One of the most celebrated filmmakers in modern animation, Genndy Tartakovsky has created a whole line of Emmy Award-winning television series for Cartoon Network, including Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars. Tartakovsky's latest show for Adult Swim is Primal, which returns for its second season on July 21, following the adventures of a caveman named Spear and a tyrannosaurus named Fang as they navigate their savage, prehistoric world together. After meeting with a woman named Mira at the end of Season 1, Spear and Fang set out in Season 2 to rescue her after she's kidnapped, embarking on an even more epic journey.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Tartakovsky shared the enduring influences behind crafting the world of Primal. He explained how the acclaimed series goes bigger and stranger in Season 2 and offered hints at what audiences can expect from the continuing saga of Spear and Fang.
CBR: Primal Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger, and now Spear and Fang are out on the high seas. What was it about hitting the ground running to kick off Season 2?
Genndy Tartakovsky: I've kind of had this story arc since almost the beginning, and as soon as we started Season 2, I realized we were heading into a cliché. It's been done before. Everything felt icky for me, especially after what we had done in the first 10 episodes, so we threw everything out and kind of started over. We wanted to continue right where we left off, pretty much, and go into this new world and all of this crazy stuff that's going to happen to our characters.
One of my favorite episodes of Dexter's Laboratory was largely silent, and there are sequences without dialogue in Clone Wars and Samurai Jack, too. How was it honing that technique and bringing it to Primal?
That's exactly right. I've been doing this type of storytelling since Dexter, and we've just been honing it, getting better at it, and understanding it more. It really was the culmination. After the fifth season of Samurai Jack, everyone was freaking out about the sequences with no dialogue. It really hit me -- why don't I do a show that's built out of all these sequences since I've been practicing doing them my whole career? This idea that I had all came together, and it worked to do this. I learned that it's never enough, and what I mean by that is that, through my career, my timing went from being really snappy to slower and slower and slower. What it's doing is sucking the audience in.
I always tell this story of when I finished the second episode of Primal. I went to Atlanta to do a little screening of it. It was a lunchtime screening. We had pizza, and my boss grabbed a slice of pizza. He took a bite. The show started, and he was holding his plate the whole time. He never took a bite, he got frozen because he was sucked in. I think you need all your senses -- well, your eyes and ears -- but a lot of shows you can talk and text and turn off, but with this show, you can't. What I learned is to keep pushing it, evolve it, and make it more interesting. The best thing that happened is that all the complex stories in Season 1 worked because we weren't sure if they were going to really get it, but they did, and now we're pushing the complexity to the next level.
What is it about Conan the Barbarian and Frank Frazetta that endures and influences not just Primal but your work overall?
With Frazetta, it's the best craftsmanship you could do. This violence of color and light and kinetics, you're just sucked into this painting, and you see so much in it. It's sensual, violent, manly, and it's everything. It's hard to explain, and some people don't like it, but for me, I was attracted to it right away, and I just loved it. With Conan, I was about 14 when I went to see it. Especially in those first few minutes where there is no dialogue, there's this story being told, and it's poetic and iconic... I always talk about iconic scenes and sequences where you used to be able to walk out of a movie theater, and those things are burned into your head forever.
For me, those first 30 minutes of Conan was it. I'm very much a person who operates from instinct, and I instantly loved the way that I felt watching it. When I got a chance to be a filmmaker and do stories, I wanted to duplicate that feeling. I want the audience to feel the way that I felt or experience something, and that's why I do what I do.
How is it coming up with the sound design for Primal with Joel Valentine? I can only imagine what the Foley sessions must be like.
Joel and I have worked together since Dexter's Lab. He's in my brain, and if I say "whoosh," he knows exactly what that is. For Primal, it's creating a world, a landscape, a feeling, and a mood. With Season 1, there were a lot of jungles, and for Season 2, there's a bit of that too, but also so much more. Now we're lifting everything up, and the thing that got pushed more was Fang's language, her little roars, squeaks, squeals, and moans. We keep pushing it to make it feel more real, and that's super exciting. Between music and effects, I usually pick out what's going to be the big mood-setter. Sometimes the absence of music makes it all great, and sometimes so does the absence of sound.
What's the secret sauce in making a great action sequence in animation?
Music -- that you do everything rhythmically. The best martial arts movies, like with Bruce Lee, or John Woo with his action films, it feels like a composition. They can go fast-fast-fast-slow or slow-slow-slow-fast -- any kind of rhythm you can establish, you're going to be successful. When you're doing things haphazardly, and there's not a plan, that sort of feels like just an action sequence. I always think about where am I heading, what am I doing, what kind of action can I do, [and] what's featured? I think about it like a musical composition: here's going to be my fast part, here's where I slow it down, and here, I'm going to get it going again.
Fang and Spear came together after each losing their respective families, and then, at the end of Season 1, they met Mira, who was taken away from them. What does Mira bring to their dynamic, and how does that impact Primal Season 2?
She brings in that there's something else in this world, and I think everybody can tell from the first trailer that there are more advanced civilizations. What's exciting about it is that it's all historical. There's historical evidence that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens existed at the same time -- they even mated together. We are now taking Spear and Fang to try and rescue Mira, and what Mira brings is the entryway into this new world for them. Because of Spear and Fang's loss, this is part of their new family, and they're not going to lose her. Instinctively, they're protecting each other, protecting their families.
You mentioned not knowing how the audience was going to react ahead of the premiere. What was the biggest surprise from the reactions coming out of Season 1?
That the emotional relationship and them as characters have outweighed all the violence. Any time you're doing violence, there's a sexiness to it. I was worried people were going to see the gore and not see everything else because we went pretty far with it. That was the biggest surprise, thank goodness, the character relationship. Reading people's reactions and what they were looking for in the next season, you could see that the relationship was so much more important than anything else.
Was there ever a moment where you wondered if you should dial the violence back?
It was actually the opposite, going, "Are we getting too soft?" Especially in Episode 10, I worried that there was so much character-building, and I didn't know how people would feel about the show, but it feels right to me to do this, or do people just want more senseless violence? It's hard because it is fun to watch, but you need a story, context, and characters; without that, it's nothing.
It was recently announced you're working on a movie back at Sony that's a mature animated project. What can you tease about it?
What's interesting is we're doing it at Sony Animation Studios, but it's actually for New Line. It's this new world of different studios doing movies for different companies. It's this whole different thing. It's rated R, 2D, and about a dog who discovers he's going to get neutered in the morning, and what does he do with the last 24 hours that he has? It's kind of a bromance, romance -- It's raunchy, it's got heart, and it's kind of a unicorn in a way where there's nothing else really like it.
It's not like Beavis & Butthead or something where it's a little more subversive. It's really like we're trying to [do] a high quality of animation, like 101 Dalmatians -- but not that, obviously -- but something that's R-rated. The raunch is delivered with a very soft, pleasing touch rather than just being dirty. It feels very nice, but there's some hardcore, funny, raunchy stuff. It's trying to get to that Judd Apatow level. I loved Superbad and Knocked Up. I really like the characters and character humor, and then you got really raunchy humor, and we're shooting for that.
As a huge fan of Dexter's Lab, how is it looking back at your career and working with Cartoon Network all the way through to Primal?
It's been my only home for television. Anything that I've done for TV has been for Cartoon Network, and I love that about it. It's great. Dexter was the first series, and we've all grown up together. Now, to have the opportunity to do a show like Primal that is so out of the box [that] no other studio probably would make it, and the only reason I do get to make it is my relationship with everybody and that I'm proven, that I've earned it to a degree, it's great. For the most part, it's been nothing but great experiences with Cartoon Network. We had our little dark days when Sym-Bionic Titan got canceled and all that kind of stuff, but generally, it's been incredible. I'm fortunate to have that experience and relationship with that studio.
By the end of Primal Season 1, you guys started to venture into the supernatural, with witches showing up. Based on what we've seen from Season 2, it looks like the show isn't just getting bigger but also weirder from its more grounded beginnings. How is it leaning more into fantasy?
Yeah, it was always the idea [to do] that. It's pulp, and that comes from the Conan books. If you ever read the Conan books, they're incredible. They're 10 times what the movie was, and it had so much more character and this pulpy, fantasy element to it. Whether there were gods, giant Vikings, or whatever it was, it was incredible, not just from the Conan books but also from Solomon Kane. Almost everything that [Robert E. Howard] did, he loved that element, and it really connected with me. Even though I don't like horror movies and the feeling of being scared, I liked reading about it. That totally connected with me.
With the first season, we started out softly, but then we had the vampire bats and the giant spider. By the time you get to the monkeys, the black elixir, and all these kinds of stuff, it was off the charts. The prehistoric witches, that was the one I was the most excited about because it was the most complex thing we've ever done without dialogue in a story about loss and everything. Getting to the second season, there is plenty of more fantasy coming. The only thing we're probably lacking is creatures. We kind of had to dial back a little bit with the creatures, but, at the same time, what you get instead is pretty cuckoo.
What else can you tease about Primal Season 2?
I wouldn't miss an episode because it is one story from start to finish. These 10 episodes have more surprises in where we go, and it's so dynamic that I'm very excited about people experiencing it. I'm going to get yelled at. There are going to be angry people, but, at the same time, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to have fun. It's a fun 10 episodes -- you don't know where it's going, it keeps building on itself, and, by the end, it'll be an explosion. It's going to be a ride!
Created by Genndy Tartakovsky, Primal premieres Thursday, July 21 at 12 am EST on Adult Swim, with episodes released on HBO Max the following day.