Ace Lightning: Difference between revisions

At first glance, ''Ace Lightning'' could be suspected of being pulled straight from the pages of a videogame-related [[Fan Fiction]]. What it actually ''is'', however, is a 39 episode series, which run from 2002 to 2004. It was created as a collaboration between Canadian and British entertainment industries. Many fans believe it was [[Too Good to Last]].

 

 

The [[Supporting Protagonist|protagonist]] is 13-year-old Mark Hollander, who has just immigrated to <s>Canada</s> North America from England. However getting to grips with life on the other side of the pond turns out to be the least of his problems, when, on the first night in their new home, the aerial of Mark's house is struck by lightning. As chance would have it, Mark was at that exact moment engaged in his favourite videogame: ''Ace Lightning and the Carnival of Doom'', and had discovered a level which wasn't supposed to exist. Turns out this isn't an ordinary copy of ''Ace Lightning''. The next thing Mark knows the characters of his videogame- good and bad alike- have come to life and are engaging in battle in his back yard. Mark is somewhat reluctantly elected as Ace Lightning's new sidekick, and dragged into a quest to locate the seven shattered pieces of [[MacGuffin|The Amulet of Zoar]] which will give its yielder power over the entire universe. Ace and the villians are convinced that the real world is just another level from the game (albeit, from their perspective, a rather strange one), and treat it as such. Mark's new life just became a lot more complicated.

Ace Lightning regularly attempts to mock the tropes associated with the Superhero genre and at no point tries to hide from the fact that it is, essentially, a superhero parody that occasionally plays things straight. Every CGI character in the show is a stereotype of more traditional heroes. You've got your spunky red headed sidekick, your bewitching black widow, and your villian who just happens to look like a living skeleton. Ace is a typical superhero; super strong, super fast, able to shoot lightning energy from his hands, and surviving on electrical power sources. ''Ace Lightning'' shows the audience what ''really'' happens when you stick a person with those kinds of abilities into a world which wasn't built to accommodate them. The humans meanwhile, are normal (mostly) people living ordinary lives which contrast garishly with the superheroes. And while Ace is learning the finer points of humanity from Mark, Mark is learning that sometimes, a hero's gotta do what a hero's gotta do.

 

 

 

* [[Friendship Moment]]: When Random isn't trying to kill him, he and Ace have a few of these.

* [[Geek]]: Chuck Mugel: a geek of the computer-related variety.

** Oddly enough, Mark (who is mainly supposed to ''point out'' Ace?s genre blindness) gets one of these during Episode Seven, Opposite Attraction, speaking about Ace and Lady Illusion.

{{quote|Mark: ...I don't get it. Nothing in the rulebook says they could fall in love. }}