January 1 2008
AMERICANWAY 71
1988:
In theHeat of
theNight
Itwould have been hard to
predict that Carroll O’Connor
wouldgo from
All in the
Family
to thismovie-turned-
TV series about race rela-
tions in a small-town police
force. But he did so to critical
acclaim for six seasons, even
though the showwasn’t quite
as edgy as the 1965 novel or
as theOscar-winning 1967
movie that inspired it.
1990:
FerrisBueller
You knowwhowas in this
television adaptation of the
hit 1986 JohnHughesmovie
that starredMatthewBrod-
erick? JenniferAniston. You
knowwhat else?You can’t
make a goodTV series about
a guywho skipped school
one day.
1997:
Buffy theVampire
Slayer
Best. Adaptation. Ever.While
themoviewas neither scary
nor compelling, theTV show
about a teenage girl with a
gift for doing in the undead
kept you riveted.While the
moviewas pointlessly silly,
the showpeppered its dark
plotlineswith smart comic
relief. Andwhile themovie
starredLukePerry, theTV
show, thankfully, did not.
2003:
MyBigFat
GreekLife
This short-lived serieswas
a
TheDayAfter
version of
MyBigFat GreekWedding
.
Frighteningly unwatchable.
2006:
Blade
GiveSpikeTV credit for try-
ing to produce some original,
scripted content rather than
just airing another
CSI
rerun
or a reality show inwhich
guys kick each other in the
face. Then take that credit
away for the company’s
havingmade a funWesley
Snipes action-movie series
into a boringTV show in
which the characters talk
toomuch.
and that’s just thebeginningof thechallenges,
for both themom in
Sarah Connor
and everyone
else involvedwith the series. The show picks up
roughlywhere the second
Terminator
film ended
and thus shares the movies’ mythology. There’s
still Skynet, there are still T-100s and other ter-
minators, and it’s still John Connor’s job to save
the world from the rise of the machines. But
given that there’s onebig elementmissing—ar-
nold Schwarzenegger — all that stuff may just
be beside the point. Towork for episodic TV, this
show has to have the very complicated relation-
shipbetween amother and her child at its core.
“Iconically,Schwarzenegger is the thingwere-
member fromthefilms,”says21-year-oldThomas
Dekker, who plays JohnConnor in the Fox series.
“Butwhile peoplemight have been scared of the
Terminator or found him cool, emotionally what
peoplewere connected towasSarahConnor and
Kyle reese [Sarah’s guardian from the future] in
thefirstmovieandSarahandJohnConnor in the
secondmovie.”
Which is not to say that the terminators in
Sarah Connor
aren’t cool or scary. They’re both.
(and, by the way, there’s more than one.) But
they aren’t enough. On the big screen, you only
need to capture the audience’s attention for two
hours. On the small screen, youneed toholdpeo-
ple captive for years at a time. For a science fic-
tion series, that means making the otherworldly
plotlines seem both impossible and everyday. It
sounds hard, but it’s been done before. The best
movie-to-TV franchise,
Buffy theVampireSlayer
,
worked well because it was viewable as both a
weekly serialized horror movie and a metaphor
for thehorrors of growingupwhen it seems that
the pressures of the entire world are bearing
down on you.
“We do have a single mother trying to raise
her teenage son, so we’ll get to address all that
sort of angst you deal with growing up,” says
LenaHeadey,who starred in last summer’saction
hit
300
and is now playing the title character in
Sarah Connor
. “Plus, to all that, you have to add
the fact that John is born to save theworld.”
right. Big plus. But there’s a big catch to go
along with it. While no one is comparing
Sarah
Connor
with
Buffy
just yet (and while I may be
one of the few foolish enough to compare itwith
Gilmore Girls
),
Buffy
had one major advantage:
The movie was terrible. The
Terminator
films, on
the other hand, werearnold-tastic. So regardless
of howwell executed theTV show is (and judging
from the first few episodes, it’s pretty arnold-
tastic itself), it is almost certain to suffer by com-
parison.andyoucanbet therewillbecomparison.
Onblogsand Internetchatboards, it’salreadyout
there. It can’t be bargainedwith; it can’t be rea-
sonedwith. It doesn’t feel pityor remorseor fear,
and it absolutelywill not stop. Ever.
That is, unless a five-foot-eight-inch, slight-
framed, doe-eyed robot from the future named
Cameron can stop it. Cameron? Don’t remember
a terminator named Cameron? That’s because
she’s been created just for this series. The most
advanced terminator model ever, Cameron is
sent back in time to protect John from what-
ever comes to kill him. also, she sits next to him
in homeroom. “My character was never in the
films,” acknowledges Summer Glau, the
Firefly
and
Serenity
alumna who plays Cameron. “So I
have a lot of freedom. But we feel pressure as a
cast and crew.Wewant people to know thatwe
have respect for the film butwe are trying to do
somethingdifferent.”
adds Dekker, “We’re not doing a remake. This
is a reinterpretation.”
ultimately, given that the show’s reinterpreta-
tion leaves out one particular terminator— one
arnold Schwarzenegger, unstoppable robot
—who hunts John in his suburban hiding place,
the success of
SarahConnor
couldbe inHeadey’s
hands.We’ll need tobelieve that she’sLindaHam-
ilton.She’ll have tobecapableof raising the future
leader ofmankindandalsoofmaking sure thekid
doesn’t break curfew. The thing is, she’s off to a
prettygood start. “all I cando is domy thingand
play the role how I interpret it,” Headey says. “If
that is embraced by audiences immediately, then
that’s brilliant. If not, then I’ll break themdown.”
