Heroes Reborn - first impressions (yes some spoilers)

Tonguez · Sep 30, 2015

NBC has rebirthed its superhero drama "Heroes", four years after the Cheerleader jumped off the ferris wheel and publically came out only to have the original show cancelled. The new reboot starts by showing how the world has come to terms with mutants/Evo's in our midst and then kicks things up with a terrorist attack by a mutant supremacist, the human backlash and mutants being hunted down by a vengeful/fearful public - yes its all very Days of Future Past.

The show has introduced new characters and put old characters in new situations. Suresh is supposedly the Mutant supremacist and the Cheerleader is presumed dead (but maybe not).

We have a few new plot threads set-up including the Odessa terrorism conspiracy which features a secret evil organisation that now owns Primatech and HRG having to investigate since his mind was wiped on his own orders. We also meet a mutant kid trying to survive as a teenage geek while being hunted by mutant haters (and being helped by another character of dubious morality) and the brother of a mexican superhero redeeming himself via the Evo underground railway. A seemingly unrelated plotline in Japan features a girl and a magic sword that is able to transport her between real world Tokyo and a Samurai-themed digital world and finally we get a vignette of another girl doing stuff with the northern lights, trying to stop whatever is coming (presumably this will tie everything together)

Apparently Hiro, Micah, Parkman and Angela will be back in time

They're interesting plot elements and I enjoyed the Katana girl sequences and the character development going on for the murderous Chuck. The geek boy and bully story was very cliche, but I can handle that.

I liked this first episode(s) more than I do Agents of SHEILD but not as much as The Flash -as a show the original Heroes started well but went stupid as the seasons progressed. Do you think Heroes Reborn can last the distance and compete in the Superhero TV market?

Crothian · Sep 30, 2015

Of the Superhero shows currently on I think Heroes is my least favorite. But AoS and the others have had time to do things. Heroes pilot was just a lot of random scenes on random characters with powers. It was very much like the orginal Heroes pilot in that regard though that one was much more interesting.

Dog Moon · Sep 30, 2015

So far it is interesting enough. The whole "Suresh is supposedly a bad guy but probably isn't" and the "something mysterious going on with the corporations and why did HRG remove his memory" things were interesting to me, but even if they aren't new tropes, I like mysteries like that, when done well.

Some of the others stories weren't done as well, IMO. I liked the kid and he seems to have a neat power to send people to where he's thinking at the time, but the high school thing was sorta meh to me. I also have mixed feelings about "Katana Girl". How does using the katana make her go into the game? To me that seems less superhero and more something else, I don't know. It seems more like a magical item, which turns the focus away from super powers to something else. I suppose maybe somehow that will be explained, but for now that will just sorta annoy me a little.

So right now I'll keep watching it, but I quit Heroes after the second season so I have no problems quitting again. And I hope they don't do too much that requires a person to have watched seasons 3 or 4 because that won't make any sense to me.

trappedslider · Sep 30, 2015

The plan is that HEroes: Reborn is a miniseries,so not a whole season as far as I am aware. I am very much enjoying this,I was saddened that some of my favorites wouldn't be returning but they do have other commitments and in some cases bigger things going on.

Jhaelen · Sep 30, 2015

I'm the opposite: I'd very much have preferred an all-new cast. Imho, that was their biggest mistake in the first run of the show. It should have been like 'True Detective', i.e. a new story for each season. As it was, only the first season was good, everything that followed after that ranged from mildly annoying to utter crap.

If it's only a mini-series it might be enjoyable, but I don't have high hopes.

Hand of Evil · Sep 30, 2015

did not care for it, too many "heroes" and the selected characters were disappointing, no connection to them.

Ovinomancer · Sep 30, 2015

My favorite techie, paraphrased:

Heroes reborn is like that ex that comes back and tries to convince you how cool they are, but fails.

Crothian · Sep 30, 2015

Hand of Evil said:
did not care for it, too many "heroes" and the selected characters were disappointing, no connection to them.

For fun I looked up the thread about the pilot for Heroes that we had back in 2006. You're first comment then was

Hand of Evil said:
I thought it was good but not sure I liked the format of switching back and forth between story lines, broke my interest in the charaters.

Consistent opinions

Dog Moon · Sep 30, 2015

Hand of Evil said:
did not care for it, too many "heroes" and the selected characters were disappointing, no connection to them.

It's kinda funny because [at least in the first season of the first series], I kinda liked that. It felt like a sort of game: "How are these people from totally different backgrounds related to each other?"

The problem I had was that some of the characters have cooler stories than the others and you sort of want the lame characters to hurry up to get to the cool characters. Reborn of course isn't fixing this situation at all, sadly, but then again I suppose it would be hard to make every character appeal to every watcher.