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Recently, Amazon signed a multi-series licensing deal with Glitch Productions, producer of YouTube animated series that have been so popular that they’ve attracted hundreds of millions of views. The first show that Prime is streaming under the deal is Glitch’s biggest hit: Murder Drones, which was first released in 2021 and slowly produced eight episodes until 2024.
MURDER DRONES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “BOOTING UP. EXPOSITION.” Then we see a number of what the narrator calls “worker drones.”
The Gist: Worker drones help humans mine exoplanets for a massive conglomerate named JC Jensen. But the company wiped out all human life on their exoplanet, leaving the worker drones to live on their own. But the company couldn’t let that happen, so they sent an army of “disassembly drones,” which the workers call “murder drones,” to start killing them off. They also drink the workers’ oil to sustain themselves.
One of those worker drones is Uzi Doorman (Elsie Lovelock), an angsty teen who says “Bite me!” a lot. Her father, Khan Doorman (David Dixon), is famous in the colony for inventing the doors that keep the murder drones out. But Uzi thinks that the workers need to be on the offensive, and she shows her class a “sick-as-hell railgun”, even though no one asked her to.
She tells her father she wants to check the doors, making him proud, but she really wants to go to the surface to test her gun. She encounters a murder drone, all wings and claws, but manages to blast him with the railgun. After the drone reboots, his sensors are off. He turns out to be an amiable goof named N (Michael Kovach), who doesn’t realize he’s befriending someone he just tried to kill.
N and Uzi go into the murder drones’ landing pod; Uzi tries to explain to N that they can escape the planet in the pod, and warns that JC Jensen will have no use for disassembly drones once their job is done. N talks about the rest of his landing team: V (Nola Klop), a vicious killer on whom he has an unrequited crush, and J (Shara Kirby), the team leader who thinks N is pretty useless.
When V and J return from their hunting mission, they smack sense into N and he realizes he let a worker drone go. He manages to follow her and get into the colony, and his instincts tells him to attack; Uzi’s dad backs away from her gun when N has her in his clutches and leaves her for dead. But when V decides N is a traitor, he and Uzi team up.
Photo: Glitch ProductionsWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Murder Drones, created by Liam Vickers, is made by Glitch Productions and its 8 episodes have garnered over 330 million views on YouTube since the pilot debuted in 2021. Its success led to the production house putting out The Amazing Digital Circus, which was the first Glitch production to be licensed by a streamer (it debuted on Netflix in October). Our Take:
But how is Murder Drones as a story? Actually, it’s pretty good. The main characters we’re introduced to in the pilot — namely, Uzi, N, V and J — are very well-defined. We’ll meet other characters later on, some in flashbacks, some in real time. But the first episode is a classic scene-setter that leans into the exposition by straight-out labeling the first minute or so “Exposition.” Nothing better than telling the audience exactly what they’re going to get, right?
Anyway, the key to the show is the relationship between Uzi and N, mainly because they’re supposed to be enemies. But Uzi is much more of a doer than her usually-passive worker drone friends and family, and N is a murder drone who realizes that he’s murdering drones that only differ from him in that they don’t have wings, a tail, and talons. That pairing is going to give that personal aspect that is absolutely necessary in animation like this.
The animation is also one of the stars, with CGI that’s detailed when it needs to be and cartoonish when it comes to the expressions on the digital faces (i.e. readouts) of the various drones. But it also puts you in the middle of scenes and battles with zooms and shaky “camera” work that makes things more dynamic than we see from even recent computer-animated series.
Photo: Glitch ProductionsWhat Age Group Is This For?: There’s some mild swearing and some robot violence; Amazon rates it as “13+”, but we think it’s fine for kids 10 and up (mainly because our 10-year-old daughter is a massive fan of Murder Drones).
Parting Shot: Uzi says “Just can’t wait to murder all humans. Classic robot stuff. I hope they’re sitting pretty there on Earth, ’cause we’re coming for them.”
Sleeper Star: Michael Kovach’s character N is goofy and silly, and he’s a murder drone we want to root for.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Uzi is recovering from a railgun misfire in class, she asks a classmate, “What are you in for? Testosterone too hard?”
Our Call: STREAM IT. There is a lot going on in the first episode of Murder Drones. But the drones are fun characters to follow and the animation plays well on the big screen. It certainly has justified its massive fandom, and Prime subscribers get a chance to get in on the fun.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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