Looks like NBC is really trying to relaunch Heroes. They have a whole new plot and series of characters (a weird carnival), and these videos seem to want us to get involved with the show again, and get to know the characters we love.
The Sylar and Claire videos give a good background/recap of the characters, but the "Heroes in Love" one doesn't really make sense (some characters aren't even on the show anymore, and the Matt/Daphne thing didn't really happen), but they're good promos. (Here's the trailer for season four.)
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Here's another sneak peek at the new season of Heroes
Continue reading Here's another sneak peek at the new season of Heroes
Here's a preview of Heroes, season four
Like a lot of Heroes fans, there's a lot I've liked about the show and a lot that has frustrated me. But damn if they don't have me coming back season after season.
Jason already told you about what's coming up in season 4 ("Redemption"), and now here's a trailer. Looks like a whole new group of people with powers will be introduced (a carnival, I believe), Claire is in college, Mrs. Petrelli is still being mysterious, Sylar looks like Nathan (except when others see him as Sylar), and (sigh) it still looks like Hiro is time-traveling. But they have me curious again.
Jason already told you about what's coming up in season 4 ("Redemption"), and now here's a trailer. Looks like a whole new group of people with powers will be introduced (a carnival, I believe), Claire is in college, Mrs. Petrelli is still being mysterious, Sylar looks like Nathan (except when others see him as Sylar), and (sigh) it still looks like Hiro is time-traveling. But they have me curious again.
Heroes returning characters to their "normal" lives
Remember when Heroes was about ordinary people with extraordinary abilities? Well, after the last few seasons of time travel, daddy issues and government interference, Tim Kring and the team are taking Heroes back to basics. They'll have regular jobs an regular lives. In other words, they remembered why we liked the show in that first season, so they're trying to recapture lighting.So you've got our cast trying to live regular lives after all the excitement they've been through. Add in a traveling carnival with an earth-moving leader luring other people with abilities into his troupe and you have the premise for at least the start of the season.
Oh, and that lesbian-esque relationship between Claire and her new college roommate we've been hearing about. Well, have to get buzz somehow, right? And make Claire interesting. Nothing else worked so let's try girl-on-girl action.
Continue reading Heroes returning characters to their "normal" lives
Tim Kring offers spoilers for Heroes season four
I'm eagerly anticipating Zachary Quinto's return to Heroes as Sylar after watching Star Trek. Now, producer Tim Kring is getting my hopes up for the show's fourth season, which he says will explore some classic and intriguing superhero themes.Kring recently revealed some details about the show's upcoming plots and themes in his latest "Heroes All Access" newsletter. We have the scoop on what Claire, Peter, Nathan/Sylar and HRG will be up to when the show returns to NBC in the fall.
Click through for spoilers.
Continue reading Tim Kring offers spoilers for Heroes season four
Heroes: 1961
(S03E023) Hot damn, Tim Kring, you did it! The show's creator stepped up to the pen flying solo on the writing for this episode, and by golly, he made a Petrelli family episode interesting. Angela finally stopped abusing her kin by having them dig up skeletal remains, all the while refusing to tell them why they were doing it. She finally opened up a little bit and we got some flashbacks as to just what happened at Coyote Sands and what it has to do with the Petrellis and Mohinder's father.
And while it was interesting from beginning to end, primarily because it did answer some questions as to what happened in the past with Angela and, ultimately, with the genesis of what would become "The Company," it wasn't great. I did find the story of Angela and her sister Alice intriguing, but there were just as many questions left unanswered as there were answered, which I guess is a goal of a long-term series like this. What I do want to know is if Angela went back to Coyote Flats after she left that night to dance with a colored boy, not that anyone remembers that.
Heroes accused of theft again - VIDEOS
As if Heroes hasn't had enough bad press lately. Here comes another controversy to deal with.The makes of the Icelandic film Astropia are demanding an injunction against the NBC show, saying it has violated copyright laws. Remember the scene in the most recent episode where cheerleader Claire went to the record store to interview for the job left vacant when Aquaboy went on the run? The producers of Astropia say that the scene is very similar to one that they had in their 2007 film. Both show girls going to a comic book store job interview.
This is the second time that the show has been accused of lifting material from another source. A lawsuit came up during the show's first season.
The two scenes are after the jump. The first clip is from Heroes, the second clip is from Astropia. You be the judge! Is Heroes just taking stuff from other sources or is this just a superficial similarity?
Continue reading Heroes accused of theft again - VIDEOS
Should NBC give Heroes an end date like Lost has?
Interesting story over at The Hollywood Reporter: should NBC give an end date for Heroes like ABC gave an end date for Lost?It's an intriguing idea. If they were to say that Heroes was going to end, let's say, after the 6th season, then the writers and producers could actually start planning the story in a certain way and give it a real ending. I also think that if the show were to have a definite end date, fans and former fans would watch the show, knowing that it is actually going somewhere. James Hibberd makes a good case, saying that scarcity increases demand, that it will probably increase ratings, and the show is, well, a goner anyway.
Of course, this could probably be said about a lot of shows on TV, that giving them an end date would make the stories better and get fans interested. Except for According To Jim of course. ABC just renewed that the sitcom through the 2021-22 season.
Do you have Heroes fatigue, too?
As Bob wrote the other day, NBC has assured fans that Heroes will be back next season. Isn't that great? Well, no, not to me. I would like to assure NBC that I have had it with Heroes. I'm exhausted and fed up. Do you feel like me? Do you have Heroes fatigue?The changes have been detrimental to the original premise, ruining what was once the most exciting new TV show on the air since Lost. Quite simply, I don't like the new "book"; I don't like the characters that have been mangled beyond recognition; I don't like all the story lines that were dropped in favor of this new paradigm that has the government hunting down Matt and Peter and the other familiar heroes and treating them like terrorists. At the end of the last episode, I just felt bad about Heroes. What have they done to my show?
Continue reading Do you have Heroes fatigue, too?
Heroes: Exposed
(S01E18) Now that's how you do it. Heroes was founded on the idea of this multifarious cast running all over the place and getting into trouble. We skipped all around, checking in on everyone and the hours just seemed to fly by. After what was a slower outing last week, the adrenaline kicked back into high gear. Rebel made a return appearance, if by appearance I mean more text on various computer screens ... and that is what I mean? Is it Ma Petrelli? Nathan asked her that point blank tonight.
And poor Nathan. You kind of knew the Hunter was going to be a bit much for Nathan to control. After all, Nathan is wanting to round up those with abilities for their own good as well as for the good of mankind. He wants to protect them and the world at large. In a sense, he's doing a "good" thing, if only from his perspective. The Hunter, on the other hand, sees them as a threat that needs to be eliminated. They're dangerous, and after his close encounter last week he's gone and made it personal.
Continue reading Heroes: Exposed
Heroes: Trust and Blood
(S03E15) The second chapter of the newest volume of Heroes wasn't quite as strong as the first one, but it kept things moving in a positive direction. I guess the writers were wanting to keep the fugitive heroes as weak in power base as possible, based on the casualty we experienced in this episode. In a way, I can say I knew it was coming, but was hopeful that it wouldn't. While I agree that the cast had gotten a little sprawling and out of control at times thorughout the series progression, I never thought this character was a problem.
Continue reading Heroes: Trust and Blood
Top TV Stories of 2008: The decline of Heroes
I'm sure that many of us could go round and round over the quality of the episodes in this latest chapter of Heroes. If you're following along with the weekly reviews, you've no doubt seen it play out in the comments. The thing that is a little harder to argue is the ratings. Over these last few months, the one time flagship NBC drama has seen its numbers drop to drastic levels. Put another way, if Heroes was a space ship, and dropping ratings signified an increase in speed, the show has gone plaid.
Continue reading Top TV Stories of 2008: The decline of Heroes
Heroes: Dual
(S03E13) Man, they did it again. Set up a potentially solid climactic final chapter to a "Volume" and then just kind of fizzled out. Sylar's antics bordered a bit on the ridiculous, and I don't at all buy Nathan's character path over the past three seasons as plausible. I was pleased with the continuation and ultimate resolution of Hiro's story as it involved also Ando, Matt and Daphne. As it turns out, while these are by no means the central figures in the plots for this Volume, their story was the best.
Maybe it's because there was a minimum of whining (Peter) or pouting (Claire), and quite frankly there's only so much of that crap you can take. With the end of "Volume Three" tonight, as we've done in the past, we got a sneak peek at "Volume Four: Fugitives." And as has been the case in the past, the few minutes we got on a preview of the next volume was much more compelling than the finale of this current volume. Just like real comic books, you usually get a great build up in these big stories, ultimately leading to disappointment.
Here's how Bryan Fuller will fix Heroes
Brett already told you earlier today about the casting of John Glover as Sylar's father on Heroes. But there are many more changes coming to the NBC show.Pushing Daisies creator/producer Bryan Fuller is back at the show. He worked on the show in the first season, and now he's coming back to work on it again starting with episode 19, a few episodes into the "Fugitives" chapter. In this interview over at Entertainment Weekly, Fuller acknowledges that the show has had several problems the past year. He's well aware of them, and he has some ideas on how to fix it.
Continue reading Here's how Bryan Fuller will fix Heroes
Six bad things about four good shows
1. Heroes. The show has problems, which have been analyzed to death in the past several weeks, but it's still an entertaining hour of television. Great cast, and it's a fun ride. But a few things about the show bother me. One is the number of characters. Well, not the amount, per se, but how the show is structured with all of the characters. I'd rather see several characters sit out an episode than have ten characters all fighting for screen time in one episode. It's just too much. I also hate that there doesn't seem to be any real danger on the show, no real risk. I mean, if Hiro can go back in time, where's the real danger? If something can be done where a character can come back to life even after he is killed, where's the real risk? The show has to do something to change that in the next chapter.
Continue reading Six bad things about four good shows
What if Heroes wasn't a serialized show?
Everyone seems to have an idea on how Heroes can be improved. I think it's still good, but ratings are down, fans are fleeing, and it's probably not a show new fans can get into. Now creator Tim Kring has an idea.For next season, he'd like to see more self-contained episodes instead of a long continuing storyline over the entire season. He talked about what he intended to do with the show and what the future might hold at the Creative Screenwriting Expo last weekend. He wanted to give NBC a show like Lost or 24, one with a serialized storyline that would have fans coming back each week. Now he says he's not sure if that was the right decision, describing those shows as "an absolute bear to do." He thinks that the way that people watch TV nowadays is a lot different than just three years ago, because of DVRs and online viewing and all that, and that has changed how viewers watch serialized dramas since they don't watch them live every week.
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