Prepared for the worst, so I wasn't directly disappointed but definitely confirmed my assumptions.
The opening is teasing you with the iconic soundtrack just to change it entirely shortly after and the opening ends with the evenly well-known explosion with the name MacGyver over it. Appears so half-assed. Really.
However, why have they recasted most of the characters and reshooted the pilot but of all the issues we saw early on, they kept the biggest one: Lucas Till? That makes no sense.
He comes off as a snarky, arrogant and condescending ass. He's this way too young superman type of a guy, who can do basically anything. He's too much of everything, he's seriously unrelatable and unlikable to the core. I hope, they turn that assholeness down a lot in the upcoming episodes. This episode - for a MacGyver and this show is just that: a modern attempt at a MacGyver by taking what's cool these days - appears simply too violent for what it is or tries to be. Hopefully that was just an attempt at drawing people in.
CGI effects are atrocius (except the "useful" hints that that object is an unfolded paperclip and such). I hate cheap CGI gunfire, seriously hate it. If the explosion is cheap CGI and defies any laws of physics (bomb explosion), okay, you usually don't have that many of those, you laugh it off and move on. But gunfire was pretty common here and was Blindspot S1 atrocius or even worse. This, for me, is one of the biggest immersion killers in any action packed movie/series.
Having the ex-Rush Hour (TV Series) actor, who played Carter, be in this as "Wilt" seems unnecessary. Any scenes with him are a waste of time as they take away from the MacGyver-ness of the show. He's supposed to be the cover for Mac and has no clue what Mac does for a living. But why?! Why is it so often necessary, to have a main protagonist live with a "cover" friend? Can a spy, super-agent, can-do-everything adventurer, or whatever never live alone without raising suspicion? It never makes sense and always imposes on the actual show at some point. It makes even less sense for a MacGyver show.
It's pretty action packed so it might catch on a younger audience, though.
But what I really wonder is, why should one watch this?
It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Scorpion, Blindspot, The Last Ship, Containment (in a smaller scale), Supernatural, Orphan Black...
All shows with a group of people solving ("world") problems. This has literally nothing setting it apart.
The little things he does with tinfoil and stuff was way too shallow and, well, lame. Opening handcuffs with a bobbypin? Never seen before! Putting tinfoil in some ammonia+corrosive to create smoke to start the firealarm? So exciting!! So much easier than using a lighter and I always have my bottle full with ammonia on me, anyway! A parachute from the planes of that truck? Mindblowing. All these things felt like they were a stupid joke reference to the old MacGyver that is thrown in between all the gun and explosion action. There's (mostly) no relevance to it whatsoever. I wouldn't have anything against a (good) modern MacGyver reboot but not how this episode tries to sell it: as a joke.
This show has some major issues.
Sigh.
Watching the pilot again on Ion now. I see that the show was actually better than what it became. Sure it was too much of a buddy show next to the original Macgyver where he mostly did everything by himself.
It was better as a buddy show than when it became Mission Impossible pretty much with MacGyver having a whole team.
This pilot is actually more fun than most of episodes in later seasons. It was definitely better with George Eads as Jack than without him. Even if Jack had a much smaller role in the original.
Well it is trying to be cocky and fun, but it is stupid, not in the good way in the end, unwatchable for me.
I mean it is worse then scorpion, like csi cyber bad
Scorpion at least had that Asian tomboy chick.
Or maybe I'm just too old for macgyver.
BTW rally subtle dream house ...
The pilot was over the top with an arrogant lead who is too big to contain .. hated this
My god, it was even worse than "Intelligence", "Scorpion" and "Blindspot" combined.
This isn't MacGyver, this is a guy who watched too much MacGyver and is now in some secret organisation doing things kinda like his TV-show idol. He even calls himself Mac.
Its more violent (which is ok by me) but MacGyver shouldn't be, the tricks are lame, the people too beautiful, the action too much without risk, there's little new and special, the use of the almost unhearable intro theme being swept up into some random nonsense and with the EXACT same explosion as the original one... the list goes on.
They should have called it Mac and have a scene where he talks about his lifetime hero, a tv character, who in later episodes pops up now and then with his own tv-wisdom, hell... make a joke or two about him meeting Anderson and comment his weight for all I care... It would have been tongue in cheek, fun, pander to the old fans and introduce the real one to the new people... They might even have made an extra buck selling the old episodes wherever they can be found.
Idk if I'll watch this with so many series popping up again. I still need to watch the final 4 seasons of the real MacGyver anyways.
I really had no expectations for this show, so it was okay.
I think that with time I can actually like the characters, however the writing needs to improve a LOT.
But the shaky camera when they are running is so awful! I really hope it was a one time thing. And all the cool stuffs he does with everyday things really should be fun and new, and in this episode it was pretty much what we've saw in every spy show/movie.
This is kind of trash. I hate the voice overs explaining everything and the dialogue is not great. But this kind of dumb thriller stuff is what I enjoy so I'm going to continue watching this until it probably gets too dumb and trash for me to handle.
There are simply no words for this atrocity.
Even MacGruber was better than this.
Not quite sure about it.
A bit too much government agency and too less lone wolf genius.
The explanations would be fine, if they weren't so far off.
I knew most of this stuff was not the way they explain it in the show when i was in 9th grade...
Still, it was fun to watch - will see how it progresses.
the new mcgyver for millenials to watch. :-):
Plenty of action but feels more like Mission Impossible meets Johnny Quest so far. Not much of what made the original good is captured here. Macgyver never had a team. Although yes he does at least have some of his skills from the original show.
Plus I predict his girlfriend he thinks is dead is alive and bad by the end. Watch me be right. "Updated comment" And yes I was right lol...
So yeah was a little cliche and predictable but I will probably watch it every week nevertheless.
Shout by Tiago LuzBlockedParent2016-09-29T03:34:56Z
This is so bad I couldn't finish the episode. When the girl hammered the notebook to "extract" the HDD, that's when I said enough.