Samurai Jack: The Premiere Movie is a Made-for-TV Movie that also serves as the Pilot Movie to Samurai Jack. It was released on August 10th, 2001 as a complete movie and was broken into three individual episodes for reruns. Those episodes being "The Beginning", "The Samurai Called Jack" and "The First Fight".
In ancient Japan, a samurai warrior embarks on a mission to defeat the evil wizard Aku. Before completing his task, he is jettisoned thousands of years into the future. Suddenly, he discovers he is in a world where Aku now enjoys complete power over every living thing. Taking on the name Jack, he sets out on a quest to free the future from Aku's grasp and to find a way back to his own time so he can destroy the evil for good.
Episode numerals: I, II and III
Original air date: 8/10/01
The film provides examples of:
- Early-Installment Weirdness: As this is the first episode...
- Jack is not only frequently Off-Model, but his voice sounds awfully American.
- Aku is set up as the serious, sinister threat he is, with none of his trademark humor which would later subvert this.
- The Emperor describes Aku as an Evil Sorcerer with shapeshifting powers rather than as a demonic force of pure evil.
- Since Jack hasn't been sent into the future yet, this episode has none of the series' sci-fi elements and thus amounts to twenty four minutes of straight-up Wuxia.
- When Jack's sword strikes Aku, it just leaves simple cuts. Later episodes establish that Holy Burns Evil, meaning any contact with the sword will cause Aku's essence to burn away.
- The forms Aku takes when he fights Jack can only vaguely be animalistic, and in later confrontations Aku is much more like an animal in these forms. Compare the fight to the one in "Jack and the Zombies" and you’ll see the difference.
- Establishing Character Moment: Done masterfully well with Aku, who says it all in the opening line of the series itself in a very calm and sinister tone:Aku: Once again, I am free to smite the world as I did in days long passed.
- Foregone Conclusion: Considering this is the first episode of the show, and that the entire synopsis of the series revolves around Jack being hurled into the future, it's pretty obvious that Jack's first attempt to finish Aku wouldn't be successful.
Part 1 tropes:
- A Minor Kidroduction: Jack is a little boy in the prologue. After his exile, he gradually grows up into a young man.
- Anachronism Stew: Jack's Training Montage shows him training with Ottoman Turks, Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Vikings, and Russians with Saint Basil's Cathedral in the background.
- As You Know: After Aku's escape, Jack's father recounts his son with the story of the battle the two shared, wherein he imprisoned Aku using the sword. In true ironic fashion, Aku arrives to capture The Emperor and raze Jack's homeland to the ground almost immediately after he finishes recounting his story.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The episode begins with Aku successfully conquering Japan, and he even manages to capture the same hero who had previously defeated him years before. Later, Aku banishes Jack to the future in order to achieve victory at the end of their fight.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: In the first (by episode anyway) of many incidences for the demon, when Jack's father goes running to grab the mystical sword to fend off Aku, Aku grabs him and stands there laughing as Jack and Jack's mother get away with the sword rather than simply disintegrating Jack's father on the spot and grabbing/destroying the sword itself.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends while Jack is still falling through the time portal, screaming in confused terror.
- Clothing Damage: Implied over the passage of time, when Jack wears a gi that slowly falls apart into tatters as he ages, until finally, the only thing left of it is the family crest. He's given a new one upon reuniting with his mother, but it will be the first of many times his clothes will be ruined.
- Crazy-Prepared: The Emperor predicted that Aku would eventually return and he would fail to stop him, so he orders his wife to send their son off for his training.
- Creepy Monotone: Aku speaks like this throughout the entire episode.
- Curb-Stomp Cushion: In his first form during their battle, Aku manages to get in a painful looking slash at Jack's side. He spends the majority of the fight after getting sliced up by Jack's sword.
- Downer Beginning: The opening of the movie shows Aku being released from his imprisonment, wherein he arrives in Jack's city, captures his father, and razes his whole kingdom to the ground.
- Downer Ending: And the entire first act is quite a downer overall, considering the fact it ends with Aku flinging Jack into the future before he can deliver the final blow.
- Foreshadowing: The Emperor's last line in this episode:The Emperor: Be wary, my son. For evil finds a way...
- Knight of Cerebus: Aku is potrayed at his most evil and terrifying, having absolutely none of the humor that would later characterize him.
- No Name Given: The titular Samurai is never officially named. He's only ever referred to as "my son" by his father and "samurai" by Aku. He doesn't even get the nickname of "Samurai Jack" until the next part.
- Say My Name: Jack bellows Aku's name to get his attention in his tower of doom. And it's just the beginning of many instances where Jack will yell his adversary's name in a full-throated roar.Jack: AKUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Jack's father trapped the demon Aku inside a black tree several years ago. Unfortunately, it can't hold him forever.
- Silence Is Golden: The entire montage of Jack training from childhood to adulthood, about one third of the episode, has no dialogue whatsoever, just music and visuals.
- Time Travel: Aku tears open a portal through time, which causes Jack to be flung countless years into the distant future...
- Total Eclipse of the Plot: A solar eclipse causes a bolt of energy to hit the tree that Aku was trapped in, allowing him to escape.
- Training Montage: A large section of the episodes middle revolves around Jack's traveling all across the world as he grows up, learning various different fighting styles, before his first true confrontation with Aku.
- We Will Meet Again: Just when Jack is about to land the final killing blow on a weakened Aku, Aku vows that they will see each other again in the future. Jack scoffs at this, but only for Aku to fulfill his promise...
Part 2 tropes:
- Alternative Calendar: Sir Rothchild scans Jack with his device to discover he originates from 25 BA (Before Aku), 25 years before Aku enslaved the Earth.
- Appropriated Appellation: "Jack" is not actually the Samurai's name, it's the slang term that the first people whom Jack talks to in the future refer to him as. However by the end of the episode, after he agrees to help the dog archaeologists out, he tells them that people refer to him as Jack.
- Asshole Victim: The alien thugs who Jack fought, and literally disarmed, are this. Considering they tried to kill him for looking at them funny, even when he apologized for it, they deserved it.
- Bad Future: It doesn't take long for Jack to come to grips with the fact that Aku has been free to create this with his absence. He makes it his goal to return to his timeline. By destroying Aku in the past, this future can be undone.
- Bar Full of Aliens: Jack unwittingly walks into a nightclub filled with exotic alien dancers, and patronized by alien criminals. Naturally, he soon gets into a Bar Brawl with those criminals, which attracts the attention of a few talking dogs who are looking for help.
- Black Shirt: One of Aku's followers overhears Jack's conversation with the dogs and immediately informs him about the Samurai's arrival.
- Bullying a Dragon: The alien thug at the bar chooses to bully and abuse Jack, even after he apologizes for staring at him, eventually deciding to murder him. Needless to say, he becomes the first of many fools to fall victim to Samurai Jack.
- Crapsack World: A combination of Bad Future and Villain World. Without Jack or his sword around to destroy Aku, the latter was able to conquer the entire world, and he enslaved everyone in order to mine resources to conquer the rest of the galaxy. Worse, Aku has allowed "ruthless criminals, mindless stooges and questionable mercenaries" from all over the cosmos to crash on Earth and wreak havoc as they please.
- Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: While a group of alien refugees ask Aku for shelter on Earth, a younger alien angrily calls out Aku after he revealed he was responsible for their plight. Aku punishes the youth by teleporting him to the Pit of Hate, where he will eventually learn "proper respect for Aku".
- Fake Arm Disarm: The alien thug who attacks Jack, along with the rest of his gang, all have cybernetic arms which can shoot missiles. This allows Jack to disarm them without having to kill them.
- Fantastic Racism: At the aforementioned nightclub, the gang of alien thugs are offended that Jack (a human) had even dared to look at them funny, and they try to kill him for it.
- Fish People: The aquatic aliens from the planet Badaquas. Aku decided to have their oceans drained, forcing them to immigrate to Earth and personally beg for Aku's permission to stay.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Jack becomes this after arriving in the Bad Future, which is filled with flying vehicles and populated by all kinds of strange creatures. Naturally, this leaves Jack more then a little stupefied throughout the episode.
- Gone to the Future: Jack finds out Aku took over the world while he was absent for thousands of years.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Of a sort. While the dogs who have been crucified by Aku are shown from the front, they are very heavily covered in shadow to avoid showing the details of their demise. The main focus is instead of Jack's expression of horror.
- Heroes Love Dogs: When explaining what his old world was like, Jack says the dogs of his time were wonderful companions.
- It's Personal: Jack is generally disgusted by Aku's evil, but seeing what the dogs are forced to endure hits a particular nerve, due to it echoing what his family and people were being put through before he got sent to the future.
- Jumped at the Call: When the dogs explain how Aku enslaved him and that they need help, Jack admits he's unsure if he can liberate them, but he's certainly going to try.
- Little "No": Jack when the dogs express certainty that Aku will spread his evil to the rest of the galaxy.
- Mr. Exposition: The Archaeologist Dogs serve this role, helpfully explaining how Aku had taken over the world during Jack's absence.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Jack when approached by Sir Rothchild, mistaking him for some kind of demon dog.
- Aku, upon seeing that the one vowing to liberate the dogs is Jack.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Jack's ultimate goal for the series; to return to his past and destroy Aku, thereby undoing the Bad Future he is in now.
- Shout-Out
- One of the three locals describes Jack's moves as "supercalifragilistic".
- Jack slicing off an alien's arm in a Bad Guy Bar.
- The waitress from the Bad Guy Bar takes the teleporter from Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century to see Aku.
- The archeological dig is in a ruined version of Townsville.
- Two of the dogs in the canine village are The Big Dog and The Little Dog from 2 Stupid Dogs, Genndy Tartakovsky's first animation job.
- The music cue as Jack looks on as the weathered dog archeologists is a sound-alike of the score from the scene in A New Hope when Luke looks out at the sunset.
- Small Role, Big Impact:
- Jack's name comes from three Totally Radical locals he met upon exiting the portal.
- Aku learns of Jack exiting the time portal because the waitress (who turns out to be an Aku worshipper) informed him of what she overheard at the nightclub.
- Smug Smiler: Aku's initial shock at seeing Jack again quickly recedes into a satisfied grin, showing Aku's misplaced confidence that he has enough resources now to dispose of Jack once and for all.
- Time Travel: Jack exits through the time portal that Aku had thrown him into from the previous episode.
- Totally Radical: The three locals who bestow Jack with his name speak only in a faux hip-hop slang.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Jack sitting in the private booth with the dog archeologists.
- Villainous Vow: Still remembering the pain of their first fight, Aku promises to return the favor to Jack.
- Wretched Hive: The futuristic, cyberpunk city Jack finds himself in. It's filled with enormously tall buildings, flying cars and spaceships, and infested with criminal gangs. Oh and of course, it's just one shitty little corner of Aku's shitty world.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Jack was already gobsmacked by the sci-fi sights of the future, but he initially mistakes Sir Rothchild for some kind of mystical demon, due to him being a recognizable animal that nonetheless talks like a human and walks upright.
Part 3 tropes:
- Blood-Splattered Warrior: By the end of the battle with the Beetle Drones, Jack is shown covered head-to-toe in their oil as well as his own wounds.
- But Now I Must Go: After freeing the dog archaeologists from Aku's slavery, they ask Jack to join up with them; but Jack refuses since he needs to find a way back to the past, and there are bound to be others that will need protection from Aku.
- Clothing Damage: Jack starts the battle against the robots with various armor pieces over his body, in addition to his robes. By the end of his fight, the whole armor and upper part of the robes are destroyed.
- Death Glare: Jack briefly gives one to Sir Rothchild following the latter's levity in the aftermath of his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the Beetle Drones.
- Heroic Vow: Departing the mines, Jack promises to find a way back to his own time and end Aku's evil once and for all.
- Humble Hero: After the fight is over, the dog archaeologists thank Jack for saving their lives, saying he will go down in their history and that they will forever be indebted to him. Jack simply tells them, "Thanks are not necessary."
- Machine Blood: Beginning a tradition that will last throughout the rest of the original series; whenever Jack destroys a robotic opponent, a large amount of black oil spurts out to compensate for traditional blood.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Jack is introduced to the retractable ball point pen.
- One-Man Army: Jack proves just how tough he is by single-handedly destroying every single robot. This is the first of many times that he defeats multiple enemies in a row.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Or rather oil bank, but the point still stands that many of the robots Jack fights start spewing out large quantities of oil after they've been cut up.
- Silence Is Golden: Jack has exactly one line of dialogue during battle with the Beetle Drones. Other than that and some shouting, there is no dialogue until he says goodbye to the dogs at the end.
- Title Drop: The last line of the episode, courtesy of Aku.Aku: And it is I who will put an end to that war started in that ancient time... Samurai Jack! [Evil Laugh]
Wa-chout! - Villainous Vow: The closing lines are Aku vowing that he will be watching and waiting for the time when he puts an end to his most hated foe.
- We Will Meet Again: Aku promises Jack that the two of them will meet again to finish their battle at a time and place of his own choosing.
