Revolution Trailers and JJ
Hey folks, Admin_Rock here. Remember when there used to be three (or four) of us bringing you our thoughts and musings? Yeah, me too. Rather than excessive whining about why it is that the busiest of us somehow is holding the bag and bringing you new content, let’s just jump right in:
NBC has picked up the latest show from JJ Abrams called “Revolution”.
Here’s the link to i09, lots of short trailers here…
The basic plot involves the loss of all electrical power in the world. We pick up the story 15 years after this happened, a world of militias, farming, and buildings with moss on them. There’s a locket with a usb drive in it, that seems to hold some kind of secret or information about how to get it all working again. There’s a quest to find and rescue someone. There’s Giancarlo Espisito, which is worth at least 100 points off the top.
The closest thing to this storyline I can think of is S.M. Sterling’s “Dies The Fire” series, which started out interesting, and devolved in to “SCA enthusiasts are the best people ever!!!!”. I gave up about 3 books in. Hopefully, this show goes other places.
I have a big writer-crush on JJ. He brings a lot of awesome in to the world. The guy had 3 television shows on the air last year (Fringe, Person of Interest, Alcatraz), and will have 3 again this year (minus Alcatraz, plus Revolution). He brought us Lost, in my opinion one of the best shows on TV. Yeah, didn’t stick the landing, but went for it hard, changed up the game for serialized TV, and was brilliant in it’s efforts.
The point is that JJ brings new things to the game, and they’re ambitious. Even if they fail, they’re usually worth the journey. That’s what I ask out of a series: “Make it interesting”. Alcatraz had a lot of hope, had some interesting elements, but somehow didn’t juggle the season arc/weekly business tradeoff very well. I think too much “bad guy of the week” made it a procedural, which I’d wager fans of serialized shows aren’t in to.
So, for my money, I’ll tune in and watch most shows J.J. puts up. Might be bad, might be brilliant. A lot of that will depend on the writing, the cast, the production. It’s easy to judge in advance, to shoot down any efforts to bring something new to the table, but if we do that, we get more of the same old, more “Dancing with the Skaters of Singing”.
So: Thoughts? Does it look good? Will you watch? Do you have a “JJ” of your own, a creator or visionary who you’ll try anything by?
