Coming Soon: Revolution Trailer First Reaction

You just can’t keep JJ Abrams down, can you? With the recent cancellation of Alcatraz (not surprising, and only a little upsetting; it was good but it wasn’t ‘grated cheese in a bag’ good) and the impending conclusion of Fringe (also known as ‘this is one of the best SF series on television and if you don’t love it you’re an idiot’ or ‘The Walter Bishop Show featuring Pacey Whitter and Science’) it would seem that poor JJ is in need of something new to lend his name to.

It’s just not a good year for Mr Abrams unless there’s at least four properties to be ‘executive produced’ and so enters into the coming fall schedule Revolution a new soft-post-apocalypse drama series starring Billy Burke (mostly known for Twilight these days but we won’t hold that against him), Giancarlo Esposito (Gus from Breaking Bad), and a whole bunch of other people I don’t recognise. Apparently one of them had a ‘person of the week’ role in Fringe. Dunno. Also Eric Kripke (former show runner and creator of Supernatural), is co-creator, which is rad. And apparently Jon Favreau (Iron Man) is directing the pilot. So that’s also pretty great.

See for yourself, here’s a trailer released this week:

The basic idea is this; for a reason that will, I assume, be drip fed to us over the course of the season, everything stops working. Electricity, nuclear fusion, steam power also apparently. Everything. Thus dropping humanity back to the year 1654 or so. No cars or cell phones or laptops or internet. I assume the Amish will be on every street corner laughing at the rest of us. It’s a soft apocalypse; civilisation ends but people keep going. Society collapses, governments are replaced by roaming gangs of marauding bandits and everyone has a generally shitty time because nobody can watch Jersey Shore or play Playstation.

It all looks like pretty entertaining, if standard, JJ and Kripke fare. The music used in the middle third is a bit overdone at this point but the inclusion of VAST in the final minutes made up for it. It looks nicely produced now I can see it in action, something the original stills and promo shots did not communicate well. When I saw that image up top I instantly thought this was another SyFy miniseries designed to allow them to support their bizarre WWE habit.

Oh and then we have the scene at the very end where someone uses a computer to talk to somebody else who uses a computer and it’s all very mysterious and what’s in the hatch? It all looks rather polished and for people living after the end of the world, some how they’ve all just stepped out of both an Urban Outfitters and a Pantene commercial. But it’s not quite as terrible as the first promo pic lead me to believe. The moral of the story here kids, is something.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m interested. It’s given me enough to take a look but to be perfectly honest, given recent history I have almost zero optimism for science fiction television anymore; particularly on the major networks. This year alone we’ve had Alcatraz and Terra Nova cancelled, and Awake is looking like it might head that way too scratch that, just checked and yeah it’s been canned. Granted, Alcatraz under performed and left too much unanswered, and Terra Nova spent too much time pansying about with irritating, wish-washy villains to be worth much air time but Awake is genuinely good, and original and thought provoking which apparently is the “Americans won’t watch it” trifecta.

Then we have, after going back a little while longer: V (screwed around with by the network, then cancelled), Firefly (screwed around with by the network, then cancelled), Stargate: Universe (screwed around with by the network, then cancelled and that was after they cancelled Stargate: Atlantis just to make it), Dollhouse (screwed around with by the network then cancelled), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (screwed around with b- oh fuck it you see the pattern already), The River, probably Sanctuary (which hasn’t been cancelled so much as just never mentioned) the list goes on. If it’s scifi or fantasy, and neither animated nor on paid cable, it doesn’t stand much chance in hell.

So, there you have it folks.This doesn’t look too bad and I’ll be tuning for a gander sometime in September when it starts up. Also I give it eleven episodes before being cancelled because it’s not instantly as popular as LOST or Game of Thrones.

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