Rick & Morty Proves A 21st Century Captain Planet Would Be A Horror Villain
Rick & Morty season 5 introduces a Captain Planet parody that underscores the absurdity & shows how threatening the hero would be in real life.
Rick & Morty season 5 introduces a Captain Planet parody character that proves how threatening an environmentalist superhero-gone-rogue could be in today's climate chaos. "A Rickconvenient Mort" centers on the romantic relationship between Morty and Planetina (Alison Brie), an obvious spoof of the 90s animated children's television series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, but the initially peaceful and well-intentioned heroine travels down a dark path far from the kid-friendly antics of the original Planeteers.
Captain Planet was meant to introduce environmental issues to younger audiences, an admirable attempt at trying to inspire activism in the upcoming generation that was ultimately overshadowed by the show's unintentional goofiness. The Planeteers themselves had the power to summon Captain Planet, a sort of super-powerful avatar of the planet Earth, using their combined elemental powers of earth, air, water, fire, and "heart," the latter of which became infamously inane. The team fought overzealous villains who reveled in causing environmental destruction and whose evil plots were supposed to reflect real-world problems.
That strange combination of cartoonish wackiness and actual political issues was part of what made the show memorable, even if not for the intended reasons, though, admittedly, the young audience the show was aimed at didn't see the goofiness. It's also what makes the concept so fun to parody. Rick & Morty season 5 takes a disturbing look at how a Captain Planet who exists in the current, complicated world of environmental politics might not take too kindly to the continuing exploitation of Earth's resources. Captain Planet's villains were animated exaggerations of real evils, but Planetina's rampage shows how quickly the superhero could mete out justice to whoever is deemed a threat, whether they are or not.
This isn't the first time a parody has pointed out how deranged a real-life Captain Planet would be when faced with the horrors of the modern industrial world. Don Cheadle famously played a crazed caricature of the character in a series of Funny or Die sketches that would fit right into an apocalyptic horror movie. In that version, Captain Planet goes mad with power and transforms almost everyone on Earth into trees as the Planeteers cower in fear. In addition, Captain Planet is just one eco-terrorist act away from becoming a Poison Ivy, who has similar motivations to protect the planet from environmental destruction but who often brutally murders people to accomplish her missions.
"A Rickconvenient Truth" interestingly never takes an official stance on how justified Planetina is and uses her arc to show the complexity of current environmental politics. That being said, her violent outrage makes her seem like a horrifying villain even if her motives are understandable. Part of the gag is that Captain Planet would absolutely go insane in a world where corrupt politicians undermine environmental activism. Rick & Morty commonly takes pop culture figures and distorts them to fit inside the series' own bizarre sci-fi world, but Planetina's anger is more based in reality than the rest of these Rick & Morty parodies, making it all the more unsettling.