Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Difference between revisions

The villains -- who all had [[Obviously Evil]] [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]] like Duke Nukem ([[Name's the Same|not]] [[Duke Nukem|that one]]), Hoggish Greedly, and Looten Plunder -- were [[Strawman Political|strawmen]] who often seemed to want to destroy the planet [[For the Evulz|just because it was the eeevil thing to do]] (though there was often a perfunctory profit-motive involved). This was a sincere, if ''exceptionally'' hamfisted, way of avoiding offense: if the villains had been given [[White and Gray Morality|grayer morality]], then kids might have compared them to their parents or their parents' employers, who are only trying to do their jobs in an efficient manner. To avoid friction, the writers created villains who were intentionally exaggerated and made to be symbols of the planet's environmental problems (rather than representative of the actions of individuals).

 

 

The Captain was also [[The Unexpected]] [[Guest Fighter]] on the [[Mascot Fighter]] ''[[Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion]]''.

* [[The Ace]]: Captain Planet himself, which is kind of unusual for a [[Five-Man Band]] type show in that he himself is not technically part of said band.

* [[Achilles in His Tent]]: "Kwame's Crisis"

* [[Alike and Antithetical Adversaries]]

* [[AI Is a Crapshoot]]: Averted-ish. MAL , Blight's AI henchman, was originally a nice AI who liked to play games, but was reprogrammed by Blight into his current malicious incarnation. He was reverted to his original programming in one episode and then proceeded to help the Planeteers.

* [[Easter Egg]]: In "'Teers in the Hood", [[Scooby Doo|Shaggy and Velma]] are at their high school. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNp6-Q1NH9M At 2:18.]

* [[Element Number Five]]: Heart.

* [[Empathic Weapon]]: The rings, which can't work while in heavy pollution.

** Ma-ti's Heart ring was unable to scan exactly what Hoggish Greedly was doing with Wheeler in a distant temple in one episode, because the very fact he was doing something evil blocked away anything else the ring could detect.

* [[The Gods Must Be Lazy]]: Gaia could easily restore barren land with her [[Fertile Feet]], but chooses not to because [[An Aesop|humans need to learn to take care of their own world]] ([[Broken Aesop|except when we can't and need magic]]). Fair enough. But why can't she just choose another fire ring user when Wheeler [[Refusal of the Call|Refused the Call]] and went back in time to stop himself from accepting it? Okay, maybe the Planeteers are [[The Chosen One|chosen by a higher power]] that even she can't change. It's a guess, but whatever. Now, explain why she decides to take a hundred-year nap in the middle of the goddamn ''industrial revolution,'' then relies entirely on five teenagers to fix a century of her neglect? What the hell, Earth Mother?

** Addressed in "The Unbearable Blightness of Being," where Gaia!Blight's attempted radical ecological alterations (first on her list being to turn the Sahara into a garden) would ultimately end up being just as destructive as the stuff Blight usually does, addressing why Gaia didn't do that herself. Yet this creates ''another problem'', because the Sahara Desert is a natural part of the environment and of course turning it into a garden would be bad. But there's plenty of places ruined by man that she ''could'' be affecting that she just...doesn't. Like cleaning up Chernobyl, or putting out the coal fires in Centralia or refilling the Aral Sea.

* [[Grand Theft Me]]: "The Unbearable Blightness Of Being" features Dr. Blight kidnapping and switching with Gaia's body. This backfires on her when Gaia spends the episode fixing ecological problems with Blight's technology.

* [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]: Linka of "The Soviet Union" is one of the good guys (albeit described as from 'Eastern Europe' after the Berlin Wall fell), and Russia was never played in a negative light until a late episode in the show's run (''Missing Linka''), when Linka goes back to her home in Russia to discover that a hastily abandoned and poorly dug iron mine was responsible for spreading sickness through the groundwater table, highlighting the rampant environmental problems in Russia.

** As long as you don't look under that hair covering part of her face.

* [[Human Ladder]]: Wheeler and Kwame in "A Mine Is a Terrible Thing to Waste (part 2)."

* [[Humans Are Bastards]]: Pretty well averted. While those poor silly humans are always wrecking their planet with wanton disregard, nearly everyone the Planeteers meet (except the eco-villains, of course) can actually be reasoned with. The vast amount of secondary villains who redeem themselves make this clear.

* [[Humongous Mecha]]: Hoggish Greedly and Rigger plan to obtain colossal amounts of crude oil in a very short amount of time with a mobile oil rig in the first episode, "A Hero For Earth". It towers over the trees and [[Kick the Dog|almost smashes a rabbit]] who is ant-sized in comparison, but it still proves to be no match for Captain Planet, and Greedly and Rigger move on to operate smaller yet still destructive machines with a pig-motif instead.

* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: Dr. Blight bears a strong resemblance to her original voice actor, Meg Ryan. The same can be said with varying degrees of accuracy about the other eco-villains and their respective voice actors.

* [[Invocation]]: "Let our powers combine!" and "Go planet!"

* [[Jumped At the Call]]: All of the kids did.

* [[Just a Kid]]: Ma-Ti often feels like he's [[The Load]] of the group, and one of the reasons is that he's just twelve years old, whereas the other Planeteers are all over the age of fifteen.

** Captain Planet ''rules'' this trope, in addition to being a fine example of how [[Incoming Ham]] is done.

* [[Last-Name Basis]]: Wheeler's first name is {{spoiler|Joey}}, and Dr. Blight's first name is {{spoiler|Babs.}}

* [[Legion of Doom]]:

** One episode depicted an alternate timeline in the future after the regular [[Rogues Gallery]] formed a proper evil alliance and conquered the world.

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: The villains have the kind of [[Meaningful Name|Meaningful Names]] that should trigger warning bells for any sane person. Would ''you'' invest in a company with a CEO named Looten Plunder? Or take environmental consulting from Sly Sludge? Would you let a man named Hoggish Greedly drill for oil and mine for coal by your home city? Or let a woman named Dr. Blight...within 50 feet of you?

* [[Nebulous Evil Organization]]: The Eco-villains occasionally organize with each other, though they're more likely to appear alone. None of them are really nice to each other, though Sly Sludge usually uses Dr. Blight's technology. See also the "[[Legion of Doom]]," trope above.

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Somewhat averted. Ma-ti mentions that manure is a good fertilizer in one Planeteer Alert. If it mentions a kind of mammal solid waste, it implies that humans void as well.

* [[No Fourth Wall]]: "Hog Tide", in which Captain Planet sings a part of the show's theme song.

* [[Pungeon Master]]: Captain Planet, Wheeler, and most of the villains.

* [[Reckless Gun Usage]]: In one episode, Wheeler had been showing off his gun-twirling skills with a loaded revolver. The gun went off but [[Animation Age Ghetto|since it's a cartoon]], it hit the sign, making it fall and hit Ma-Ti on the head.

* [[Red Eyes, Take Warning]]: "The Conqueror", where Zarm happens to do this a lot while prompting the Planeteers to take his Gauntlets of Conquest.

* [[Redheaded Hero]]: Wheeler.

** This episode is a prime example of the writer's mantra: "Wheeler is always wrong." Gaia informs Wheeler that this terrible world is all his fault...even though she could have fixed the entire mess by giving the ring to someone else. But apparently, she had no backup candidates in mind, and openly refuses to try and find any, essentially preferring to let the world go to Hell rather than do the extra work. And this, too, is blamed on Wheeler. Furthermore, in the [[Bad Future]], Gaia herself has been killed by pollution, meaning she effectively let herself die because she wasn't willing to find someone to take Wheeler's place. It doesn't help that the reason the Planeteers broke up is they couldn't create Captain Planet without a fifth member. So without a pun-spewing genie in their corner, they couldn't handle it.

* [[Reed Richards Is Useless]]: The team could eliminate most pollution by simply releasing the technology they use in their own vehicles and equipment (since we're told it doesn't pollute at all).

* [[Sailor Earth]]: [http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a323/aaronhong/Misc/Planeteers02.jpg One Captain Planet figure] has him donning an additional suit of armor. Where did it come from? Why, Kylie from Australia, with the Power of Light, of course!

** More likely Stark Industries? That particular toy looks a lot like the Iron Man toys that were coming out at the same time.

* [[Science Is Bad]]: Though played straight with the character of Dr. Blight, all the other scientists are good. In fact, the show promotes the use of science and technology in a good way.

** Supposedly the technology on the island is perfect eco-technology from the future that lets a supersonic jet fly off solar power. [[Reed Richards Is Useless|However, they don't share this technology with anyone else]], nor do they go into how the mining for rare earth elements for solar power isn't actually sustainable)

* [[Secret Test of Character]]: Greedly's grandfather, green industrialist Don Porkaloin, fakes his bloody death and leaves a bogus fortune to his grandson to test if Greedly could be taught to be environmentally conscious. [[Captain Obvious|Nope]].

* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]: Ma-Ti and Wheeler.

** Wheeler does several shout-outs to certain shows and movies.

{{quote| '''Linka:''' "How can you think about pizza with what is happening to those turtles!?"<br />

** The season 6 opening rap song. "Mega Mac Daddy of Ecology" indeed.

* [[The Troubles]]: Again, "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast": quite possibly the worst treatment of this subject in fiction ever.

* [[Verbal Tic]]: Hoggish Greedly always snorts like a pig when he talks.

* [[Villainous Glutton]]: Hoggish Greedly, obviously. He even ate his own horse while in the middle of a desert once, because he really was that hungry. He's also meant to represent how acquiring vast amounts of natural resources damages the environment.

** Though in a display of [[Genre Savvy]], the planeteers were able to invert this with [[Evil Twin|Captain Pollution]] and were able to repulse his initial attack by... spraying him with water. Captain Pollution was also shown to be vulnerable to fresh air and concentrated sunlight.

** Also, volcanoes put out millions of tons of what can be termed as pollutants. Toxic gas, carbon dioxide, particulates... and yet lava heals him.

** In the alternate future created by Wheeler not joining the Planeteers, Ma-Ti does exactly that... using the power of Heart to brainwash people passing by into giving their money to the less fortunate.

** It also works with Heart's opposite power: Hate. In a time travel episode, [[Adolf Hitler]] emanates so much Hate his mere presence harms Captain Planet the same way toxic substances do.