Gen¹³

I've known Kevin Altieri for decades. He spent a pile of his own money premiering this film years ago only to see the thing crammed into a vault at Disney because Wildstorm Comics, the publisher of the Gen 13 series, sold itself to DC Comics (owned by Time-Warner) and Disney decided it would rather eat the cost of the film than help sell a rival conglomerate's merchandise. So, an entire film swallowed whole due to studio politics. Amazingly, years later, it still sits, only viewable as a bootleg because of a minor release in Australia and Europe. Kevin just shakes his head at the waste. He did quite a job on this considering the limits of the budget. The uncut version does not feature nudity except in the slightest cheesecake variety. I disagree with a fellow poster regarding the music. Amotz Plessner (from the Czech Republic) provided an excellent score with none of the usual tinny synthesizer drivel typically larded over action-adventure animation. As for any heavy-breathing lesbian characters or material, you have to consider that this film was financed by Disney, so what would you expect? Sure, this film is not Miyazaki, or something worthy of putting in the Smithsonian, but it is a well-made little feature. And though I haven't seen the bootleg version(s) available for download, I'd be suspicious of the quality (although the original not being available it would be impossible to tell at this point).

With a little polishing, this could have been a really good film.

At first glance, Gen 13 seems to have all the right ingredients: Quality voice talent from Alicia Witt (Twin Peaks), John de Lancie (Q from "Star Trek: Next Generation"), Mark Hamill (duh!) and even Cloris Leachman. It also has a good plot, taken almost verbatim from the pages of Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell's "Gen 13" comic book mini-series.

Kevin Altieri's past experience with the "Batman" animated series is obvious, mostly keeping the story moving at a good clip.

But this movie views as though the money behind it suddenly lost interest during the final stages. Although there are several good lines, "We're like... the 'Justice League,' man", the voices are not well mixed and, at times, need additional coaching. Background noises mix in and out at random. The "Grunge" character is poorly scripted as the well-meaning dope and Flea fails to give him any personality.

The music weighs everything down. It sounds more like the soundtrack for a Saturday morning cartoon than an 82-minute feature film.

Despite all that, the visuals are really pretty good. Fairchild is still the busty titan and Freefall the good-hearted bad girl. And they are still fun to look at.

Like I said, it seems unfinished.

Ok, they did stick pretty close to the comic, but why never release it? The animation was close to Batman/Superman WB, which I really like. But to not include 2 other members is a shame. Mark Hamil was at points too close to laughing like the Joker, but I love his voice in the WB cartoons, it is perfect, but for this it is not how I heard Threshold in my head, but still pretty good.

i was a fan of the comic back way back and was excited to hear that an animated film was being made.And then,i heard nothing about it for years until i recently found a bootleg copy.

This film is not your children's Saturday morning cartoon since it's got scenes of bloody violence,about two dozen bad words(mostly religious related words but no f words) and characters who either smoke or talk about wanting to smoke.

it's sexy in some parts but don't expect any nudity or you'll be really disappointed.

The story is somewhat interesting but the animation didn't match my high expectations.

Maybe there will be a really great GEN 13 animated film done one day but this simply isn't it!

A DC superhero animated movie - made by Disney! Gen¹³ was a comic created by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi in the early 1990s through their WildStorm company - at that time part of Image Comics. Disney expressed interest in developing a Gen¹³ film; however, whilst the film was in production, Lee began talks to sell WildStorm to DC Comics, a Time Warner company. By the time the film was finished, Lee's sale of WildStorm to DC had been completed, meaning that Disney now had a movie based on a property indirectly owned by another studio. As a result Disney shelved it, and it was never released in the US. It was however released on video in Europe and Australia.

It's basically an X-Men kinda tale, with a group of teens who each possess a gene giving potential for superhuman abilities, being guided by an older mentor, to help secure the future of mankind. But (of course) there are those who want to control the youngsters for their own selfish reasons. Voice talent includes Alicia Witt, John de Lancie, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Hamill, Cloris Leachman, and Flea (yes, he of the Red Hot Chili Peppers!), all of whom do a nice job. Animation has a nostalgic 'Saturday morning TV' feel (incidentally, the logo at the beginning of the film is a green-tinted version of the old DC 'Bullet' - nice to see it again). This easily had potential for at least one sequel, although for obvious reasons it never happened. 7.5/10.