I’m an on-record eye-roller when it comes to the Orci/Kurtzman team, not because they so often make bad movies and TV shows but because the bad stuff they make is often so close to being awesome. So much of their output plays like a “sanitized” version of someone else’s batshit-nuts brilliant idea; and as I continue to say: A crazy, unwieldy, unworkably ridiculous idea unleashed full-force – even and often especially if the result is spectacularly embarassing – is preferable to competently-executed mediocrity: Please me, horrify me, just don’t BORE me.
With that in mind, the trailer for O/K’s latest TV effort for Fox, “Sleepy Hollow;” in which Icabod Crane and the Headless Horseman are ressurrected in present-day New England to continue their battle anew. With Dan Brown-style historical conspiracy theories. And machine guns. And it looks AWESOMEly terrible.
Looks like these guys are finally heeding the sage advice of every assistant director on every porno ever: If you’re gonna suck, at least suck well:
Sooooo many things I love about this – mostly ironically (because really, this looks soooo fucking stupid) but some genuinely:
Icabod Crane is now some kind of super-agent contracted by George Washington to kill the Hessian brute who becomes the Headless Horseman. LOVE IT… because it’s so point-missingly dumb, like something out of an old “Spawn” comic.
“He described the man I saw in PERFECT DETAIL!” In that she saw a man without a head on a horse, and Crane apparently used the standard two-word description for that.
Orlando Jones is in it. Orlando Jones rules.
So is John Cho!
The decade-old “too many Starbucks” joke getting dragged out, again. Um… LA writers? Do your research. If they’re in New England, 2/3rds of those are Dunkin Donuts.
Jones calling Icabod “Captain America.”
“Turn around and put your hands on your… OH GOD!!!”
Treasure maps? Ancient good vs. evil Witch War conspiracy? “The secret is in Washington’s Bible?” So dumb. So beautiful.
Icabod’s mission: Thwart armageddon – apparently The Headless Horseman is also one of the Four Horseman of The Apocalypse. Because… that’s two supernatural things that everyone knows has the word “Horseman” in them. That’s the sort of thing you’d put into a parody of bad Alan Moore-wannabe literary-mashup stuff, and here it is as the hook of a real TV show. Perfection.
The Headless Horseman, wearing an ammo-belt over his Hessian war coat, firing a submachine gun at cops gangsta-style.
Icabod assumes his black female cop partner is a freed slave.
“HEADS! WILL! ROLL!” Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I would love this if it were just a “Funny Or Die” parody of someone’s insane pitch for a “Once Upon A Time” bandwagon-jumper, but I think I’ll love it even more as a somehow-meant-to-be-taken-seriously actual show. Bring it on.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 