He is the wild blue yonder. The front line in a never-ending battle between good and not-so-good. He is The Tick, and now, he’s played by low-key comedy genius Peter Serafinowicz in Amazon’s new live-action series.
For fans of older iterations of the satirical blue superhero, it may be difficult to envision the British actor, whose recognition this side of the pond isn’t quite where it deserves to be, in the same shoes as Patrick Warburton, whose pitch-perfect cartoonish take on the character made the tragically short-lived tv show a cult favorite (and worthy successor to the 1994 animated series, featuring Townsend Coleman as the voice of the titular hero).
As discussed in IGN's review of The Tick, Amazon’s take on the show looks to be just as irreverent and surreally hilarious as the story has always required, but with a slightly grimmer edge. But lest you worry this is just the latest attempt to grab cash by ramping up the violence of a comic book story, or that Serafinowicz couldn’t possibly measure up to Warburton’s timeless turn as The Tick, ahead we’ve got irrefutable proof that the British comedy veteran has got what it takes to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere.
Most of these reasons discuss old shows, films and movies, but a few (particularly People of Earth are more recent), so beware of SPOILERS.
The Tick, created by Ben Edlund in 1986 as a mascot for Boston-area comic shop chain New England Comics, is a spoof of American comic book heroes. If Watchmen had taken itself way, way, waaaay less seriously (or The Incredibles moreso) we would probably end up with some similar bits of commentary about superheroes causing gigantic amounts of damage while saving cities from villains as we get from The Tick. Luckily for us, Serafinowicz is no stranger to straight-faced, absurdist satire.
The BAFTA-nominated series Look Around You, written and created by Serafinowicz and Robert Popper, ran on BBC2 in 2002 and 2005. It was a spoof of 1970’s/1980’s era educational programs often shown in public schools. It’s formatted as a science and discovery show, featuring nonsensical experiments done on-camera with made-up lab equipment and using era-authentic 16mm film. For a taste of the classically dry British comedic satire, check out this clip (featuring none other than Edgar Wright as a scientist):
Speaking of Edgar Wright, here’s another example of Serafinowicz killing it (pun intended) in a satirical project that nails and celebrates the tropes of its genre, in this case, zombie horror. While Serafinowicz, as uptight straight-man Pete, doesn’t get the chance to flex his comedic chops nearly to the degree that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do (the “f**k-a-doodle-do” line and censored edition of “go live in the shed, you thick funk!” notwithstanding), he does manage to be a spectacularly frightening zombie while looming over Shaun in the bathroom.
And his hair-trigger, beleaguered temperament while still alive, which we only really see on display during his small amount of screen-time at the start of the film, lingers such that his flatmates are almost too afraid to steal his car even after he’s died and joined the ranks of the undead. The sinister edge he lent the short-lived Pete will definitely serve the slightly darker updated Tick in Amazon’s series. If, like us, you obsessively watched every single DVD extra on Shaun of the Dead as teenagers, then you were also treated to this Beatles version of the kitchen argument between Pete and Shaun:
Though it only ran for seven episodes, the sketch-comedy series helmed by Peter Serafinowicz (along with Robert Popper, again) demonstrates the maniac-levels of commitment the newest Tick is capable of delivering to absurd comedic premises. Serafinowicz carried this devotion so far that, when the series was cancelled, he issued a mock BBC interview on YouTube claiming to have left the show by choice, because he was "unhappy with the BBC's decision to not recommission the series."
The show was essentially a platform for the actor’s myriad celebrity impressions, from each one of the Beatles to Kevin Spacey, as well as original characters like the cult favorite nonsensical salesman Brian Butterfield. Though the list of laugh-out-loud sketches is impressively long for such a short-lived show, by far one of the best is “Darth Vader in Love,” which makes excellent use of both Serafinowicz’s voice acting skills, and surprisingly original mouth-breathing gimmicks:
The immensely popular action role-playing game Dark Souls II boasted a more powerful graphics engine and advanced AI system than the first installment, and earned acclaim from a number of critics (including our own Marty Silva, who scored it 9 out of 10). Peter Serafinowicz had been such an avowed superfan of the first Dark Souls (fun fact: he’s called the Souls series a cross between Zelda and Resident Evil 4) that he wanted the chance to do voicework in the sequel, having already experienced videogame voice acting with roles in Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior and Lego City Undercover.
In Dark Souls 2, he helped transcend Mild-Mannered Pate into a notable, standout NPC. In an interview with Vice, Serafinowicz said of his own character, “There are so many things that are oblique. Not even I know, truly, what Pate's intentions were." Serafinowicz has done plenty of voice acting for games, but his role in Dark Souls II showcases perfectly how his involvement in a property helps elevate a character.
In his small but memorable role as Denarian Saal of Nova Corps in Guardians of the Galaxy, Serafinowicz demonstrated a similar, if far more straight-faced, single-minded pursuit of justice to that of The Tick. Here, it’s the same aggressively serious mannerisms which made the pre-zombified Pete so easy to laugh at (nervous laughter, at least) in Shaun of the Dead that make Saal an effective foil for his bumbling partner, Corpsman Dey (played by John C. Reilly). Though his character is killed in the battle on Xandar, there’s always the slight possibility that we’ll see Saal again, if the storyline from the comic books is taken into account. Just watch how he steals the show (and became the go-to quote for the movie) based on the first trailer:
One of Serafinowicz’s most recent roles is that of Eric, the floating sentient cube on TBS’s subtly dark, offbeat alien abduction comedy series People of Earth. We meet Eric right at the end of Season 1/the opening of Season 2, when he/it is revealed as the new boss in charge of the alien invasion of Earth. To give a memorable voice performance as a tiny, nearly featureless box is no easy feat, but Serafinowicz pulls it off remarkably. The character speaks in a blandly unidentifiable accent, and constantly uses an upbeat tone that almost covers the implied threat of lines like “Work can be fun, especially when we work together.”
Eric betrays almost no emotion, but his mysterious seizure of command over the substation and ability to scan living beings for information about their emotions and secrets leave much of his true intentions to the imagination, and none of it good. Serafinowicz’s impressive ability to pull all this off in brief, robotic lines points again to the possibility that this newest Tick may have more going on beneath the blue armor than a simple blind devotion to justice. In lieu of available Eric the Cube clips, please enjoy this instructional video for aliens, made by “The Visitors for Human Collaborators on Edité-Frignim (Earth)” (Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper again, 2013).
Do you think Serafinowicz is as worthy of his moment as we do? Let us know in the comments! And for more on The Tick, make sure to check out our exclusive set visit report, as well as our review of the first half of Season 1.
Lauren is a freelance writer and artist who can be followed at @YasBruja.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire