The Librarians
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Oh. Well, even so, watching 8 hours of the franchise in a single day (albeit with a 2-hour break between the third movie and the series premiere) would be a bit much, so hopefully I'll get my borrowed copies of the first couple of movies before Saturday.
Cool. I knew it was unlikely that he'd want to be a regular at this point, but it will be nice to see him. I absolutely love Bob Newhart.
In motion pictures, the person responsible for the story and how it's shaped is the director. In television, that person or persons is the producer.
They set the tone, oversee the story across episodes and are responsible for the hiring of everyone involved in the production. A television series is a story told by the producer, most often the showrunner, but all producers have input into the process.
Look at Joss Whedon for example. He has legions of fans who will try any series he produces, simply because he delivers a product those fans enjoy.
So, as a person who enjoyed Leverage, when I see a producer from that show, especially the showrunner, is involved with a concept that interests me, it is an extra incentive for me to check it out, expecting it has a chance to be a good, quality product.
I managed to track down copies of the three Noah Wyle movies. Not bad, but not as good as I was expecting, either. They were definitely on the corny side but they had some fun and entertaining moments. I think the third one was probably the best, while the second was maybe the worst. That said, I'm still interested in the show; the basic concept is great and I really think John Rogers is going to add a nice little zing to the formula.
Or record all of them and watch them over the course of the week?!?
I may have to, if the library copies I requested don't get in tomorrow. (They're in transit from other branches.)
Or, heck, maybe I'll just sit through the whole six hours of movies in a row and then the 2-hour premiere later on. I've been known to do that sort of thing, including last week with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day Marathon on YouTube (though I only watched four of the six movies all the way through).
They're running the movies before the premier.
Okay, my library got in the first two movies in time for me to watch them today, so I just have to watch the third movie and the series premiere tomorrow.
And man, the first movie is terrible. Kind of a much stupider, worse-acted, less imaginative, more predictable and heavy-handed rough draft of Warehouse 13. Now I remember why I never bothered with the sequels. The one thing I liked was the hilarious incongruity of Bob Newhart turning out to be a two-fisted action commando.
The second movie is somewhat better-written and not as obnoxiously unfunny as the first, but still not very good, and saddled with some very cliched racial politics (the good guys are white, the bad guys are Middle Eastern but they're working for a main bad guy who's also white, and the native African tribesman adopts a subservient-protector role to the white heroes). Oh, and it has lousy special effects, and very stupidly portrays the "Book of Solomon" as a codex (a standard hardcover book), a format that wasn't invented until a millennium after King Solomon's purported reign.
At this point, the only reasons I'm still willing to try the series are that 1) John Rogers is producing it, so it'll probably be better than these movies, and 2) Noah Wyle isn't the star. I have never much liked Noah Wyle, and these movies are just making me like him less.
And man, the first movie is terrible. Kind of a much stupider, worse-acted, less imaginative, more predictable and heavy-handed rough draft of Warehouse 13. Now I remember why I never bothered with the sequels. The one thing I liked was the hilarious incongruity of Bob Newhart turning out to be a two-fisted action commando.
The second movie is somewhat better-written and not as obnoxiously unfunny as the first, but still not very good, and saddled with some very cliched racial politics (the good guys are white, the bad guys are Middle Eastern but they're working for a main bad guy who's also white, and the native African tribesman adopts a subservient-protector role to the white heroes). Oh, and it has lousy special effects, and very stupidly portrays the "Book of Solomon" as a codex (a standard hardcover book), a format that wasn't invented until a millennium after King Solomon's purported reign.
At this point, the only reasons I'm still willing to try the series are that 1) John Rogers is producing it, so it'll probably be better than these movies, and 2) Noah Wyle isn't the star. I have never much liked Noah Wyle, and these movies are just making me like him less.
I really just can't get over how stupid the first movie is. The story makes no sense. Okay, the villains steal the first piece of the Spear of Destiny from the Library, and the other two pieces are securely locked away in locations that nobody knows about. So really, Flynn's assignment should be to get the first piece back, because the other two aren't in any real danger. Instead, he goes on a quest to find the second one and bring it out of its secure location, which lets the bad guys get it and then force him to find the third piece. And then at the end, after they've reassembled the deadliest weapon in the world, they put it back in the Library the first piece was stolen from -- i.e. the place that had by far the least security of any of the three hiding places.
Not to mention, if they needed that handy-dandy book to find out where the other two pieces were, why didn't the Serpent Brotherhood steal the book along with the first piece? The whole quest made no sense.
The second film wasn't much better in this regard. Once again, the plan for keeping a powerful artifact out of evil hands is for Flynn to find it himself and lead the villains right to it. I mean, once he'd gotten the map out of the bad guys' hands, the sensible thing to do would've been to take it back to the Library and leave it at that. He had no actual reason at that point to continue searching for the tomb, except maybe to impress the archaeologist love interest.
So in both movies, the world would've been in less danger if the "hero" had just left well enough alone. (Okay, the same goes for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but at least that movie has other stuff going for it.)
Not to mention, if they needed that handy-dandy book to find out where the other two pieces were, why didn't the Serpent Brotherhood steal the book along with the first piece? The whole quest made no sense.
The second film wasn't much better in this regard. Once again, the plan for keeping a powerful artifact out of evil hands is for Flynn to find it himself and lead the villains right to it. I mean, once he'd gotten the map out of the bad guys' hands, the sensible thing to do would've been to take it back to the Library and leave it at that. He had no actual reason at that point to continue searching for the tomb, except maybe to impress the archaeologist love interest.
So in both movies, the world would've been in less danger if the "hero" had just left well enough alone. (Okay, the same goes for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but at least that movie has other stuff going for it.)
Obviously they didn't know where the book and certainly nobody could translate it. The movie was pretty harmless fun movie and of course Bob Newhart's first action scene.
I don't know about that -- once again, the villains only found the relic they wanted because they let Flynn lead them directly to it. Although in this case, it's at least plausible that they would've eventually found it without him. Maybe that's what you meant. But it still fits the cliche pretty well.
Still, it's the only one of the movies that's actually decent, though at times it's more obnoxiously goofy than even the first two. And it's the only one where the love interest was played by an actress I actually find beautiful. (Although I think Stana Katic's singing was autotuned.)
I missed about ten minutes (after they were locked in the ship's hold) because my cable box crashed and took that long to reset. So I was thinking, okay, I still have that copy on hold from the library, so maybe I'll check it out after all and watch the part I missed. But then it occurred to me to check and see if the movies were available via the On Demand channel, and lo and behold, there they were, which makes me feel like a dope for not checking that option before I requested them from the library. Well, at least they didn't cost me anything. Umm, except the cost of 1.8 miles' worth of gas, since it was too cold to walk.
So I got to see the part I missed, and I had to wonder... They rigged a cannon to blow out an iron door that was supposedly their only way out of the hold... but directly behind them was a row of stained-glass windows. Umm, wouldn't those have been a much easier escape route?
I enjoyed the movies, so I was already looking forward to this. Knowing that the creators of Leverage are involved makes me even more excited. The trailers have also looked like a lot of fun, and with Warehouse 13 and Eureka both over I've been hoping we'd get another light fun sci-fi/fantasy series like this.
Well, there we go. Right off the bat, the series is enormously better than the movies. Of course, you could see them going through the mechanics of transitioning from movies to a weekly TV series -- writing out the big-name actors, setting up the new team, moving to a smaller base of operations, relocating from New York to Portland (where the series is being filmed), setting up a weekly quest, etc. But they did it in a way that made a reasonable amount of sense and meshed well with what came before, with the continuity and overall mythology of the films (even linking the new team's origin to the "interview" sequence in the first movie). And they even fleshed out the ground rules for how this world works (the ley lines and the presence/absence of magic in the world) much better than the movies ever bothered to do.
I'm still not a fan of Wyle, but at least they toned down his character's klutziness and played up his ultra-competence. In fact, as written, he came off a lot like the Doctor, especially in that opening scene. They even had Rebecca Romijn play the "companion" role, the normal-person viewpoint character who gets drawn into the life of the weird genius world-saver as a source of exposition for the new audience. And, best of all, they set it up so that Flynn will be only a recurring character, with the focus being on the new team.
And I like the new team. The cast is likeable and effective, and they should be fun to watch. We even got a bit of a Leverage vibe when they robbed the Tower of London, though they did it far more clumsily than Nate's team would have.
All in all, the series so far is good enough that it was worth sitting through the terrible first movie and the mediocre second one to get the background for it. If I hadn't tracked down the movies ahead of time, then the show would've made me curious to watch them afterward, and I would've been disappointed by how bad they were in comparison. This way, I got the worst part out of the way first and it's gotten progressively better since.
I'm still not a fan of Wyle, but at least they toned down his character's klutziness and played up his ultra-competence. In fact, as written, he came off a lot like the Doctor, especially in that opening scene. They even had Rebecca Romijn play the "companion" role, the normal-person viewpoint character who gets drawn into the life of the weird genius world-saver as a source of exposition for the new audience. And, best of all, they set it up so that Flynn will be only a recurring character, with the focus being on the new team.
And I like the new team. The cast is likeable and effective, and they should be fun to watch. We even got a bit of a Leverage vibe when they robbed the Tower of London, though they did it far more clumsily than Nate's team would have.
All in all, the series so far is good enough that it was worth sitting through the terrible first movie and the mediocre second one to get the background for it. If I hadn't tracked down the movies ahead of time, then the show would've made me curious to watch them afterward, and I would've been disappointed by how bad they were in comparison. This way, I got the worst part out of the way first and it's gotten progressively better since.
I too got a Doctor Who vibe from the premiere, but a team of Librarians gives it more a feel of Warehouse 13. And now they have a mission, to get back all of the objects taken from the Library. And stangely enough Noah Wylie even dressed like the Doctor and of course his duties on Falling Skies probably limited his role on this series, so far at least.
Spoilers . . . .
I have to wonder if the whole twist about them being cut off from the Library and its supply of magical artifacts was a deliberate attempt to differentiate themselves from WH13. They made a big deal about the fact that the team could no longer make use of all the artifacts stored in the Warehou--I mean, Library.
Granted, "The Librarian" was there first, but, at this point of time, they had know that they were going to be compared to WH13. But that's not such a bad thing. We can use another show like WH13 . . . and LEVERAGE for that.
(Says the guy who wrote tie-in novels for both!)
I have to wonder if the whole twist about them being cut off from the Library and its supply of magical artifacts was a deliberate attempt to differentiate themselves from WH13. They made a big deal about the fact that the team could no longer make use of all the artifacts stored in the Warehou--I mean, Library.
Granted, "The Librarian" was there first, but, at this point of time, they had know that they were going to be compared to WH13. But that's not such a bad thing. We can use another show like WH13 . . . and LEVERAGE for that.
(Says the guy who wrote tie-in novels for both!)
I have to wonder if the whole twist about them being cut off from the Library and its supply of magical artifacts was a deliberate attempt to differentiate themselves from WH13. They made a big deal about the fact that the team could no longer make use of all the artifacts stored in the Warehou--I mean, Library.
Maybe, but I'm sure it was partly about not having the budget to show the huge Library and all its wondrous artifacts on a weekly basis. And about limiting the protagonists' resources so they can more effectively be placed in danger. The thing about W13 is that all their Artifacts come with a downside, so there aren't that many that can be safely used even for good. But if you can just call on Excalibur or the Holy Grail or the Time Machine whenever you feel like it, that makes things too easy.
The main library CGI sets are cumulatively expensive and to the trained eye (Or to anyone after 5 seasons) cartoony.
They save a bundle every episode by having their club house in "the real world".
They save a bundle every episode by having their club house in "the real world".
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