Lost Knight wrote:March2875 wrote:What I didn't like was that Devon Miles was murdered, the original Kitt got dismantled, and that it was set in the future. Knight Rider was about the car of the future being in the present.
A woman taking over didn't really bother me. One woman can make a difference just as easily as a man can. The fact that Kitt's chip ended up in her head was rather dumb though.
That's funny, because the reasons you mentioned why you didn't like the movie are the only aspects of the movie that I liked. Did I like seeing Devon die? Well, not necessarily, but I thought it created a very poignant scene and was an emotional tragedy, which is important in order to make the audience care about the film and/or its characters.
Did I like that the Knight 2000 was dismantled? I remember hating it when I first watched it as a 9-year-old. (And by the way, just where the hell did that steering wheel in the crates come from, anyway!?) Looking back now, however, I think it was a logical extrapolation of the original series. Think about it: we last saw K.I.T.T. in 1986, and according to the film, he and Michael's adventures continued through 1990. The movie takes place in the year 2000...so, would it be logical to keep a 1982 vehicle with series 2000 circuitry as the primary vehicle for the Knight Foundation? I certainly still don't use my old Compaq Presario from 2000 nowadays... Russ Maddock was certainly a cold, unlikeable character, but he did have a point when he said, "the car didn't exactly have fresh oil on the dipstick."
As for the character of Shawn McCormick, the fact that she was a woman taking over is not what bugged me. What bugged me is that for some reason I just didn't care about her character. The fact that she had a connection with K.I.T.T. by having one of his chips implanted in her brain was a little silly, too (as was the whole nonsense with being able to read peoples' thoughts and see them on monitors). To this day I can't quite figure out exactly why I don't like her character. Perhaps it's just that I didn't find her passionate or interesting enough (especially compared to Michael Knight, which is who everyone was watching the movie for, anyway). I guess she sort of worked for the TV movie, but I couldn't see her as a strong enough character to lead a new series.
Next, I hated the whole deal with the '57 Chevy. Sure, it was a little humorous to see K.I.T.T. being downgraded into such an old vehicle. But I would have preferred for the writers to have simply kept him as a pile of electronics than to put him in that car. The Knight 4000 wasn't all that bad, I thought. The problem was not even that it looked awkward from certain angles, but that it was RED. Someone brought up a point earlier that K.I.T.T. did everything the Knight 4000 did, and I agree, except for the Virtual Reality Mode. What's wrong with
actual reality?
Finally, the main reason why I didn't like the movie was not even the lack of turbo boosts or the original Trans Am. The reason I didn't like it was because it just wasn't a fun movie. When Glen Larson says the film missed the point, he's 100 percent right. The movie was just overall a bit too sci-fi and a bit too serious. Its entire tone was completely different than that of the original series. Jan Hammer's score wasn't necessarily bad music, but it just didn't fit well in what was supposed to be an action movie. Playing jazz music while Michael was fighting Tommy Watts didn't exactly make things feel climactic, either. In fact, I think 50 percent of the movie's problems could have been solved by simply making a score that fit better into the overall movie, even if no other elements were changed. Why didn't they call Don Peake or Stu Phillips?
