Member review

Penguins of Madagascar is about a group of penguins who break into Fort Knox because it contains the last vending machine that contains their favourite snack, Cheesy Dibbles. Then they get caught up with this shape-shifting, villainous octopus named Dave, who is resentful because humans have treated Dave poorly on account of the fact that Dave is not cute. So Dave driven by anger over not being cute has developed this serum that turns penguins monstrously ugly and will therefore make humans uninterested in protecting them.

So for the last 60 years we've lived in a new geological period called the anthroposcene in which humans are radically reshaping the planet. We can affect the atmosphere and the sea levels and the planets overall level of biodiversity and we can also choose which animals to value and protect. So Dave the evil octopus is absolutely right, we are very biased towards the cute, fuzzy organisms.

So it seems to me that the Penguins of Madagascar is really about the anthropascene as seen from a non-human perspective, which is incredibly fascinating.

But unfortunately they cast Dave as the villain so it ends up being a celebration of cute instead of a critique of our aesthetics of cute, but there are still some really interesting ideas there, not to mention some very funny jokes.