Scavengers Reign still has so much more to say

Within the media panorama of 2024, Scavengers Reign looks like nothing wanting a marvel. Initially conceived as a 20-minute brief movie by co-creators Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner, the collection was greenlit for a 12-episode season for Max (then known as HBO Max) and slowly gestated in manufacturing for a number of years earlier than premiering in fall of final 12 months. With its emphasis on visible storytelling, phantasmagorical imagery, and heady themes of survival and symbiosis, the obvious query is easy: How did the creators of Scavengers Reign go about nailing the strategy to its peculiar sci-fi universe?

“The main principle [of the original short] was that we were following these characters [as they] do a process through nature, and you’re kind of seeing this Rube Goldberg-style process of cause and effect, trial and error throughout,” Bennett tells Polygon. “It had no dialogue, so it was all visual narrative. […] Gradually, we started leaning into planet Vesta’s nature and what that could be.”

What grew from that fledgling seed of an thought was a densely imagined world of unique fauna, inscrutable native life kinds, and an enormous, interconnected ecology of creatures present in live performance with each other. “[The idea was] if every character is utilizing these organisms as some sort of functionality, have that be a thing throughout the show that’s consistent,” Bennett mentioned. “It’s never just that the characters are the central focus. […] These characters are struggling through so much inner turmoil and psychological stress, and seeing that against the backdrop of this planet that in a lot of ways is unforgiving — that dichotomy was always important to keep in mind.”

Pulling from influences as far afield because the comics of Jean “Mœbius” Giraud and the animation of René Laloux to the Primitive Know-how YouTube Channel, Scavengers Reign was distinctive by design and from the leap. “One of the things I always heard from Joe and Charles was that you wanted this thing to breathe,” Titmouse founder Chris Prynoski says. “If you look at an episode of Lower Decks, we’re trying to cram as much story in one of those episodes as possible. […] [On Scavengers], even the shot count, it’s like, We can have a lower shot count but spend more time on making those special.”

However that stability was vital; cliche although it might be, Planet Vesta is a personality unto itself in Scavengers Reign, neither benevolent nor explicitly malicious; a very alien frontier through which the survivors of Demeter 227 are introduced to bear not solely the bounds of their bodily our bodies however the full weight of their private histories. The purpose of focus isn’t simply on the human characters themselves. The collection spends as much time, if not more, scrutinizing the micro- and macroscopic creatures of this lovely and continuously hostile world because it does the hapless people struggling to navigate and survive it.

The viewers sees this not simply on display, however in the best way the collection is edited, with close-ups of the Demeter survivors repeatedly interjected with vast pictures situating them as tiny iotas dwarfed by the immense scale of the unusual and unfamiliar panorama that surrounds them. It is sensible that Scavengers Reign would put so much emphasis on Vesta’s vistas and biomes, given how much time and a spotlight the manufacturing crew invested into nailing the appear and feel of the planet.

“We had a nice runway for concept design and building out the ecosystems and all that stuff,” Bennett instructed Polygon. From character and creature designs to the environments and sound design, each component of the present’s creation fed into each other. “I’m a big believer when creating any kind of show in just that threading [of the creative process] where the composer is making music, and you’d send that to the animators, and that would inspire them in a certain way. Then you would take some of the drawings that the concept designers are making and you send those to the writers, and it’s inspiring to them.”

Picture: Max

Picture: Max

Picture: Max

And you may actually see that artistic cycle and symbiosis echoed all through the whole thing of Scavengers Reign, like within the first episode, when Ursula and Sam repurpose a blowfish-like creature as an air filtration masks and later escape system, or when Azi employs the pheromones of a jellyfish-like creature to keep off the advances of a herd of presumably hostile aliens. “That was the really fun part. You’re like, These creatures pair really well with these organisms and this foliage, which goes well with this whole scenery,” Bennett says. “It was just this idea of like, as different as they are, it all still feels like part of one planet, and also that there’s some kind of significance to these things. Whether it’s a utility for the characters, or even just what their functionality is on the planet.”

The consequence, even in a present with much less dialogue, speaks volumes. The primary season of Scavengers Reign settles right into a intentionally paced and considerate sci-fi story about more than only a group of survivors marooned on a wierd planet, however a narrative about what a wholesome, mutually helpful relationship between people and their setting ought to ideally attempt for. “We were trying to tell a sincere story,” Bennett mentioned. “The pacing was really important, and giving some brevity to these kinds of things. […] It was such an organic process all the way up to the end. And so things were just changing, constantly being kind of re-tweaked.”

So much change in such an advanced course of may trigger anxiousness, positive. But it surely felt vital to the tone of the present. “You get so much of a better result when people feel like they’re trusted to inject themselves into it,” Prynoski says. “A lot of these primetime comedy-type shows […] it’s very much about dialing in jokes, which, we’re so fortunate that that was not the tone of this show.”

Picture: Max

As of this writing, it’s been over a month since information first broke that Scavengers Reign had been canceled by Max following its premiere final October. Followers and newcomers of the present have been ready with bated breath for information of a attainable renewal of the collection by means of Netflix, which added the collection to its streaming library on Could 31. When requested what his plans for a possible season 2 would seem like, Bennett emphasised that it could focus partially on the mysterious group of gold-masked figures who encounter certainly one of Lev’s techno-organic progeny aboard a marooned scavengers ship. “I think there’s definitely kind of a roadmap,” Bennett mentioned. “It begins to get imprecise possibly, like, 5 or 6 episodes in. However there’s undoubtedly a roadmap an thought for these guys.

“If we’re lucky enough and we can do a season 2, you’ll see a lot more context and it’ll make more sense. But I also really love the idea of not knowing and just going with the flow, and things just change.”

Season 1 of Scavengers Reign is now streaming on Netflix and Max.