Can Hereos Be Saved?
By now, you’ve probably seen that Heroes producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander are no longer a part of the team. It seems that sinking ratings and fan backlash can get you fired. Who knew? Tim Kring now states that he wants to simplify the storlines, go back to the good vs. evil themes, and emphasize character development over plot twists. We’ve heard something similar from Kring before Season 3 started about righting the sinking U.S.S. Heroes and yet here we are, two fired producers and sagging ratings later.
So, now’s your chance to play producer (there are two openings after all). Before taking the job, you have to decide whether Heroes can be saved at all. If so, what would you do to ‘fix’ Heroes? Tell us in the comments!
For me:
- Lose the soap opera stuff. I don’t need evil twins, long lost fathers, and the like.
- Evil should be evil and good should be good. Stop morphing the characters between the two extremes, we need G v E as the fulcrum of the show. It’s called Heroes after all. With actual heroes to root for, why bother? This would lend itself to the good guys and bad guys squaring off against each other in classic ‘comic book’ form.
- Cut down on the number of heroes and make darn sure everyone and their brother can’t obtain them. If that means nuking Mohindar and his formula, so be it.
- And please, find someone, anyone, who can write a decent storyline.
I’m almost thinking Heroes needs a reboot. Already!
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JP,
I especially don’t like the super hero “formula” aspect of this season, which is why I vote for Mohinder to be nuked. I personally would like to see Sylar take him out along with Mr. Petrelli, and the formula…
Then I would like Sylar to become evil again. While, I kind of like Sylar as a good guy and wouldn’t mind seeing him “save the world”, I also thought he made a better bad guy than his “Dad”.
I would put in a much more obvious line between the “good guys and bad guys”. And seriously… Peter and Mohinder don’t make for good bad guys.
I would make it clear whether or not the “company” was good or bad. We still really don’t know who the good guys and bad guys are and one of the ways we can know is by clearing up this issue.
I would also kill off the company and the original 12 founders. Then some of the new heroes could start their own “company” whose purpose was to fight evil and to delve back into the history of the original company.
I would bring back the Haitain for more a prominent role. I liked his character, maybe it’s because he didn’t talk much. I guess you have a point about hiring new writers
I would introduce Kryptonite to the show. That way anyone who could find Kryptonite could weaken the heroe’s powers. Alternatively, there would need to be more people with the Hatian’s powers to prevent people like Peter, Sylar and their Dad from being too powerful.
There are many other things I would change, but overall I still like the show enough to watch it.
<I>And please, find someone, anyone, who can write a decent storyline.</I>
If they fix this issue, all the others should be fixed too. I have no problem with soap opera story lines or characters with complex personalities that are neither completely good nor completely evil, as long as the stories are entertaining.
Writing is key, but it’s incredibly easy to get too cheesey with the soap opera elements. I say loose em.
The single biggest mistake I’ve seen in season three is the “hero formula” was a huge mistake. Who was it that said “If everyone is special, then no one is”?
Finally, as it’s been said here before: heroes need to be Heroic!
I’d recommend single-season story arcs (ala Veronica Mars or 24) that have the good guys fighting the bad guys and foiling an uber-plot. Honestly, “24 with super powers” is a good formula for the show – and some ‘soap opera’ / ‘character development’ fits fine as long as the episodes are mostly story driven. That’s the key though – the show needs to be story driven and not character driven for the most part.
I haven’t watched since the first season so I can’t comment on the characters today, but they should avoid turning into the ‘live-action Justice League’ if at all possible. I’d avoid having them group up, but instead having them work toegether because it is ‘the right thing to do despite our differences.’
I think the heroes should have some real differences with their basic motivations. Frankly, having a hero who coverts fame and/or fortune makes sense. Having some who crave annonymity works, but not everybody. Heck, take a look at a few different celebrity behavior and apply it to the heroes (think Brittany Spears, Harrison Ford, Will Smith, Heath Ledger.)
Oh, and time travel is way too powerful – that needs to be eliminated. Teleportation or freezing time is OK, but back/forth is not. Besides, time travel paradoxes suck as plot devices.
I agree that the formula idea is a bad one. It doesn’t really explain how Adam Monroe would have had his powers way back when. Was there a formula then? I think a genetic reason would have been better.
I think it was a bad choice to make Sylar become good, especially in such a short time frame. Nor do I think the person playing him does a very convincing acting job.
They need to cut down on the number of characters and stick to a core group. It would give a better opportunity to develop each of them, rather than just have snippets of each.
The first season got my interest because there was a story goal and questions to be answered. This season there’s what? Nothing. It just seems like the characters are moving through the scenes without purpose or motivation.
I’m not watching any more, because I don’t care what happens next when an episode ends. The first season, I couldn’t get enough. Now, I’ve had enough. If they come up with better storylines, I’ll reconsider the show.
The aspect I like most about Heroes is that each character is also a very ‘human’ being. Lose the soap opera stuff along with the character development and the show will lose the humanity. It’s the soap opera stuff that brings in the non-fanboy viewers. Without it, you just have some crazy sci-fi show that will be dropped from the primetime schedule faster than you can say “Reba”.
That’s not to say that some of the character development has gone very, very wrong. Nuke that horny dog Mojinder and his latin girlfriend. That whole storyline was just…., stupid!
@Jeff – “Who was it that said “If everyone is special, then no one is”?”
That would be Syndrome from The Incredibles. Maybe Pixar ought to take a crack at Heroes? Then again, The Incredibles is so much better, why would they want to?
Flush it. Some things are so broken they cant be fixed.
I agree that priority number one is to improve the writing. A lot. The trick is to have a show that can be driven both by the story and by the characters. They should be bringing on George R R Martin and his gang of Wildcards authors.
Whatevery they do though, it’ll have to be pretty good to bring me back. I stopped watching a couple of episodes ago and don’t have any interest in returning unless I hear some really fantastic reviews on a consistent basis.
Honestly, it can have big dramatic soap opera stuff and corny twists and turns and horrid dialogue. Why not? Look at the really, really classic comics by Chris Claremont, around the Phoenix Saga era. Cheesy, cheesy, dopey stuff. X-Men playing baseball for heaven’s sakes.
And it’s fine…IF IT’S FUN.
It’s gotta be fun. It’s gotta be unashamed and gleeful and fun. And if it’s that, then you can have giant purple robots and corny dialogue and whatever else you like. Heroes needs some of that. Because right now, it feels like 90′s comics, when the industry crashed, because everyone was being too damn serious without actually telling any stories that warrented it.
Gimme a Heroes that’s giddy fun. It should probably have Joss Whedon writing it, at his most ironic. Somewhere between current Heroes, and Doctor Horrible.
Whaddaya think, I get the job?