Arad Animation and
41 Entertainment announced Kong: King of
the Apes in 2014, with a premise that seemed tailor-made to geek site
headlines. The Eighth Wonder of the World would be fighting robot dinosaurs in
San Francisco circa 2050, a fugitive from justice thanks to the machinations of
the scientist who created them. The 13-episode first season premiered on
Netflix in early 2016, but I doubt most fans of the character made it through
episode one. The CG animation was mediocre, the dialogue seemed to have been
written by a predictive text generator for action-adventure cartoons, and its tame,
jetpack-wearing Kong was unrecognizable. I watched all of it for two reasons:
because, as previously established, I am a masochistic, completionist dolt, and
because of Botila.
I envision a
scenario in which a brave, principled screenwriter hacked into the computer
responsible for cranking out this show’s scripts, but only had time to change
one character. Botila is out of sync with Kong:
King of the Apes in the best ways possible. She’s an android created by the
human villain who barely tolerates him, heckling his schemes and always on the
brink of declaring herself the leader
of the Decepticons. (In the last episode, she finally shoves him off a cliff.) It’s
not an exaggeration to say she gets all the best lines either. So my interest
was piqued when the Season 2 trailer suggested she would be the main
antagonist.
