‘A world gone crazy’ in rebooted sci-fi series Heroes Reborn
Chuck star Zachary Levi is the big villain for a new generation of super powered people
The original Heroes was a landmark show in television.
It made you believe the precept that if you could save the cheerleader, you could save the world. It took the premise of comic books such as X-Men and put flesh and bone on some outlandish but entirely human characters.
Unlike other science fiction, it was more character than special effects driven. It went off the rails in later seasons as it tried to take itself too seriously, even as the disjointed plots became more bizarre.
Five years later, a reborn version of the show is again striving for relevance, premiering on Global Thursday at 8 p.m. with a two-hour debut, but in a much more crowded room. Superheroes are the norm, not the exception on television these days.
“I think the show still has something to say,” star Zachary Levi said in Toronto. “This is a new world where everyone has found out that people have abilities. It’s a world gone crazy. Some people are afraid, others are embracing the new world.”
“I’m just one of many characters living life in this world and trying to find some truth.”
It is a testament to the impact of the original Heroes that Heroes: Reborn was honoured this month with a premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival along with five other TV shows, in recognition that television could also be art.
“It’s a brilliant piece of TV history. And a great time to bring the show back,” says TIFF programmer Michael Lerman, a fan of the original series. “It’s positioning it in the modern age in a smart way.”
The inclusion of Levi also means that it gains a loyal and genre-compatible following. Levi, 34, is best known to some as the star of NBC’s Chuck, about a computer nerd who works in a Best Buy-type store and ends up working for the CIA.
In his new role, Levi plays Luke Collins, who hunts down those with super powers and may even have powers himself.
Levi is more than familiar with the original Heroes mythology because both Chuck and Heroes were at NBC.
“Chuck premiered during Heroes’ second season, so I got to know all those guys. Zachary Quinto (who played villain Sylar on the original) and I are probably the closest. I was always envious of their show because they got to have super powers. How cool was that? And now I’m doing this.” If Heroes Reborn fans in Toronto only knew that the show’s evil super villain has been hanging out in the city for the last few months where the series is shot.
“It’s been mostly at karaoke bars, I’m not joking,” laughs Levi. “I feel like I know this place so well. We’ve been shooting everywhere from the Beach to Hamilton to that rich place. What do they call it? The Bridle Path.”
There are parallels between Levi’s old job and the current one.
Chuck was about an everyman getting thrown into the world of espionage. Heroes is about regular folk who get thrown into the world of super powers. But Levi cautions that his character is “not Sylar. He’s a complicated character, but very different from what Zach played.”
Creator Tim Kring says the show is still relevant today because it answers “primal questions” of “How am I connected?” and “What does it all mean?”
Kring was never a comic book geek, so he approached the original concept as a show about people not superpowers.
“It was a show that was called Heroes and not ‘Superpowers’ or ‘Powers,’ you know. So it was always meant to be about the characters themselves,” Kring said. “By going back to some of those original basic base note ideas of what the show was originally, it almost doesn’t matter what’s happened in the world around us.”