Captain LaserHawk: A Blood Dragon Remix
When it comes to Captain LaserHawk, there’s a lot going on. That’s what I learned when I was invited to attend a publicity event where we could do a Q&A about this series with creator and director Adi Shankar.
I’d already seen all six episodes of Captain Laserhawk on Netflix, but was excited to get the opportunity to watch the first episode on the big screen at AMC theaters in The Grove, and also learn all about this character.
The idea for Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, is that it takes all of Ubisoft’s most popular franchises and reimagines major characters in this storyline.
The world for this animated, adult series, is set in the 90s. America is now Eden, a corrupt, tech-focused, totalitarian society. It opens with Captain Laserhawk and his boyfriend Alex Taylor trying to steal a gadget that will make it so they don’t have to work ever again. But then, Alex betrays Captain Laserhawk. The Captain ends up in prison with new teammates, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty epic battle for him to break free and find out what’s going on with Eden, Alex, and everything else.
The first episode was super fun to see on the big screen, and smashes together all kinds of popular characters from the Ubisoft franchise. One of the funniest parts, is with Niji Six, a squad that reminds you of the power rangers, but are referred to as ‘Rainbox Six Siege.’ Adi Shankar has the main characters call them ‘the gummi bear gestapo’ instead. All the episodes have quick, hilarious comments like this, and also lovingly poke fun at a number of Ubisoft’s most serious franchises.
During the Q&A, I learned that Adi Shankar is one of the best people to make a show like this, because he’s always created his own fan fiction. He’s the creator of ‘Bootleg Universe,’ which was a YouTube series of one-off fan films where he presented different stories he wanted to see with popular characters. It grew into a successful brand. Shankar said he got his start as a kid making up stories for his favorite shows. For Q&A, he reminisced about enjoying making up final episodes for shows he liked watching. In one example, Shankar described telling another kid he saw a special secret episode where Captain Planet died. Then, he described the episode in detail. The other children would often believe him.
This seems to have paid off, Captain Laserhawk shows a real depth of knowledge about all of Ubisoft’s major franchises, is action packed, funny, and also queer. Shankar’s choice to have Captain Laserhawk and Alex Taylor be a gay couple gives the action a unique twist.
If you like anime, Ubisoft, and Shankar’s other work, you’ll love this series. If you don’t know all the Ubisoft references, the series is still fun to watch. I was familiar with some of the characters, but not all of them, and it’s not necessary to be a super fan to enjoy the series. But, it probably makes it even more fun.
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