Gen¹³

• Directed by Kevin Altieri
• July 17, 1998 (Wizard World Chicago)
• Based on Gen¹³ created by Jim Lee Brandon Choi, and J. Scott Campbell

Voice Cast

• Caitlin Fairchild-Alicia Witt
• Colonel John “Jack” Lynch-John de Lancie
• Edward Chang/Grunge-Flea
• Roxy Spaulding /Freefall-Elizabeth “E.G.” Daily
• Matthew Callahan/Threshold-Mark Hamill
• Ivana Baiul-Lauren Lane
• Helga Kleinman-Cloris Leachman
• Stephen Callahan-John De Mita
• Rachel-Kath Soucie
• Additional Voices-Corey Burton, Julia De Mita, Debi Derryberry, Dave Fennoy, Alex Fernandez, Jamie Hanes, John Hostetter, Mary Kivala, Dakin Matthews, Matt McKenzie, Matt K. Miller, Andy Philpot, Pamela Segall, Mike Sorich, and Ahmet Zappa

A teenager is offered a place in a school for gifted children but learns the institute is really a military project to turn children into super soldiers.

While (sorta) familiar with the comic, I was unaware for some time that a Gen¹³ movie even existed. I had heard about Gen¹³ years ago but not by word of mouth or articles. Rather I learned it existed by having come across it at a bootleg retailer while attending Baltimore Comic-Con. I didn’t feel like buying a potentially poorly made DVD of a movie about a property that I only collected the first one or two issues of its first volume. But God bless YouTube! You can find multiple versions of it there in varying degrees of pretty decent quality.

I cannot say I was too impressed by Gen¹³. For starters the animation looks like mid 90s cheap Saturday morning animation making the total presentation a bit generic. The character designs bare a passing resemblance in style to the animated WB shows of the era. The general environments are not that strong on detail and look more like they were ripped from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero or GI Transformers. While those types of sparsely detailed environments work for those shows, for something that has heavier dialogue and is action light as this is not so much.

The story is an odd mix of the 90 Saturday morning style with characters meant to be edgy for kids and some definitely more adult material. There is one character that’s essentially a comedic surfer dude yet there are mentions of condoms and several moments of implied or tastefully hidden nudity. Who was the target audience here? There is mature without being inappropriate for kids and then there is adult. This just did not know which to be.

This feels like an origin story/series pilot for an animated show that never happened and not something meant to entertain as a bit of direct-to-video marketing. While I don’t know if this was intended as a pilot film, it certainly comes off as such. It sets up the villain and establishes the core team and the general scenario in which they must function. But there’s no defeat or implied defeat of the villain. Rather they are essentially chased away from their headquarters with just about everything they need to continue their villainy.

As a series pilot this is great. As a one-off movie it leaves far too much dangling. There is too much up in the air for it to even feel like a token ending. The trick as always is to give enough that there is a sense of conclusion but that one could build future films or series from if warranted.

The voice cast for Gen¹³ is rather stacked with not only voice acting talent but just general acting talent. Coris Leachman shows up here basically doing Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein. Seriously. There are also the likes of Alicia Witt, John “Q” de Lancie, Flea, E.G. Daily, Lauren Lane, and Kath Soucie. And you can forget Mark Hamill? Aside from being Luke Skywalker, he also showed genuine brilliance in his part as The Joker in Batman: TAS. He’s not so much The Joker as he is Mark Hamill playing Matthew Callahan/Threshold. It seems like they were trying to push Threshold as a real psycho, but he just comes off as dangerous ultimately.

The main thing holding this back though is not the story, but the poor animation. This was just a bit of marketing clearly, but that doesn’t mean it looks like it came straight from Saturday mornings. The characters don’t always fit with their environment in scale and some of the stuff looks painfully two dimensional without depth.

Gen¹³ is nothing edgy or highly original, but what it does it does very well. It entertains. But because of previously noted issues, I think the only people that will really find strong enjoyment are comic book fans familiar with the original iteration or even comic book fans who are familiar with the idea now but wanted to see how it was put together back then.

If interested word is this was released somewhere in Europe. It never got a wider theatrical release or even a legit physical release. This and that changed hands and while the film rights were in the hands of one group, the property rights were in the hands of another and since those two are currently trying to get their own superhero film universes together or just keep them going it’s highly unlikely that this will ever see a release beyond bootlegs. So your only hope to see this is YouTube.

In the end, Gen¹³ is an adequate movie. Not great but not bad. Even safe maybe. Proceed with caution.