Voltron Live Action Short

11/02/2011

Can you guess what my favorite cartoon was as a kid spanning the mid '80s to late '90s? I'll give you five tries. Care Bears? They were adorable, and I *am* Grumpy Bear (also Grumpy dwarf and Oscar the Grouch), but no. Inspector Gadget? I was already old enough by then for him to annoy the living crap out of me. He-Man or She-Ra? Cool tiger and horse, but that's not enough. That counts as two, cheater. Transformers? Close. Probably number three on the list. I will always love a big sentient robot that can turn into a car. Okay, then it's gotta be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Getting warmer. Donatello is my guy. And that damn Nintendo game was freakin' hard for a 10-year-old! Okay, so how about Voltron? Finally! Seriously, the answer was in the post title. By the way, you didn't win. I said five guesses not seven.

To me, Voltron was the best. It's the only one I ever dreamed about, and, strangely enough, I dreamed about it not in cartoon form but live action. It wasn't so much the stories or characters that I gravitated towards; it was the lions, which is how I assume it was for most. I was hooked as soon as I saw them form Voltron for the first time. They were so cool that if I were suddenly rich enough today, a life-sized red lion replica would be the first thing that I spent money on, and it just so happens that Timothy Omundson (Carlton Lassiter, also fondly known as Lassie, the hilarious no nonsense cop on Psych) is playing the red lion pilot in this. It's only a couple minutes long, but packs in tension, emotion, and the isolation of being dead in the water. There's a lot of heart in this tiny gem.

I would get out of the pool on a hot summer day just to watch Voltron. No time to change, I'd sit on a few towels and let the air conditioner freeze me. For that half hour I was immovable. So, when I see something like this, something that's not a parody and actually takes the material seriously enough to be believable and quite damn good, that's impressive. I just want to give a big hug to all involved.