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IT'S RANT TIME
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The good part about having such a flopped account is that I can take advantage of my own insignificance to avoid the analyzes and rants I promised to do 45 years ago.
Like this one:
and how much of overlooked it is. Like... people dont address the way that Max failed Victor and Elena enoUGH not enough for me one day i
That said:
Do you know the difference between a happy family and a broken one? A Max Tennyson.
and thats why Victor and Elena Validus are the most wronged characters in Ben 10!!!!
No shade, but there is a pattern because, not content with being a bad father to Carl and Frank, Max went and removed Victor Validus' right to be a father too!
There are still controversies about what of Alien Swarm is canonical and what isn't, but none of their characterizations have ever been taken seriously, so… 365 so fresh!
OK. Victor Validus is an emblematic character in his own right… A serious symptom of the disease that Ben 10 never really addressed - the complete uselessness of the plumbers and the way corruption has made this institution so dysfunctional and unfair. I like the way the movie acknowledges that Max acted in bad faith - more than once - and how, in the end, he realizes it. What annoys me is that NONE of the serious mistakes made by the plumbers, individually or at an institutional level, have negative repercussions for them in the series. The faith placed in the Plumbers is NEVER shaken, on the contrary, the position of plumber is something to be aspired to even by an ex-offender like Kevin… though the organization is highly deficient, flawed, vulnerable, negligent and inflexible. The protagonists themselves, as generous and “virtuous” as they are, seem oblivious to the recurrence of certain mistakes.
WAIT what does Tennyson have to do with it? it is self-explanatory (if you watched the movie), so let's get to the point… Well, the Tennysons are part of the only group in the series that has a level of autonomy in relation to EVERY institution/nation/system/organization/kingdom you can imagine. Often, they even influence them. So much so that from the Poison (Max) Elena saw where she could find the cure (Ben) because if a Tennyson had the freedom to make mistakes, only another Tennyson would fight for the freedom to make it right.
The series has always oscillated between the values attributed to the plumbers and they have always been good at reminding us that appearances can be deceiving, which means that, yes, there is diversity between the perspectives presented, the problem is that impunity has always prevailed.
How many plumbers teamed up to immobilize the Validus? Countless, I bet. How many were censured for failing to investigate, prevent or contain the swarm? Probably none.
“It's a kids' show, that sort of thing doesn't fit the story.” nah that's an excuse that doesn't stick with me because the franchise took itself seriously enough to explore topics that reverberate in society to this day. Racism, illegal immigration, deficiencies in the prison system, ethnic cleansing, slavery, the existence of militias, even stockholm syndrome!!!!! In fact, the franchise is constantly celebrated for being "ahead of its time". Please! Some things are just plain incoherent.
Now, isn't it funny how Max destroying an innocent man's life, condemning his daughter to a life of contempt, loneliness and stigma, trying to discredit her pleas for help, being the real culprit for the advance of microships through his own omission and negligence, has never been cause for judgment or made him less loved by the fanbase? When I say that the crimes committed by plumbers are ignored by the series… It's because they ARE. Literally. And by extension, by the fanbase. Female characters are judged more for looking down on Ben than Max is for being incompetent.
So let's talk about Elena. Because what they did to her was a massacre.
Yes, it's going to get hazy because UAF inserted a plot twist that shattered the Elena of the movie, but everything about her was more interesting than the series used to allow. At least in the beginning. It's very subtle, but if you think about it carefully, you can see that she was one of the best parallels they made with Ben. Like, seriously, apart from being the only female character who played soccer, she was the plumber's daughter crossing heaven and earth to rescue the parental figure who was supposed to be her protector, she was obstinate enough to face Gwen and Kevin without backing down, intelligent enough to decode the nature of the chips, to know how to attract the only person who could stand up to the queen and conduct an investigation independently. SHE WAS A TEENAGER. WITHOUT ANY SUPPORT. No omnitrix or mana to help.
However, the writers of UAF decided to make two or three episodes about the events of the movie as a form of marketing. And, for some reason, the two episodes revolve around the hormones of a teenager who is highly inclined to commit infidelity after a kidnapping and about how crazy the two characters who are his love interests (including the one who was kidnapped) are.
I DO give it the benefit of the doubt because i was able to extract some very interesting things from Revenge of the Swarm and The Perfect Girlfriend. In both we witness a level of desperation that rarely any character reaches. Also: 1 - We discovered that a lot of Elena actions were the result of devastating, self-destructive grief. 2 - We had the reintroduction of a REALLY dangerous (?) villain. 3 - And I liked her design. 4 - We saw a very strange demonstration of her hunger for connection - and attempts of control that weren't exclusively tied to the old imperialist agenda that always concerned villains like Vilgax or the Incursians etc. 5 - There was self-sabotage. 6 - And to MY delight *though very briefly* Ben and Julie synchronized on one thing: both tried to reach the consciousness of the old Elena at critical moments and both showed genuine concern for her, despite being her biggest targets. So far, these two have been the only ones to do so. How ironic… ⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊
by the way, i have a predilection for some of the elements inserted into the plot of The Perfect Girlfriend, you know, the sounds of Persona (1966) and The Stepford Wives (2004) echoed there, but we don't need to talk about it now. ⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚
but like ... NONE of that mattered in the end. Elena turned to DUST before our eyes. She ends The Perfect Girlfriend saying that they would see her again and then SHE WAS NEVER SEEN AGAIN (does THAT appearance in omniverse count? I don't think it should).
There is very little emphasis on the fact that father and daughter - probably the only family they had - were abandoned by everyone because of the crimes of which THEY WERE victims. Elena had her life stolen from her and was reduced to a Yandere. The queen was never defeated. Those who expelled Victor for a smuggling operation that never happened subsequently showed very little interest in taking any action against the queen or in locating the microships in any way (in UAF, when they resurface) The plumbers? They never really helped with anything. But, for heaven's sake, the end of the MOVIE suggested that things had been resolved. Why untie the knots made in the movie and why, in two episodes dedicated to exploring a love triangle that wasn't a triangle, wasn't love, wasn't anything? The plot twist isn't even the crux of my criticism, but what blossomed from it. Girl, nothing came of it. What was OKAY became UNNECESSARY. For what? Not even God knows.
Well, anyway…
Victor and Elena suffered and died far from those they once trusted. That's what was left for them.
And it's a shame, honestly!
