I got a free download from iTunes, via Starbucks, for this show. I was not entirely sold on the teasers, but I decided to give it a chance. I was really surprised, I really enjoyed the character development and interaction. The acting is good, but not great. I am hoping that it is just first episode jitters and will work itself out. They have me waiting for episode 2, and with the amount of six degrees situations I am sure it will take a few episodes to fully see the entire picture, maybe even the first season. Give it a chance, could be the one everyone is talking about, similar to Lost 2 years ago. This should be a welcomed addition to my tivo season pass, hoping it is in HD.
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emrey2812 September 2006
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jetkot10 October 2017The casting is impeccable. The Japanese guy is fantastic. The story has seriousness and humor. It delves beautifully into fantasy and looks believable. I am looking forward to how they will take it forward. A beautiful start. Loving it. The special effects are good and the story keeps you on your toes. They introduce characters brilliantly without wasting time in building them.
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Prismark1012 August 2020I can be very critical of American shows. Some of the episodic series are very formulaic. The long form shows can have pacing issues. I avoid acting like a fanboy or like a paid shill in my reviews *cough the all new Perry Mason cough*.
Heroes is a show that should had remained a one series wonder. It was almost perfect as it was. Unfortunately they carried on.
I only jumped into the first series while it was midway. A friend kept pestering me to watch it as he knew I liked sci fi. I very much liked what I saw although my friend needed to fill in some details as I knew nothing about the backstory apart from it seemed to be inspired by the X Men. Even Stan Lee gave it his own seal of approval.
So I only watched the first episode after I saw the conclusion of the first series.
The episode introduces some of the characters, some of them believing that they have special powers. Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) is a Texas cheerleader who cannot be harmed. Her father is a shady agent of some kind who is tracking Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) whose father was involved in some top secret research in India.
It starts off with Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) who thinks he can fly. His older brother is rising politician Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar).
There is a global element of Heroes. Apart from scenes set in India, there is humour from Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) a Tokyo office worker who believes he can control time and space. His colleague is far from impressed.
It is a promising start, some intrigue, some humour and an adventure you want to stick with. -
tavm27 September 2006From the Star Wars-like crawl in the beginning to the sight of a young man at the top of a tall building in New York imagining he can fly to a teacher in India being told after class that his dad died to a woman stripping on the internet in Las Vegas and having a mirror image that acts opposite of what she does to Japan where an office drone discovers he can control time and teleport to a teenage girl cheerleader in Texas who has skin that heals quickly even after she jumps off a tall stair or saves someone in a fire...whew, a lot to take in one episode and there's a few other characters and events I have not mentioned yet. But I loved what I've seen so far and I'm way excited to see what happens next especially when one of my favorites, Greg Grunberg, makes an appearance in the next episode. Heroes is definitely must see for the new season on NBC!
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jaymez85819 August 2006I was lucky enough to preview part of the pilot of HEROES at the San Diego Comic Con in July and I must say it's a fresh new outlook on comics/superheroes. It was just earlier this year that I was talking with a coworker on how superheroes and TV shows need a wake up call. We were yearning for something new. I know there are great story lines in the Marvel & DC universes, but for television, this has got to be the hit to fill the void. If you like LOST, then I think you'll be hooked on HEROES. There are 10 different heroes that are ripe and ready for development. Each episode will keep you wondering about each character's abilities. You'll be looking forward to the next episode with anxiety.
Personally, I think reality TV is way past it prime. I doubt that any "twist" will ever have the same impact as Survivor or Real World. I believe HEROES will stimulate the imaginations of both young and old just as the early comic books did and yet, spare the boredom of a borrowed storyline.
I only saw about half of the pilot and was very impressed. This show is sure to take television audiences by storm, but don't just take my word for it; The pilot airs 9/25 on NBC. -
adw-5156620 January 2016A pilot that does everything right. It establishes an interesting premise from the get go and instantly pulls the audience in. It gives us great characters sets up a story of where it will go down the line. Heroes has one of the best premiers I've seen from a show, it was great in 2006, and it is great now. It sets up the beginning of an epic series that truly captures what it would be like for ordinary people to have these abilities and doesn't go with the superhero costume approach. From shows like Breaking Bad, LOST, 24, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, etc, have yet to capture the magic the premier of Heroes had. If you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to watch it, then good luck trying to quit, because you won't.
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taylorkingston9 May 2015I love this episode. It's a great way to start a fantastic show. We get to meet all of our beloved characters and we have the feeling that we are evolving and growing with them.
In this episode, we are introduced to a handful of people who are just discovering that they have special abilities. Claire, a teenage cheerleader in Odessa, Texas, is realizing that she can heal quickly. Hiro, an office worker in Japan realizes that he can bend space and time. Isaac, a drug addict painter realizes he can paint the future. Nathan, a politician, who can fly. His brother Peter, a nurse, who also thinks he has a special ability. All are realizing that they are more than they ever thought they would be. Along with Mohinder, a scientist from India who comes to New York trying to find out who murdered his Dad, and why.
Overall, I give this episode a 10 out of 10, which in my ratings book is: Freaking Ridonkulous. -
"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution". That was the first phrase of the monologue that opened X-Men. The pilot episode of Heroes, titled Genesis, begins with a similar text, indicating that, with the film franchise having reached its conclusion (spin-offs notwithstanding), this is the closest we'll ever get to a live-action X-Men TV series. And may I add, a really great series, too.
Much like Bryan Singer's film showed ordinary people developing extraordinary abilities, Heroes starts with a group of individuals, living on all sides of the globe, coming to discover their new selves: Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), a good-hearted nurse who's assisting a dying man (Richard Roundtree) and has a brother (Adrian Pasdar) running for Congress in New York, is convinced he can fly after experiencing some very suggestive dreams; Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera), a drug-addicted artist, is supposedly capable of painting the future; Niki Sanders (Ali Larter), a single mom who has to strip on the internet to make ends meet and take care of her son Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey), is suddenly scared by her reflection in the window; Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), a cheerleader from Odessa, Texas, can recover from any wound instantly; Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), a Japanese office drone, believes he can alter the time-space continuum. A normal person whose destiny seems to be tied with theirs is Mohinder Suresh (Sendil Ramamurthy), an Indian geneticist who moves to New York after hearing his father, a researcher who thought mutants (in lack of a better word) existed, was murdered while looking for them. And somehow all of this appears to be linked to a solar eclipse that occurs almost halfway through the episode.
Genesis is a bona fide first issue of a comic-book brought to the small screen: all the characters are introduced, their abilities are more or less explained and events are set in motion for some kind of life-altering incident that will determine the storyline of Volume One. There are also comic-based elements in the show's formal execution: captions indicate where the various people are, episode (or better, chapter) titles and numbers are shown on screen, and the final scene cuts to a completely black frame with the words "To be continued..." written on it. Furthermore, there's a bit of a comic-book geekiness in Masi Oka's performance, which provides some comic relief that sits well with the seriousness of other people's acting (Pasdar and Ventimiglia most of all).
But Heroes is more than a mere superhero show, in fact not one character is seen wearing a cape or some other fancy item of clothing. They're all "normal" people. Perhaps the name "Heroes" can be compared to the title of a comic-book that Marvel Comics published after 9/11: made by all the major writers and artists in the business, Heroes featured stories of the firemen and policemen who helped get the victims out of the Twin Towers. A few years later, a Spider-Man comic emphasized the role of those people by having someone saying to Spidey: "You're not a hero. Firemen and cops, people who risk their lives every day, they're the real heroes".
In light of that interpretation, it's no coincidence that Peter Petrelli, the only "hero" who believes our actions serve a higher purpose, is a nurse, i.e. someone who helps those in pain and does his best to save their lives (one should also note his alliterated initials, another comic-book staple, which match those of Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man). It's no coincidence most of the main characters are common men and women, with common lives and common jobs. They are the people who can really make a difference. As such, Heroes is a powerful meditation on the world we live in, a reflection disguised as a TV superhero epic. -
As far as television shows go, "Heroes" seems to have it all. Big budget, great looking and talented cast, capable direction, realistic effects and a thoroughly entertaining script. Following a viewing of the first episode, I agree with the hype and comments that this is indeed the new "Lost".
Among the heroes are Ali Larter, who is excellent as the young mother who is in a spot of trouble with the local mob and who is tormented by eerie occurrences with mirrors, the cute-as-a-button Hayden Panettiere, who plays the indestructible cheerleader, and Masi Oka, who is a young Japanese man who can bend time! This is thoroughly addictive viewing and the most original show I've seen in a long time.
Marvellous! -
In Manhattan, Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) is the younger brother of the candidate to the congress Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), and he dreams and believes that he can fly. He decides to prove his theory and jumps from the roof of a building in an alley and his brother flies and saves him. In Texas, the cheerleader Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) is indestructible and can not harm herself or die. She saves a fireman in a fire in a train. In Tokyo, Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) believes he can control time and space continuum. In India, Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) moves to the Brooklyn, New York, when his father that was researching a secret project called Genesis about genome and DNA is killed in his cab. In Lower Manhattan, the painter Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera) paints pictures of the future. In Las Vegas, the striper Niki Sanders (Ali Larter) borrows US$ 30.000,00 from a powerful local mobster and does not have the money to pay her loan. She sees a different image of her in the mirror, and when two gangsters come to her house to collect the money, one of them hits her and she faints.
The Introduction of the characters of "Heroes" is a reasonable episode, with six disconnected stories. I believe the lives of the characters will entwine in the next episodes, but I had a great expectation based on the comments of friends and I was a little disappointed. The story of the gorgeous and sexy Nikki is the more intriguing in this moment. My vote is six.
Title (Brazil): "Genesis" -
The year was 2015. Like many fans of the original series -- this series -- I was glued to my TV at the thought that the series was to be rebooted. Rebooting was clearly not impossible. They rebooted X-Files successfully (although with a strangely sardonic vibe). So, like millions around the world, I watched, and as episode ran after episode, I was gob-smacked at how wretched, how terrible, the reboot was.
I wrote IMDb reviews on the reboot trying to point this fact out as if (I knew better) my reviews could get the producers and writers back on course. But it was too late. The reboot died under its own fetid weight and all I had for my trouble was a phalanx of "not useful" hits at the reviews I had offered.
In my reviews of the reboot, "go buy the DVDs of the original," I said time after time to the children who were trying to see the good bits in the reboot. Like the story of the optimist's daughter who is taken to a room full of manure and jumps for joy, yelling, "With all this poop, there has to be a pony here somewhere!" That is the problem with younger people since the beginning of time -- they think the world began when they did.
In any case, I took my own advice and got the original from Amazon. Just finished episode 1. NOW THAT IS HOW TO START A SERIES! Present one interesting character after another, with great tight dialog, and a background message that makes you think.
Perfect opener! I have never seen better. -
sarastro725 September 2006I am a comic collector, and I would love nothing more than for a show of this kind to succeed. Ordinary people becoming heroes! I love the high morals and idealism of superhero comics.
But I thought the initial episode of this TV show was fairly boring. It was too dark and indistinctive. Too realistic (i.e. not fantastic enough). Some things were alright, but there really was nothing much in the way of novelty and originality. Heck, I could write a superhero show much better than this. Someone mentioned that it looks almost like The 4400 all over again, and I had hoped that wouldn't be the case, but actually it is. There's a lot of ominous hinting of this and that, but hardly any proper action. That's how such shows have ALWAYS been made! Isn't it time for something more, especially in this age of fairly affordable CGI and such? Come on!
I hate to be a naysayer, but I doubt this show will last very long, unless it gets its act together and start pouring on some real action. I hope it improves, but I'm not optimistic. And a show about SUPERHEROES which does not inspire optimism... well, I'm afraid that just might be a sure sign of a slam-dunk failure.
6 out of 10. -
captain_tripps-9989321 November 2021I'll start off by saying that I originally watched this right after it ended and the whole series was on some streaming site. (I want to say Netflix, but I can't be sure.) I forgot a good deal of it and only really remembered big things, although I forgot a lot of them too. I did really like this show at first, especially the first season. IMO it goes downhill from here. I'm also not going to put a synopsis in my review. I see a lot of people do that and I really can't understand why. I thought reviews were suppose to be about what you thought of something and not a play-by-play of what happened in the episode. I'm going to assume you watched it. That said, here is my opinion of the first episode and it's characters.
I don't usually like child actors because let's face it, usually they overact like hell, but the kid who play Micah is actually good and I like his character. I don't really care for Ali Larter's character though. She's like the incredible hulk, but way more irritating. She just bugs me.
I also surprisingly like Claire, but I think it was stupid to make a video using her powers. There are so many ways that could go wrong (and does later). "I have my reasons" is a lame explanation, especially if we don't ever hear what those reasons are. I know we do later, but I still think it's lame. I liked Claire saving the man from the fire though, that was a good moment for her. Her family is a bit boring though, except for her dad.
The Petrelli boys tend to annoy me for different reasons. Peter is super annoying even though he turned out to be right. He's still a very grating character. Nathan is just a dick. Their mother is an interesting character, if not a bit of a b***h.
Hiro is adorable. He's a fun character because he's such a dork about it all. He really embraces it and it's great. Ando is just a bit of a perv.
Mohinder is interesting, for now. Isaac is kind of annoying and his power is a bit lame. Painting the future, at least it's not as bad as season 4's ink power thing. I know that I shouldn't complain because it's at least different, but I still found it kind of lame.
Overall, a good introduction episode for the characters. I'll ignore the impossible eclipse stuff. Also, everyone being able to get anywhere in New York City in 10 minutes drives me crazy. There really isn't much more to say about this episode. It really was just kind of an introduction and not a lot really happens. -
igoatabase9 January 2010A contemporary vision of X-Men ? It could be one way to describe Heroes after watching its pilot, Genesis. However as told by Mohinder Suresh during the introduction, the characters with special abilities are not mutants but evolved humans. But the problem is that you can't learn how to fly overnight nor how to teleport. That's why I found his genetic theory didn't really make sense. It's specially true considering the importance of technology in our reality. Otherwise let's not forget it's only fiction and entertainment.
So like in Carnivàle it seems the characters are more than who they appear to be at first sight. Although their profiles are different, I wasn't convinced by most of them. Only Niki Sanders, played by gorgeous Ali Larter, and Isaac Mendez intrigued me. The first strips on the Internet to pay her bills and take good care of her genius son. Apparently she has a split personality but it seems something even weirder is happening to her. It becomes quite obvious at the end. Isaac is a painter and can predict future events. I found the idea of using arts original because it brought something accessible to the audience. Moreover the actor's performance was quite good and you could feel how lost he was and how much he was suffering.
As for the others I thought I was actually watching The WB instead of NBC. Most performers are pretty people and I found their characters, like the regenerating cheerleader Claire Bennet and wannabe flyer Peter Petrelli, lacked authenticity. Otherwise it was balanced with educational elements that brought some depth to them. We're watching their first steps so it could be as entertaining as in Smallville, but without the fascinating Superman mythology surrounding Clark Kent. They all have a different story but we soon learn that they're all connected, like in Lost for example. One thing I liked about Mohinder and Hiro Nakamura, the time bender, is that they brought a universal vibe to Heroes. For once they're not just here to smoke an ensemble cast but to convince the viewers that the evolution phenomena is happening right now all around the world. Moreover it seems Mohinder was used as a centric character around whom the others revolved. But the most interesting and fascinating one was probably Hiro, a Japanese. Indeed beside his funny jokes he said some very deep things about his culture. He wants to be special, different. Like in Antz he's tired of being a nobody.
Therefore Heroes definitely has potential. However the editing ruined the experience. Reversing some events was a good idea but it felt like the episode was just a bunch of random scenes put one after an other. So in the end Genesis appeared to be a show produced for the Web, made up of mini-episodes. Last but not least it seemed some characters were just here to fill the gaps. For example even if I liked Niki she wasn't connected to the other characters and the writers failed in intriguing us enough. In fact it was my second viewing of Genesis and even the first time I felt betrayed because I knew the upcoming episodes would focus on specific characters, one at a time like in the worst episodic formated productions. It wouldn't be an issue if they were as fascinating as in Lost.