A live-action short on Funny or Die featuring Don Cheadle as Captain Planet, obviously.
First, some background. I loved the shit out of Captain Planet as a kid. I don't know why. It was on the Saturday morning cartoon block on whatever channel I watched the most, and it was the most interesting thing, which shows how sad that was. (I think this was a couple of years before they came out with ReBoot, and maybe even a little before The X-Men, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Iron Man. Iron Man actually seemed boring to me even as a kid, but damned if it didn't have the awesomest intro I've ever seen.) I watched Captain Planet all the time, and I wanted to be like Wheeler, mainly because I was a pyromaniac and he was the only one with a personality. (His personality was that he was a dick. Still %1000 more personality than anyone else.) I owned a Wheeler action figure that made real sparks, and I joined the Planeteers, an official fan club for the show. It makes me so guilty to think I drive an SUV nowadays.
The point of that directionless rambling is this: Captain Planet is never too far from my mind. It lingers in the shadowy recesses of my subconscious, waiting to spring its catchy theme song on me in the least opportune of times. "Captain Planet, he's our hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero!" I do that all the time, and I try to hit the original key. So I found this parody solely by searching for Captain Planet. There are any number of reasons I might've. It was probably because I was thinking of Dr. Blight and whether she left a lasting impact on my sexuality. Offhand, I could not place the name Don Cheadle. Sounded pretty familiar, but no. It turns out he's sort of ridiculously overqualified for this kind of thing. Which was a sweet move.
Now that we're past all this exposition, let me set the scene. Naturally, the clip starts with that classic theme song. Then the characters. Whoever is playing Kwame does a pretty excellent impression. You'll also notice Britta Perry as Linka. Ma-Ti breaks out the first joke: exaggerated enthusiasm highlighting his flamboyancy. (I seriously never knew Ma-Ti was a boy until like, a year ago.) Someone is destroying trees. They summon Don Cheadle, who looks pretty fucking awesome as Captain Planet. He turns the bad men into trees. Then he turns a dog into a tree. Then a woman's baby, then a man who was planting a tree. He continues turning hundreds, nay thousands of innocents into trees with beams from his palm, then from his pelvic thrust, as Linka and Ma-Ti cry. "My heart. It hurts." Then there's a dramatic closeup on Captain Planet's face, some crazed, joyous, far-off expression. It's almost beyond description, so perfectly insane, like a true serial killer. "I--I'll turn everyone into a tree. Heh, heh. I'm gonna do it."
Kwame steps up. "I can't let you do that, Captain." He never had a chance. Treed. "Anyone else want to go green?! Huh?! That's what I thought!" It gets a little cliched from there, but, man. I could watch this all day just for Ma-Ti in the beginning and Don Cheadle's close-up.
"Hey all you Planeteers at home! Remember, turn off the faucet between usages, and recycle those plastics! Or else, I'll turn you into a fucking tree."