Customer Reviews

Dark Angel

5 star:		(167)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I do not remember why I missed "Dark Angel" when it originally aired, but now that I have seen the first season I am willing to admit I made a big mistake (Mea Culpa, James Cameron). The story is set in Seattle, Washington, in the year 2019, which is after "The Pulse," an electromagnetic bomb that basically pushed reset on the United States. However, that is only the setting, because the star is Jessica Alba as Max Guevera, who at first glance has a day job as a bike courier, and at second glance works as a cat burglar at night, bit at third glance and closer examination turns out to be a genetically enhanced superhuman created by the government who escaped from a military training school ten years earlier.

"Dark Angel: The Complete First Season" has a couple of plot lines that make Max both the hunter and the hunted. Max is always on the lookout for her "siblings," the other kids who escaped from Manticore, while Lydecker (John Savage), the head of the secret program is trying to find both them and Max to return them to government service. Meanwhile, Max's days as a cat burglar are over when she tries to rob Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a rich kid who is the secret cyber-journalist known as "Eyes Only," who enlists her into his idealistic crusade to clean up corruption in Seattle. Of course, the two are made for each other, but we have to wait for them to catch out to this rather obvious fact. What really makes "Dark Angel" work is the extent to which this futuristic dystopia has been worked out. This is not so much a series where the mythology emerges over time, as it is one where the premises are so strong that they sustain multiple episodes and provide compelling sub-text for the rest. Compare this to similar series that take a while to find themselves, and you can see why these solid premises allowed this one to be able to have so many solid episodes early on.

Creator James Cameron's imprint is clearly on this production, but mention should be made of the show's Vancouver crew, which obviously includes a lot of "X-Files" veterans. The production values on "Dark Angel" are pretty striking in creating the seedy world of post-pulse Seattle and its icon Space Needle where Max likes to go and contemplate existence. But the sense of style comes as much from the characters as the setting. Alba is truly stunning as Max, able to play hard, soft, or whatever the scene demands. Weatherly has one of the squarest jaws in television history, and Savage has fun milking everything out of the bad guy (he really does care for his children, but duty never gets in the way of such emotions). The supporting cast has some compelling texture types, from Normal (J.C. MacKenzie), the overbearing dispatcher at Jam Pony ("Bip! Bip! Bip!"), to urban philosopher Herbal Thought (Alimi Bllard), and everybody's favorite, Original Cindy (Valerie Rae Miller), Max's roommate and co-worker, who basically has the right attitude for every occasion.

After watching the complete first season of "Dark Angel" you will want to move on to the complete second season, which just came out and you will be disappointed that there were only two seasons of the series. However, when you see the overall drop in quality during season two, you will not be that surprised (it takes half of that second season for the series to really get going). But "Dark Angel" is one of the better science fiction series to be produced in the last ten years, and the first season does provide a complete story arc.

I had never watched Dark Angel during its short run on FOX. I'm a big Cameron fan, but mixed reviews and lack of interest on my part kept me from giving it a shot. I didn't even know the show had been cancelled when the first season popped up in stores on DVD. One thing I love about DVD is the chance to experience full seasons of TV shows in one big serving. I've become a Buffy/Angel addict, had the chance to collect all The X-Files (which I watched religiously since it first aired when I was a kid) and have also discovered great shows like Felicity, Six Feet Under, and The Shield. I've always been a huge movie buff but I've found that television done right can be much more satisfying than any film. Stories unfold like novels and characters develop in ways that films just can't match. Greg Berlanti's new show Everwood that's on the WB is a good example of this. Hands down, that show is superior to 90% of the garbage at theaters this year. Which brings me to Dark Angel.
As an Amazon addict, I read countless reviews before deciding whether or not to buy movies and TV shows I haven't seen before. I'm fairly busy, I'm a writer/director and I run a production company in Los Angeles, and usually don't have the time to post my own thoughts. But I feel Dark Angel merits a post to hopefully get more folks to give this show a shot.
After reading a ton of reviews on various DVD sites and here on Amazon, I purchased the set. Based on the comments online, all seeming to either love the show or loathe it, I really wasn't sure what to expect. The set arrived and it sat on my desk for a week or two before I even popped it in. Some free time came up and in a very short perod of time I watched the whole series, mostly late at night on my PC. Some albums, movies and TV shows come into your life at the right time and fill a void or make you feel a certain way. I don't know exactly what was going on but I found myself really moved and involved in this show. I got really emotionally involved in Max's journey to find her long lost siblings and in her relationship with Logan. The scenes where they share blood in particular are touching and original. If you like thought provoking sci-fi with Cameron's fingerprints stamped all over it, this show is for you. Its got action, drama, romance, humor and a decent dose of darkness to keep you enthralled. Jessica Alba, lovely and tough as Max, really shines. Michael Weatherly and John Savage are also terrific.
The first season of Dark Angel builds to a nightmarish conclusion in the season finale that will have you screaming at the screen and wanting to rip your hair out because the second and last season isn't released until October. I've already pre-ordered my copy.
The 6 disc DVD set contains all 22 episodes of the first season and a nice set of extras. Commentaries on four episodes including the Pilot presentation are chock full of details about the production, hefty budget, special effects and Cameron's involvement as co-creator and writer. Also included are four featurettes, auditon tapes, gag reel/bloopers, and a trailer for Cameron's Dark Angel video game. Highly recommended in my opinion.

The series is set two decades in the future from 2009-2019 in Seattle, Washington, & stars the uniquely beautiful Jessica Alba. One of the refreshing things is that the main character is a brooding beauty who rarely smiles, rather than the stereotypical fake smiling or hysterical heroins that pollute so many series.

Jessica Alba is very believable in her torment. Her character sprang from a military genetic experiment called "Project Manticore" where kids were genetically altered to be super-human fighters & they were kept as prisoners in their training school. In their early teens the kids rebel & a few escape. Soon terrorists set off an electro magnetic pulse bomb that wipes out all debt & personal information, this clearly helps her to disappear. Her former captors pursue her obsessively as corruption runs wild in this highly chaotic society that in some ways has regressed into a third world country.

Meanwhile, a rogue underground news network regularly hacks into the government networks to inform the public of various conspiracy theories. Alba's love interest Michael Weatherley comes from this group. Dark Angel mixes several different genre's of storytelling{ part The Fugitive & part Outer Limits} that makes for a somewhat slow, but still entertaining series. In conclusion, the special effects are sometimes stronger than the suspense & plots.

Skeptical, I began watching occasional episodes of Dark Angel whenever I happened to catch them. Not being a big fan of television in general, these episodes came few and far between. I watched essentially to confirm my hunch that it was going to be just another mediocre sci-fi show whose good-looking cast, rather than the story itself, was to be its selling point.

Much to my surprise and enjoyment, Dark Angel was nothing like what I expected it to be. While many of the characters had a rough beginning in the first season, all of the actors grew into their roles very well. The dialogue is (mostly) very natural and doesn't shy away from slang and street-talk like most television shows do. The mythology developed around Manticore in the second season is splendid and quite interesting and, putting my expectations to shame, the show did an excellent job exploring the reactions and repercussions of genetically engineered humans coexisting with us.

The season finale - which turned out to be the series finale - is, in my opinion, one of the best ways that Dark Angel could have ended. A happy ending, tying up all the loose ends, would have been detrimental to a show that explored dark and complex themes which other shows have avoided. In spite of the many plot threads that would no doubt have been developed in a third season, the triumphant but open ending is one of the strongest points of the series and allows the viewer to speculate about the future none of us can know with certainty.

Let us all hope Fox decides to release this series on DVD. So many people did not give this show the trial it deserved, saying, like me, that is was just going to be another bad show with a good premise - and even we deserve a second chance.

My family and I love Dark Angel. It is an excellent sci-fi show set in the future, it won a People's Choice award in its first season, and was unbelievably canceled by unknowledgeable bigwigs at Fox.

There are more mysteries at the end of Season 2 than there were at the end of Season 1, so we believe at least two, if not three more seasons of this excellent show can be made.

If you enjoy regular people in weird circumstances and a genetically engineered female who [is tough], sign up and vote for this show and obtain the DVD when it is available.

I only recently have given DARK ANGEL a try after long avoiding it. Why did I avoid it? I had seen a couple of episodes, and Jessica Alba struck me as excruciatingly beautiful on the one hand, but not terribly talented as an actress on the other, with a flat, uninflected delivery and not as much screen presence as other "girl power" actresses like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eliza Dushku, or Jennifer Garner. I am still not a huge fan of Ms. Alba as an actress, but I have come to enjoy her character a lot more than I thought I would, and I have come to appreciate what a superb production the show is as a whole.

Of all the TV shows that have arisen in the aftermath of the girl power unleashed by BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, this show and ALIAS have been perhaps the two most successful. While neither of these show possess the brilliance of BUFFY and its incredible stable of writers (some of whom are now, however, moving over to ALIAS with the demise of ANGEL), DARK ANGEL is remarkable for its extraordinary production values, talented supporting cast, and superb sets and art design. With the increasing predominance of reality shows and their miniscule budgets, costly shows like DARK ANGEL are going to become endangered entities until the fad for reality TV finally passes. DARK ANGEL is remarkable for its camera work, for the large number of set ups they make for each episode, for the convincing and compelling sets for each episode (they manage to make post-pulse Seattle as slovenly and unattractive as the makers of ANGEL were able to make Los Angeles look unglamorous and dark). This is an especially ambitious film, with a host of sets and characters and a complex overall story that they manage to tell with an exceedingly high degree of professionalism.

I love long story arcs. It is one of the things that have made shows like THE X-FILES, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL, and FARSCAPE so fascinating to watch. Almost every episode of DARK ANGEL manages to tell a self-contained story, but also carry forward the larger narrative. The scripts are consistently strong and the writers gifted, though in the end the show lacks the deep interpersonal complexity and the crackling dialogue of BUFFY.

I have come to like Jessica Alba more than I would ever have thought possible. She is not a great actress, and it is true that her voice lacks power or the ability to express nuance, but she overall does a competent job and manages to be more than just a beautiful face. She is, however, above all a beautiful face, with lips that rival those of Michelle Pfeiffer and Angelina Jolie for the most excruciatingly gorgeous in the world. She is also a very athletic actress. As much as I loved BUFFY, and as much as I respected Sarah Michelle Gellar for how enormously she developed as a martial artist in her seven years on the show (compare her fight scenes in Season One with those in Season Five, Six, or Seven), she always managed to "run like a girl." At her best she managed short, choppy strides with arms tucked tightly into her body. Jessica Alba, however, when she runs, looks like a track athlete. She has a long, reaching stride, and pumps her arms vigorously, just as they teach in track. If she doesn't take over scenes in quite the way that Sarah Michelle or Eliza Dushku or Jennifer Garner or Claudia Black might, she nonetheless is a exquisitely beautiful, pleasant, athletic presence.

It is unfortunately easy to understand why this show was cancelled. The networks are enamored of reality TV shows. They are incredibly cheap to produce; they pull in large audiences. Shows like DARK ANGEL, which are immeasurably better than any reality show, are, on the other hand, expensive to produce, take a lot of work to make, and challenge audiences with their long story lines. As a result, we got only two seasons of this superb show. We should have gotten many. It is definitely our loss.

I absolutely LOVED this show! I was so disappointed when they said it would not get a third season. Jessica Alba totally kicks rear end, besides being gorgeous, and the very concept of the show is just so captivating. I was hoping one day that Max and Logan could be together. What a bummer that we won't get the chance to see that. But at the very least, I think the fans, myself included, deserve to be able to own the 2 seasons we were blessed with. '24', a show which I also like, has its first season out already, and in my mind, I would put Dark Angel in the same box with it. Yet, mysteriously, Dark Angel was not granted another chance, despite its obvious quality and success. Pleeeease put the two seasons of Dark Angel out on DVD or something! I thought the show was popular, maybe I was wrong. I loved it, and I'm sure there are plenty of loyal fans still waiting for the day when it'll be available for us to buy. I hope someone's listening out there. DA on DVD! DA on DVD!!!

During the time that Dark Angel aired on Fox, I watched almost every episode that was ever aired. The others I missed because the timer on my VCR sometimes didn't work (boy did I feel cheated). In my overall opinion, Dark Angel was a fantastic series that should have never stooped! It features intense battles, brilliant characters, and best of all excellent storyline with lots of plot twists.

For those not familar with the series, it revolves around a secret government project known as Manticore. It's main purpose: to design genitically engineered soldiers superior to any known weapon on earth. Unable to tolerate the harsh and brutal experiments and training exercises, a group of soldiers escapes from the facility and hides away. The main character of the show, Max, is one of these soldiers and finds herself paired up with Logan, head of a NGO group known as "Eyes Only". In exchange for Logan's help to find the other soldiers, she agrees to help him put a stop to government corruption in America, which plagues an already poor-stricken country that was attacked by an EMP set off by terriots knocking out all their technology. Throughout the series, many new surprises arise in Max's adventures, including her discovery of an underground power-hungry breeding cult, her finding of new soldiers that look anything but human, and even times when she's forced to fight against her own comrades. Most important of all, she'll always be faced with a tough choice between chosing life on the run or sticking by the friends she grows to love.

If this series comes out on DVD, don't hesitate to buy it! It'll be worth every penny. Filled with plenty of suspense, action, comedy, plot twists, and dealing with life's toughest choices, the value of this series is beyond that of a treasure full of gold.

Dark Angel has been my favorite show ever since it came out on television. I managed to catch most of the episodes, but having the DVD will definitely clue me in on some of the things I missed. Dark Angel perfectly depicted a future America that has been left wrecked by the pulse. For all who have not seen this show you have no idea what you're missing. Why Fox chose to cancel the show after only two seasons is a mystery to me and I am still fuming about it. If you like the show you might also wanna check out the book series that Max Alan Collins started writing after the series was taken off air. The first one is Dark Angel: Before the Dawn. This book sheds some light on some of Max's background that the series didn't go in to. The next book, Dark Ange: Skin Game, skips to continue the series after the last TV Episode, Freak Nation. The third one just came out it's called Dark Angel: After the Dark. I haven't read it yet but I'm sure it'll be great. You might also wanna check out Dark Angel: The Eyes Only Dossier. It gives a lot of background on Logan.(Eyes Only) All together it's an excellent series and Jessica Alba plays her role perfectly.

As a fan of the show, i would usually have to be careful not to write a biased review. This series though, is worthy of all the credit it gets. Excellent character development and plot makes this series a good thing to have in your DVD player. The storyline constantly build on what happens in previous episodes. Which is good for the fan that watches every episode. However this can be a drawback if you watch it infrequently, (developments can be hard to follow.) but if your buying the DVD boxed set, you won't have to worry about that.
Jessica Alba and Micheal Weatherly are possibly the most perfect actors for their roles. The chemistry between them is so strong that they are now in fact engaged. This reflects in the series as you really can believe the love they have for each other fictionally on screen. A great supporting cast of other talented actors keeps the show from being just another action scene to action scene, and adds a great down to earth feel.

Some of the drawbacks of the DVDs are their initial Price .... so not everyone can afford them. The special features are limited to 4 interviews with James Cameron, Jessica Alba, Micheal Weatherly and John Savage on the second boxed set, with none on the first. This is perhaps the only disapoining aspect of the sets. It would have been good to see some of the outtakes or deleted scenes..

Worth looking at if you like Sci-Fi, and a must have for a dedicated fan.