Heroes Reborn

Dear Readers,

So, I owe you an apology.  Things got a bit busy for me in September, and I was not able to get anything posted.  So this month, I have a review of Heroes Reborn, the revamp of the NBC show Heroes.  Next month, I am going to transition away from the reviews briefly and do another political post, since I got some pretty good response on the last one.  So if you are the kind of reader who likes my book and movie reviews, stick around here.  If you are more interested in my analyses of current events, feel free the skip up to that one.

Heroes Reborn

My first experience with superhero TV shows was the original Heroes, a fantastic show about a group of people who discover they have superpowers and end up working together to save the world.  While the later seasons of the show were disappointing due to the 2007-8 writers strike and subsequent poor writing, the initial season of the show created interesting characters with a diverse range of powers trying to unravel the puzzel in a series of prophetic paintings in order to prevent a nuclear explosion in New York city.  Along the way, the characters were forced to confront their powers, and how their new abilities impact their relationships with their friends and family.  Heroes Reborn is an attempt to recapture the fun, tension, and heart of that initial season of Heroes.

To some extent it succeeds.  While not as good a show as the original series, the reboot certainly exceeds expectations set by the later seasons of Heroes.  Much like Jurassic World, Heroes Reborn recaptures a brief glimpse of the magic of the original.  A few old faces return to the show, most notably Jack Coleman as Noah Bennet, the highly trained agent whose daughter, Claire was a main subject in the original series.  The show looks to also see the return of well loved characters like Mohinder Suresh, a genetic specialist with an interest in the evolution of superhuman abilities, Matt Parkman, a cop who can read minds, and Hiro Nakamura, the nerd who discovers he can manipulate the space-time continuum.  Along with the old faces come a variety of new characters with new powers… a young woman who can manipulate light and darkness, a boy who can teleport people and objects, a man who can transform sunlight into heat and energy, and a girl who can transform into a video game character.  Each of these has their own back story, motivations, and journey, although, as in the first season, it is obvious that their individual journeys all lead toward an encounter with each other and a mysterious impending doom.

One of the things the show has done very well is to show a possible response the world might have to the revelation of humans with superpowers.  Following an explosion at a conference designed to facilitate human and evo (evolved human) relationships, a negative backlash towards evos escalates into government and individual persecution and the heroes are hunted because of their powers.  The fear of “the Other” is powerfully evoked as the shows characters are forced to navigate a world which they are trying to save, but which rejects their efforts and views them as a threat.

This struggle is most effectively embodied in Zachary Levi’s character, Luke Collins.  After his son is killed in the explosion at the conference, Luke and his wife Joanne (played by Judith Shekoni) begin to hunt down and execute evos, viewing them as dangerous and uncontrollable.  While Joanne is fully dedicated to their vengeful executions, Luke begins to second guess their actions, particularly when confronted by the lives and families of the evolved humans he has murdered.  The emotionality both Levi and Shekoni bring to their roles make for one of the more interesting story arcs in the series so far.

Where Heroes Reborn falls short of the original show is in the performances of some of the younger cast members and in building the tension in the story over all.  The majority of the new characters are very young; averaging in their teens, with adult characters taking a supporting role.  This is very different from the original show, where the majority of the characters were in their twenties or thirties, and dealing with the difficulties of careers and everyday life along with their powers.  The comparative youth of the protagonists in the current series creates difficulties in the diolog and character representation, as the inexperience of the characters creates some absurd situations, and the teenage angst in dealing with parents and authority figures clashes with the political seriousness of the show as a whole.

Another aspect where the show is lacking in in the portrayal of any sort of antagonist or villain.  Initially, I assumed that Luke Collins and his wife would be the main antagonists for the first series.  However, recent episodes have indicated that, Luke at least, will be functioning as a protagonist for the show, leaving room for the introduction of a new villainous character.  The current antagonist, however, is a depressingly stereotypical badguy: the mysterious corporation.  Instead of placing an individual at the center of the series conflict, Heroes Reborn has created another boring mega-corporation that seems well intentioned but ultimately is working to destroy the protagonists.  Kidnapping “evos,” studying their powers, and using those powers to create new technologies, there is nothing interesting or compelling about Renatis as antagonist.  As a show that throve through the presence of an interesting villain (Sylar in the original Heroes), the cookie cutter blandness of an evil corporation in a science fiction show is hugely disappointing and frustrating.

Heroes Reborn, while not as powerful as the original series, is still a fun and fascinating superhero romp, with interesting characters, involved worldbuilding, and a great deal of potential.  Hopefully the rest of the season will retain the enjoyable aspects of the political and social discourse, while introducing some of the humor that was so excellent in the original, a more compelling villain, more mature characters to offset some of the juvenility of the current cast.

Well, back to reality.