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The series premieres tonight on ABC, 10 PM local time. I thought this was a supernatural thriller about imaginary friends, but per the pilot episode, it's a scifi series "in which a mysterious entity invades Earth and uses unwitting youngsters to facilitate its plan for world domination." Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) and Lily Rabe (American Horror Story) star.
I noticed it listed two people for the director credit (not a good sign).
When they first reveal the "petrified lightning"(?), I couldn't understand what they were showing us. Presenting it from different angles helped make it clearer, but the original shot was a mess.
Poor Lily Rabe. She probably filmed this pilot just after AHS: Coven wrapped, in which she killed it as a Stevie Nicks-obsessed witch. After that role, playing a sad mom FBI agent was arguably a steep disappointment for her. She seemed pretty bored with the material she was given in this episode.
The set-up here was serviceable and creepy kids are creepy, but so much of the premise rests on the child actors' ability to really sell the authenticity of the situation. Unfortunately (and understandably), some of the kids couldn't quite deliver the performance required for this concept and the show suffers as a result. They're just kids and it's unrealistic to expect them to shoulder this show's success, which is what the entire premise asks of them.
I think also the script demanded too much nuance from child actors. The opening scene, for instance, implies that the little girl is unaware that a fall from that great a height would hurt her mother. Really? As a child, I was terrified of heights and if my mother fell, screaming from that high up, my first reaction would not be to giggle cluelessly. I don't know what they were aiming for here, but they failed to reach a believable outcome.
The show, as a whole, may have some promising angles, so I'm not dismissing the entire series based on its lukewarm pilot (which, judging by the shared director credit, was likely re-shot or re-worked). Either the second episode will be a better example of what we can expect from this show or it will give us a better reason to remove it from our DVRs. Hopefully it will be the former.
^ Yeah, the first reveal of the petrified lightning was so dark I couldn't tell what was going on. I thought, is it an alien tree, is it a funky meteorite? The ominous music told me something important was happening, but it was damn hard to tell what.
I agree with you that it was pretty unlikely the little girl wouldn't know that that would seriously hurt her mom. Hopefully Autumn Reeser recovers and returns home, because she deserves a more expansive role.
Bradbury's Zero Hour short story upon which this is based was about ten pages long, so they're going to pad it out with a whole bunch of angsty love triangles and filler.
But I thought the premise was strong enough to stick around, and the kids pulled off the creepy vibe well enough for me to give it a chance.
Always nice to see Alan Ruck again. This time if Cameron goes catatonic, he might not be faking it.
I was kind of surprised to see Steven Spielberg was a producer on this, I honestly don't remember seeing that mentioned in any of the marketing or interviews I read.
I thought it was pretty good. Nothing mindblowing, but I thought there was enough interesting stuff introduced that I'll stick around for now.
Glad to here I wasn't the only one who had trouble telling what the petrified lighting stuff was when they first showed it.
I'm really glad they didn't drag out the reveal that the Milo Ventimiglia was the pilot, I figured that one out pretty quickly, and I was afraid they were going to wait forever for that reveal.
So we know this will be going for a sci-fi explanation? I was wondering if it was going to be some kind of a demon, and the thing that plane was stuck in was like Hellfire or something along those line.
I'm thinking it's not a coincidence that the last two kids are connected to Ventimiglia's character.
I re-watched the credits sequence at the beginning of the episode, and the composer wasn't shown. The end credits were cut off to show a promo for the news, so if it showed it during that, I don't know.
I was kind of surprised to see Steven Spielberg was a producer on this, I honestly don't remember seeing that mentioned in any of the marketing or interviews I read.
I don't recall any mention of him in promos either (though I did read about it), and I did take note of the super creepy ads the past few months. Although, his EP role on Extant was promoted more significantly but that show was kind of critically lambasted, so maybe he decided to limit his public attachment to this one until they see if it's a critical hit or not (it seems not - the reviews have been middle of the road at best). But that's pure speculation on my part based on no evidence, and kind of contradicts what Spielberg would typically do in these situations, which is attract viewers to a show or movie by using his name as EP to promote it.
So we know this will be going for a sci-fi explanation? I was wondering if it was going to be some kind of a demon, and the thing that plane was stuck in was like Hellfire or something along those line.
I'll summarize the short story if you want, but be warned that it will give away the whole plot of the show unless they've drastically changed the premise (and it doesn't appear they have from the pilot):
A little girl named Mink (Minx in the show) and all the kids in her neighborhood are outside playing a game called "Invasion" ("Domination" in the show). Over the course of a single day, Mink's mom keeps having odd run-ins with her daughter where the little girl talks about her "imaginary" friend, named Drill. Mink claims Drill is an alien that's planning an invasion of Earth at 5:00 PM using children under ten because they're more malleable. Her mom simply thinks it's something the neighborhood kids all came up with and laughs at the imagination of children instead of seeing anything sinister behind it.
Later, the mother is talking to her friend several cities over on the phone, and after sharing the story about the game with her, she finds out that all the kids there are playing the same game of Invasion with an alien named Drill, and the invasion is scheduled to begin at 5:00 PM in their game as well. She starts to get a little curious and worried about this, but after a moment convinces herself that it must be a schoolyard game that's spread throughout the region, and she's allowing herself to get concerned over nothing
Then it's 5:00 PM and Mink's dad comes home from work. The mom and dad are talking when suddenly an otherworldly and powerful buzzing noise can be heard everywhere outside. Given the time and her daughter's stories throughout the day, the mother pieces together that the alien invasion wasn't imaginary, and tries to take the father up to the attic to hide with her. He doesn't believe her, however, and keeps making noise, which attracts the attention of their daughter.
The story ends with Mink entering the attic with an alien following behind her.
The short story is VERY short, only about ten pages long, and focuses almost exclusively on this one family. So all the multiple family angst, love triangles, government conspiracies, missing planes, and so forth are things that have been added for the show, which was inevitable, since there's so little source material to draw from. One could make the argument that they shouldn't have created an entire series out of it then, but I'd argue the premise is solid enough to merit an expansion into something more, though I wish the something more would not be soap opera-y cheating spouses and other such pedestrian plots. I'm cool with the government and infrastructure takeover plot though, and how all the kids are children of notable government, military, energy, scientific and other important officials.
It was nice to see Dee Wallace again.
Oh, and someone needs to get FBI lady a better laptop that doesn't download images at the speed of plot. That sketch of Peter Petrelli took ages to download so we could have the dramatic reveal of who he was. I half expected her to slap in an AOL disk too.
