If you missed it during the Olympics last night, NBC previewed Revolution, their new post-apocalyptic drama due to debut this fall. The show stars Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad’s Gus Fring), is produced by J.J. Abrams, and directed by Iron Man director Jon Favreau. There’s a lot of talent behind this show, so why does it look so bad?
The extended preview doesn’t look much different than the online preview NBC released during pilot season. Unfortunately, it appears that the central premise of the show is still intact. If you need a refresher, the premise is this: For some mysterious reason, an event causes everything in the world that runs on energy stops working. Planes go down. Cars stop running. Electricity goes out. There are no more computers. No Internet. NO INTERNET PORN. The show takes places 15 years after the event, and now the world has morphed into a post-apocalyptic Old West. People fight for control of the new territories. D batteries are the new global currency, or something.
That’s the show. Aside from the ridiculous plot, with the exception of Giancarlo Esposito, it looks like NBC took a page of the the Terra Nova casting book: Cast as many bland, pretty-looking people as possible, actors with fresh family-friendly faces, like the Dad from the Twilight movies, and put them in a setting where fresh, pretty faces look most inappropriate. There’s no energy remaining in the world, and yet, hair gel is PLENTIFUL.
I don’t even want to address the logic of the show because it hurts my brain.
NBC has a lot riding on this show. I’m sure the pilot alone cost them millions. That’s too bad, because it looks like another The Event-like failed idea. Gus Fring deserves better. Hell, Elizabeth Mitchell deserves better.
Here’s the preview.
That’s depressing. To cheer you up, here’s young Gus Fring in Eddie Murphy’s Trading Places.
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I hope it’s awesome and successful so you can talk about how much it sucks for a few seasons.
That should be the quote for nearly everything on uproxx and film drunk.
hahaha..then be all p.o.’d when it gets cancelled without a finally….
“And then she slipped onnnn the ballllll.”
So do guns run on electricity now?
apparently I should have paid more attention to these endless promos between Michael Phelps interviews
gunpowder is dried electricity in jj abrams land.
also, crossbows are really big right now.
A plane defies all laws of physics and spins directly downward out of the sky. Holy Christ this looks like shit.
Maybe he flew into Iceman’s jetwash.
Someone should tell JJ Abrams that it is possible to make a tv show without green screen computers and strange unexplained events happening.
Well, the car stopped running. Might as well let vines take over everything.
My thoughts exactly. Pruning shears ain’t high tech, folks.
This is like Flashforward for the Flashforward generation.
But, how did everyone become a Samurai without google and youtube to teach them how?
Nintendo.
Oh, wait, same problem. Nevermind.
So, Favreau will direct the pilot and then never touch this pile again?
I’m the odd man out here, because I’m actually interested in this one. I think it has potential, and hey, sword fights. Rule of Cool, people. Although, even Rule of Cool cannot explain the reason their CROSSBOWS ARE GODDAMN BACKWARDS!
Apparently this is “frontal string” or “reverse draw” technology. Although it looks like it’s proprietary, and the company only uses it on a few models, so it seems odd to feature it in the show. Also it looks really stupid.
NBC exec, after watching TheHunger Games:
“Make me a show that has as many bow and arrows as fucking possible. Fuck it, give someone a sword too.”
They are aware that crossbows operate as much on potential and kinetic energy as any gun, correct?
guns aren’t electronic, they would still work.
Car engines could be made without the need for electricity under the same basic principle as guns.
Yeah, I’m thinking: why did all the diesel vehicles stop?
Look, you eggheads can trot out all the faggy “science” you want, but you’re missing the whole point of the show.
All the power in the world stops!
EXCEPT THE POWER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT!
@nussy, there’s the argument that most modern cars have electronic fuel injection, so an EMP or whatever the fuck happened here made those stop working, but older cars with a carburetor would still work I guess gas stations use electronic pumps as well? and what about hot water heaters? those use gas…
maybe the idea is that in 15 years we would have used up all the gas?
I certainly don’t want to defend this, but : without “power,” LOTS of things that don’t require power would still become infinitely more difficult to create. Especially things that require fine machinery. Bullets are obviously an “analog” thing, but have to be made to pretty precise specifications that dont’ REQUIRE
… electronic machinery but to make in any sort of bulk would really need power.
As for cars… diesels could be made to work wtihout electricity in theory, but good luck keeping that up. No gasoline engine would work, even carbeurated ones, because you need a spark for ignition.
Why are there no flintlocks? Seriously. Flintlocks. Muskets. People have these right now.
I remember seeing this months ago and thinking it was going to be a real turkey.
“There’s no energy remaining in the world, and yet, hair gel is PLENTIFUL.”
I think that says it all.
“Fringe” is so good, but most of Bad Robot shows are really bad. I don’t understand why.
Yeah you really nailed the way the casting sucks the life out of these shows. That said, the dad from Twilight is great in Nurse Jackie.
Wouldn’t everyone be dead from radiation? Those nuclear fuel roads aren’t going to cool themselves.
wouldn’t all the plants go into auto-cool mode? or at least the workers would manually open the floodgates and flood the plant
(note my entire knowledge of nuclear power plants comes from TDKR)
There would be no radiation because all energy had stopped.
…to say nothing of photosynthesis..
Jericho got 3 seasons…
Jericho could have been a pretty cool show but no one’s motives made any sense whatsoever
Too many bows and arrows to not watch, am I right?
Btw, this reminds me to buy myself an arsenal of old-timey wepons so when dystopia comes a-knockin’ I’ll be prepared.
I really hope they explain all these logic holes like Rob Lowe’s character in Thank You For Smoking, “It’s an easy fix, one line of dialogue ‘thank god we invented the … whatever’ “
Here’s hoping they blame Russians, Arabs, and Villains for the blackout too.
“For some mysterious reason, an event causes everything in the world that runs on energy stops working.”
“Energy”???
This premise makes “Big Bang Theory” seem like PBS
So since guns don’t work I take it that Giancarlo Esposito will kill someone with a box cutter?
Come on, it’s J.J. Fucking Abrahms. So basically there are, like, eleventy-three MacGuffins, a half-finished story arc (to maybe be filled in later but probably not) and no one on the writing staff has even sat down to think about a plausible ending let alone actually jot something down.
Maybe it was aliens, or big corporations, or environmental terrorists, or spooky science, whatever, fuck you!
That’s how I imagine JJ Abrams mind works.
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Nerds will recognize this as the premise for the Emberverse novels by SM Stirling
Is it any less idiotic than this looks?
It could turn into a good show 10 or 15 eps down the road. But it would lose half its audience by then, so it wouldnt matter
I’m confused about all this “no guns” talk. Doesn’t Esposito’s guy shoot the girl’s dad with a gun?
After watching this, I’m all of a sudden back on board with Falling Skies.
And for the love of god, some cable channel please pick up Community after this season so i never have to look at this goddamn ass-clown of a network again.
i think it looks neat, but i also got sucked in to “drive” somehow, so my tastes in programming are pretty darn suspect.
it was this “drive” by the way.
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stupid sexy fillion smolder.
Why does it look bad? Two words…
You know, Kevin Costner si so god, I’d love to cast him in my movie about society’s breakdown. See, he delivers the maila s a metaphor for society’s restoration. We’ll call it, The Postman.
It’s The Postman. God help me, it’s The Postman.
Wasn’t that the premise to Dark Angel?
As a female, I guess I’m supposed to be automatically intrigued by a) females shooting arrows, or b) vampires.
I’m actually going to give this show a shot, because Erik Kripke, who made the first five seasons of Supernatural, is involved. Plus watching Giancarlo Esposito play a bad guy is always interesting.
Didn’t ‘Dark Angel’ have roughly the same premise only with much hotter Jessica Alba? Terrorists set of an EMP, world goes black, chaos everywhere…JJ Abrams needs to be stopped. I gave him two solid years of TV viewing with ‘Fringe’ and then, well, it made no fucking sense. How many more of these “high concept”, multi-philosophical shitbombs will be dropped on us before TV execs realize that shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad are what viewers actually want?
No gasoline engine would work, even carbeurated ones, because you need a spark for ignition. ~ blackwhiteplanet _℃om ~~~~~ is for thousands of upscale men and beautiful women, who understand that ambition, success, and glamour are key elements of attraction. It’s worth a try!
So what you’re saying is that Abrams read ‘Y the Last Man’ and said; “Switch out all males dying, and put electricity in it’s place.”
Looks like they finally made a direct to tv sequel to Escape from L.A. after Snake Plissken, and I quote, “shut down the world” in very much the same way…except they took the ridiculous and campy greatness of that movie and replaced it with a dramatic and serious tone, which sucks. Plus there isn’t a single scene of street surfing with Peter Fonda.