This would be my lifelong dream and intended epic masterpiece of animation–and not to mention, a monumental (if largely 2d hand drawn) animated epic cartoon feature film project done on a grand epic scale; much more along the lines of Samurai Jack than Dexter’s Laboratory itself.
In Dexter’s Odyssey, Mandark, Dexter’s evil rival genius kid neighbor, offended at being left off the guest list for Dee Dee’s birthday party, gets into a fight with Lee Lee (Dee Dee’s Asian friend) before exiling himself to enemy territory where Mandark, discovered to have great powers similar to the evil, terrible magical powers possessed by a long-dormant Sauron-type Dark Lord (who shares the same name as Dexter’s rival) responsible for conquering and enslaving the world centuries earlier, excites a desire for war against the free nations so that Mandark could get his revenge on Lee Lee and Dexter as well as destroy Dexter’s Laboratory.
Dexter, a squat, square little redheaded geek, accompanied by his annoying tall, skinny blonde ballerina sister Dee Dee and her black and Asian ballerina friends Mee Mee and Lee Lee, journeys across dinosaur-populated wildernesses and distant exotic unknown far-off civilizations in order to stop Mandark, and along the way, Dexter must also learn to overcome his arrogance as well as his nature as a ‘shut-in’ as Dexter and the girls heads toward the fateful epic battle between good and evil.
Hopefully, when completed in some near future time, Dexter’s Odyssey is going to be such a mind-blowing epic piece of art, and my goal for Dexter’s Odyssey is not simply to entertain, for in contrast to the much more mainstream original Dexter’s Lab show (which is, apart from a few eps, a pretty standard cartoon, certainly as far as storytelling goes), Dexter’s Odyssey is going to be art on a grand, epic, never-before-seen scale–drowning in visual and artistic style, perhaps, and lite on dialogue, too, as well as being excitingly beautiful to watch on a mostly visual and artistic level with little-to-no dialogue presumably for much of the journey undertaken by Dexter, Dee Dee, Mee Mee and Lee Lee, so you and I will never know if you and I were going to get a meandering background story, a major conflict between Dexter, Dee Dee, Mee Mee or Lee Lee and Mandark or so on, for it’ll be a really beautiful epic piece of mind blowing art that is like an epic silent film (or more) told more with visuals and a sweepingly majestic epic music score (possibly to be recorded, mixed as well as presented in a multi-dimensional audio format like Dolby Atmos, and with the electronic music sounds kept to a minimum with all the rest being traditional orchestra and ethnic instrumental and vocal musical sounds) than dialogue and words.
Of course, Dexter’s Odyssey will be more along the lines of Samurai Jack than anything ever created for the much more mainstream Dexter’s Laboratory (itself a pretty standard cartoon as far as storytelling) itself; in Dexter’s Odyssey, nobody will speak anything for much of the journey itself, for it will all be just about Dexter, Dee Dee, Mee Mee and Lee Lee doing all this atmospheric wandering as they head towards their fateful epic confrontation with Mandark, as well as some zany cartoon slapstick chases, an astonishing dinosaur stampede sequence and brief intense fights with dragons, dinosaurs, pirates, evil robots, and other enemies in the service of Mandark himself. (And that’s not to mention an encounter with the Do-Do bird from Porky in Wackyland who became an indispensable guide as well as a formidable and crucial ally for Dexter, Dee Dee, Mee Mee and Lee Lee as they head towards the great epic battle between good and evil so the kids (namely Lee Lee) could bring about 'The Downfall of Mandark’)
And just like Brad Bird’s much-acclaimed feature film debut The Iron Giant, Dexter’s Odyssey, being largely 2d classical hand drawn animated (with some CGI thrown in), might be made in a CinemaScope/Panavision widescreen 2.39:1 format, which might create such special requirements as the need for different kinds of wider staging of small numbers of characters (such as Dexter, Dee Dee, Mee Mee and Lee Lee alone in the world) and the need for longer backgrounds, but the Panasvision/Cinemascope 2.39:1 widescreen frames might also allow for a more detailed approach, even if the designs had to be beautiful as well as more graphic, geometrically angular, and contemporary as well as looking as though the viewer, once in a while, comes across something or someone straight out of Samurai Jack the cartoon show; I wanted the design of Dexter’s Odyssey to also look like living illustrations as well, so the Dexter’s Odyssey design work should also take inspiration not just from Samurai Jack and the old-gold Genndy Tartakovsky original Dexter’s Lab character designs from 1997-98, but also different kinds of world art from the art of Africa and the Australian Aboriginal peoples to medieval European tapestries to Japanese and Chinese art.
Even so, it will be my hope for Dexter’s Odyssey to be, with Chuck Jones’ What’s Opera Doc? (1957) and/or even Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant (1999), one of the great [non-Disney] masterpieces of animation’s history (past and/or present).
Sure, you don’t have to read all of it if you want, but what do you think of all that?
