‘Aqua Teen’ characters back in new movie, Adult Swim season
“Aqua Teen Hunger Force” was one of the first big hits in the early days of Adult Swim more than two decades ago, generated on a comically low budget by Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro.
The show set the tone for the entire network as a subversive visual diet for young men seeking a latenight diversion long before smartphones and streaming services became the norm.
Over 11 seasons, 140-plus TV episodes and a 2007 movie, “Aqua Teen” revolved around three living, breathing fastfood items writ large: the forever annoyed leader Frylock, narcissistic milkshake Master Shake and delightfully juvenile Meatwad. The show was canceled in 2015.
But like many animated series, it was ripe for a comeback, and in January, Adult Swim announced a 12th season of five episodes. HBO Max also recently released a new film, “Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm.” (The movie is streaming for a few weeks and then will air March 19 on Adult Swim.)
In the movie, the trio of friends are estranged, only brought back together when Frylock befriends an evil tech billionaire who runs a company called Amazin. Then all hell breaks loose, and the trio is tasked with saving the planet.
The two creators have a hard time not joking about the show’s resiliency.
Willis hopes “Aqua Teen” lasts centuries. “We want to create multigenerational wealth from ‘Aqua Teen,’ ” Willis cracked.
Maiellaro added as a franchise, “It’s beyond James Bond. We’re bigger than ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ ”
In Adult Swim’s early days, experimentation was rife and budgets were modest.
“It was such a small crew,” Maiellaro said.
“We loved it. Nobody ever wanted us to do it and (that) pushed us even further to keep making it.” Management, he said, “stayed far away from it. We just did what we thought was funny.”
Willis added, “It was like a calling. We had blinders on. This is amazing. It never even crossed my mind that someone could cancel a TV show.”
Maiellaro said despite the absurdities of the show, it remains oddly relatable. “Everyone knows a Shake and Meatwad and Frylock in familiar fastfood shapes, and Carl as a human,” he said. “Once you get that hook, you can do anything around it.”
And in the end, “‘Aqua Teen’ put Adult Swim on the map,” he said.
Doing a movie, of course, meant more depth and more character arc, Maiellaro said. “Once we cracked that, we went into episodic mode. It just took longer.”
“You have to be really smart to understand it,” Willis added.
And the magic of an animated series like “Aqua Teen” is there is no need for continuity. “We don’t even know what that is,” Maiellaro said. The characters could die or change jobs or get married in one episode, and it won’t matter when a new season starts.
Willis and Maiellaro have produced other shows such as “Squidbillies” and “Your Pretty Face is Going To Hell,” but “Aqua Teen” will always be their calling card.