Heroes In Singapore Frenzy

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Author: teropong | September 7, 2007 - 11:32 am

Heroes has a dedicated and obsessive fan-base, as its cast found out when they received a frenzied reception in Singapore last week.

Just so you know, Heroes isn’t a mere sci-fi show or a comic-book-type TV series. As more than one member of the visiting cast stressed during the Singapore stopover of the Heroes World Tour last week, it’s a character-driven drama that just happens to have science fiction or comic-book elements.

Drama, shawarma. These guys might as well have been rock stars, from the howling, screaming, frenzied reception they received right from their Aug 30 arrival at Changi airport where 200-plus people made them feel, well, happy to be there – right up to the 5,000 who packed the VivoCity mall the following day and gave them an even more rousing welcome.

It was the biggest fan turnout for the South-East Asian tour, according to Star World.

“It was insane!” says Nini Yusof, Star’s associate vice-president, distribution and marketing for SEA, of the VivoCity event.

“The actors were totally blown away by the thousands of enthusiastic fans, which prompted both Greg and Masi to do an impromptu beat-box number, to the delight of the roaring fans!”

You can’t get an exact answer on why the show has captured the public’s imagination all over the world.

The everyman factor with ordinary people developing extraordinary abilities … the cute and/or handsome guys on the show … the tough and beautiful women characters … the sheer creativity of show-runner Tim Kring’s vision … it’s all this and more.

Genre show, breakout hit, captivating drama – call it what you will, but in one season the show has won the kind of dedicated and obsessive fan-base that most others would give their left primetime commercial slots to have.

With its international setting (even though the series is filmed entirely in Los Angeles) and characters, it seemed only fitting that a world tour was held to give a shout-out to fans around the globe.

The Asian leg of the tour, held to promote the upcoming second season and also the first year’s DVD boxed set, saw performers Masi Oka (time-travelling geek Hiro Nakamura), Greg Grunberg (mind-reading cop Matt Parkman), Sendhil Ramamurthy (“miracle blood” man and geneticist Dr Mohinder Suresh) and Ali Larter (super-strong single mom and former Internet stripper Niki Sanders) in Singapore from Thursday to Saturday for that crazy airport reception, wild public appearance and unusual media conference (they were welcomed with a lion dance).

Some hints were given about the second year, which kicks off Sept 24 Stateside and starts on Star World in January, and in looking ahead we learnt more about how the series will actually be looking back.

Volume Two: Generations

Like the hint at the end of Season One indicated, we can look forward to an exploration of the bloodlines of the Heroes, perhaps explaining how the whole super-ability business took root in their genealogy and how they were chosen.

At the same time, in the present, nasty stuff will happen, some of it no doubt caused by the new “Big Bad” whose presence was also hinted at towards the end of the first year. If you thought Sylar (Zachary Quinto) was nasty, this new villain will make him look like the kid in the Astro commercial who gets hung from his cape on the coat rack.

“After five episodes of the first season, we were interviewed and we told them, guys, we haven’t even started,” says Grunberg during the cast interview session.

“I can build it up as much as I want because it really is that good, so I hope the interest broadens, and the audience broadens too.”

(Six episodes have been filmed so far, with scripts for the seventh going out while the cast was on the tour.)

If the general thread running through the established characters’ individual story arcs can be summed up – a difficult task to do where Heroes is concerned – it is that this year will see them trying to go back to their normal lives after making all their astonishing discoveries.

As usual, nothing goes according to plan.

Judging from a brief video montage screened for the media’s benefit, Season Two will see more exotic locales (or rather, Los Angeles getting dressed up in more exotic ways) with Mohinder globetrotting in search of more folks on his list; plenty of samurai action with Hiro having his own little feudal adventure; and a warrior who looks a lot like Sword Saint Takezo Kensei – the legendary warrior who is Hiro’s childhood hero – pulling off his mask to reveal that … he’s a white dude?

Internet surfers have known this for a month now: David Anders, who played bad boy Sark on Alias, has been cast as Kensei and his role reportedly grew from a guest stint to a full-blown regular.

Asked about this Caucasian development, Masi Oka would only say: “Yeah, he is, isn’t he?”

And what’s the story with that?

Oka: “Well … he’s a white guy.” That must be Hiro/Heroes parlance for “Don’t ask, just watch.”

Of the four visitors, the one whose character probably undergoes the biggest change will be Mohinder, according to Sendhil.

“It’s extraordinary that the writers had the courage to really make the character do a 180-degree turn and the reason they gave for him to do so is fantastic,” he enthuses.

As for Larter, she ducked the question of whether or not Niki’s hubby DL (Leonard Roberts) survived the serious gunshot wound he suffered in the last season’s penultimate episode, but did say that her character would be “moving away from the family dynamic thing”.

As expected, the travelling stars could not get too specific about the details of Season Two, so we had to go out and scrounge up the following tidbits from the Internet, mostly to do with cast additions.

New faces, new powers

# Dana Davis and Jessica Collins, both from the 2006-07 TV season’s early casualty The Nine (about survivors of a bank robbery whose lives are intertwined after the event), will join as Monica and Sophie respectively.

# Monica will be a new ordinary girl developing super-powers, while Sophie works for an agency that is tracking the super-beings (though she may have a special ability of her own too).

# Dominic Keating, Lt Malcolm Reed from Enterprise, will come on board as an Irish mobster although there is no word yet on whether or not his character will be “special”.

# It gets hotter: Kristen Bell, a.k.a. Veronica Mars, will play Elle, a mysterious woman who reportedly has a connection with regular characters Claire Bennett (Hayden Panettiere) and Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia).

# And to further strengthen the Heroes-Star Trek link (George Takei and Keating on the show, Quinto signing up to play Spock in the upcoming JJ Abrams Trek film), Nichelle Nichols – famous for her role as Lt Uhura on Trek – has also signed on as Monica’s grandmother.

This may not seem like an information overload but remember, with Heroes it’s all about the characters. So some of the above may be in for the long haul, others may find themselves written out after a few appearances.

One thing for certain is that the Season Two premiere, Four Months Later, is going to have some pretty big expectations running beside the coach as it approaches.

No doubt, the heroes and their creator will be more than up to the challenge.

Those rock star welcomes don’t just fall out of the sky during solar eclipses, you know.

source : Mass Media

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