Hacker Cinema
MacGyver
2016 · TV series · 5 seasons
Created by Peter M. Lenkov
20-something Angus MacGyver creates a clandestine organization where he uses his knack for solving problems in unconventional ways to help prevent disasters from happening.
1 positive3 negative9 neutralfrom 13 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
Videos commenters linked
From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
13 comments on Hacker News
Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Germany, I've been brainwashed by US movies and sitcoms, 90% of the things I've watched was from the US - Magnum P.I, Simon & Simon, The Fall Guy, Kojak, A-Team, Golden Girls, Mary Taylor Moore, Lou Grant, MacGyver, Knight Rider, Night Court, Family Ties, Miami Vice, The Wonder Years, Facts of Life, Love Boat, and on and on and on.
I know the US better than many parts of Germany.
[I'm going to adopt a curmudgeonly tone for stylistic reasons. I actually really like your response. Assume I put <SNARK> tags around the following attempt at humor.]
BOO HOO! I can't compile the kernel someone else gave me in time to catch tonight's episode of MacGyver. In my day we entered in complete operating systems manually through the front panel and WE LIKED IT THAT WAY.
Your CPU has an ALU!? Aren't you fancy. The IBM CADET I started on used table look up for addition.
Modem? AREN'T WE FANCY! And who do you speak with through that thing? The idiots from the college two counties over? No. God gave us tape drives and 747s for a reason.
> People are still referencing Mcguyver, but nobody's had the hubris to try and reboot that classic.
They did. And it probably got the same treatment mentioned in the article. It survived 5 seasons despite receiving abysmal reviews.
"Young Angus "Mac" MacGyver works for a clandestine organization within the U.S. government, relying on his unconventional problem-solving skills to save lives." [0]
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1399045/
Ah yeah, I actually knew about this; there was a MacGyver episode about it! Weird that I remember this after 20 years...
I wonder if this was ever used in a MacGyver episode.
I've been noticing that as channels get more custom tailored what is available to the mass market, where tastes are less refined, has been steadily receding in quality. Outcast to Drake; MacGyver to Ice Road Truckers.
But the opposite has happened on the other end of the spectrum. Emancipator or Bonobo (or Romare or Pilotpriest or or Nicola Cruz or Nu or Pantha du Prince or Sampha) are just leagues better than what we had even ten years ago. Sure the mass market is drinking down Fast and the Furious 9 or Transformers 11 or Spiderman ∞, but the quality of the films that are targeted at the intelligentsia is head and shoulders above what we used to have. Even television has stratified.
I think the internet has something to do with it. People follow people that are smarter than them because they learn from them or they interact with smarter people more because they tend to get upvoted more, but there is a window of potential interaction. None of my family members are on HN and very few of them follow me on Twitter (out of the 130+ of them). Then you move the smart people to the smart cities and the normal, day-to-day interaction that would have happened no longer does.
I'm not sure just how accurate it was, but I still remember the first season MacGyver episode "Thief of Budapest" where he adjusted the settings to create a traffic jam.
There was extreme media censorship (GUKPPiW 1946-1990), but directed almost exclusively towards dissident political statements and praise of western prosperity. You were still allowed to show foreign wealth as long as you showed for example how easily Polish creativity fleeced westerners out of it. Labelling everything as a comedy also helped, still for example 'Alternatywy 4'(same director as the clips below) spend 3 years being edited/censored. Those were prime time TV shows broadcast couple of years before fall of the Iron Curtain, maybe even slightly contributing to the growing unrest and eventual Polish exit from the Eastern Bloc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5MXX_n0pfQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThD7AmKQkjg
https://youtu.be/_nmGi757fyo?t=5m1s
TV was not allowed to show anything celebrating western lifestyle. We didnt get Miami Vice, Wonder Years, MacGyver, A Team or Dynasty until ~5 years after kicking Russians out of our country. Instead foreign tv shows we had were 'Escrava Isaura' and some old chestnuts from the fifties like Zorro. Cinema was a lot better, scifi movies had little trouble with censorship, we got 'New Hope' in 1979, 'Empire Strikes Back' in 1982, 'Terminator' in 1985. Toho Kaiju movies came out same year as in the west. Of course you could get censored for something entirely not in the movie. 1984 'NeverEnding Story' was delayed into 1987 because of directors earlier work 'Das Boot'.
Very interesting and great name, however - should we expect a cease and desist order soon for using what is likely a trademarked name? There was a MacGyver film in the works a while back, though I'm not sure what the status of it is.
Looks like they took a Macgyver episode and made it a little smaller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF6FUVxAVzI
I'm actually older than 30, but we didn't have a TV in the house when MacGyver aired, I've never seen an actual episode of the show
MacGyver is referenced all the time, to the point where I imagine most people pick it up from context clues, even if they've never seen the original show
That's the problem. We can't aim to make $200 M movies from the start.
But I think it is pretty much possible to build a platform where we can finance a TV series like The Big Bang Theory, by charging only $1 per episode to the subscriber. Just cutting the middle man and setting a deal with a dumb pipe channel like Google (YouTube), where they can make money from ads, and paying the creators some more money... That would be only $4 a month for a series you REALLY love. [1]
And of course, the public wins A LOT, by avoiding unexpected cancellations, time slot changes, etc!
I'd definitely pay for series like Battlestar Galactica, TBBT, MacGyver (lol! how would it be today)...
And of course, if you make it GLOBAL, erasing regional restrictions, you can increase your audience at an enormous level!
I see this model as something ABSOLUTELY plausible today. Why are we still paying to the middle men?!?! Let's make this happen.
[1] http://www.tvguide.com/News/Top-TV-Earners-1021717.aspx
I'm sure it has.
But it's kind of like a lot of engineering fields. As reported in the NYTimes, engineers reported the risks and management made the decision to ignore those risks.
So I'd still suggest that if those deeply involved with drilling oil say nuking the well is fucking stupid idea, then it's a fucking stupid idea - especially since already sounds like a fucking stupid idea. Perhaps it would work in a MacGyver movie.