By Jason Apuzzo. Word comes today from The Wall Street Journal that the new version of CBS’ classic Hawaii Five-O series – see the trailer above – will feature a plotline in which the show’s heroes fight terrorism. How much of that they do, of course, remains to be seen (is there a lot of terrorism in Hawaii?).
Here’s the Journal:
In the original “Hawaii Five-O,” Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett is an elite detective—and a bit of a straight arrow—whose arch-nemesis is Chinese communist spy Wo Fat. He’s too busy solving crimes to have much of a personal life. For the new version of the cop show, writers crafted McGarrett in post-9/11 mode, as a third-generation military man armed with high-tech weapons to fight international terrorism.
So they’re going Jack Bauer this time out. Interesting. I’ve been aware for some time that they were rebooting this series, but was not aware until now that there might be an anti-terror subplot worked into the storyline.
I’m a fan of the original show – in fact, as an odd coincidence, I just started watching DVDs of the original series last week. One of the things that made the original show so interesting – aside from its aggressive, in-your-face photography and editing, memorable score, and Jack Lord’s flinty persona – was the abundant international intrigue in the show. The core villain of the original series was, indeed, a Chinese communist superspy named Wo Fat, played menacingly by Khigh Dheigh (also famous as the Chinese communist spymaster from The Manchurian Candidate). The pilot of the series, for example, features Wo Fat immersing American counter-intelligence agents (including, eventually, Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett character) into a special brain-washing tank, in order to squeeze information out of them. Wo Fat comes across as a crafty, brilliant adversary – and his rivalry with Jack Lord would eventually extend over the entire twelve seasons of the show.
And anti-communism was actually an important subtext of the show. Hawaii Five-O was, to some extent, a refashioning of John Wayne’s film Big Jim McLain – a film which had featured The Duke and sidekick James Arness battling a communist cell in Hawaii … all while wearing impossibly stylish clothing, and romancing local beauties like Nancy Olsen. Jack Lord himself had famously played C.I.A. agent Felix Leiter in the original James Bond film Dr. No, and Lord’s first major starring role was in the anti-communist cult classic The Red Menace – so the Red Scare was definitely in the air on this series.
My assumption going in is that this reboot will not come even close to being as good as the original. That’s a given, for reasons I probably don’t need to elaborate on here. [Essentially it boils down to this: they botch everything these days.] The new show obviously won’t have Jack Lord – who played McGarrett as a kind of edgy, 1950s-style company man, always on the brink of going berserk – and above all they won’t have the style, the muted cool of the old series. But at least they’ll be fighting terrorists, and that’s a plus. And maybe at some point they’ll bring in a new, 21st century Wo Fat. Who knows?
The trailer looks plain vanilla, frankly – albeit with a fair amount of hardware. We’ll keep an eye on all this.
[LFM Contributor Steve Greaves chimes in: “As a side note, another ‘impossibly cool’ element that is likely to be missing (or if it is there, will exist in some sullied form) from the new series is the kinetic, iconic and just plain rockin’ opening of the show featuring Mort Stevens’ time-tested Hawaii 5-0 theme music.
“Being a film music composer and buff myself, I have to say that the slammin’ timpani and heavy backbeat that kicked off the stylish and punchy title sequence made for one of most memorable, macho and all around tasty bits of 60’s TV pre-music video era. While the trailer shows signs of keeping the main theme reasonably intact, no doubt the reboot will purloin and abuse the melody, adding the requisite techno elements and Limp Bisquity schlock rock guitar wash that sounds like every action trailer churned out these days. Let’s hope they keep it pure, as the original show’s sonic palette brought a unique character to the series and locales therein.
“For a real treat, travel back in time and take a listen to the original series soundtrack which features classic mid-century TV cue writing and execution at its finest. Naturally, it also makes for great tiki party background fare.”]
Posted on August 6th, 2010 at 12:28pm.
