March 24th, 2008
13. Super Friends: Season One
When Hanna-Barbera brought the DC Comics superheroes to Saturday mornings in 1973, they apparently went out of their way to rob them of their cool. Instead of "The Justice League Of America," Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman became "The Super Friends." And instead of fighting wicked-looking supervillains like Lex Luthor, Braniac and The Joker, this wimpier league took on intergalactic polluters, overpopulation, and world hunger. Well, sort of, anyway. In a typical first-season episode of Super Friends, the bad guys are often well-meaning, and it's the heroes who have to stop them from trying to solve the world's problems. Whether it's the animal-controlling "Dr. Pelagian" threatening industrialists or "Dr. Gulliver" shrinking humanity so they'll use less resources, these villains have our best interests in mind. So naturally, the Super Friends must crush them.
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze
If the secret of the ooze is that ninja turtles are only into cleaning up the environment so long as it involves mopping the floor with hordes of nameless Foot Soldiers, then that secret's been out for a while now. Otherwise, the violent, man-sized turtles don't really seem to care. In the sequel to the turtles' first big-screen outing, the Techno Cosmic Research Institute, in a sudden bout of corporate social responsibility, hires Professor Jordan Perry (a certified lab-coat-wearing scientist) to investigate its toxic waste, which triggers mutations in flora. But when the ninja turtles meet up with Perry, and he explains that their mutant state is due to a similar contamination, Donatello is merely bummed that there's nothing more interesting to it. There's no concern for the ecological effects of the mutation, or anything like that—but they seem pretty pleased once they vanquish Shredder beneath a pier and return his mutated henchmen, Tokka and Rahzar, to their original forms, as a snapping turtle and wolf. And instead of pondering whether they should be responsible and also regress to their original non-mutant forms, Master Splinter merely commands them to practice harder—why give a hoot when there are sequels to make?
15. Waterworld
It would be a lot easier to laugh at Waterworld if there weren't declassified Pentagon reports floating around about, containing the contingency plans for when the icecaps melt and flood Europe. But since that tragedy is still, oh, about six years away, let's do our best to enjoy the sublime ludicrousness of Kevin Costner as a mutant man/fish hybrid leading purebred humans to a mythical spot known as "Dryland." (Or as we shall one day know it, "Denver.") To reach paradise, Costner has to motor past a one-eyed Dennis Hopper, who's getting rich off all the global destruction that polluting has wrought, and sees Dryland as yet another resource he can exploit. To emphasize the irony, Waterworld has Hopper captaining the salvaged remains of the Exxon Valdez. Once, it spilled oil. Now, it spills third-act plot complications.
16. Widget, The World Watcher
Thank God for the Horsehead Nebula. Without it, we would never have been sent its eco-friendly resident Widget, a purple, shape-shifting apprentice world-watcher whose primary mission is to save Earth from ecological disasters. Sure, he'll end poaching on government-protected parks in Africa with the help of his human friends and Megabrain (a cocky, floating head with a transparent cranium), but there's a catch: His grating voice and liberal use of the word "awesome." What's so misguided about that? Well, Widget's theme song starts, "Danger and evil were everywhere / Nature thought we didn't care," and apparently the moral is, we don't have to care: A dopey alien like Widget will come along and fix it for us, so long as we put up with his market-tested youth slang.
17. The Smoggies
Lest stupid Americans mistake them for the hero of this cartoon, Canada's The Smoggies aired in the U.S. under the name Stop The Smoggies. No one paid much attention anyway, as evidenced by The Smoggies' relegation to the dustbin of cartoon history. The creators didn't do themselves any favors with an interminable theme song that basically gives away the entire show: The Smoggies are the bad guys who mess up the planet, while the Suntots—creepy little childlike beasts with funny hairdos—live in ecological harmony. (They also stay young forever with magic coral.) Sing along, won't you? "With the Suntots and the Smoggies / Choose the way the world could be / A messy mess or shiny clear, ecologically!" Umm, is there a third choice?
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