sactoking
Diamond Member
- Sep 24, 2007
- 7,594
- 2,840
- 136
i'm watching nikita. surprisingly not bad considering its on CW
Allow me to quote Gregg Easterbrook:
Anyone can produce a television show that is mainly nonsense: As James Parker of The Atlantic has noted, to produce a TV show that consists entirely of nonsense is an art form. The latest variant of Nikita rises to the level of nothing but nonsense: There are no scenes that make sense. So by Parker's standard, the latest Nikita is art. But like a lot of art, it's really bad. Five episodes have aired, and TMQ needs to get his points in before the cancellation.
"Nikita" is a remake of the 1997 television series, itself a remake of the 1990 movie. Doesn't more time need to pass before a TV series can be remade? By this standard a "Friends" remake is already overdue. Nikita is locked in struggle with An Agency Far, Far More Secret Than the CIA. Whenever An Agency Far, Far More Secret Than the CIA shows up in movies or TV, my first thought is that the agency budget would have to be many billions of dollars: Where does its budget come from? The latest Agency Far, Far More Secret Than the CIA is depicted as near-omniscient, yet cannot locate Nikita even though she lives in a palatial apartment and constantly uses cell phones and the Internet.
In the pilot, Nikita, this time played by Maggie Q, effortlessly beats into unconsciousness two huge men with guns -- Maggie Q might weigh 110 pounds -- and doesn't even muss her clothes. She breaks a dead-bolted hotel door with a single kick, shattering the hinges, then kicks a huge man, causing him to go flying backward and smash into a wall unconscious. One doubts even a martial-arts champion could do either thing.
Nikita depicts its heroine killing bad guys by throwing knives. In one scene, a steak knife thrown into a huge bad guy's chest causes him to fall dead instantaneously. Even if a steak knife could be thrown into the center of the chest (unlikely -- the sternum is pretty strong), a person wouldn't just fall dead: he would struggle, try to clamp the wound and so on. In Nikita, he falls instantly dead. The flick "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" offered a lengthy sequence in which Angelina Jolie throws steak knives into the chests of numerous huge men, resulting in instant death every time. And in that movie the huge men are wearing body armor -- the steak knives go through their bulletproof vests, then through their sternums and are still moving with enough force to cause instant death. That's some throw, considering Jolie weighs maybe 120 pounds. Obviously "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" contained nothing but nonsense. Can't physical reality at least be depicted accurately? At the end of the scene, Jolie accidentally hits Brad Pitt with one of the knives. He is unharmed and doesn't even bleed --- though the same knives caused instant death to everyone else.
Nikita has also featured a scene increasingly presented in nonsense cinema -- she causes instant death to a huge guy by twisting his head. In the Fox show "Fringe," in the Arnold Schwarzenegger flick "Commando" and in other Hollywood offerings, regular people who don't have any superpowers cause instant death by twisting someone's head. Is this possible? And wouldn't the person whose head is being twisted -- what's the word I am looking for -- resist?
In my favorite scene, Nikita stops bullets fired at her from point-blank range by holding up a plastic beach chair. Secret agencies need people with these skills!