The HBO Max Original series Adventure Time: Distant Lands is the follow-up to the hit Cartoon Network series Adventure Time, which ran for 10 seasons from 2010–2018. Adventure Time: Distant Lands is comprised of four stand-alone specials, each following different characters from the series on all-new adventures.
The four specials are as follows:
- BMO (45:06)
Robot BMO is traveling alone to Mars to start a potato farm, but it’s a long, lonely journey. He welcomes an alien named Olive whom he meets along the way, but as Olive speeds up the ship, they go far off course and crash-land in the middle of a gang battle between the Grey Elves and the Shell people, on an ancient space station. The two rivals call a truce, uniting over their new common enemy, BMO. However, a rabbit named Y4 rescues BMO from the fray, and he agrees to help retrieve the genesis crystal, which is needed to fix the station’s unity pod. However, it turns out there is something much more sinister going on at this space port, and if Y4 is going to help BMO save the day, she’s going to have to stand up to those who have been telling her what to do all her life.
- Obsidian (45:12)
After the other residents of the Glass Kingdom make fun of the crack in Glassboy’s face, he steals a key and sneaks down to the furnace below the city in hopes of fixing his appearance. But in doing so, he accidentally frees the Dragon Molto Larvo, who had been trapped there for hundreds of years. The townsfolk are upset and call for Glassboy’s head, but the See-Thru Princess helps him escape, sending Glassboy to find Saint Marceline, the vampire princess who originally trapped the dragon with her music, in hopes that she can save the kingdom once again. However, Marceline’s return to the Glass Kingdom brings back painful memories from her childhood and stirs up memories of her last visit—a bad time in her relationship with Princess Bubblegum. But Marceline is going to have to let go of her angsty past if she has any hope of saving the kingdom again.
- Together Again (46:26)
As Finn becomes part of the deadworld, he hopes to reunite with his old friend Jake in the afterlife. His guide, Mr Fox, informs him that in order to travel between the deadworlds to find his pal, he’ll need the approval from the New Death. Along the journey, Finn runs into some old friends and enemies, including Tiffany who’s now an undertaker/cop who’s been sent to stop him. However, the corrupt new leadership of the deadworld turns out be an old foe, and Finn and Jake are going to have to team up for one more adventure together in order to make things right in the afterlife.
- Wizard City (49:58)
Former dark wizard Peppermint Butler is trying to start over, enrolling as a new student at the wizarding school in Wizard City. While he believes he will be one of the cool kids on campus like Spader in the Salamander house, he ends up being assigned to Skink, along with aspiring stage magician/daughter of the janitor Cadebra. As Pep struggles in his classes, he remains determined to master the dark arts, while also keeping his past a secret. However, as mysterious events play out on campus, some of the students grow suspicious of Pep, and he must try to find out what’s really going on and prove his innocence.
I had never actually watched the original Adventure Time series before checking out these specials. While I’m sure longtime fans of the original series may get more out of the continuing adventures of these characters, I never found myself lost by just jumping right in. In fact, I’m not sure if the backstories of the characters mentioned in these specials were even previously covered in the series&mdas;such Marceline’s flashbacks in “Obsidian”—or if they were just made up just for these specials. Either way, I found the specials to be quite entertaining, with fun, interesting characters and rich, full worlds. The stories delved into these characters, exploring their backstories and also giving them some personal struggle or obstacles to overcome. Sometimes the series veered off a bit into the nonsensical, wacky and bizarre, but it felt like that was probably par for the original series. I liked that each of the specials was self-contained, and follows a different set of characters (though Choose Goose pops up in several of them and has a sort of continuing storyline). Each story has a slightly different look and feel, but all still felt like part of the same larger world of characters.
I enjoyed all four of the specials for different reasons. I loved the Harry Potter-like world of “Wizard City” and its sort of murder-mystery the best of the four; “BMO” provided a fun alien/space adventure; “Obsidian” gives a musical, romantic and medieval-like tale of dragons and overcoming your personal demons; and “Together Again” is just a fun tale of two buddies going on an adventure while trying to beat the devil. I’m not sure how or if all of the main characters from these four specials ever interacted in the original show, but their separate adventures are quite entertaining. The writing is witty, with the different characters each having his or her own quirks or styles—BMO teds to use a lot of film quotes, while Finn makes some fun pop culture references, Marceline is a bit more emotional, and Pep always makes me laugh as he tries to lie about his identity. Many of the main characters also break into song at some point, which I quite enjoyed. I definitely need to go back and check out the original series at some point. One thing to note is that you can tell the series was designed to air on regular TV (like Cartoon Network) as well as stream on HBO Max as there are several fade-to-black commercial break points in each special. While I never found this distracting, it is definitely noticeable.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s Blu-ray release looks and sounds great. The animation is well done, with bright, beautiful colors, and a nice level of detail, with a more hand-drawn look than the computer 3D animation that is more prevalent in today’s films. The picture is pretty immaculate, with rich colors and details. The audio track provides clear dialogue and some great sounding musical performances (especially during “Obsidian”), and makes excellent use of the stereo and surround channels to put the viewer in the middle of the action, providing an immersive viewing experience, especially during some of the more action-packed sequences. All four specials reside on a single disc, which offers Play All and Episode selection options. The disc is packed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a cardboard slipcover. Unfortunately, there is no bonus material included with this release. This is disappointing as it would have been nice if they had included the Comic-Con panel(s) for the show, or some other behind-the-scenes material. Also missing is a digital copy. This may be because this was an HBO Max Original series and they want folks to watch the digital there. However, unlike the second season of HBO Max Original Doom Patrol which also didn’t include a digital copy, this series is actually available for purchase on digital.
What’s Included:
- All 4 specials: “BMO”, “Obsidian”, “Together Again”, “Wizard City”
- 1080p / Widescreen 1.78:1
- Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround
- Subtitles: English SDH, French
Specials: (3:06:42)
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Blu-ray:
Extras:
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There is no bonus material included with this release.
Final Thoughts:
Longtime Adventure Time fans should really enjoy these continuing adventures of some of their favorite characters from the series. However, new viewers can still just jump right into Adventure Time: Distant Lands and fully enjoy these four stand-alone specials. The Blu-ray release looks and sounds great, but unfortunately is barebones, offering no supplemental material or digital copy. That said, the disc still comes recommended based on the quality of the specials themselves.
