Thirty years later though, Peter Cushing, who had died in 1994, and Carrie Fisher 2016, were “reborn” as digital avatars in the Star Wars film Rogue One (2016). The idea of a an artificially created star living only in the digital heart of a computer seemed like the grandest of science fiction conceits in 1985. Cyberpunk had really taken off with the publication of Gibson’s multi-award winning novel Neuromancer in 1984 and Max Headroom owes debts to both the book and Blade Runner, the latter inspiring its dystopian, “retro-future” look. Max Headroom was an early screen manifestation of the burgeoning cyberpunk science fiction movement that had first taken root with short stories like William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic (1981) and had informed the hugely influential aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). The real Carter, consigned to a body bank, revives, escapes and together with Theora and his digital alter ego sets out to expose Grossman, Lynch and the “blipverts.” Lynch is able to reproduce Carter as a glitching, smart-aleck, self-aware computer simulation that refers to itself as Max Headroom and ends up in the hands of Blank Reg (William Morgan Sheppard) and Dominique (Hilary Tindall), owners of a tiny pirate television station, Big Time Television, run from an old RV. The “blipverts” have been created by teen genius Bryce Lynch (Paul Spurrier) who works freelance for Channel 23 (“a network with a great future behind it”) and its ruthless chief executive Grossman (Nickolas Grace).Īfter breaking into Channel 23’s headquarters, Carter is fleeing on a motorcycle with video evidence of the effects of “blipverts”, pursued by Lynch’s assassins Breugal (Hilton McRae) and Mahler (George Rossi) when he suffers an accident, colliding with a barrier labelled “Max. Carter is assigned a new operator, Theora Jones (Amanda Pays – the Theora lossless video compression system was later named after her character) and continues to investigate, learning that the cause of the explosion was a case of spontaneous human combustion caused by “blipverts”, heavily compressed subliminal adverts that cause some viewers to explode. News reporter Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) is investigating a mysterious explosion in an apartment block when his operator (in this violent, dangerous near future, news gathering is run like a military operation) pulls him from the story, resulting in him being beaten by a local gang. Set “20 minutes into the future” in a Britain where television is the greatest economic power, Max Headroom was intended as an introduction to a new “vee jay” character created by Channel Four to introduce the music video show that began two days after the film was first broadcast on 4 April 1985. A live-action American science fiction drama series ran from two truncated series in 1987 and there were any number of commercial appearances, most recently as an aging and embittered 2007, returning to his original home on Channel 4 in a spot directed by Rocky Morton (who co-directed this film with Annabel Jankel) alerting British viewers to the imminent change over from analogue to digital television. A smart-mouthed digital talking head, he made his first appearance in this one-off drama before taking the small screen by storm with his music video showcase The Max Headroom Show (1985-1987) which transformed into the chat show The Original Max Talking Headroom Show in 1987. In the 1980s, Max Headroom – the computer-generated alter ego of a seriously injured investigative television reporter – was a genuine pop culture phenomenon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |