In a promo after Bionic Woman this week, NBC announced the return of American Gladiators, premiering in January. Awesome! This was one of the first shows I watched when I came to this country for college, and it was God-awful. I loved it. I think of it as a precursor to the modern wrestling TV phenomenon, like WWE lite. I can’t wait to see how they update it, if they even bother.
How do you update a show that was so incredibly ahead of its time?
Goes back to watching The Running Man.
Now that was a movie. And what a supporting cast! Yaphet Kotto! Richard Dawson! Dweezil Zappa! Mick Fleetwood! Jim Brown! Jesse Ventura! (Who, it is important to remind everyone, was the Governator first.)
Maybe they’ll update American Gladiators with celebrity guests.
Yes, great, but not my favorite Arnold-Jesse pairing. Ironically, I think JV made a better military badass than professional wrestling (killing?) personality. I guess it figures, though, since the military predated his wrestling career. And for Jesse, I prefer “The Governing Body.”
Predator was a fine movie (and included the stylings of Apollo Creed, I mean, Carl Weathers, which is hard to surpass), but it did not have the pretense at meaning that Running Man did.