Why is Captain Planet so hated?

I didn't hate the show as a child, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, but now that I look back at the show and I have seen a few episodes somewhat recently I can say that it definately didn't age well and the message behind the show is way to pushy and it comes across as a half an hour PSA at certain times. I think the message behind the show is good but the idea behind the show was to shouve it in your face and it is just way too obvious, it's a nice blast from the past to listen to the opening theme song once every couple of years though.
 
Honestly people, if you want to see a show about a group of teenagers with elemental superpowers fighting to protect the world's natural balance it's been done way way better. At least twice...


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And neither of these teams ever needed a giant smurf with a mullet to save them from some glorified garbage men.
 
I didn't hate Captain Planet, but I knew right from the get-go that the series was pure camp, even back then.

The whole thing was just too corny and over-the-top with its' stock cliche characters (wasn't too fond of how the token American kid had to be portrayed as the jerk/dufus who always screws up and has to learn his lesson the hard way), cardboard cutout "evil for the sake of being evil" villains who hate and pollute for fun, CP's lame puns, the cheeseball stories and the general holier-than-thou preachiness of the whole enterprise. Captain Planet's heart was in the right place, but brother, did it miss the mark.

If nothing else, CP is a fun show to MST, although I usually can't sit through more than a few minutes of it.
 
^ Make it thrice.
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I remember seeing a video where Ted Turner or an artist from Captain Planet were showing designs for a potential spin-off/feature film, where the wold has gone completely polluted, and there's only one tree left. And now the Planeteers try to do what they can to restore the world to be a cleaner place. The series would have been darker and the art was pretty neat looking.
 
Acutally it could hypnotize people. I remember in a bad future episode, he used it to get someone to give him money.
The problem I always see is that people think Heart didn't really do anything, but if Ma-Ti was more agressive people would've taken him more seriously.
 
I liked Captain Planet when I was little. I still kinda do. I don't really think it was that bad a show at all, I think it's just that sometimes it's execution was off.

The main problem is that being from the early 90s it was definitely a product of its time, plus its creator was Ted Turner, who has to be one of the most eccentric people in all of television, if not the most eccentric. Being a political-minded excecutive more than a creator, obviously some of the enviromentalism messages will come off as over-the-top.

A lot of episodes were better than others. While I don't care either way about the population epsiodes, I thought Captain Pollution's first appearence was an awesome episode. In retrospect, I think he probably should have been the main villian over Dr. Blight. Of course, it helps he had a backstory. :p

In fact, I believe the last two seasons the show got a lot better, as the animation kicked up a notch and some of the episodes I thought were really good. Aside from In Zarm's Way and Numbers Game, there were episodes like the gang violence one Teers in the Hood and Talkin Trash (in which Wheeler took on Verminous Skumm in his hometown on his own. Seriously, for anyone who likes Wheeler and thought he could be treated better, I recommend checking this episode out. It also provides some good character development from Wheeler and his dad as well as his titular ex-girlfriend Trash/Trish)


What I think would be really cool is if they made a remake of Captain Planet. One with at least mostly accurate enviromental info, more action from Captain Planet and the 'Teers, as well as established backstories for the supervillians. Dr. Blight, Duke Nukem, and Skumm I think in particular could have awesome origin episodes. It might not happen anytime soon, but I do think an improved version of it would be spectacular! :D
 
Heh, forgot about that one. ;)

I don't think a Captian Planet reboot would really work. Being a glorified PSA was basically the entire point of the show, take that away and what's left? You might as well just start from scratch with an entirely new concept.

Frankly I think the only character in the whole series who's even half way salvagable is Dr. Blight, and that's just because I think we need more female mad scientists.
 
Just to prove how hypocritical this joke of a show was, there was lots of merchandise, toys, and action figures made for it. I doubt that crud was green friendly.
 
In addition to the badly-sent messages the show had, there were a couple of episodes that were pretty dang brutal. Like that whale hunting episode were the caught whale were thrown through a processing plant and turned into food. The thing is, you could actually see all the blood being splattered as the whales scream in pain. I can understand it's like that in real life, but dang, it was a lot more graphic than it should have been.

And the zombie-drug episode was way too over-the-top. It starts out fine but then it becomes a Night of The Living Dead parody and it's just ridiculous. Pretty much so-bad-it's-funny territory. The ending is brilliant, though.
 
In my own idea on how to redo the series, Captain Planet wouldn't be a once-an-episode thing, but something done only when the situation can't get any worse by summoning a super-powered being that can pretty much requires the map to be redrawn anywhere he happens to fight.

I'd turn Planet's personality up to 11, and model him a bit on old Super Robot heroes. He'd be ultra hot-blooded, but with the implication that Heart being part of the formula is the only thing keeping him from just wiping out humanity and being done with it.

I'd replace Captain Pollution with an equivalent associated with Zarm and summoned through his Iron Fists.

And of course, no pollution weakness. The only thing that could stop this CP is stuff that could actually damage the Earth. So it would take a heck of a lot more than crude oil (which comes from the Earth in the first place) to hurt him.

Yeah, silly, but it's how I imagine it working.
 
The show is widely known as Turner's baby. Furthermore, the only time it's really gotten play outside of its original airings was on channels Ted owned, and it was replaced when he no longer owned them. Hell, Turner's gone on record in interviews lamenting his inability to air Captain Planet (as well as other Hanna-Barbera cartoons) on Cartoon Network as far back as the Toonami era.

Come on, it's not JUST Planet. Planet's the worst, but a lot of nature-themed shows tend to stink due to how over-preachy they are. Unless you're going to go the crazy WTH route (Planeteers vs. Mecha Buddha!) it's going to seem like indoctrination.
 
Even better, do you remember any kids that purposefully bought them? I know Turner bankrolled it, but most kids saw CP as "that thing on before wrestling." It certainly wasn't in the same tier as say, X-Men.
 
Let me see...
Heart can create telepathic rapports, pinpoint a person's whereabouts, can contact animals and speak to them in a way regular speaking cannot, is probably the source of CP's good-guy personality. There was one ep. where Mai-ti and Quame (and the President of the United States) went into space and were cut off from Earth. When Captain Planet separated himself, he was unable to return Heart and Earth to the space-lost planeteers, even though he lost fire, wind, and water.
To my knowledge, there were two times Mai-Ti used Heart aggressively, and both times were when he was in a bad way:
-The bad future episode, where Mai-Ti had become so cynical he could use his powers selfishly.
-In another bad future episode of futuristic gang violence, Mai-Ti was transformed by Dr. Blight into a nasty punk. Confronting a rival street gang, Mai-Ti manipulated them into trusting them enough into letting their guard down, so his fellow bad Planeteers could mop the floor with them.

I do remember this series was rather bloody. One episode about shark-killing showed both Mai-Ti & Quame suffering massive foot bleedings and a scene of shark parts in a bucket. Another had a drug-addicted Russo-American breaking through a window, with blood streaming out of his lacerated arms!
 
Ah, so I didn't just hallucinate that scene. Thank you, I honestly thought I just imagined that all these years.

Overall, I remember actually liking the show's early episodes. It wasn't the best, but it had some kind-of-cool set pieces, particularly in the villains' debut episodes.
 
Ted Turner funding the show himself is a fact. Everybody knows that. He got the big-name actors to guest star on the show himself, so it's pretty obvious he tried everything he could to get people to watch it.
 
That same episode had a scene in which the villain captured a shark and cut his upper fin with a single slice of a big knife. The shark then sinks down as it dies a slow and painful death.
 
There was that whole scene in the movie SHORT CUTS dedicated to Captain Planet and its toys :) .

We can't really dispute the show had a long run and I'm sure some people watched it. When I was a kid I did tune and watch it from time to time.

Also at the end of the day most kids aren't as cynical as we are and will enjoy stuff like this even when its preachy.
 
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