User Reviews

Okay so this one starts out with some French cargo vessel in the middle of the night with several sailors on deck looking out over a dolphin-abundant choppy sea... Hey, I'm just sure everyone's gonna be perfectly fine, I mean it's only the prologue of a Mighty Max episode, what's the worst that could happen? I got it, Something large and terrible is going to emerge from the briny deep and drag all on board down to a chilling watery grave! This episode is very loosely adapted from the Doom Zone "Mighty Max Sinks Nautilus", in that the only real connection between this story and the play-set is a nautilus that appears - although it's not a monster, but a metallic submarine that's only shaped like one of the strange mollusks, which just in case you was unawares, have the appearance of a kind of floating snail shell with tentacles. Anyway the machine's not really seen all that much and it doesn't do anything except destroy the ship at the beginning in a fairly impressively animated explosion, but that's about it! Tim Curry was for some reason given quite a lot of voice-work to do in this one. As well as voicing several of the merry band of dumb pirate goons, he also does the heroic Jules Verne who sounds just like a French Skullmaster, and his villainous arch-enemy, a descendant of the original Captain Nemo who is physically identical to his infamous namesake and bears a smouldering grudge against Verne for 'slandering' his grandfather's good name in a certain classic novel. This isn't one of my favourites in the series, but I like how it's all kind of a homage to legendary author Jules Verne and how they actually devised a way to include him in the story as a fictional version of himself as an adventuring scientist who freezes himself in cryogenic suspension so that he may bear witness to the distant future... I do think it's impressive how they always tried to intertwine as many little mythologies and famous monsters as they could into the stories. I really love it at the end when he says goodbye to Max and tells him that he's "A great character." I find the broader meaning of that very profound, because if you were of a certain age in the early to mid-90's and you really loved all the toys and this show then he really is one of the great unsung animated characters, certainly enriched my childhood for a precious time. I found that notion really clever and for me it's the episode's best moment. But I don't know, overall this one's just not that fun to me. I guess it's not too bad, but it definitely ain't that good. It feels very by-the-numbers, very run of the mill. It's kinda funny, the only other underwater-adventure they ever did, "Less than 20'000 Squid- Heads under the Sea", didn't exactly shine either.. Note to Mighty Max: Stay on land.