Centurions (TV Series 1986) Poster

(1986)

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8/10
Power Extreme
hellraiser723 June 2014
80's cartoons were just full of excitement and colorful ideas, along with the toys. This show was one of them and is another under the radar gem, it was a slight hit and popular for it's time, but as became forgotten as time went on.

The Animation is solid, I really like the color and character designs, I wouldn't say it's anything totally mind blowing but I feel the animation quality is a pass because it's practical and looks like effort was made. I really like the plot and it's setting. The concept now seems slightly plausible with our drone technology today as well as some robotics we're coming up with. I really liked this futuristic world and how technologically driven it was, as a kid this kinda blew me away and made it a place I'd love to visit.

The protagonists are pretty solid, their not deep characters but hey it's a cartoon from the 80's what can you honestly expect. Four of the protagonist that stand out persona wise are Jake Rockwell whom is pretty much battle hardened and has a gruff persona and charisma.

Crystal whom is hot to trot, I like that she's intelligent, can hold her own against danger, has some charisma; the only problem is that she doesn't have much to do just relay some intel for the guys, run communications and beam them down, but doesn't really get to fight with them which isn't entirely fair; but oh well.

Though my favorite was always Ace McCloud whom is a typical hotshot, arrogant, has plenty of charisma. Also kinda a flirt, always trying to charm Crystal.

So, the characters serve their purposes, but really like with most 80's cartoons were in it really for the action and this show has got plenty of that. The action sequences I think are solid, their well choreographed and most of the situations they fight in our different. Even like the robots they get to fight, their's a solid variety of them and they have unique functions.

But the real joy is seeing the Centurions use the power suits. I love the concept of them which is different, their not in mechs but it's really just a combination of weapons and technology. Depending on what you mix up and put together will give you the weponization and capabilities based on the arena of your choice, the land, sea, or air. The way these things worked, I wanted a power suit of my own because it literally makes you a one man army.

Second Favorite suit was of course Jake's which is based on ground assault. I always loved it whenever he fired the big machine guns and the sound they make, just always did the most damage.

My favorite suit was Ace McCloud's suit since it was one based on flying and that I always found cool and to me I felt the most balanced of the bunch because you can not just attack enemies in the air but also on the ground and water, which I feel is a real big step up from the opposition.

The theme song is excellent, it's both one of my favorite theme song in both animation and in general. It's just one that is heroic and fuels you with excitement.

My only real problem with the show is that the Centurions don't really have much of a rogue gallery. It's just they don't really get to meet their match, we don't see Darkterror have a power suited team of his own, I feel the lack of this was a lost opportunity. But all of the action and situations the Centurions are put thought makes up for this limit.

And yes this is another animated series I feel deserves a revival. With the animation and writing style of today it can be done. Could go into darker and more in depth with the plot and characters; but also could do even more with the power suit technology like small upgrades every once in a while, or have them mix up their combinations. Have Darkterror with a power suited rogue team of his own and more robot types to sick on the good guys.. But also have a few other different Centuions and power suits and weapons, may'be Crystal could have a power suit of her own that seems more than fair. I don't know but still this is something to consider.

Centurions got the power.

Rating: 3 stars
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10/10
This cartoon rocked!!!
grayoo729 March 2006
This is absolutely the best 80s cartoon ever, maybe the best cartoon of all time. It had everything action, adventure, thrill, and much more...

I can't imagine how hard it was for Ruby-Spears company to make this great cartoon, there has been spent a lot of money for this masterpiece of work and it was worth it, for example just the beaming down scenes were hard because I wouldn't call the 1980s for a great technology year with computers like now in the world we live in so the beaming down scenes were excellent!

The cartoons will never be the same as they were before, that is why I hope that they all will be released on DVD specially The Centurions as it's my favorite. I have the whole complete set of 65 episodes on DVD-r but it's not the same because if they were released on DVD the people in the world would be able to buy it and see the DVD's in almost every store which means a lot to the fans. My good friend Ted made this petition to either get the show back on TV or better on DVD, that is if we get many requests to get them back on DVD.

So please help us by signing the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/6600F/petition.html
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10/10
One of the best cartoons ever
minerals18 September 2004
The centurions is one of the best cartoons ever and it needs to be put on TV and DVD so people can have younger generations enjoy such a good show that is far better than the garbage they have made in the last 14 years. I have a petition online that is at the website address Http://www.petitiononline.com/6600F/petition.html that originally was trying to get this show on five days a week but is now trying to get this show onto DVD since the TV station it was focused on has bad public relations. We all need to convince the people who own this show to put it on DVD so it can be seen by future generations. Also since now Hasbro Toys owns the toy line of this show we might want to try to convince them to make a live action movie of it just like they have done with Transformers and sometime this year G.I.Joe. We need good cartoons like this one to come back and be enjoyed by the younger generations. Please do sign this petition so we can one day have DVDs of the guys who are famous for yelling "Power Extreme!"
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The years have not been kind to this one
faisal_khan18 July 2005
For some reason cartoons made by Ruby Spears haven't done well outside of the 80s, mainly because they were truly a product of their time: fast and disposable fun for kids and young teenagers. Look at the line-up: Mr.T, Heathcliff, Rambo and Thundarr the Barbarian to name a few. None of these have survived outside the 80s and with good reason – they're not much better than the 15 second cartoons used to sell toys that were so popular back then. Centurions is basically that – a glorified ad for the toy line aimed squarely at boys under 16. Given to Sunbow or Lou Scheimer this would have done well but in the hands of Ruby Spears it's become something embarrassing after all these years.

Take He-Man, Transformers or G.I.Joe: what makes those cartoons so enjoyable after all these years is the time they took to distinguish the characters. Despite some huge casts they all managed to find a distinct, recognisable trait and voice for every star of the show. The late great Christopher Latta is instantly recognisable as Cobra Commander or Starscream and Alan Oppenheimer's Skeletor has the most marvellous villain's voice in cartoon history.

No-one ever took that kind of care with the Centurions. You'd imagine it would be easy to give the 3 leads some personality but they remain bland and lifeless, distinguished only by the colour of their suits. Every week their ineffective nemesis Doc Terror would hijack/brainwash/terrorise some research facility or city for some rare metal or source of energy and the Centurions would beam in, select an outfit and blast him back to Dominion. What made me laugh was that there was always a river or lake nearby for Max Ray to use his 'sea-weapons'. If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Bart dismisses 'Kinght Boat' you'll get the joke.

Time hasn't been kind to this show. I loved it as a kid because it worked as an ad for toys I wanted. I watch it now (I have all 65 episodes on VHS) after 20 years and I wind up fast-forwarding most of the episodes. For the sake of your childhood memories, don't try to watch this now as you'll find yourself floundering badly, wondering what on earth you saw in this show. Remember it as it was, part of that wild, glorious decade and leave it there.
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6/10
Cheesy Goodness
jon_carlson-2895328 August 2020
You're not going to find "Centurions" on many "Great Cartoons of the 80s" lists. Or any lists, good or bad, for that matter. It is a repetitive toy commercial show, atypical for it's time. Despite being cancelled after 1 season, it still managed to go 65 episodes.

So, imagine if you will, three elite soldiers. Each specializing in land, sea, and air combat. Each with unique suits capable of being equipped with certain levels of weaponry, depending on the threat level. It gets beamed down from an orbiting space station where their support operator (and her pet chimpanzee) keeps an eye on the evil plots of one "Dr. Terror" and his sidekick "Hacker" who are more cyborg than men with evil doing gadgets.

Dr. Terror and Hacker try to do bad guy stuff for world domination or some such, or sometimes a one-off villain of the week, the good guys show up, struggle a bit, and win the day with firepower and one-liners (while never killing anybody) Makes for a great commercial. As a kid, I remember getting very thrilled when they'd break out their heavy stuff. Had their been action figures available to me, I'd have bought them.

The main characters share the spotlight rather well. Each get developed well enough. Later on, more Centurion members are added with their own specialties to go with newer bad guys. Meet the new plot, same as the old plot. I could see this show getting a reboot somewhere. Michael Bay would have fun with this, I think. It's by no means deep subject matter, but you can tell some genuine effort was put into it. Worth a look for some retro, cheesy fun.
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10/10
Jake Rockwell ROX!!
blackarachnia23 February 2008
I had such high hopes for Teletoon Retro to air this but instead of having shows such as this, ones that don't get the treatment that they deserve, they air things that I may have seen dozens of times before.

The Centurions was the highlight of my pre-teen years. I know that may seem a little bit clichéd but it's true. After Duke from G.I. Joe, Jake Rockewell is another one of those cartoon characters that I really had a crush on.

It's too bad that Teletoon Retro doesn't see it the same way people of my generation do. Otherwise Teletoon Retro would be a lot better than it is.
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10/10
IN the Near Future, Doc Terror
Dark_Lord_Mark15 October 2014
Wow a great and wonderful hero cartoon. Teaches heroism. This was made in the early 80's, but got extended run in the early 90's from the cartoon network. This show was introduced to the 90's kids and it was epic. Ace, Jake and Max were POWER EXTREME.

Good plots, likable characters. Jake was the tough guys, Max was the leader with the 70's pornstache and Ace was the ladies man always trying to score with Crystal, who was their....hmmmm....their secretary of sorts but with a brain.

Fantastic stuff...kids of today miss.

I rate this a 10 but around season 2, they introduced 2 more members...I forgot their names, but the quality did suffer as they had too many characters and not enough time to dedicate to two more guys.

Awesome, must watch.....
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10/10
Best ever
dan_ho7822 August 2022
This cartoon shaped my childhood. I looked at the episode titles and can still remember them. Wish I could find it dreaming somewhere. I would also give it more stars if that were possible.
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4/10
It's not good. Its nostalgia.
Java_Joe28 November 2022
I liked this as a kid and the toys were great but there comes a point where you have to say it's not as good as it was.

When you're a kid you tend to watch things uncritically. You're looking for action, excitement and really wild things. And this cartoon delivered. The problem in seeing it now with a more mature outlook shows all the faults.

Let's get it out of the way first, this show was made to sell toys and I'm perfectly fine with that. So let's take that off the table and talk about the show itself.

It had a good concept. Three men, later on increased to five, were experts in their given field. Jake Rockwell was the land expert, Max Ray was the water expert. And Ace McCloud was the air expert. All of them wore these "exo frames" into which items could be plugged into . This meant that they could customize their weapons for whatever was needed. There's a bad guy and his not-too-bright henchman who are always trying to take over the world but the Centurions stop his plans in the end. Rinse and repeat for just about every episode.

The characters are stock and rather one dimensional but this is more or less what you'd expect from a series like this. The dialogue feels rushed and often times falls into the trap of having catch phrases like Ace always calling a woman "beautiful" when talking to them.

But the worst part of it is that it suffered from "Night Boat syndrome". To those who are unaware, Night Boat was a spoof of Night Rider, a show where Michael Knight rode around in a souped up Trans Am. Lisa and Bart have a problem with this premise because, as they put it, "there's always a canal". It's a boat so they can't take it on land. But if there's a convenient canal / river / estuary etc the action will always take place near it allowing Night Boat to do his thing. I bring this up because no matter the episode, whether it made sense or not, Max Ray would ALWAYS run into something that allowed him to continue the investigation or chase the bad guys.

The animation was done on the cheap. The voice acting is fine and while the premise is great the execution wasn't.
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Great Stuff!
Nick_Dets23 April 2004
"The Centurions" is one of the best adventure cartoons ever. Sure, its nothing deep, but the paper-thin stories where gorged with high-flying action that never let up. This was an exhilarating show.

There's not much to the story. Four or five special soldiers are equipped with ultra-cool armor, sent from a beam projected from a large spacecraft hovering over Earth, to fight international crime. In these sequences, we would see this mysterious ship and meet the under-developed ally who had a purple monkey named Jane used for comic relief (!)

Anyway, this was one entertaining show. The villains were always cool and the action was a whole lot of fun. There is signaturely campy wit, a surplus of explosions and awesome gunplay. The unrelenting fun make this one better than "G.I. Joe" and comparable to the "Spiderman" cartoon (but "Batman the Animated Series" would be a stretch). Any fans should look up "Cowboy Bebop", a show no action lover should miss.
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A Great Cartoon Series!
chsmith99923 December 2000
The Centurions is about the battle between the cyborg Doctor Terror, who is aided by his assistant Hacker, and the United Nations. The force dispatched to stop them is the Centurions who can have assault systems beamed to them from space. This show is just as good as it was in the 80's and is still enjoyable today. Anyone who likes 80's cartoons will love the Centurions. The animation is a little primative but the story lines are great and the show, overall, is a real treat to watch.
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Don't make 'em like this anymore
LionelHutz198530 March 2003
Warning: Spoilers
(spoilers) I remember when I was about 6 or so, I saw a few re runs for this show on cartoon network. Afterwards, I started watching the show regulary. The centurions was about 3 (5 in the later episodes) guys that were battling the evil forces of Doc. Terror (half man, half machine) and his companion Hacker, who was also half man, half machine. It was your standard 80's cartoon like (the greatest of them all) GI Joe. Every episode, Doc. Terror would have some new insidous evil plot, and the centurions would have to figure out how to stop it. I remember several of the plots very well. One was about (I think) a weather control machine, one plot was to stop this scientist that was like a chameleon, in that he could change color. Another episode was about a psychic/telekenetic high school student that got a hold of Centurion technology and was using it to exert revenge on people that had been bullying him. I remember after the show, they always had a science fact, or moral bit. One was about Saturn's rings, one was about the way that some lizards change color, so on and do forth. The show was great, im surprised that so few people have voted or made comments. (end of spoilers)
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