For over 20 years, [adult swim] has produced some of the most off-color, bizarre animation to ever hit TV. While the styles and sensibilities of its animated programming has flowed with the aging of its audience, it’s hard to think of many other shows that have had as much of an impact on the block asAqua Teen Hunger Force.
Having started out as one of the block’s earliest programs,Aqua Teen’s mix of the bizarrely-crude and crudely-bizarre helped to set the tone of the young block, lasting for 11 seasons and a feature film from 2001 to 2015. After a few years off, the IP has returned both with its recent new feature,Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm, in addition tothe big announcement of a new twelfth seasonon the horizon.
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On the heels of the announcement,Aqua Teencreators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro sat down withGameRant‘s Kevin Credo for a quick chat regarding the return of animation’s greatest sentient fast food. As the reader will see, the creative duo are able to keep their style just as strong in-person as they can on the show.
GameRant: Since the firstAqua Teenmovie in 2007, both of you have had a strong desire to get a second movie out for a while. Now that it’s finally here, and now that you’ve got more episodes coming up on top of that, what does it feel like to finally be bringing Aqua Teen back?
Matt Maiellaro: That’s easy. It feels like [air guitar riffs complete with hand motion]
GR: Pretty good way to feel.
Dave Willis: [laughs] Yeah, it’s pretty nice! In a way it’s like we never stopped, but I think in a way we were pretty burned out when the show ended. And it was frustrating to have it end when it did initially, but in a way it was time to take a break then, and bring it back. To everything there is a season, you know? I believe that’s said in the Bible.
MM: Yeah. We read that every day!
GR: I’m sure. So,Plantasmwas perhaps a good way to get back into Aqua Teen, because the sort of setup of the movie is that for a lot of it the group, Aqua Teen, is kind of broken up, only reuniting over the course of the film. Do you feel like this new setup helped to expand upon, or to refresh the dynamics between the characters within the comedy of it all?
MM: We take all of our inspiration from a lot of different places. Like mash. We mash it up. We were in talks with George Lucas and consulting on all this stuff. He said, “Matt and Dave, you guys are the best. I’m giving you my property.” Did you get all that? It’s important.
DW: To get more serious, well one of the premises of the show is asking why Frylock would hang out with the other Aqua Teens, who are these ridiculous asses? And the answer is always, of course he should probably leave! He could’ve probably left in 2002! And that’s kind of what we explored inPlantasm. And that set up let us explore some stuff with the characters. Even Shake, I mean, he might even be correct about some stuff for the first time in this one! And with Carl, we even play around with the sort of acknowledgment that he’s almost kind of like a fourth Aqua Teen himself, even though he’d never admit to that. We really enjoyed getting to explore that new terrain.
GR: On that note,Plantasmdefinitely keeps the humor ofAqua Teen, but it feels very contemporary in a lot of its subject matter. The characters are living in this bizarre consumerist world, and there’s so much in the movie that kind of riffs on that, and on the tech industry, and on a lot of other stuff in that whole sphere. How did you try and adapt these sorts of modern themes into the humor of the show?
DW: When you thinkAqua Teen, you think, ripped from the headlines.
GR: Exactly.
DW: Always, always, a very trenchant observer of the world’s political landscape and culture.
MM: We will always be ahead of our time.
DW: [laughs] I mean, forPlantasm, there was a lot of stuff going on that we were able to pull snippets of, and it was kind of inspired by the stuff you see in Silicon Valley, giving birth to this new sort of wealthy, Bond-villain archetype that we played off of with Peter Serafinowicz’s character. Easy to find a lot of inspiration.
MM: There actually is so much material to draw from with this kind of stuff. You can read the news, and, it’s like there’s a never-ending well of it.
GR: There’s a lot ofAqua Teennews going on with this new movie switching from just Blu-Ray to HBO Max soon, in addition to the new episodes. With this new stuff coming out, what is one thing, no matter how small, that you can share about the upcoming episodes?
MM: …Comedy.
DW: Yeah, well, Matt and I have been writing together since the late ‘90s, and we really are keeping that same feel going for these. We talk about what’s going on in the world, and our worlds in particular, and somehow we just shove it through this prism of our mind-melt. So I think that we’ll keep with that feel of what’s going on with things, contemporary, in these new episodes. And yet, of course, I don’t think anyone is gonna walk away from these thinking it’s not like a pure satire. Does that make sense? I don’t even know what I’m saying.
MM: No you’re making sense.
GR: So we can expect more of the movie’s feel in the new episodes?
MM: Yeah. These new episodes, they pick up from the movie, actually. Which is a secret. But you may share it.
GR: And then I have to ask one last question. One of the most entertaining parodies inPlantasmis a sort ofSpace Jamparody that happens near the beginning, where you’ve got all these parody versions of theLooney Tunescharacters. Did you always envision this with the parody characters, or did at any point did you try to go to Warner and get the real ones approved for the skit?
DW: We knew we’d never get the real Bugs Bunny for that, we didn’t write that in. We knew if we even tried, we’d still be sending emails trying to get it to happen! As if we’d get, like, Mel Blanc’s estate wanting to evaluate the designs at each juncture. Reminds me of, for the first Aqua Teen movie, we tried to get Tom Cruise to do a cameo. Cruise didn’t do it, obviously, but it didn’t stop our producer from continuing to try and make it happen and write him emails. Until he got an email finally saying, “You need to stop emailing us. Tom Cruise will never be in your movie.”
Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasmis out on VOD and Blu-Ray now, and is coming to HBO Max on February 8th.
