Ben 10's OTHER Live Action Movie [Ben 10 Alien Swarm] | Billiam

yeah this is billiam there's a second live-action ben 10 movie after the finale of the original ben 10 show cartoon network aired a live action made for tv movie ben 10 race against time and while it really didn't have the best production value it had this whimsical spy kids type charm to it that actually worked in its own way yet when the show's sequel ben 10 alien force had a darker tone and aged the characters up into their teenage years the follow-up live-action film which aired two years later ben 10 alien swarm followed suit with more drama and a darker tone like literally a desaturated darker tone with a much larger budget than the first a lot of the times the sequel looks better than its predecessor but unlike the original film which seems to be in the original show's tonal world i feel alien swarm is a bit disconnected from the show it's based on it's okay max it's not okay but at the same time it gives us an interesting look into how a dc cw teen drama style ben 10 show could be it's interesting and weird so let's talk about ben 10 alien swarm hey beardless billiam here i've come back from the past to tell you about today's sponsor skillshare and while skillshare can't teach you how to time travel skillshare does offer thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people it's a learning community with professionally led classes on topics like photography design video freelancing and more here's the thing future billy is stressed he doesn't have time to put a lot of hours into learning something new but that's cool because skillshare classes are designed for busy people of all skill levels with most classes being under an hour and made up of short lessons designed to fit any schedule and speaking of fitting any schedule i want to recommend the productivity master class by thomas frank create a custom system that works i'm constantly shifting and adjusting my workflow organization based on advice i get and how it works within my own unique workflow i feel like this is a great start for others like me who have trouble managing productivity and i haven't learned to manage my productivity yet so if you're interested in getting lost in your creativity like i have been lost in the past for the past one minute then click on the link in the description the first 1000 people to click it will get 30 off of an annual skillshare membership think of all the skills i could have learned if i started learning in the past thank you so much to skillshare for sponsoring this video by the time cartoon network had started work on a second ben 10 movie a few things had changed that made this one different the first was ben 10 alien force changing the show's setting and the second was cartoon network itself had gone through a major shift by june 17 2009 cartoon network had entered into its cn real era with the whole lineup of live-action and reality tv shows targeted toward a pre-teen teenage audience cartoon network had a heavier hand in this one's production but back in the directing chair is honorary bill alex winter the film had a significantly higher budget than the original with 40 million dollars being put into it there was a tight six-week filming schedule but a pretty beefy cgi budget at least for the time filming locations were also changed from california to georgia so bellwood is looking a bit different because it was filmed so closely to the original a whole new group of actors was cast to represent their characters in their teenage years as well as the role of grandpa max so let's get into it uh ben 10 alien swarm the movie event you know the fda actually makes them label it a movie event instead of a regular movie sort of like cheese versus a processed cheese product loosely taking place in between seasons two and three of ben 10 alien force the movie follows a similar x-files style investigative format oh my god it's kevin's car from the tv show ben 10 alien force in live action kevin levin the former villain turned team bad boy is setting up a sting operation they're trying to bust a black market deal on dangerous alien technology what are you selling alien technology it's the good stuff the good stuff but things get a little tense when ben 10 and his cousin gwen show up who are these jokers man i can't tell you i'm just the middle man one of the dealers named elena immediately recognizes the two elena no way i love how this is presented as a twist no way i had to check the ben 10 wiki to see if i was forgetting who she was this is her first appearance elena's father used to be partnered with grandpa max while working with the plumbers i mean they're gonna pay for this stuff by fixing my toilet i love how they use this same joke in the last movie to explain who the plumbers are they're plumbers the plumbers you mean if i absolutely stuffed my toilet and those pipes just busted wide open and the water started flowing down to the apartment below me and i haven't caught my landlord yet because water's included in the rent so it's not really my problem plumbers like you guys could fix a situation like that today plumbers the plumbers are a secret interplanetary security force oh well can you guys at least make the call to my landlord for me elena tells gwen and ben they are no longer friends because grandpa max betrayed her father who has gone missing elena thinks the chips she's carelessly trying to sell may be dangerous and she's right it's some evil man wearing an evil cloak and a neutral hat he starts controlling the nano chips it's an all-out brawl between our heroes and some chips when uses her powers in live action kevin becomes a rock in live action ben transforms into big chill in live action who actually looks pretty great it's like people don't believe me when i say mothman exists but then they call me an idiot when i show them this picture looks pretty real to me and hey if you're calling me an idiot that's an ad hominem attack that's a logical fallacy who's the idiot now it's you ben kevin and gwen head over to the secret underground plumber base located under the auto shop but hey man tomorrow ben 10 is so cool he can't even go to get his car fixed without someone flirting with him just got hit with some serious uh homework damn ben's a cool guy oh my god it's [Applause] elena look at this new plumber base they're just flexing that 40 million dollars aren't they also i find it funny this was actually filmed at the georgia aquarium where i actually filmed the greatest video i've ever made it's a penguin that's grandpa walks in and asks what the gang is up to but their conversation is cut short when elena gets caught breaking into the lair it's okay max you probably don't recognize her she's it's not okay we find out elena's father stole these chips from the plumbers and grandpa sees it as a heavy betrayal but meanwhile elena feels like she and her father have been betrayed and abandoned by max max tells ben to ignore elena but ben wants to help her so he goes off against the wishes of grandpa and gwen who warns against breaking plumber ranks i order you to stay away from her sorry max i'm not following that order then but then gwen and kevin also go behind grandpa's back to uncover the truth about the micro trips and the falling out between elena's father and grandpa max himself you can't break plumber ranks break the code [Music] better crack that dang judo code like in the original movie i think alien swarm does a pretty okay job filling the roles of these characters i don't particularly love their performance but i feel like if they got a chance to play these characters again which was something that was actually on the table at one point they would have filled out the roles really nicely except for grandpa max who we'll get to it's not okay the bulk of the second act plays out like an investigation ben 10 steals his grandpa's motorcycle he and elena drive their motorcycles to the last known location of elena's father but the cloaked man who is elena's father actually is waiting for them that's a good girl bring them here to us has elena set up a trap for ben 10 the two discover a bunch of shipping slips but suddenly it's a trap there's too many of them like they were expecting us like this is a trap no i swear it the microchips have infected everyone they're infected they're being controlled they're infected they're being controlled yeah they want ben to meet the queen and he's like how about i turn into an alien instead it won't let him transform into another alien what do you think this is a 41 million dollar movie so they scrounge up a few pennies to give ben a couple of vfx shots saving elena's life and several million dollars i'm just some guy i'm not even a chip not that i know anything about chips meanwhile kevin and gwen are pretty bored so they're trying to hack into the plumber database gwen has played differently than her alien force counterpart she's a bit sassier like younger gwen is in the original show which could be how winter directed the character i learned that from watching the science channel your depth of knowledge astounds but also she plays up the prep school side of gwen a lot too which creates a charming contrast between gwen and kevin i did not like kevin the first time i watched this movie but when i watched it again i realized it had absolutely nothing to do with the performance he gets the cocky sarcastic stuff down pretty well they were here kev we're too late yeah that's what i get too it's just kevin's dialogue is also lame beautiful she she's beautiful yakulikara sheep like so lame you're trouble in a jug kevin's supposed to be charming but oh my god he's he's lame he just stands around flexing his muscles yeah how about i flex him in your face we learned that elena's father victor thought the chips were dangerous but max thought he was full of didn't want to do anything about it lad boys say they're nothing but alien tech alien tech that does what grandpa they don't want to hear any of it the gang decides to meet up at the shipit warehouse to investigate the packing slips further but they're ambushed by some guy wait actually it's some chips they turn into some balls it chases after kevin eleven's car from the hit tv show bent on alien force but in live action i can't believe they destroyed kevin eleven's live-action car it had half the screen time so far thank god for motorcycles then ben shows up and transforms into humongousaur i'm like kinda sad he didn't yell the name like in the cartoon that that's like fun in hell yeah it's ben 10 versus wheels a snake they head back to the plumber's base where grandpa is still skeptical of the chips being dangerous despite now being told the same thing by kevin gwen and ben i'm gonna dissect these chips to see what they're made of excuse me you never even examined the chips grandpa literally betrayed his best friend just because he didn't feel like running a super quick analysis of them like it doesn't even take them the afternoon to finish the analysis the central character conflict of this movie event is the ever-changing dynamics of trust between grandpa max ben gwen and kevin and elena the kids think grandpa max may just be having his judgment clouded because he was so hurt by the apparent betrayal of elena's father and grandpa max thinks ben just has a crush on elena and kevin and gwen are caught somewhere in the middle elena was ben's first crush with tension between our group of protagonists being a major plot point there's a lot more mellow drama in this one they're arguing a lot and they talk a lot about grandpa max being their superior officer in the plumbers and that ben is being rebellious by going against ranks but ben is not technically a plumber and grandpa max has never been positioned to be his superior officer between going against plumber ranks and ben stealing his grandpa's motorcycle i feel like they're riding ben with some bad boy twang he and elena go off and do their motorbike courtship dance strange that there's no mention of ben's girlfriend julie in this film there's a delightful whimsy to the original film's cheese and at times that charm carries through to this film is it time oh yeah pal it's time time for you to give us your money fake this scene when victor recruits some new people to the nanochip horde we're talking to you tom don't you notice a bad party town fool just beautiful work however amongst the characters we already know they're going for a more dramatic tone which causes some of the scenes to be more boring than they have to be like when the nano chip zombies push ben and elena to their backs i feel like ben should have come up with something really stupid that turned out to be clever to get out of here i know people can be overly critical of how teens are supposed to talk in movies but seriously how old were some of the people who wrote this dialogue like this is a trap no i swear it like 90 years old because you're not coming with us you're trouble in a jug 200 years old she's trouble in a jug i'm gonna start using that there's a lot of focus too much focus on this disagreement about helping elena and whether or not she should be trusted for some reason both times watching this movie i was actually irritated during all of the disagreements with grandpa max he's just so uncharacteristically stubborn even after the gang says they know the fact that the chips are dangerous he's skeptical like when daphne fred and velma don't believe that scooby and shaggy saw a monster even though they run into a monster like every week grandpa max is patient kind and above all else he always gives people in his life important to him the benefit of the doubt but here he's kind of demanding and unwilling to really explain his point of view stay away from her the validus family is blacklisted there can be no interaction between them and the plumbers he hasn't even analyzed the chips yet this doesn't really feel like grandpa max in fact they don't even call him grandpa max max there's something you need to explain they're in max's office sorry max i'm not following that order i can't even trust max so yeah this is grandpa max he's the grandfather to ben and gwen this is max he just their grandma they traced the chips all over the world using plumber radar technology and pick up that there's chips multiplying everywhere they realize the chips are insect-like and piece together clues to conclude there must be a queen they respond to and if they locate the queen they can take down the drones but oops grandpa still didn't have enough concern about the chips to make sure he didn't let one escape and now he's evil and kind is finished they realize the chips have a higher population density in all major cities around the world and for some reason this one random place in missouri and it happens that's where shippit headquarters is located kevin gives ben a new car in live action and they head off to missouri which was filmed on location in georgia the queen is inside of elena's dad who's creating more chips to be mailed out around the world to totally infect earth that's not my dad he's become some kind of freak they break in and ben turns into a brand new alien nano mac who where's live action cannonball despite the larger budget we only get three alien transformations as opposed to the four in the original movie there's a scene with big chill at the beginning which looks pretty good mothman freezing some stuff the humongous or fight a lot of it looks pretty good a whole lot more effort was put into the environmental effects but they keep cutting away from humongous or and the fight ends with this really janky edit where he uses kevin's car as a weapon i have come to the conclusion that nano chips were a good choice for an enemy for this movie they're kind of like little transformers they morph into different objects and it allows for a lot of variety with the action the nanomech fight is just a mess of graphics like they just blended a bunch of ps1 games together but ben beats the out of the queen i do think nanomech is an okay ben 10 alien he's this little chip size guy who can shrink and shrink and while he does show up again in ben 10 ultimate alien i just don't think revealing a new alien in a live-action movie is the best idea the cool thing about seeing a live-action version of an animated or illustrated property is seeing it realized in a three-dimensional space this final fight would have been much more exciting if ben just pulled out literally any of the aliens we already knew like it could have cast flubber as goop it would have been awesome you could have had the whole area covered in green slime it would have been a fun goof-illed finale a gooey finale instead we get playstation one ben 10. i can easily defeat any funy drone nanomech makes it feel like there's only two of ben's aliens in this movie and that's kind of disappointing because i do feel like the appeal to a tv movie like this is the novelty aspect of seeing the characters we know in 3d the queen is destroyed and everyone is saved grandpa says oopsie-doops then he tells ben he wants him to take over and be in charge of the plumbers but ben tends like no do your own job you lazy grand elena's like hahaha i guess i'm part of the team now and gwen's like you're not on the team gwen's right about that one well the original film was fun for its charm there's a lot more excitement to this one but between the hacking montages guitar riffs soundtrack transformer like villains and also from transformers just a gratuitous number of like vehicle shots kevin's car the motorcycle ben's new car when this movie came out i would have thought it was lame but you know what now watching this movie try too hard to be cool at a particular time it's got this time capsule quality to it i'm glad i watched it i mean it's a tv movie no it's an event it's worth the one hour run time if you like ben 10. do wish they followed through with the plans to do a second and apparently according to the inktank's interview with ryan kelly thank you kuro for pointing this out to me they were even planning on doing a third one potentially i really feel like they could have made this a really fun series and it was actually a huge hit for cartoon network too but the shake-up that led into cartoon network's live-action era kept shaking and the newer direction the channel was going into didn't prioritize 40 million dollars for a live-action tv movie and let me tell you ever try making a sequel to a 40 million dollar movie without 40 million dollars that's that's just trouble and a jug right there all right i fulfilled my promise to use it i don't ever have to say that again so anyways i'm tired i'm stressed i'll see you soon whoa whoa whoa the plumbers you mean if i absolutely stuffed my toilet and those pipes just busted wide open and the water started flowing down to the apartment below me and i haven't called my landlord yet because water's included so [Music] whoa whoa

Channel: Billiam

Views: 413,987

Keywords: Billiam, Ben 10, Commentary, Nostalgia, Ben 10 Alien Swarm, Ben 10 Alien Force, Ben 10 Live Action, Cartoon Network, CN Real, review

Id: LfktTBkVYpU

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021