HWUAAA-JACK

Oh man, they've been teasing this remake for a few years now, so I'm glad it's here already. Though after watching the episode I only feel like watching the old episodes again. If you don't mind me being a party-pooper, I'm gonna go over the stuff I remember about the old show and what made it great, and how the new season looks like it's preserving those elements:

1. The visual aesthetic

Samurai Jack the original had a world with landscapes and beings that are kind of trippy. Like if you took a lonely kid's doodles and made a show out of them. All of the alien like designs, all the different robots (and how their guts looked like), and how every episode had a different place, like that time Jack went underwater and rescued Atlantis, or the time he went to Egypt to solve puzzles. Twice. Or the time he went to treasure island with the Scotsman, or all the places that looked really, really bad under Aku's influence, all the pointy black pillars and red sky and ravaged land, or the junk piles, dysfunctional futuristic cities, slums, or the occasional place that looks like it's getting by but you know something horrible is gonna happen to it in a few minutes. And the monsters looked so edgy and kind of bland, but really earnest at the same time. It was great. They stuck with me for years.

[spoiler]The new series looks the same as the old one, which doesn't really matter to me, honestly. If they changed the art style but still kept conjuring those otherworldly societies and places, that would've been amazing. So far they're sticking to the old artstyle, but more than that, the people and places are inspired from older episodes, or are direct copies at worse. The one thing that felt new was with the weird out of place zombie people from Jack's nightmares that look like they were taken from a Gorillaz video.[/spoiler]

2. Immersive episodes, worldbuiding, story

The environment kind of helps here, but even just with the pacing, every episode of the old Jack was painfully slow. You couldn't speed through it, you had to take it all in and travel the lands along with Jack, and go with whatever happens to him. Each episode sucks you in really fast, and introduces a new place or new charcters, and at the end of the episode there's always some epilogue of what happens to the people you met, sometimes it's a happy end, sometimes Jack walks off to the sunset away from the ravages of what used to be a town, or a broken time portal, or a mountain of bodies, or sometimes it's just a quiet ending where you take it all in, because you were holding your breath for the entire episode and now it's finally over.

[spoiler]Bzzt. I didn't really feel anything from the eipsode. Sure they're trying to set things up, reintroduce Jack and ease in new watchers, but the episode had no feeling of time or place. It just jumps from here to there and there's no worldbuilding. Every new scene rushes into its raison d'etre and thrusts you into the next. I don't know, there was also a lot more action than you'd think, maybe they want you to focus on that instead.[/spoiler]

3. Oh man it was so subtle and an amazing character study oh man

You know how the show is about a tragic hero who goes around a broken future fixing things wherever he goes but at the end of the day he's stuck where he started, no closer to getting back to the past and undoing the future that is Akuuu's, cue theme song? Jack is a strong character in the original. He's a nice guy who feels obligated to help everyone not only because he wants to and he can and it makes him feel good, but also because he's haunted shitless by his past. You know the whole, it's up to you to defeat Aku thing? Well, he failed. He fought the guy and he failed, and now he's stuck in the future. He has failed everyone, and he knows it, and the only thing he can do now is take little steps in the right direction. Every few episodes Jack gets a break and he finds an opportunity to go back to the past, some time mcguffin or another, but every time he gets so close and the opportunity slips between his fingers at the last second. And you know what Jack does? He walks it off. For a few seconds you can see the torture he's going through, but he fucking walks it off, because this is his life now. Baby steps. The original series had amazing patience with Jack's character. Not to mention all the lessons he learns from his failures, and the show handles it all with grace.

[spoiler]Oy vey. Here's where I'm not expecting anything from the remake anymore. The first episode had no subtlety to it, anywhere, and missed every opportunity to make a statement. I was throwing what ifs at the screen the whole time, like what if they killed off that one twin that almost fell off the pillar to examplify that not everyone's built for Aku's world, and how cruel it is and people die and shit. They could have kept the sword as some kind of statement like Jack chose to throw it away, maybe because he lost faith in it, maybe because he lost faith in himself, or he's trying new things, or it's some deeper tragedy that's going on. Maybe this Jack is fundamentally different from the old Jack and he doesn't need his sword anymore. Instead they flashed in this scene where his sword falls into a chasm and Jack's all like ohhh noooo like are you serious? God. They tried making it obvious how Jack is haunted by his past, but there's no context. He looked fine a few minutes ago, or some scenes ago, why is he suddenly reminded of his failures by a falling leaf? No catalyst? Really, what's that about? What has Jack been doing all this time if he's always this hot and bothered? I can go on.[/spoiler]

I guess what I'm saying is that I love the old show to bits and will forever hold unrealistic expectations. But man, it feels like the remake doesn't even come close. On a meh, you tried scale of 1 to 10 it gets a 2 if generous.