Creator: Tim Kring
Starring: Milo Ventimiglia, Adrian Pasdar, Masi Oka, Hayden Panettiere, Ali Larter, Greg Grunberg, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Santiago Cabrera, Leonard Roberts
I remember seeing the adds for Heroes when they began to appear in comic books last year. I remember being not even mildly intrigued. Then slowly the building internet buzz wore me down and I decided to give the first couple of episodes a look. I was hooked, and not only me but my girlfriend as well, and apparently 14.3 million US viewers. Heroes then is that rare thing, a piece of superhero fiction that appeals not just to us comic book geeks, but to the mass market as well. This appeal perhaps stems from the series creator Tim Kring, who has freely admitted he has almost no knowledge of, or interest in, the superhero genre. Rather he simply set out to ape the ensemble cast model that Lost had so recently popularised.
Heroes follows a massive cast, spread over several world locales, although predominantly US based. Throughout the series each character’s back-story is fleshed out, as their fates intertwine, building to the grand finale. The cast is too large, and the individual stories too winding for me to give an overview in this short review. There is however a main overarching storyline throughout the series, which revolves around the series villain, Sylar, and nurse Peter Petrelli, both of whose power is to absorb the powers of others, although in very different ways. The series builds to the ultimate conflict with Sylar, and the heroes’ independent tales all join at the end as they attempt to avert the destruction of New York City in a nuclear explosion. While in summary this all sounds rather generic, it is the way in which the story is told that grips the viewer. Like Lost, and The X-Files before it, Heroes has a deeply buried history involving a past generation of superpowers, little bits of which are handed out to you episode by episode, allowing you to piece together part of the story. At the same time like another current favourite, 24, most episodes end on a cliff-hanger, which drags you back for the next episode. Essentially Heroes borrows the best ideas from every recent TV success, and puts them to good use.
At the outset Kring surrounded himself with writers who were in the know where the superhero genre is concerned; Jeph Loeb of Marvel/DC for example and Greg Beeman, previously a writer on Smallville. Most of the main characters are part of a sub-set of people who are awakening to new super-powers, and all the standard super-powers are all represented; super strength, flight, teleportation, invisibility etc. None of these concepts are exactly alien to the mainstream, and to those of us who read comics they’re old hat. It is then in the meeting of minds between these genre writers and creator Kring, who’s background is in mainstream dramas such as Chicago Hope, where Heroes strikes gold. It’s the way in which Kring and his team have married the superhero aspects of the story to the characters everyday life that pushes the series past genre and into mainstream. For example the single mum, stripping on the internet to make ends meet has super strength; the senator in the running, chained to responsibility and duty has the freedom of flight; the highly regimented, cubicle bound Japanese kid can bend time and space. Each power either fits or rebels against the characters nature, and in the end what made Heroes work was that this was a story about the characters; not their powers.
For all this praise, Volume 1 of Heroes was far from perfect. While the ensemble cast was central to the success of the series it was perhaps a shade too large. While certain characters, the naïve and wide eyed Hiro for example, shone out from the beginning, others, such as D.L., felt somewhat incomplete as characters because there just wasn’t time to explore them properly. In addition the ending was, well a bit rubbish really. It was in grand comic book tradition full of massive plot holes and something of a sense of disappointment after such build up.
Criticisms aside though Heroes was a massively entertaining series, with some truly awesome episodes and some brilliant TV moments. Each time a new power was revealed it was almost wondrous, and the flash forward episode, while full of shades of Days of Future Past, was just gripping from beginning to end. In addition the online comics that filled the wait between episodes were a stroke of genius, and actually essential reading for the viewer who wants to know all the details. Personally I can’t wait for Volume 2, not least of all because I simply MUST know what Angela Petrelli’s power is…
Having recently finished a PhD in Immunology Ross is currently working for a UK biotech company. He lives in Cambridge where he reads comics, spends too much money on music and attempts to learn Portuguese. He owns at least 7 lightsabers, yet still manages to have a very attractive girlfriend who he misses very much, thus proving anything really is possible.