Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix Footage Reaction: Not Your Dad's Video Game Adaptation [Annecy 2023]

The first question to pop in many a fan's mind when they hear about a new video game adaptation is, how faithful will it be? This is not an easy question to answer. If you chiefly try to please those familiar with the source material, you may risk alienating newcomers. At the same time, trying to bring in a new audience may also risk turning off established fans. For every super faithful "The Last of Us," we get an "Arcane" or a "Castlevania" that reimagine their source material. 

From "Castlevania" creator Adi Shankar, a new animated video game show aims to deliver something completely different. Inspired by the excellent "Far Cry 3" standalone expansion "Blood Dragon," the animated "Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix" burrows its source material's tongue-in-cheek take on '80s video game aesthetics and synth-wave soundtrack but leaves behind everything else. 

Directed by Mehdi Laffad and animated by studio Bobbypills (DC's upcoming "Creature Commandos"), "Captain Laserhawk" feels right at home with Shankar's "Bootleg Universe" of unauthorized fan films, reimagining not a single video game but Ubisoft's entire catalog of games, repurposing them in a neon-lit sandbox where everything goes and the only rule is the rule of cool. "Captain Laserhawk" imagines the Rainbow Six squad as a Super Sentai team of color-coded heroes, the characters from Assassin's Creed as French killer frogs, and much more.

During a work-in-progress session at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Netflix and Ubisoft gave audiences a look at the upcoming "Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix," which promises to be a radically different video game adaptation. It just might be what audiences have been waiting for.

The story follows Dolph Laserhawk, an original character and mercenary in a '90s dystopia suffering from heartbreak and betrayal by his former lover and partner, Alex Taylor, very much an archetypal 1980s action hero.

The presentation was about as chaotic and jovial as the footage shown, with director Mehdi Leffad, Jérémie Bonnouvrier and Yves "Balak" Bigerel offering plenty of banter between them as they reminisced the seven-year-long production and how free Ubisoft and Shankar were to just "open up the toy box" at the gaming studio and reinterpret things as they pleased. 

In addition to the aforementioned reinterpretation of Ubisoft characters, there's also the overall look of "Captain Laserhawk," which should have audiences excited. The show is clearly influenced by anime OVAs and movies by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, like "Ninja Scroll" and "Wicked City," but also the mandatory "Ghost in the Shell" influence for the techno dystopia. 

Of course, this is a video game show, and "Captain Laserhawk" is already teasing a visual experience unlike any other video game show, taking the very essence of video games into its visual language. An early animation test shown to audiences followed a car chase that turns into an "F-Zero" racing game-style scene. Another clip of a heist job showed an agent trying to seduce a guard, with the visuals suddenly turning into a Japanese dating sim.  

Just as the "Spider-Verse" movies bring the visual language of comics to the screen, "Captain Laserhawk" brings the art of video games into its storytelling and imagery. This is the secret weapon of "Captain Laserhawk," which aims to do more than just recreate your favorite gaming memories on the screen. Instead, this show wants to take the essence of these franchises and tell a unique and original story. We can't wait to see more.