Just finished a rewatch
Generator Rex was one of my favorite shows growing up. It's been a while since I'd seen it, but I had some time on my hands and wanted to see how well it held up. My verdict? Pretty well! Generator Rex is a fun, action packed series, with some surprisingly deep plots and characters. Now onto some of my general thoughts.
General Thoughts:
- Rex is a lot tougher than I remembered. Dude takes a bunch of hits from some pretty strong foes, but powers through darn near all of them
- I totally forgot how much they used the Whilhelm Scream and slow-mo moments in the show. Not bad or anything, I just really didn't remember how much that stuff happened
- I did remember the music which would often accompany scenes, and it remains awesome. There are times when I don't feel it lines up perfectly with the battles at hand, but there's also plenty of times where it's awesome, so that's a minor quibble
Season 1:
- There's a lot that happens early on. I really liked this. While there's still room for some filler/light-hearted episodes, the pacing felt great here
- Van Kleiss was a great villain early on, his battles with Rex were fun.
-Things like attacking the U.N., Kleiss' 'death,' Breach taking Rex as her toy, Rex meeting his old crew, etc. all occured earlier than I remembered
- I entirely forgot about ZAG-RS until I saw her again. She was a lot more threatening than I realized, having the potential to destroy the world (or at least almost every human on it) each time
- Seeing White Knight be very abrasive and suspicious of Rex and grow to accept him more over time was awesome. I'm also curious as to what White Knight and Six were doing before Providence, and why Knight despite being his partner (and capable of throwing hands with Six) even before the Event didn't have number like his partner
- I liked some of the large scale events, like the time everyone falls asleep, showing the varied disasters Providence has to try and deal with. While it probably wouldn't fit into a kids show, it would be nice if we got to hear a bit more about what it's like living in a post-Event world and how difficult it must be to keep society stable
- Finale was good, but I do feel that after this point, Van Kleiss gets a bit stale as the preimer villain of the show. Depowering Rex feels like his last major victory
Season 2:
- I enjoyed seeing the new forms Rex could make here, kinda wish we got more of them, but after this season I don't think Rex ever makes anything new? Also, he almost never uses his whip to channel electricity. Admittedly, most times he uses it, the enemy will either break free fast or is too weak for it to matter, but there's a couple times where it could have been useful.
- Pacing here isn't quite as good as season 1, imo. Maybe it was just having a bunch of filler episodes back to back, but there was a point in the early-to-middle of season where it felt a little boring
- Kenwyn was a really cool character and they totally built in a way for her to become a recurring character and then just... didn't use her at all. That sucked. I think she could have had some great moments bouncing off of/working with Rex and the others
- Ceasar was cool. I knew he was super smart, but I forgot how many inventions he could make that had nothing to do with nanites, like his sonic device, his flying lab, or the fact that he built a Null Void gun
- No Face was incredibly strong! This showed up in season 1, but it bears repeating here as we see him beat Rex in a straight up fight. I don't think we see many people ever beat Rex in a straight up fight - sometimes they get away or surprise him, but even the more powerful villains tend to lose in fair fights against him. Not this guy though! At least not this season...
- Any episodes delving into Six and his past are great. I forgot (haha) that Six doesn't ever regain his memories after Caesar's device malfunctions. Given how skilled he is with everything else and what he was planning, I do kinda wonder if Caesar ever intended for the memory retrival device to work in the first place.
- Weirdly enough, Breach time travel stuff happens later than I remember, being the season 2 finale. It wasn't bad but felt a little weird as a finale
Heroes United Thoughts:
- Giving this one it's own category cause I have a lot of thoughts on the special. Ben 10 was another favorite series of mine so I remember this crossover being so hype. Going back and rewatching it though, I find it's not as good as I thought? Which isn't to say it's bad but it's less great than I remember
- This is probably because beginnings and endings stick out more in my mind, and it does those pretty well. The middle section, with Rex arbitrarily skeptical and angry with Ben is rather annoying. There's still some good parts to it though, like when they play basketball and then accidentally swap jackets
- It's a little weird how they know that Alpha is going after Rex's nanites and yet they just... send Rex out and take no precautions. They might need Rex to fight Alpha, but it's weird that they take no steps to avoid Alpha getting close, like having Ben take on the frontline and having Rex do ranged support.
- Ben has the Ultimatrix, yet never uses the ultimate forms of any aliens here. Why not? Honestly in general, he sticks to a bunch of weaker/less useful aliens against Alpha for reasons that aren't really clear. Also, the first use of Shocksquatch, and I think the only time Ben uses him before Omniverse
- White Knight is there for a the final confrontation... and does next to nothing. Probably my least favorite showing of him. Also not a fan of wiping out the Bug Jar. It was an interesting location with some fun adventures, but just serves as a set piece after Alpha shows up.
- The moment where Ben uses Upgrade is admittedly epic though, so much so I was surprised that it wasn't what lets them defeat Alpha after he gets Rex's Omega nanite - instead its a combo move of Cannonball and Rex's launcher gun. Which is still cool, but just feels like it could have been done first and Upgrade Rex been what won the battle. Likewise, I think it would have been cooler to have Alpha copy the Omnitrix's powers for the final sequence of the fight and not have that happen earlier
- Okay, enough hating and critique. The beginning of the special, where Ben and Rex fight while Providence and Six clash with Alpha was incredible. Possibly one of my favorite scenes in the show overall. And even with my critiques, I'm still so glad we got to see this crossover, bringing two of my childhood heroes together
Season 3:
- Felt like they tried too hard to show Black Knight and the Consortium as evil/put them and Rex at odds early on. Especially since Rex ends up working with them plenty of times before Black and White (episode 9) when they finally reveal just how evil they are. Feels like we could have slow built up to that before they broke away.
- In general, this season feels a bit worse than the others. The need to have filler episodes kinda hurts things as the plot ramps up (even if I did like some of them, like the band one, which feels like it might have had some meta commentary going on).
- Also, it felt like the episode quality went down. There's more 'splash frames' where they just show a still of the character beating up a villain than the actual action, and a few were there is movement, but it's done in a very rough way, like Rex trying to move a bull. Was the budget running thin here?
- I enjoyed the concept of the Consortium, but I wish we could have seen a bit more personality to these villains, got a better sense of how much power they held around the globe with their financial empires. Got to see some of their unethical deeds in action in ways unrelated to Providence, even.
- God, Caesar's communication skills suck. Like I know he's a bit of an absentminded scientist and likely had to conceal much of what he was planning, but he damn-near doomed the world. Seriously, Rex nearly died and even if he hadn't, had the Consortium listened to Black Knight after they powered up, they would have won. All because Caesar didn't tell Rex that it was all a trick to give Rex the ultimate power
- As much as they had little by way of personality (aside from Black Knight), they were still very epic threats for the finale, and I enjoyed seeing them fight. Really gave a sense of just how strong the Meta Nanites are
- The ending leaves some major questions like why would Breach rescue Van Kleiss and the Pack (especially when she hates the former so much)? What was Black Knight's plan to avoid the depowering? Did it work? How much power did they have left after the Meta Nanites left their system? It seems like a lot of this was meant to set up potential other seasons or alternative media, but can feel a little forced.
- Overall though, I did really enjoy the ending though. It leaves things on a great place, with the world saved and changed for the better, but still needing Rex as its occasional protector.
In general, this series was a blast and I super enjoyed it. Very glad to have watched it again. Let me know what you think and if you have any answers to some of the questions I posted (seriously, there's so much about the post ending I need to know!) and thank you for reading this long ramble on my thoughts of this series.