Dark Angel: Children of the Revolution

August 16, 2008

DARK ANGEL: CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION by Uncanny Antman

review by boon23

I finally finished watching this. Clocking in at about 200minutes it took me actually 3 sessions, which was on the one hand based on not having a lot of time lately and on the other hand on my desire to take a break. But I wanted to finish watching this, so I can say: I was kind of well entertained.

The edit:
This is a good fanedit created from the entire and final season 2 of Dark Angel. The total running time of all the 22 episodes was about 17h, so Uncanny Antman cut out almost 14hours and he did this really well. The focus of his edit never left the Trans-X people breaking out and being hunted, which is by far the most interesting part of season 2 anyway. We get to know the break out, their fight for survival and the final hunt.
This is a well designed plot for a movie, however, it did not work as a movie. The episodic feeling stayed all the time, most of all because of the way climaxes were presented and little stories told from start to finish.
The score also gave that episodic feeling, for it was clearly spottable, when an episode would end and a new one begin.
So I would not call this a movie, but a compressed version of season 2. And as this, it is a great fanedit. There are still loads of scenes worth cutting, when the spoken lines are to cheesy or the effects are to over the top, but still it's fun to watch as it is.
The editing job was done quite well. I would have wished for a different score at times and a bit less embarrassing moments though. Still there are no rough cuts, no flaws to the plot. I was entertained, sometimes bored and sometimes really thrilled.
editing: 4 of 5,
entertainment: 3 of 5

Image quality:
I only watched the avi version (as it was the only version available at that time) and of course the image quality is not the best, but it is still good.
video quality: 4 of 5

Audio quality:
The audio comes in 48000Hz 180 kb/s tot , Joint Stereo, which is not really good. The audio was ok though on my headphones, no hard cuts, but real stereo would have been the least to expect.
audio: 3 of 5

resulting in a 3 of 5 overall rating from me. BUT please keep in mind: This fanedit is a huge improvement over the crappy season 2 of Dark Angel and if I ever had to endure it again, I would for sure rather pick this fanedit. Could the fanedit be further improved? Oh yes. It will never be a masterpiece, but it could lose the episodic presentation and be more like a movie. 120-150 minutes could be perfect.

July 18, 2008

This the final film in my Uncanny Antman marathon and color me impressed once again. This is a totally different beast though, as it attempts to shrink an entire TV season into a “movie.” I’m a Dark Angel fan, have been from day one and I actually really liked the second season. Flawed as it may be, I really dug the mythology of Manticore and the breeding cult, and thought Ames White was a great villain. I also really liked Alec (Jensen Ackles is why I started watching Supernatural). However, I didn’t care for the character of Joshua very much. Although he was a sympathetic character and I didn’t want to see him die (like Jar Jar Binks), he was also really annoying and, for the most part, useless. UA’s edit doesn’t attempt to chop this down into a movie per se, more an enjoyable season for Dark Angel fans. I certainly wouldn’t recommend this for the unitiated, as there are many things left unexplained, characters who appear out of nowhere and exit just as quickly and references to things that happened in Season One (or in episodes that were cut). That being said, the edit is never confusing and, especially for a 200 minute “movie,” it moves at a nice clip. UA’s editing is once again top-notch, of course. It would’ve been nice to see some montages (as cliched as they are), as they may have helped to fill in some of the gaps left by cutting so much material. I definitely had a blast with Children of the Revolution. It’s like a greatest hits collection of Season Two and, like all greatest hits collections, it may not be the most complete version of the story but it’s great for when you just want to rock out with your favorite parts. If you hated Season Two, or were just disappointed by it, then I highly recommend this cut. If you’ve never seen a single frame of DA, then this may not be the best place to start but I think you’ll still have a good time, nonetheless. And, hopefully, it will make you want to watch the other two seasons. Then again, if you’ve never seen DA then you probably don’t own the DVDs. And, if you don’t own the DVDs then why are you downloading this in the first place, hmmm?