The power is yours: 47 Words explores Captain Planet’s distinguished rogues gallery, and the awkwardly famous celebrities Ted Turner forced to voice them.
Hoggish Greedly
Voiced by Ed Asner
Driven by the Almighty Dollar as well as a homicidal urge to murder every animal on Earth, no method is too obscure for this snorting, porcine mountain of man: bird smuggling, fish dynamiting, and – the mother of all evil schemes – introducing nonnative species to the Galapagos Islands.
Dr. Blight
Voiced by Meg Ryan
Science has a dark side, and this bombshell sits a long way from Louis Pasteur on the spectrum. To most cosmetologists, animal testing yields profit; Blight, however, merely loves smearing beauty cream on rabbits’ eyeballs. Scarred by biochemistry, her wounds only made her thirsty for another taste.
Sly Sludge
Voiced by Martin Sheen
This gentleman gets a kick out of dumping his inexplicably vast stores of toxic waste wherever he sees fit. He’s supposed to represent apathy, but hacking the federal government’s central network to reclassify national parks as dumping grounds is more goal-oriented than your average slacker can manage.
Looten Plunder
Voiced by James Coburn
“You’ll pay for this, Captain Planet!” Bellowed at the heart of the program’s closing theme, these immortal words are the only really memorable characteristic of this ruthless developer. Plunder-centric episodes tend to focus on bureaucracy – to your average child, hardly an alternative to Biker Mice From Mars.
Verminous Skumm
Voiced by Jeff Goldblum
This mutant rat’s machinations generally don’t follow a central theme, except “being a douchebag.” He spreads a rumor that a high-school student has AIDS, launching a wave of parental controversy so fierce it made it a third of the way up Ted Turner’s giant pile of money.
Zarm
Voiced by Sting, Malcolm McDowell and David Warner
Look at that British pedigree – you know the spirit of destruction means serious business when he speaks with the voice of Alex DeLarge, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and the Evil Genius from Time Bandits. Plus, the story of his descent into iniquity is the Paradise Lost of environmental entertainment.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Modo // Aug 18, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Some appreciation of satire, irony & of course paradox wouldn’t go amiss - even a bit of genuine research might help. Sure - shoot from the hip as your analogise but do at least watch your target… first!
2 Jake Mix // Aug 18, 2008 at 2:20 pm
@ Modo
Oh, I assure you, Rich is writing this with absolute reverance of the Captain Planet canon - even if the whole thing is pretty silly.
3 Rich Bunnell // Aug 18, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I think it was directed at the Biker Mice comment, which was definitely not a knock on the show.
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