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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
 Posted - 02/18/2008 : 12:16:34 AM
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I just got done watching it, and it was about as uninteresting as I expected. It seems like pretty much a standard modern-day crime drama, just with a talking car thrown in.
***MILD SPOILERS***
- The love-hate relationship between the new Mike and the lady was irritating. Who cares why whoever left without saying goodbye? I didn't mind at first because I figured the lady wouldn't be sticking around for the series. But it looks like she is. So I probably won't be. If all they're gonna do is bicker, what is this crap? Gimme an unattached ladies' man any day.
- KITT can change colors and even license plates now? Ken mentioned that in the original Knight Rider, KITT got new powers to keep audiences interested as the series went on. I guess the folks behind this series are figuring they have to pull out all the stops from the start to keep audiences interested. I don't think it's gonna work.
- Hasselhoff's cameo at the end was nothing. He had a jaunty stance for a guy paying last respects to the mother of his only son. And he didn't real say much that was meaningful. I was hoping for at least a "You're gonna have a good time with this, kid. Trust me."
- The slo-mo zoom-ins of the bullets bouncing off KITT scream CSI.
- Nice touch that the intro notes of the theme song are the same. I always did like that.
- I actually didn't mind KITT's new voice too much aside from simply missing the original voice. His tone of voice though, his modes of speaking, seemed to me to be juuuuust a shade on the robotic side; but given that he and the new Michael are just now meeting each other, maybe that'll change, and it won't be that much of a change, either. So the voice I'm okay with that.
BOTTOM LINE: I doubt I'll be watching this show very much. |
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Capt. Nemo
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
630 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 01:54:39 AM
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- Seeing them replace the 18 wheeler with a big honking airplane epitomized what I saw going wrong with this show.
- Val Kilmer's voice was okay.
- I might be able to shrug off scenes of KITT saying he's programmed to preserve human life but nearly snapping a guy's neck for dropping a potato chip on his floor. Just keep it to a minimum
- Of course KITT uses solar energy! Even crime fighters have to do their part for the environment. Speaking of which, is KITT's engine going to be sold to any car companies any time soon? Just imagine the profits and prestiege a car company could get marketing a super efficient fuel car. I hope they aren't going to hog it for themselves.
- Brits make great bad guys. Don't they?
- What? No turbo boost?
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"Ward, the Beaver blew up the 7-11 again."
"I'll have a talk with him Dear" |
Edited by - Capt. Nemo on 02/18/2008 02:15:46 AM |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 04:28:11 AM
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How does one travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a car with no driver without getting the attention of any cops?
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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RossM
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
427 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 08:29:24 AM
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| Was Hasseloff sober at least? The origional Kitt needed all that armor with him driving it. |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 2:08:54 PM
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I appreciated they neeed to update the approach, but it was a tad too grim for my taste. Amp up the fun quotient if it goes to series.
The series 'hand-off' from Hasselhoff was meh. The kid shed his hostility way too fast after needlessly exhibiting it all show. And from what I can tell, the woman who was his mother was not one of the zillion characters Michael saved on the show, or anything like that.
Moreover, the kid was clearly about thirty, and thus presumably born before Michael Long became Michael Knight. So the character on the first Knight Rider had a kid with a woman who wasn't his fiancee Stevie Mason, and abandoned both the mom and the kid? That's not the Michael Knight I know by a long shot.
Getting Hasselhoff was the right idea, although what they really needed was a shot of him getting into the original KITT, even a long shot.
Biggest thrill after subjecting myself to an intense week of old Knight Rider watching? The opening credits and the fact they kept the theme music, albeit jazzed up.
Wow, she's a lesbian. How daring. (Yawn.) Oh, and she was also pretty stupid.
Comedy jerk FBI sidekick? Lamer.
Lucky that Knight Industries Three Thousand also spells KITT.
Why not self-repair *and* molecular bonding.
KITT not moving during van collision apparent violation of physics, even if it was unharmed. And it should have been, but then repaired. They need to think this stuff out.
KITT can barely outdrive a regular Ford. *There's* a sponsorhip issue.
More if I think of it. It was OK.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 2:30:49 PM
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| By the way, for anyone who missed it, the movie will be rerun on Saturday. |
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Capt. Nemo
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
630 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 3:07:10 PM
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I may be giving them too much credit. But they might have been thinking of the Chevy Volt as a model for KITT's power supply.
The car primarily runs on electric motors and batteries. The gasoline engine is there only to generate electricity. Electricity is stored in batteries for later use. So you could idle and still use that energy on the road.
The weird part is that this technology has been around for a long time. World War 2 submarines worked this way.
[url="http://www.chevy-volt.net/"]Click here to see the Volt.[/url]
[url="http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car2.htm"]Click here to get hybrid info.[/url]
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"Ward, the Beaver blew up the 7-11 again."
"I'll have a talk with him Dear" |
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TheFoywonder
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
833 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2008 : 3:13:47 PM
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I found this to be absolutely awful with really no redeeming qualities. Too many characters, too little action, boring villains, barely any real plot, Kilmer sounded like a stoned HAL 9000, too much bickering lovebirds nonsense, no turbo boost, pitiful car chases, one giant Ford circle jerk, all the fun was sucked out of it: I'm amazed anyone found anything to like about this. An utter waste of two hours of my life. Maybe the reason they're rerunning it on Saturday is because they had a good deal of money tied into the movie and it failed to even beat the second hour of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in the ratings.
For the record, the writer of this two-hour movie designed to potentially relaunch Knight Rider as a weekly television series once again - a writer whose only other writing credit is a single episode of another short lived show I don't even remember called RAINES - told Entertainment Weekly he wrote the script in all of 12-days. After watching it last night I have one question: what did he do for the other 11?
Now Playing in Foyeurism at Foywonder.com: ACTION U.S.A. - The best kept secret in all of action b-moviedom explodes into the Foyer
Plus: B-WARE THE BLOG is alive at http://www.livejournal.com/users/foywonder |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2008 : 9:01:38 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Ken HPoJ
I appreciated they neeed to update the approach, but it was a tad too grim for my taste. Amp up the fun quotient if it goes to series.
Amen. As stupid as the original series was, it had a sense of fun to it almost from the word go.
quote:
The series 'hand-off' from Hasselhoff was meh. The kid shed his hostility way too fast after needlessly exhibiting it all show. And from what I can tell, the woman who was his mother was not one of the zillion characters Michael saved on the show, or anything like that.
Moreover, the kid was clearly about thirty, and thus presumably born before Michael Long became Michael Knight. So the character on the first Knight Rider had a kid with a woman who wasn't his fiancee Stevie Mason, and abandoned both the mom and the kid? That's not the Michael Knight I know by a long shot.
Getting Hasselhoff was the right idea, although what they really needed was a shot of him getting into the original KITT, even a long shot.
One problem: ahem, wasn't he, you know, Michael Long before assuming the identity of Michael Knight? Okay, no sense of fun, tries to turn half of the running time into a music video (so hip it's already stale!), the mother dying carried no emotional weight at all. But the biggest problem, for me, was the selective continuity this show had.
Let's see. Twenty-five years ago, the first KITT was made, and he had a pretty realistic set of emotions, to the point where he was by far the best character in the series.* Now, 25 years later, they have a computer that has no emotions and is referred to as "it." THIS is progress?? Add to that everything Ken just said about the problem of long-lost father Michael Knight.
*[That may kill the series right there. The thing that made the original Knight Rider as popular as it was may have been that KITT was a real character, which is more than this version has.]
If you're starting a new series, either do a complete reboot, or make sure you have decent continuity for the old show. This one falls in between. WHONK! |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 02/27/2008 : 1:05:27 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Ericb
How does one travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a car with no driver without getting the attention of any cops?
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp
As someone who spent two years stationed at Edwards AFB and made many road trips to/from Vegas, let me say that that's nothing unusual. LOTS of old folks are on that interstate, and if you didn't catch a flash of blue hair, you'd swear there was no one in the car. Any cops that saw Kitt would assume there were four old ladies in it heading to Vegas to play the slots. :)
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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Capt. Nemo
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
630 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 6:54:36 PM
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Sorry about the tardiness of this post. But my computer crashed and I had to wait for a computer company to send me a new one. I then added more bells and whistles to it. The whole process took about a week. Now I have the computer of my dreams.
Roger Ebert once said that one way to critique a movie is to compare it to another movie with some of the same themes, plots or characters. So I compare this movie to the Knight Rider pilot for the original series. After thinking it over, the old one blows the new one way.
I remember the original pilot because it had two themes that I love. The first being that the bad guys don’t know who they are messing with. The second is revenge. The second theme is explained in Ken’s reviews of Knight Rider episodes. Michael was originally Michael Long. Long was betrayed, shot and left for dead. But the first theme in the pilot set the standard on how future episodes played out.
It would usually go like this. Bad guys would have their plans set in motion. Michael and Kitt would ride in (seemingly out of nowhere) and start to pester the bad guys. The bad guys would smugly smile and think they can handle Michael and KITT. But every plan they try is foiled because they don’t realize they are dealing with a guy with a super car who can spot and/or foil their every move. The fun really comes when we see the bad guys befuddlement as they witness a car where bullets bounce off it and can pass through concrete walls that should have reduced the car to crushed beer can.
The pilot for the new series acted like a 24 episode in reverse. Instead of the good guys being one step behind the bad guys, it’s the other way around. The good guys are one step ahead bad guys. Thanks sometimes in part to KITT. But leaves out the fun in seeing the bad guys’ befuddlement as they slowly realize they are not dealing with an ordinary man with an ordinary car. They spend most of the movie trying to figure out the good guys’ next move.
And that is where it derails. The new pilot never took time to take glee in the bad guys’ misfortune. Especially since their plans didn’t involve having a supercar in the mix.
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"Ward, the Beaver blew up the 7-11 again."
"I'll have a talk with him Dear" |
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