My media-commitment issues and I have never been the type to follow TV shows, mostly because my parents have never paid for cable. No, we had a small screen and rabbit ears during my formative years. Now we have a large screen and even larger rabbit ears. Go figure. Well, at least almost nobody can get HBO through the usual channels.
Movies based on television shows have the unenviable task of juggling faithfulness to source material for the fans and being watchable and approachable for non-fans. They must stay true to the style, quirks and characters that made the show popular, but also find a way to integrate them smoothly into the movie so that a cunning in-joke doesn’t come off as jarring and out of place. With few exceptions, Hollywood usually succeeds. I saw all of the below movies without difficulty in cottoning on to the concept and and context the first time I watched them as a non-fan.
So why note that the movies are based on television at all? For several of my choices, I was intrigued by the mythology the film hinted at and took a bit of time to familiarize myself with character backstories and myth arcs later. Not all the choices, of course. Some movies can only be appreciated in the moment, and afterwards there is absolutely no desire to learn more about the source material. Sometimes the movie is made decades after the show’s finale, leaving the source material dated in comparison to the movie. To find great movies based on watchable shows is nearly impossible.
Not every show is deserving of a movie, either. If they announced a Glee movie I think I’d choke on my pineapple quiche, because… why? It would be exactly like a particularly long, painful, and offensive episode of the source material. Are the kids of McKinley High ever going to save the world like the kids of Third Street School (Recess: School’s Out)? Not unless it’s by the power of song and sunshine and following your heart and that namby pamby crap. The movie adaption must have some sort of ambition, whether it be in the scope and consequence of the characters’ actions, large special-effects budget, or to attempt to resolve dangling plotlines. Glee hasn’t got it, good riddance.
All in all, lack of cable or time to enjoy it didn’t impact my absorption of movies into my pop-culture cortex. Few live-action TV shows are made into full-length feature films, and when they do, they usually function quite adequately as standalone pieces.These are five of the best.
The A Team (2010)
A Special Forces team in Iraq with eight years and eighty successful missions under its belt in Iraq is sentenced to prison after a heist gone awry. Unwilling to spend a decade in prison, they break out and search for a way to clear their names, but the plot is irrelevant to your enjoyment of this movie.
The A Team is shallow and ridiculous. It features Liam Neeson as the team leader, Hannibal, who orchestrates the wholesale theft of car doors and airbags for the greater good. Meanwhile a voice in my head was screeching, “Bad physics! No biscuit!” all the way through to make sense of exactly why such implements were required, but of course, that doesn’t matter. More movies should have high-functioning lunatics like Murdoch (Sharto Copley) and the mohawked B.A. “Pity da Fool” Baracus (Quinton Jackson), who is also the team pacifist. The sheer unlikeliness and energy of the plans the team orchestrate elevate The A Team several notches above the average action movie.
It is, however, still an action movie with almost not appreciable depth to the characters. If you delve into the mid-eighties source material, which is rife with sexism and Vietnam references, I award you the Invisible Cheeto Hair Award and bid thee a good day.
Get Smart (2008)
The identities of all field operatives in an intelligence agency are compromised, except for that of an agent who has never been allowed into the field because he’s just too good of an analyst, and an agent who recently underwent massive plastic surgery. Together, they must combine their disparate strengths to bring down a terrorist organization.
Get Smart was a comedy aired in the 60s, satirizing the secret agent genre, far before my time. I’ve never wanted to watch it, although it looks fairly tolerable and won several comedy Emmys.
Yet another movie about the bumbling law enforcement officer would be tiring, but Agent Maxwell Smart (Steve Carrell) is an oasis of steely-eyed brilliance and unexpected competency in the wasteland of dishonourable officers like Inspector Clouseau and Johnny English. He holds his own among more experienced agents, including the heroic, muscle-bound Agent 23 (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), the shrewd Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), and the Chief (Alan Arkin), by virtue of incredible luck and cartoonish physical indestructibility. But his major point of appeal is being adorable. Agent Smart is so awkwardly earnest to the point where I want to hug him like a kitten dressed as a nice suit.
Star Trek (2009)
A young and rebellious James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) struggles to prove himself in the shadow of his father’s heroic sacrifice at the hands of Nero (Eric Bana), a time-travelling madman. Years later, Nero reemerges from a black hole with a taste for vengeance. Timelines converge. Spaceships explode. Lenses flare.
Yeah, never had the chance to catch any Star Trek on TV either, so the cameo of the venerable Leonard Nimoy and the continuity jokes didn’t affect me as much as it should have. That aside, it’s a mighty fine adventure movie, or a superhero origins story. How did the dashing bridge crew of the starship Enterprise get so rapidly promoted? How did Jim Kirk rise from juvenile delinquent to Federation hero? And how does he win the respect of the supremely unimpressed Spock (Zachary Quinto)? The answers to all of these questions are highly implausible twists of fate orchestrated with a touch of time travel, for no other apparent reason than destiny.
Well, destiny gets me explosions, incredible chemistry between crew members, and Simon Pegg as Scotty the engineer. It’s exciting. Much unlike Star Trek: The Original Series. TOS has some good episodes (e.g. “City on the Edge of Forever”, “Mirror, Mirror”, “Amok Time” and “The Trouble with Tribbles” being some of the fine exceptions), but for the most part is rather cheesy and shimmers with sixties sci-fi aesthetic. Interpret that however you want, for good or for ill.
Fight the Future (1999)
A young boy in Texas is killed by a mysterious black sludge seeping out of the ground under mysterious circumstances. Two FBI agents, Mulder (David Duchovny) and Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate, but take one step too close to the truth while attempting to unravel a worldwide extraterrestrial coverup.
Fight the Future was meant to follow the fifth season of the X-Files, but works surprisingly well on its own by distilling the multi-season myth arc into what seems like one last hurrah for Agents Mulder and Scully. It ends with a cliffhanger and no definite answers, but I was satisfied all the same. Why should everything in a conspiracy be explained to the viewer in full detail? Leaving details in the gloom and loose threads at the edges of the frame suit Fight the Future. There are some cameos from recurring characters that were puzzling to me as a non-fan, but I’m willing to let that slide because David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are flawless in their roles as extremely capable federal investigators of the very strange.
Seriously, how could you watch this movie and not want to look into the back-story? Perhaps because of the overwhelming length of the series. There are nine seasons, and the majority of The X Files are monster-of-the-week investigation episodes. I’ve attempted to finish it multiple times but have never made it past Season 3. I suppose it’s for the better, because I’m told everything goes downhill after Season 6, and the second feature-length film (I Want To Believe) is rubbish. That doesn’t make Fight the Future any less awesome, though.
Serenity (2005)
It is the year 2517. After a violent incident in a seedy bar, a crew of smugglers discover a dangerous secret locked within the damaged psyche of a young passenger on their ship. Then they must decide whether or not it is worth everything to expose the truth to the public.
Every internet denizen worth their salt has heard the tragic tale of Firefly and how it got cancelled by the executives of FOX before the end of Season 1. I was not one of them, until a fateful night watching TV movies several years after the fact.
Now, I’m glad the fans pushed to get this movie made, because I’ve never seen a movie that was such a successful study in contrasts. It’s a sci-fi movie, with a western aesthetic, and a hefty side of political commentary. Joss Whedon’s script is brimming with an odd, seasoned wit, much like a doctor might make off-colour jokes in the break room, but there are unexpectedly eerie and beautiful moments scattered throughout. The settings range from shinier than the gleaming spires in Star Wars to grittier than the industrial rigs in Alien. (The titular spaceship, on the other hand, is simply homely and looks like the 26th century equivalent of a Frankencar.) And, quite fittingly, the tone of Serenity captures desperation as well as anything I’ve ever seen. Not only are the crew essentially making a last stand against the Alliance in the name of truth and vengeance and love, but this is the cast’s last time playing that set of characters.
It really is a shame. The first five of fourteen episodes of Firefly are on the bland, awkward side but everything from “Our Mrs Reynolds” onwards is truly excellent. Watching all of the episodes takes less time than an extended-edition Lord of the Rings marathon. And after I finished them, I watched Serenity again and wept a single tear of combined joy and sadness.
I suppose that if you’re already familiar with the show’s story and still haven’t watched it, then there’s no convincing you. But I can promise you that there are far worse things to do with your time.
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