Since April 1, 2003, when “Red vs. Blue” was created by Burnie Burns after a failed attempt at a podcast called “Drunk Gamers,” the Machinima series has gathered millions of viewers and has become extremely popular.
Through its success, a prosperous website named after their production company Rooster Teeth was created in 2004, founded by Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Gustavo Sorola and Jason Saldaña, who also voice some of the stars in the show. Along with this, the site has its own store that sells DVDs of all the seasons, “Red vs. Blue” apparel (as well as apparel from their other shows), posters, accessories and more.
“Red vs. Blue” follows three groups of soldiers, those being the Reds, Blues and the Freelancers. The first five seasons, titled “The Blood Gulch Chronicles,” focused mainly around the civil war between the Reds and Blues. Soldiers were told to fight one another to survive and capture the opposite team’s base and eliminate their enemies.
The Red team consists of a blood-thirsty redneck sergeant appropriately named Sarge, intelligent suck-up Simmons, a lazy and sly insubordinate Grif, an impressionable follower of questionable humor and motivation Donut and a sarcastic Mexican robot mechanic. Though the Red team’s role in the series isn’t as important as Blue team’s, their hysterical antics always keep the story lighthearted and breaks away from the emotionally draining and suspenseful plot and at the same time ties the entire tale together.
On the other hand the Blue team is made up of an angry, terrible shot leader named Church, Tucker
is the perverted token member of the group, the unbelievably stupid rookie Caboose, temporary member and Grif’s little sister named Sister and freelancer Tex.
Within the series, the Blue team has one of the most complex and amazing storylines taking a more serious tone, but of course, with Caboose on the team they never are far from a sidesplitting occurrence.
The show took a bit of a serious turn starting in season six, diving into the mysterious Project Freelancer, a government program in the series that is the cause of all of the Red’s and Blue’s irrational incidents and funny experiences.
Through this storyline, Burns, cowriter and creator of the show, was able to balance a dark and
thrilling action chronicle with a comical and unpredictable one.
Only a few days ago, season 10 of the show came to an emotionally wrenching end, closing “Red vs. Blue’s” first decade of hilarious nonsense, amazing action and awesome original content that spawned the “Machinima Movement,” inspiring many young gamers and film makers to try their hand at creating films with video games.
While it started off as just a few bored friends wanting to make a comedy short, they’ve turned it in to a full-blown 10 season webseries including actors like Shannon McCormick and Elijah Wood.
Through season 10, everything from the past nine seasons comes together, creating a possible close to an amazingly creative webseries, but Burns isn’t stopping there. As he claimed once before, as long as there is an audience for “Red vs. Blue,” they will continue to create more episodes.
The storyline of Project Freelancer concluded well, leaving few holes in the story, and tying up loose ends even from episode one and showing origins of characters that may have been overlooked.
The cinematography was superb, the fighting sequences (coordinated by Monty Oum) could be compared to something from a kung fu movie, and the overall story was phenomenal.
It’s to be expected that the next part in the series will be released next year and is definitely anticipated to be another great season.
“Red vs. Blue” season 10 is up for purchase along with seasons 1-9 at roosterteeth.com and iTunes.
