME! I don't know how many times I have to say this, but what pisses me off so much is how Ben is THE SAME AGE AS BEFORE, back when he was MATURE, and now he is somehow CHEESY! Yuri Lowenthal should do the right thing and walk out on the producers until they FIX THE BLOODY SERIES back to what it was before. He's been doing such a good job for 5 YEARS I tell you! He needs to make money somehow, but NOT LIKE THIS!?! Why can't he actually do something that's WORTH THE MONEY? It would've been my dream show if they made Ben 10 CGI or something like that! (more on that later) And plus, I don't even think he enjoys this stuff anymore. I mean, he seems like a really friendly guy, and he's probably good friends with the producers by now, and doing all this just to be a good friend. Those producers should be sitting in shame thinking about how they could do something like this. Sending the beloved voice actor for all these years into what I call "the death pit" where Cartoon Network's good shows go down, and down forever til their end. In the wise words of Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." If I had the producers' contact, I'd send them those words, and tell them that it's the story of the Ben 10 franchise. They just had to go for the latter. However, if they actually did improve the show, I can only imagine how long this would've gone if they expanded it into something more than just a "kid's show". The only good shows on CN now are Regular Show and Looney Tunes. Everything else was ONCE good, and all died villains rather than heroes.

My dream show for Ben 10 would probably be an expansion on Ultimate Alien, making it CGI and adding far darker storylines and more realistic action scenes. I'll probably publish an article later on explaining what I'd want a realistic Ben 10 show to be like. If Season 4 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was able to pull of that good animation every week for a whole season, then I think it's still possible for Ben 10 to do the same. I love drawing, I'm not bragging here, but I do consider myself to be pretty good at it since it's been a hobby from when I was 3. I love making comic strips, and I'm working on some Ben 10 ones. I may even publish some for you guys to read on free PDFs :D

Anyways, that was a pretty long rant, and if you are an Omniverse fan, you probably shouldn't have read it at all. But those of you who agree with me can feel free to show their support through replies and stuff. Hopefully, my other forum posts should be more positive, but until then, thanks for reading, and I'll see you guys later.

- TJlive800 