SAMURAI JACK’s Comic-Con Footage Proves The New Series Will Be Ultra Badass!
I had the opportunity to attend the Samurai Jack panel at Comic-Con this past weekend, and if you are a fan of the franchise, you are going to absolutely love what Genndy Tartakovsky is doing for the return of the series!
Tartakovsky is going to take this series to a whole new level and is going to cross lines that have never been crossed in the series before. With the series set to continue on Adult Swim, there’s a lot they can do that they couldn’t do before.
While talking about the series Tartakovsky showed off an animatic of the first scene of the first episode of the upcoming series. He explained that as the images played out on the screen he was going to pitch it to the audience the same way that he would pitch it to the studio. It was incredibly entertaining, and it’s one of those things you just had to be there for to really appreciate. Tartakovsky was so into it and the crowd exploded in laughter and cheers as he pitched the scene.
In the scene a alien mother and daughter are being hunted down by a horde of villainous beetles. As the beetles surround them, the mother and daughter speak to each other in the form of emoji symbols between their antenna’s on their head.
As they are saying good-bye to each other, there’s a rumbling in the distance, and we see the silhouette of a warrior riding on a motorcycle coming in to save the day. The warrior is wearing this elaborate armor and a helmet with long horns coming out of the top of them. The beetle’s heads turn and look as he rides in to greet them and from there the warrior just goes ballistic!
He just starts tearing into the beetles and brutally destroying them. The warrior has a spear with razor sharp places on one end and an electric shocking device on the other, and he’s just rocking their world. At one point we see him stick the spear into one of the petals and the shot follows the spear into the guts. It cuts back to the warrior twisting the spear then cuts back to the insides as we see the guts bloodily twisted. The warrior then pulls out the spear with an explosion of blood.
As the warrior is fighting, his helmet gets knocked off, and we come to learn the the warrior is Jack, forty years older, with long hair and a beard. We’ve already seen a image of him and he is freakin’ badass! Jack continues to fight, and at another point he gets on his burly motorcycle and as he pops it up for a wheelie the front tire ejects some crazy looking spikes. He then proceeds to rev the engine as the front wheel spins wildly onto the head of one of these beetles and he just completely obliterates it!
After Jack has demolished the horde of beetles, he picks up his helmet, puts it on, and rides off into the sunset without saying a single word to the mother and daughter. They are just left there among the blood and guts of their dead attackers. The little girl thanks Jack with her emoji talk as he rides away.
I really wish you could see that all for yourself because it was pretty damn epic. Like I said, they take Samurai Jack to a new level of insanity that fans of the series are going to love. The wanted to do something special and different with the series, and it looks like they succeeded in that.
They talked about the series during the panel and explained that they’ve allowed time to pass and they wanted to come a different point in Jack’s life. They explained that he’s been on a quest for so long and this series will pick up at the tail end of this quest. Jack is feeling lost in this world, and they are going to play with what is going on in his head. They also talked a lot about being inventive with the style of the new series and being bold by trying new things that they didn’t do before.
The panel ended with an actual animated clip from the series in which we see a group of Aku worshipers in a cave/temple wearing black cloaks. There is a woman giving birth on a rock and over the course of the scene she gives birth to seven babies who are all laid out on an alter in front of an Aku shrine. The woman giving birth is screaming and the babies are crying. The woman who lays the babies on the alter says, “Seven daughters to do your bidding master. They will succeed where so many others have failed and we will find favor in your glory.” That's where the clip ends.
So much greatness awaits fans of this series and what we saw was just a little taste of what is to come! I can’t wait to see the return of Samurai Jack!