posted
Well, for a live action television show it's not bad but I guess I wouldn't call it unique. Though, if it actually gets renewed for a second season, I'd call it unique, or at the very least, special.
It depends on a variety of factors. Consider, that X-Men and Mutant X, weren't about average joes living average lives who kept secret identities or what not, and fought crime. Those shows were about teams of superheroes who teamed up in secret organizations and fought OTHER mutant like guys.
When was the last time a show about a bunch of regular guys, LIVE ACTION show, I might add, who got superhero abilities and then tried to juggle that with their job and their home life actually succeeded? And after that, on a MAJOR network, and not the Sci-Fi channel?
This just solidifies even more that sci-fi is mainstream, and not just for geeks anymore. The difference is in what they focus on, and how they package it. From what I saw of Heroes, it's almost like Third Watch and ER (in the sense of everyday people more or less) but only now they have super powers. Which makes that much more sense considering it's an NBC show.
It'll be interesting to see what they focus on, the crime fighting, or everything else. Because the everything else is what usually gets left behind with this kind of series.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Edit to add this more detailed description of the show I found at this site.
quote:High School teacher Ralph Hinkley (William Katt, whose character teaches a weird sort of special ed where the students have been permanently exiled from the rest of the school populace) is a good guy. An idealist who believes he can help turn the trouble making kids in his class around. A man who believes he can make a difference. It’s this goodness and idealism that makes him the perfect candidate to a race of aliens that choose him and FBI agent Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp chewing scenery like its an all you can eat buffet) to receive a galactic gift. A super-suit that gives the wearer the ability to fly, turn invisible, become impenetrable to bullets, and fire and which gives the wearer a whole host of other gifts in order to help them protect humanity. The suit is given to Ralph by the ‘green –guys’- (who you never really see in the first season, just their ship and an agent of theirs that delivers the suit) because of his innate goodness and their belief that he will use the suit for the good of all mankind, and not just the will of America, as agent Maxwell wishes. Maxwell is to serve as a mentor and guide, to make sure that Ralph stays on task and to keep him committed to the suit and his duty. Things are far from easy for Ralph as he loses the instruction manual to the suit and has to learn its abilities as he goes and sometimes stopping the bad guys as much by accident as by intention. The real difficulty for him comes with balancing his duties with the suit – a beautifully obnoxious red thing with stretchy pants, booties, and a cape – and his work and home life. He is raising his son by himself, is fighting for custody of him with his ex-wife, has to teach and be there for his students, and has a girlfriend. No one said it was easy being a superhero. Despite the difficulties and the strain, Bill and Ralph find a way to work together and, by the first season’s end, are just getting a handle on what their duties are and how the suit works, setting things up nicely for a long run…so everyone thought.
The show is completely outdated and moderately cheesy by modern standards but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t still hold up for me. It’s well written, wonderfully acted, and has such a fun, innocent vibe to it that it’s hard not to let go of the cheesy flying effects and the hackneyed commie plots and just go with the flow. The special effects have become really laughable – as is the awful integration of a stuntman in an obvious wig that couldn’t look less like Katt – but again, if you buy into the characters, and what is happening, it makes things go down easier. The show was a novel concept that still works today, thanks in part to such earnest performances and such an interesting premise – a reluctant superhero who isn’t smooth or suave and looks as if he needs to be saved more times than not.
posted
The problem with TGAH, Magson, was that so many of the show's episodes focused not on the "ordinary guy" aspect -or- the "super-hero clumsily learning" aspect...but on the "Cold Warriors" aspect.
It was boring and cliche even back then, and makes the show so much more dated than it would've been otherwise.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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This show is going to be about beautiful people, learning the beauty of their own beautiful lives.
Even the "fat" beat-cop is beautiful.
All right. I admit that I'm a bit torqued because this show is a watered down version of a story I've been developing called "Patriarchs." Of course, in MY story, the heroes are all forty-something dads, complete with receding hair-lines, spare-tires, and flabby chins. REAL regular people, not Hollywood doubles.
posted
How is Hollywood supposed to create "regular people" without grabbing regular people out mowing their lawns and whisking them away to act in a tv show?
Besides, regular people becoming actors would turn them into Hollywood doubles, thus creating a never ending cycle.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Whedon's busy with the Wonder Woman movie at the moment. She has the dubious distinction of being the most difficult of DC's iconic characters to write.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: REAL regular people, not Hollywood doubles.
Scott, while I'm plain and extremely tubby, my brothers (with one exception) could all be models or movie stars (though none of them are). They're lean and good-looking. And they're all regular guys.
"Real" people can be "beautiful". Just sayin'. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Puffy, man, Wonder Woman's great and difficult and all, but jeez, hasn't he learned to multitask? Or go without sleep? That's what we have Starbucks for.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Joss's genius is in making us fall in love with his characters. There is not enough time for this in a movie. There is only time for this in TV.
Joss, in the impossible event you're reading this, For God's Sake Go Back To TV!
I have 13 boxed sets (7 Buffy, 5 Angel, 1 Firefly) of your DVDs already and I'm aching to buy more.
Make a 'verse. Make characters for us to love. Stick with them for 7 seasons instead of jumping to your next project. DON'T PUT IT ON FOX. Swim in the worship of your adoring fans. Roll in the money we throw at you.
posted
The Greatest American Hero is one TV show I really would like to see made into a movie. Keep the same balance of characters but with better special effects.
I picked up the first season and watched about half of it to see if it was as good as I remembered. Love the actors, love the idea, but the effects and the cheesy stories got to me. And, come to think of it, I made fun of the cheesy stories then, too.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I was going to say pretty much what Dan_raven just said, but I'll throw Lost in there too. It looks pretty standard.
I would say that this is part of the idea of the recent years of exploring the idea of demi-Gods; people with supernatural powers and, in some cases, superior morality.
quote:Besides, regular people becoming actors would turn them into Hollywood doubles, thus creating a never ending cycle.
I think Lyrhawn is right, to an extent. Sometimes the only difference between "ordinary people" and "Hollywood people" is the way they dress and how they cut their hair etc.- how they present themselves.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I'd like to see this story approached from another side.
You know, a society of superheros, where suddenly a select few discover they have bizarre human powers, like accounting and going to the laundromat. They have to learn to deal with these new abilities and juggle both their public lives of fighting crime and saving the world with their secret lives of cooking and going to see old Woody Allen flicks at the college film festival.
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