Zenon the Zequel is my personal favorite, mostly because when it came out 10 years ago, it scared the crap out of me. The alien signals freaked me out when I watched it alone in my house making crayon zap-pads out of index cards. I don't know why it scared me so much but I tend to enjoy movies that scared me as a kid. There is probably something psychological going on with that but I couldn't tell you what it is exactly. They changed Zenon's best friend from Raven to the girl from Color of Friendship, I didn't mind though. Raven was pretty much "over" by then anyway. Margie was annoying as ever and did not know when to keep her mouth shut.
In each movie, Kirsten Storms falls in love and saves the day. She's think she is a hot shot and is pretty confident that there will be very few consequences for her actions. In the end though she never gets in that much trouble considering the messes that she creates. We all wanted to live in the space station and go on awesome adventures to different planets and experience the weird foods and technology that this "future" place had. I bet a lot of children got into trouble trying to be like Zenon and butting into a lot of other people's business.
I was not a big fan of Z3 and I probably could not even tell you what happened in it because I have only seen it once. Okay, probably more than that but still. It was not as good as the first two.
The initial movie was set in 2049. In 2049 I will be 60 years old. As a kid, 50 years in the future seemed a hell of a long time. It seemed plausible that we would be using flying cars, "zap pads", and shuttling from earth to space whenever we felt like. Considering that is now 2011 and 2049 is 38 years away, I am not so sure that any of those things will be happening. But I can hope so or I am holding Disney accountable for my dreams being shattered.
Zenon was a great addition to the Original movies. Kirsten Storms moved on to play various different roles on daytime soap operas but she will always be Zenon to me. This past summer I discussed how much I did not like my camp name and how much I wished I had named myself Zenon. That would have been awesome if children and staff had called me Zenon for an entire summer.
Did you like Zenon? Which movie was your favorite? Do you think you will be living on a space station in 2049?
-Brianna