The General Knight Rider thread.

[Christopher]

Base models and Esprits didn't get the screaming chicken, only Trans Ams.

I know, but that's kind of the point. Why was it so rare to put that kind of decoration on a car? I thought it was cool as a kid, and I still do, but most cars ever since have just had bland monochrome bodies, or maybe the occasional racing stripes.

Of course, in several Asian countries, they have vehicles custom-painted with incredibly intricate artwork, like the jingle trucks of South Asia and the Japanese dekotora. I think they have them in Africa too, if I remember right from the Sense8 TV series. I guess there's some American tradition of painting vehicles, notably the sides of vans, or hippie buses or stock cars. But actually selling cars with a standard artwork like the Firebird emblem is just not done anymore.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Of course, in several Asian countries, they have vehicles custom-painted with incredibly intricate artwork, like the jingle trucks of South Asia and the Japanese dekotora. I think they have them in Africa too, if I remember right from the Sense8 TV series. I guess there's some American tradition of painting vehicles, notably the sides of vans, or hippie buses or stock cars. But actually selling cars with a standard artwork like the Firebird emblem is just not done anymore.

"Art is Subjective", it's easier to sell a Mono-Colored vehicle.

Even "Racing Stripes" are generally not applied to most vehicles for sale.

If you want to add in art, you can do that with plenty of "After Market" options to get that done for you.

 

[Christopher]

If you want to add in art, you can do that with plenty of "After Market" options to get that done for you.

Which just makes it more odd that so few people do.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Which just makes it more odd that so few people do.

Most people treat cars as a tool to get from Point A to B.

There's only a small sub section who really loves cars.

 

[Skipper]

Review of the 4k blu-ray set.

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He says that just the documentary is worth of the set price.

 

[Christopher]

Most people treat cars as a tool to get from Point A to B.

There's only a small sub section who really loves cars.

It's not about loving cars; I just think people might enjoy getting from point A to point B more if their conveyances were nicer to look at.

 

[Skipper]

The first ever screen used original KITT

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[BillJ]

It's not about loving cars; I just think people might enjoy getting from point A to point B more if their conveyances were nicer to look at.

Depends on the personality.

 

[bdub76]

Review of the 4k blu-ray set.

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He says that just the documentary is worth of the set price.

Interesting.

So wait for it to go on sale and then snag it for the documentary. No reason to pay full price.

 

[FredH]

I'm not sure how reliable this site is, but it's reporting that the Knight Rider feature film may be intended as part of a shared universe along with reboots of Airwolf and what would now be called The Six Billion Dollar Man, since those are all Universal properties.

Knight Rider Movie Rumored to Launch Airwolf and Six Billion Dollar Man Shared Universe | Cosmic Book News

Rumors suggest the Knight Rider movie will kick off a shared universe with Airwolf and The Six Billion Dollar Man, tied together by AI tech.

cosmicbook.news

What, they couldn’t throw in Street Hawk, too? Unfair!

 

[Skipper]

What, they couldn’t throw in Street Hawk, too? Unfair!

Everyone in the 80s wanted their "Knight Rider"!

 

[Skipper]

Now I'd like to talk about the element of the franchise that I probably hate the most.

Knight Rider 2000.

First let's talk about the only good thing, Jan Hammer's splendid theme.

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And that's where we end whatever good I have to say about the KR2000.

(From now, well, spoilers!)

The film has many problems. It's slow. Boring. The setting is intended to be a sort of Robocop-Lite, but with the constraints of a TV show. The new Kitt appears practically in the last 10 minutes and doesn't do anything interesting. The new characters who would be the protagonists of the potential new series are absolutely insignificant. Devon is killed for no good reason.

But what bothers me the most is that for some reason they decided to make this movie a Second Amendment fanatic's wet dream.

We're in the future, and there's even background news reminiscent of Robocop. Criminals are being sent into cryogenic sleep instead of prison. But the most significant change is that a mayor has decided to completely ban firearms! Even the police can only use useless "stun guns" (it's clear they're truly ineffective).

And according to the mantra of all those against any form of gun control, if you make guns illegal, who will be the only ones to have them?

Exactly! Criminals!

KR2000 is a mediocre sci-fi movie made by someone who's watched Robocop too many times and just finished screenwriting 101. It's uninteresting. It has a bizarre ideological stance. It's slow. Nothing happens until the end. It's not an action movie. It's not a thriller. I'm not sure exactly what they were trying to achieve with it.

(You can find the whole movie on YouTube, but please, don't watch it).

EDIT

And KIFT is UGLY

 

[Christopher]

Now I'd like to talk about the element of the franchise that I probably hate the most.

Knight Rider 2000.

...

The film has many problems. It's slow. Boring. The setting is intended to be a sort of Robocop-Lite, but with the constraints of a TV show. The new Kitt appears practically in the last 10 minutes and doesn't do anything interesting. The new characters who would be the protagonists of the potential new series are absolutely insignificant. Devon is killed for no good reason.

I do vaguely remember them killing off Devon; I'd guess the reason had to do with Edward Mulhare's availability. The only other thing I remember is the blasphemy of making KITT's new body a red car.

But what bothers me the most is that for some reason they decided to make this movie a Second Amendment fanatic's wet dream.

We're in the future, and there's even background news reminiscent of Robocop. Criminals are being sent into cryogenic sleep instead of prison. But the most significant change is that a mayor has decided to completely ban firearms! Even the police can only use useless "stun guns" (it's clear they're truly ineffective).

And according to the mantra of all those against any form of gun control, if you make guns illegal, who will be the only ones to have them?

Exactly! Criminals!

Which is manifestly untrue. In China, for instance, they have very strict gun control, and criminals thus tend to rely on knives, clubs, cleavers, and martial arts, or so I read. Cops are trained to carry firearms but only infrequently need them. Japanese police also rarely need to use guns because the criminals rarely carry guns. They're more likely to restrain criminals by wrapping them in futons than shooting them. (I've always found it odd how ultraviolent and gun-happy Japanese film and TV are in contrast to the remarkably low rate of violent crime in Japan in real life.) The same goes for the UK, I believe. Also, of course, the stats in the US show that mass shootings plummeted when assault rifles were banned and skyrocketed when the ban expired.

I'm surprised I don't remember the movie taking that attitude, since it surely would've left a sour taste. Except I don't think I would've found it surprising in a revival of an '80s action show, since I often found those way too violent for my preferences. I was a child of the '70s, when violence on TV was constrained and heroes tended to avoid killing. I had a strong distaste for shows like Airwolf where the "heroes" would gun down dozens of bad guys on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, that's been the norm in TV and movies ever since.

 

[Skipper]

I'm surprised I don't remember the movie taking that attitude, since it surely would've left a sour taste.

I have to say, as a European, I remember finding it all very bizarre. "Okay, surely having fewer guns should be a good thing, right?"

And not even the most enthusiastic gun control advocate (with any common sense, of course) would say that the police shouldn't have guns either.

And then, obviously, in a country like the United States, it's absolutely pointless to ban guns in just one city when you can easily buy them by mail order (or go shopping in the next town).

It just seemed to me a straw man. And this film, as I said, tackled real political issues: gun control, abolition of the death penalty, cryogenics as a prison sentence, etc. It was so incongruous and bizarre to have in something about KR that I didn't even understand where they'd end up in a potential TV series. And it was made in 1991, so the original series was still fresh in viewers' minds.

It gave me the idea of some script that had been kept in the drawer and then adapted to include KR elements.

Disclaimer: I saw the film over 20 years ago, so I may not remember the details very well, but reading the summary on Wikipedia, I saw that the essential points are there.

 

[Christopher]

I have to say, as a European, I remember finding it all very bizarre. "Okay, surely having fewer guns should be a good thing, right?"

And not even the most enthusiastic gun control advocate (with any common sense, of course) would say that the police shouldn't have guns either.

In many countries, police don't routinely carry firearms, they just send in a special armed squad when it becomes needed. In America, the more heavily armed and militarized the police have become, the more dangerous they've become to the citizens they're supposed to be protecting. So there's a strong case to be made that police shouldn't be lethally armed as a matter of course.

It gave me the idea for a straw man. And this film, as I said, tackled real political issues: gun control, abolition of the death penalty, cryogenics as a prison sentence, etc. It was so incongruous and bizarre to have in something about KR that I didn't even understand where they'd end up in a potential TV series.

Apparently the plan was to do it as a series of occasional TV movies, like the Columbo and Perry Mason revivals from the same era, since Hasselhoff wasn't available for a weekly series.

It gave me the idea of some script that had been kept in the drawer and then adapted to include KR elements.

Maybe, though that sounds more like Knight Rider 2010, which actually was a separate project that just had the KR name tacked onto it for marketing purposes (and was clearly meant to be further in the future than 2010, since its Mad Max-ish dystopian future had been in place since the lead character's childhood).

 

[BillJ]

And KIFT is UGLY

Looks like a Dodge Stealth with some additional body paneling.

 

[Christopher]

Looks like a Dodge Stealth with some additional body paneling.

Good eye. From Wikipedia:

Knight Rider 2000 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The studio was unable to use the real Pontiac Banshee IV concept car for the movie, so instead it hired Jay Ohrberg Star Cars Inc. to customize a 1991 Dodge Stealth[3] for the Knight 4000.[4] After filming wrapped, the custom car was used on other TV productions of the time and can also be seen, albeit briefly, as a stolen supercar in CHiPs '99,[5] a future police vehicle in Power Rangers Time Force, and in an episode of the television series Black Scorpion in 2001. After lying abandoned and unmaintained for 10 years, one of the cars was offered for sale in January 2021 by Bob's Prop Shop in Las Vegas.[6]