Total Drama: Revenge of the Island

Plot

Like Total Drama Island, this season is a fictional reality show that follows the competition of thirteen new contestants 16-year-old at Camp Wawanakwa, a summer camp on a fictional island located in an unspecified area in Muskoka, Ontario. However, since the island has been forgotten and left alone for the past two seasons, the island has been used as a toxic nuclear waste dump, transforming it into the perfect location for the most dramatic and brutal challenges yet. The new cast of campers must then participate in competitions to avoid being voted off the island as they all try to get ready to compete with some of the most popular original contestants in the fifth season. They spend almost 2 weeks (13 days) in this camp competing in challenges for immunity and at the end of the season, one winning contestant will have the chance to win one million Canadian dollars. The competition is hosted by Chris McLean (Christian Potenza), who is assisted by the camp's chef, Chef Hatchet (Clé Bennett).

At the beginning of the season, the thirteen campers are placed onto two teams, the Mutant Maggots and the Toxic Rats. In each episode, the teams participate in a challenge, in which one or more campers can win invincibility for their team. The losing team is called to the elimination ceremony at night, where they vote one of their own members off the island. At the ceremony, Chris declares which contestants are safe by calling their name and giving them a marshmallow, while the one whose name is not called is eliminated from the game and given a radioactive marshmallow. The eliminated camper is then taken to the Hurl of Shame and catapulted to the Playa de Losers. However, an eliminated camper can still come back to the game if they find a wooden Chris head.

About halfway through the season, the Toxic Rats and the Mutant Maggots are disbanded, after which the challenges continue; the winner of each challenge then only receives invincibility for him or herself, whereupon a camper without invincibility is voted off the island. This process of elimination is continued on until two players (Cameron and Lightning) remain on the island, where then they are subject to a final contest. At the end of the season, Cameron is crowned winner of the season and is given the million dollars by Chris. Lightning however, wins in the alternate ending, which airs only in the United States.

Episodes

Total Drama: Revenge of the Island premiered on both Teletoon and Cartoon Network 2012. Teletoon has aired Total Drama: Revenge of the Island on Canada on Thursday nights at 7:00 p.m. EST from January 5, 2012, to April 12, 2012, while on June 5, 2012, the U.S. started airing it on Tuesday nights at 7:30 p.m. EST on Cartoon Network. However, the first worldwide airing for this season was in France via Canal+ Family.

Cast

Other than Chris McLean and Chef Hatchet, this season featured an entirely new cast of characters, the majority of which had new voice artists. Due to the new cast, voice actors for Anne Maria, Brick, Dawn, and Staci are the ones who worked the least amount of time at Fresh TV overall. Another new character featured this season was Beverly (referred to as B). However, although he appeared in four episodes, he had no lines during any of his appearances.

Returning cast

Several characters from previous seasons also made cameo appearances in this season.

Stephanie Anne Mills as Lindsay from Episode 6 Clé Bennett as DJ from Episode 11 Katie Crown as Izzy from Episode 4 Megan Fahlenbock as Gwen from Episode 8 Kristin Fairlie as Bridgette from Episode 5 Scott McCord as Owen from Episode 1 Drew Nelson as Duncan from Episode 9 Peter Oldring as Ezekiel from Episode 7 Rachel Wilson as Heather from Episode 10

Characters

Unlike previous seasons, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island features a new set of contestants, which are Anne Maria, B, Brick, Cameron, Dakota, Dawn, Jo, Lightning, Mike, Sam, Scott, Staci, and Zoey. All of the new contestants have their own audition tapes for the new season. They can be seen online on Teletoon's official website, online on Cartoon Network's official website, or on YouTube.

Main characters

Cameron, known as the Wide-eyed Bubble Boy, is the main geek of the show. Because he had an "overprotective" mother, he spent all his life in an inflatable bubble and he was also home-schooled. It's because of this that he is shown to be very weak, short and looks a lot younger than his actual age. However, what he lacks in strength he is able to make up for with brains and he is shown to be extremely smart which helped his team win many challenges. As the season progressed Cameron became a much more physical player which greatly helped him all the way to the final where he faced off against Lightning in a fight dubbed "Brains vs. Brawn". Although Lightning was the more powerful of the two, Cameron with his intelligence was able to construct a metal suit (similar to that of Iron Man). He wins in the original ending and since he was able to survive without his bubble, he decides he doesn't need it to be inflated (since Cameron's mum said he needed the money to inflate his bubble with the money) and decides to share it with everyone else. In the alternate ending, although he doesn't win he decides he doesn't need the bubble anymore. Voiced by Kevin Duhaney.

Lightning, known as the Athletic Overachiever, is strong and athletic, while being an over-achiever who says that he always wins and never loses. However, Lightning is very arrogant and doesn't want to help his team. Also, Lightning loves to talk about himself. Lightning always loves saying "-sha" in mostly every word he says. Despite his athletic prowess, he isn't very intelligent and even believes that Jo is a boy since she is the only one who can really keep up with him. His competitive drive causes him to get to the end of the season and almost win until Cameron ultimately edges him out in the end. His jersey is similar to the jerseys issued to the San Diego Chargers. However, in the alternate ending, he wins and says he's going to use the money to buy his own stadium to train in, though he has to heal from a broken leg first. He also ends up with white hair. Voiced by Tyrone Savage.

Teams

There are two teams again in this season, which are the Toxic Rats and the Mutant Maggots. Here are the original members for each team as of Episode 1:

Toxic Rats: B, Dakota, Dawn, Lightning, Sam, Scott, and Staci.

Mutant Maggots: Anne Maria, Brick, Cameron, Jo, Mike, and Zoey.

Note that at the start of the season, Brick was on the Mutant Maggots but then switched to the Toxic Rats in Episode 4, while in Episode 6 Jo and Scott volunteered to swap teams with one another, and in Episode 7 Dakota was brought back to replace Anne Maria (who quit) and placed on the Maggots.

Original concepts

In the early production stages, the character lineup had twelve contestants, and most of them had body shapes, colors, clothing, heights, hair styles and faces that were completely different from the final designs. The thirteenth character who was added later was 'Jo'. His design was similar to that of the character used in the Total Drama Island special as the man in the car when Courtney "discovered" civilization. That character also happened to be DJ's prototype from the original Camp T.V. promos. Jo was later renamed to B (which stands for Beverly) while also getting his final design. The only other character to have their name changed was Mary; she ended up using the name 'Jo'. Despite the rename, this character underwent the least amount of change in design. Anne Maria, Brick, Lightning and Scott had minor modifications made to their outfits. Sam and Scott had different facial hair. The characters who had the most changes made to their designs were Dakota, Staci, and Zoey. Mike and Cameron had their ethnicities changed. Dawn, who was not in the original lineup, replaced an unused character named 'Molly'. Cameron's initial design would be reused for Jay and Mickey on Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race.

Cameos

Although the original contestants did not compete again in this season (according to Chris, they had outlived their usefulness), nine of them still had cameo appearances throughout the season: Bridgette, DJ, Duncan, Ezekiel, Gwen, Heather, Izzy, Lindsay, and Owen. However, at the beginning of the season, all of the original contestants (except for Blaineley) were seen together on a yacht, revealing their status after Total Drama World Tour. They were all last seen (except for the nine who cameo) leaving on the yacht right before the new contestants were first introduced.

A list of all the cameos in Total Drama: Revenge of the Island and their roles during their cameos are shown below:

The fifteen original contestants who no longer appeared after the first episode of the fourth season were Alejandro, Beth, Cody, Courtney, Eva, Geoff, Harold, Justin, Katie, Leshawna, Noah, Sadie, Sierra, Trent, and Tyler. Harold was thought to have a cameo as soon as Brian Froud was confirmed to be part of the cast, but it turned out that Brian voices Sam instead. Out of all the cameos, Ezekiel is the only original contestant who made cameos in more than one episode in the season (he appeared in three episodes), while DJ is the only cameoing character who has the same voice actor as a main character (Chef) already with a major role.

Production

Total Drama: Revenge of the Island was developed and produced by Fresh T.V. Inc. and distributed by Cake Entertainment. Since all the characters in this season are completely new, the studio had to hire several new voice actors to come and voice the new characters, but Brian Froud (the voice actor of Harold) has returned to voice Sam, one of the new characters. This season was directed by Keith Oliver and Chad Hicks, and Todd Kauffman had a small role in the making of this season. Production started in early 2010 when the season was first announced as Total Drama Reloaded, and the new characters were first released to the public by then. Production continued for almost a year well on schedule for a 2011 release date. However, major delays in 2011 caused the season's air date to be pushed back to 2012, since many scenes consisting of radioactive material had to be cut out or edited. There were some other things that did not make the final cut also, like some backgrounds, extra scenes, a flying squirrel concept and an episode about Dakota hosting the show when she locks Chef and Chris in a closet.

Air date conflict and production delays

As revealed by Christian Potenza on the Total Drama: Live Action Panel at Canada's 2011 Fan Expo, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island was originally scheduled to air on July 2011 in the United States and on September 2011 in Canada, but due to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear accident which caused many Japanese citizens to receive radiation poisoning, many staff members found some of the season's scenes of radioactive material and creatures to be considered insensitive to victims of the disaster. This initiated the producers decision to modify the storyline of the season in order to remove some of the radioactive references, leading to many scenes being edited out.

This process of re-editing the entire season required more production time, causing the U.S. air date to be delayed until September 2011 (the time when Canada was originally supposed to air the season), but failure to complete the full season by then (with many scenes that still had to be changed) now caused more delay for both the U.S. and Canada, until the season was fully finished by late 2011 for an early French airing. Now, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island aired three months later on Canada than originally expected on January 5, 2012, while the new rescheduled air date for the U.S. was not until June 5, 2012 (eleven months later than the original air date of July 2011). However, France has aired the entire season in just 8 days from December 21, 2011 to December 29, 2011, becoming the only country in the world to air the season still in 2011. Although, they only aired the French spoken version of the season that did not include the voices from the original voice actors (except Chris and Chef).

On May 28, 2012, Australia also began to air the season almost as fast as France did (one episode per weekday), but this time in English. Italy started to air the season on January 9, 2012, while Cartoon Network also aired the season in the Netherlands, Romania, Scandinavia and Hungary starting on March 5, 2012, Russia and Bulgaria on March 6, 2012, Poland and Africa on March 8, 2012 and Latin America on April 2, 2012. Originally, the season finale was set to air in the U.S. on September 11, 2012, but was instead pulled up to August 28 (two weeks from original date) due to that date being a national memorial holiday. The final two episodes were then combined into a one-hour full-length season finale.

History

On March 25, 2011, all the shapes of all the 13 contestants were revealed in this video. On March 27, 2011 all the names and personalities of the contestants were revealed in a press release. On April 5, 2011, Christian Potenza posted a YouTube video of him recording the first line of Total Drama: Revenge of the Island. The quote was:

This line is used for the promotional trailer that Teletoon showed at the end of the Total Drama World Tour finale, which was first released on April 24, 2011 (Easter Sunday). On June 1, 2011 Christian Potenza released on his Facebook the new season logo along with more final designs of the characters. On June 3, 2011 there were snapshots of radioactive Camp Wawanakwa. On August 25, 2011 the new Total Drama: Revenge of the Island flipbook was released. On August 28, 2011, the first official cast image was released to the public via Facebook. On September 24, 2011, the third official trailer was released which contained new scenes and confirmed the team assignments. On September 27, 2011, at the Total Drama: Live Action Panel at Canada's 2011 Fan Expo, Cory Doran confirmed all of Mike's personalities, and Christian Potenza said that the team name for the Radioactive Rats was scrapped. On October 13, 2011, Christian Potenza revealed some stuff about the intro of the season and said that promos will be out soon. On November 28, 2011 the official Canadian air date for the season was announced for January 5, 2012. On December 14, 2011 an animated interview with Chris McLean and a fan was released and revealed that the new team name is now "Toxic Rats". On December 18, 2011, the official Canadian TDRI website was launched that includes interactive menus and biographies of all the new contestants, as well as videos and season descriptions. On December 21, 2011, France began to air the season's episodes, two weeks before Canada. On Christmas 2011, all of the auditions of the 13 new characters were released on Teletoon's official Total Drama site. Cartoon Network viewers were able to vote for Zoey before the finale due to them airing Episode 12 and 13 in the same day.

Reception

Total Drama: Revenge of the Island has received mostly mixed to positive reviews. In the United States, over 3.3 million people have viewed the season, with over 51% growth over last year, making Total Drama: Revenge of the Island the #1 telecast of the year for Cartoon Network. Tom McGillis said in an interview that both Total Drama: Revenge of the Island and Total Drama Island are the highest rated shows on the series. This season has been viewed in over 100 countries, worldwide. On Metacritic, the season currently holds a 7.3, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".

Media

Madman Entertainment is set to release Part 1 of Season 4 of Total Drama in August 1, 2014 on a Region 4 DVD in Australia with plans to release Part 2 in the fall.