Series Review: Gen V is cynical, violent, authentic and honest

When we think of superheroes, the first thing that comes to mind is the classic pop culture icons, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, X-Men, and many more, all of them have gone through changes throughout their history, They have evolved themselves to adapt to a more modern environment.

Not everything has been said nor is it the end of an era that has been more than productive for the studios, whether they earn millions of dollars at the box office or are a complete failure, these films and television series are liked by everyone and everyone.

Comics have been the main source of inspiration for these stories and these characters to become real on screen, in the very particular case of The Boys created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson came to give that dark and sinister turn to these heroes.

As a television series in its 3 seasons, The Boys has been a success for its crudeness, its violence, for touching on political themes, the intrigues, and how well structured its characters are, this chaotic universe is completely apart from what we all already know. , where no one is all good.

In 2023, The Boys franchise evolves with the development of Craig Rosenberg, Evan Goldberg, and Eric Kripke and serves as a spin-off of The Boys, based on the comic book arc of The Boys We Gotta Go Now, Gen V promises that nothing is what it seems.

What is the series about?

At America’s only college for gifted teens, talented students test their moral and personal limits as they compete for the college’s highest ranking and the chance to join The Seven, Vought International’s elite superhero team. , when the school’s dark secrets come to light, each of them must decide what kind of heroes they want to be.

Interestingly, a spin-off is being made of a series that at the time caused a lot of controversy for being strictly for adults, its graphic and explicit violence brought more followers and alienated some more, there is no doubt that this work has evolved and now they present to a group of young people who want to occupy a place in this world either because they want to help people or to gain fame and money.

This popular genre, whether in film or television, has come to saturate the general public for a few years now, the varying box office figures and the critical work on the failures of many franchises are what is most talked about on social networks, being DC has had the worst productions, while Marvel is already seeing the twilight of what was a glorious era for them. Since the premiere of the Prime Video series The Boys in 2019, it has managed to do something that other superhero movies or television shows had not even imagined, attracting more serious criticism and debates about the genre at hand.

When it was announced in September 2020 that there would be a spin-off of The Boys, both fans and critics were surprised that this franchise could expand even further. Talking about a spin-off as such is not so easy if it is not They have things very clear because it is precisely at this point that other productions have had a resounding failure and proof of this is the various Star Wars series that Disney + has, this was planned to introduce us to new characters that “study” in a university.

The above may sound very well known, but there was already a great cinematic failure in the X-Men franchise with the film New Mutants that promised to have a group of teenage mutants in an environment more of horror than adventure and that did not work, in Partly due to the numerous changes and the global situation that existed at that time, the truth is that what starts badly ends badly.

Gen V is not only a series that promises to be spectacular but also wants to deal with other types of topics and the typical problems of a teenager in a university, we have the typical sports team with possible superstars, the pretty girl who is the handsome boy’s girlfriend, the misfit, the nerd, the gay, the African American and all those clichés that we have seen thousands of times but the twist here is that they all have superpowers, we have the fire boy, the one who can control minds, the telekinetic, the who can become small, the invisible boy, the one who can change gender, the one who has super strength and the one who can control his blood and make it a weapon, yes, it sounds stupid but that’s how it is and he is precisely the central character of this story.

It all begins with a girl named Marie Moreau (Jaeda LeBlanc) who gets her menstrual period for the first time, surprised by not knowing what is happening to her, which seems very absurd if we take into account that we are in the 21st century. and he is even more so when his blood begins to float as if the substance had a will of its own, from this event what will happen next is even stranger and more violent, his mother on the other side of the bathroom door wants to enter to see what happens and by doing it by accident this tender and innocent young girl releases part of her blood, killing her mother and then doing the same with her father before the eyes of her little sister.

This beginning is intended to be as shocking as the first minutes of the pilot episode of the first season of The Boys when A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) kills Hughie Campbell’s (Jack Quaid) girlfriend, it is not surprising what we see if we already We know what things are about in this series, a violent beginning to give way to more violence is the charming thing about this show in which super abilities and the consequences that this can bring to normal people are involved in a very irresponsible way.

We continue with Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) who is already a traumatized teenager who desperately wants to escape her past and become what she has always dreamed of, a superhero. After what happened to her parents, her sister is separated from her and adopted by another family. while having to deal with his acceptance to Godolkin University, a crime-fighting school that specifically houses students with superpowered abilities where they will be taught more than the basics and that is to understand and know how to use those abilities in the world around them. if they want to become the best.

Gen V is not only the portrait of the trite and cliché-filled teenage student life, it is also the portrait of the emotional and, above all, social disorder that they face, going from being stupid teenagers to responsible adults, as is to be expected if we have a group such as the use of drugs, sex, more drugs and more sex but not everything is as it seems in this fantastic school on the night of her arrival Marie sees how the security personnel employed by the university take into their custody a young man allegedly drugged who uses his powers to take them all down and in the end, he is subdued and taken to another place, later it is revealed that this boy is Sam (Asa Germann) an essential character in the story, without understanding what he has seen. is overlooked until other mysterious events make her and her new friends believe that this is not an isolated incident and that perhaps these students are not the ones causing harm but there is something more going on.

The plot begins to reveal the dark secrets and mysteries of this university, beneath it and in the basement there is an entire facility where problematic young people with emotional and mental disorders are held captive, they are potentially dangerous because they have super abilities, All this is out of the eye of the beholder in a facade made to distract the world’s attention, it is not surprising that Vought International is the one behind all this, at the end of the day the supers are good business for the company and the whole world.

Along with this, it is revealed that none of these young people were born with super abilities but that their parents injected them with compound V when they were born to follow a production line that guarantees that there will be supers in the world and which also ensures multimillion-dollar profits for its creators.

When Richard Brinkerhoff, a renowned professor at Godolkin University and president of the Anti-Crime Department, informs Luke Riordan (Patrick Schwarzenegger) aka Golden Boy that he is already part of The Seven after the departure of Annie January (Erin Moriarty) aka Starlight, and Margaret Shaw (Dominique McElligott) aka Queen Maeve of the team, the company plans to revamp it and make this something new.

A crazy night of drinking turns into a night of horror when the group attends a bar where Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo) uses his magnetic manipulation powers to impress a girl, things get out of control when he fatally injures her. a woman and it is Marie Moreau who uses her powers to try to save her, thus being exposed, she is expelled from the university by Richard who in turn receives a visit from Luke who, using his powers, kills him and then causes a fight in the who finally commits suicide.

Without intending to, Marie becomes a hero in the eyes of the public and her fellow students, becoming one of the most popular students overnight and becoming the first African-American freshman on the power rankings list. But not everything is what it seems. After that dazzling popularity, problems also come and of course, making enemies. When she attends an interview, Marie questions her integrity because she knows that she is not the heroine that everyone believes. She used this to stay and continue her training under the advice and tutelage of Superintendent Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn) who naively believes she can help her become what she most desires.

This is the premise of these 3 episodes that Prime Video premiered and they are:

1. God U.

Congratulations! You have been chosen to attend Godolkin University and will be delighted to be part of an unforgettable journey to discover what kind of super you are, since its founding in 1965 Godolkin University has had as graduates the best and brightest superheroes in the world! have met including three members of The Seven.

2. First Day.

The Godolkin University Mental Health Hotline would like to remind students that they are not alone in this difficult time, you may be bulletproof and invulnerable on the outside, but on the inside, we understand how difficult it can be for a student to cope. Our caring staff is trained to address the specific emotional needs of superheroes and is here to help however you need it remember that if you need to talk to someone, help is just a phone call or message away. #GodCares.

3. #ThinkBrink.

You’re invited to the #ThinkBrink Memorial Fundraising Gala tonight at Godolkin University, be sure to dress your best to dazzle everyone with your red carpet presence, then join the world’s hottest superheroes and celebrities to take selfies with them and upload them to your social networks while you drink a glass of champagne, we will have a moving tribute video to the legendary Professor Brinkerhoff featuring the participation of A-Train, The Deep and Polarity.

As the series progresses we can seem to move further away from its original concept and immediately take on its personality, although we meet several characters from this world such as the son of a bitch Homelander (Antony Starr) or the perverted and stalker Deep ( Chace Crawford) or the bold idiot A-Train here are not so necessary or basic, each character is designed to be completely independent.

Directors Nelson Crag and Phil Sgriccia along with writers Craig Rosenberg, Evan Goldberg, Eric Kripke, Zak Schwartz, Brant Englestein, and Erica Rosbe are very clear about where they want to take things, to begin, this series is set parallel to the fourth season of The Boys that will arrive at some point in 2024, each character develops a very particular personality based on the violence or trauma that their powers have caused them, here the moral discourse as well as the student clichés are more than a shameless mockery, the same as the media and social networks, there are no messages that talk about love or friendship or companionship and much less about family values, here what is talked about is the manipulation of people among themselves and the means, what you are capable of doing to achieve an objective even if you have to kill a few people to do so.

The series itself is so cynical that it mainly makes fun of itself, students who want to be superheroes speech that we already know from The Boys with Starlight who sooner rather than later realized that this fantastic world in appearance is shit in reality. the one that no one would want to be in, something that is not very far from the reality in which we live.

Gen V as a series has important things in its favor, the first is the teenage drama very much in the style of Beverly Hills 90210 taking it to the extreme then there is that surprise factor that gives way to more moderate violence than we can expect, there is also the intrigue and the conspiracy of a multinational company that only manipulates people who try to help the world, something notable almost always happens throughout the first three episodes, its agile narrative and good direction prioritize the efficiency of what we are seeing, which is engaging. immediate to the viewer to want to continue seeing more of what happens.

However, this series does not seem to be competing to be the best but rather for something equally difficult to do in a more than saturated medium and that is to successfully franchise a concept antagonistic to its franchise, it makes excellent use of its youthful cast and brings out the best in them and presents it in a way that could seem simple but is more complex than it seems and it is like that, both The Boys and now Gen V have extremely complex characters in themselves and how they interact with others, how They face the consequences of their actions and worse or better yet, it is what has given it that turn that we all wanted to see.

But not everything is so good, although it has good actors and good action sequences with good special effects, some things get out of hand and that is the proportion and scope of the powers they have, for example, in episode 3 we see this girl who becomes small interacting with a normal-sized boy, it is impossible that a detail like this has been overlooked. It is the fact that for her everything would have to be gigantic and terrifying just as any sound would be magnified throughout. Is it his size, or is there the fact that in several shots of Golden Boy the fire emanating from his body looks so fake that something like that couldn’t burn, his appearance is completely artificial, we could justify this by saying that it is a series of science fiction and that this is possible, and it can be like that, what is not possible is that they want to pretend that this is real when it is not.

Its cast is made up of Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Lizze Broadway, Maddie Phillips, London Thor, Derek Luh, Asa Germann, Shelley Conn, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Clancy Brown who have done a great job so far.

The music composed by Christopher Lennetz and Matt Bowen also has a more youthful personality, something that is very in line with what we are seeing, a good work that can be appreciated in its best moments.

In conclusion, Gen V is not just a youth series for adults, it is an example that a franchise can be successful if it is in the right hands and doing what it should do, risking everything to make more authentic and honest entertainment.

Gen V is now available on the Prime Video platform.