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"Dark Angel" (2000) More at IMDbPro »

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148 comments in total

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76 out of 89 people found the following comment useful :-
Wish it could have survived, but needed better writers., 12 September 2002
Author: badbri13 from U.S.

The pilot was awesome, and the first season was great. We couldn't wait to watch it every Friday. Jessica was excellent for the part and played it extremely well. The supporting cast also did a great job, and the characters and plot was working very well.

When the first season ended, we couldn't wait for the second season. Unfortunately, as the second season progressed, it appeared that the story writers were running out of steam. It seemed to me that they made a wrong turn with the plot along the way, and they couldn't seem to find a way to get back on track. It was an awesome show, it definately had potential, and it is unfortunate that it had to end like it did.

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28 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :-
Haven't I seen this plot before?, 14 March 2002
Author: D'Amico from Canada

How well I remember the pilot...a little girl named Max escapes from a top-secret government facility where she has been bred specifically to be a super-human. One day, she escapes, but is separated from her 'brother', who she then searches for. It's fascinating to think that what is done in that government facility is possible...and amazing to think that one little girl on her own who has been super-enhanced can escape. Waitaminute...that was the plot of a James Patterson book that came before 'Dark Angel' even hit the screen. Hmm. I guess James Cameron couldn't come up with the idea on his own, or even a name.

The series itself isn't bad. It's not great, but if you don't mind getting mired in to a side-plot, then it's really not bad. The first few episodes of the show were the best, because it was when Max was still concerned about finding out about herself. Then the show seemed to dwindle...it's still well-acted, but some of the writing has suffered. Although it's nice to see that Michael Weatherly ends up romantically involved with yet another of his co-stars.

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18 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
A show with great potential that became progressively worse., 10 December 2003
Author: flask

James Cameron's "Dark Angel," starring Jessica Marie Alba, debuted onto the public television circuit with the glitzy, media-permeating fanfare of a P.T. Barnum exhibit. It was intended to be Fox's answer to "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer," but unlike the latter show, "Dark Angel" never lived up to the glimmers of potential which it displayed in the pilot episode.

The lead character, Max Guevera/X5-452 (Jessica Marie Alba), with enhanced feline abilities was interesting enough despite the all-too-familiar "I just want to be normal" superhero formula lurking underneath. Gratuitous shots of Miss Alba -- dare I say "miss" in our enlightened society? -- in a skin-tight leather outfit was undoubtedly a major selling point with the teenage male audience but often cheapened the series to the level of a D.C. comic book.

The overarching plot involving genetically-engineered super soldiers whose DNA had been artificially created, inserted as fertilized eggs into the wombs of surrogate mothers, born under military supervision, raised in an experimentation compound and then escaped as children was laughably cliché, but still interesting. This was tacked onto a futuristic environmental setting in which a dystopian Seattle has been devastated by an electromagnetic pulse. These two premises were mildly compelling, and the show was at its best when exploring them, but the moment it would veer into alternative plotlines, it would fall from an average weekly thriller to a stinking pile of fungus.

The ensemble cast which populated the show on a weekly basis was by far the worst failing of this short-lived series. The supporting characters were often teenage stereotypes painted in broad, one-dimensional strokes for the sake of political correctness (i.e. Original Cindy) and used the most annoying hip-hop slang. The point of using slang is to make communication quicker, not to use it so much in a sing-song fashion that basic communication itself becomes stupidly incomprehensible. Apparently, middle-aged creators James Cameron and Charles Eglee were trying so hard to make a hip show that appealed to teenie boppers that they didn't realize being too trendy is just as detrimental as being too normal.

Coupled with the annoying overuse of rat-tat-tat Ebonics, a constant "battle of the sexes" theme existed throughout the series which would have been wickedly amusing if it hadn't usually lacked wit and reverted to simplistic invectives. Max saying lines such as, "Girls kick ass, [because] it says so on a T-shirt" was humorous. Max saying lines such as, "Guys are the weaker sex" to a grieving widow who has just lost her beloved husband isn't humorous, even in a morbid sense. A twisted sense of humor can be sickeningly funny, but, if an episode writer is not careful, it often can just be sickening. There is a very fine line to toe. The Dark Angel writers should have remembered Mel Brooks' famous advice, "If I cut my finger, that's tragedy. If a man walks into an open sewer and dies, that's comedy."

For the lackluster action scenes in which Max displayed her "dizzying" superpowers, the Dark Angel crew often utilized a simple fast-forwarding technique. This is an effective trick if executed correctly, but instead it often came across as sped-up footage from a shaky hand-held video camera. In retrospect, far more interesting combat effects could have been created using wire stunts ala the deified choreography of Yuen W. Ping.

Ultimately, the corniness of "Dark Angel" became more and more insufferable; the weekly episode writing didn't improve; the characters became so posh they were borderline snotty. Midway through the first season its Nielsen ratings began to slip. Seeing no quality improvement, viewers abandoned "Dark Angel" like rats from a sinking ship. By the second season, the once-promising series had degraded to having Max slaying Buffy-like monsters and encountering freakish beings that seemed borrowed from the X-Men comics. If only the series writers had aimed for a wider demographic audience other than middle school teenagers and focused less on being devastatingly hip, "Dark Angel" might have lasted a few more seasons.

Tsk! Tsk!

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9 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Cameron S.O.S, 20 January 2001
Author: leon123 from United States

This show started with much promise, but I think it is fading fast. Unless James Cameron takes a more hands-on approach and start doing some of the writing and/or directing himself, this will be another one of those short lived TV series that will be rerun on either TNT, SCI-FI, or FX cable channels ad-infinitum. I think that this show suffers from the same problems that the PRETENDER suffered from: it just keeps recycling the same good guy(girl) vs. bad guy stuff while continuing to build up on the subplots with no discernable solution to the questions the subplots are raising. In order for these types of series to succeed, the producers, in my humble opinion, need to tie the various subplots at some point to THE main plot of the show and relegate the good cop vs. bad cop episodic plots to the back burner.Of course this would mean, one suspects, that at some point the series would be over, because the main plot would be solved. The other thing that bothers me about Dark Angel is the hunter vs. the hunted theme: we've already had this in The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk, The Pretender, to some extend in The Profiler, and probably others that I haven't even heard of. Can we get rid of it? It is the biggest cliche on TV right now. Cameron said in an interview that he would only come in to direct and write an episode if it could be ground breaking enough and something that had not been done before on TV. Now's the time to do it, Jimbo. If you care about this project, save its life, please! I would submit that that is ground breaking enough.

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66 out of 127 people found the following comment useful :-
Weird gender-related double standards, 5 November 2002
Author: Skaven252 from Finland

Reading what other people have commented on the show, it seems this series is a rather mixed bunch, trying to cater to many audiences but apparently satisfying only few.

Female viewers are offended because Max is pretty and portrayed as such a sex object in every turn, but love the series because watching a girl kick (male) butt strokes their egoes.

Male viewers are offended because almost all the male characters are useless, impotent losers who (deservedly) get insulted and their asses kicked, but love the series for the action, and the hot lead character.

Pschah.

The series has an intentionally controversial message - with nothing substantial to say. It doesn't seem to offer much besides the usual endlessly expandable treadmill of standard cliche plot twists. I lost interest after the first couple of episodes.

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10 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
May or may not fly, 10 October 2000
Author: tprofumo from Los Angeles

I think the jury is still out on this one, but it will be an uphill battle for this show, despite some good numbers for the two hour debute.

"Dark Angel" is the kind of sci-fi I should like, in that it deals with a plausible future and what could be an appealing central character. Unfortunately, we've met these genetically enhanced "perfect soldier" types before, so there's nothing new there. Even her bike messenger day job comes to us out of William Gibson. There's not too much new about the setting, either, although I found the opening explanations of what's going on a little merky.

That was a major problem with the pilot. I wasn't exactly sure who the bad guys were or how many of them were around. Nor was I clear on who exactly the guys where who had created Max and her fellow genetically enhanced kids or what their connection was to the government or the apparently private company Max spent most of her time fighting in the pilot. I hope things get simplified in future episodes.

I was also very unclear on Max's character. TV, of course, is all about character and Max's seemed a little muddled to me. She was this mysterious loner/outsider type who seemed to be everyone's patsy, spending an awful lot of time getting sucked into other people's problems.

There's an old rule of screen writing which says, beware of main characters with no clear goals. Max supposedly wants to find the "others like her," but spent almost no time doing that in the opening show. She was too busy helping out everyone around her. Unless she starts following some clear path, things will get worse. The only way to have a character without some attainable, important goal is to make her a keen observor of what's going on around her, and Max didn't come off that way at all.

All this leads to the heart of the show and the main question. Jessica Alba is as fetching a girl as exists in Hollywood today. I'm sure no small number of teenager boys will tune in just to oggle her in those tight fitting biker outfits.

But can the girl act? I think that question has not yet been answered and subsequent episodes will have to do a lot to prove that. She was adequate in the first, but just barely,

Good luck with this show. I hope it succeeds, but I won't hold my breath.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the few shows/movies which feature a Jessica Alba that could act., 15 August 2009

Author: munhasen from St. Charles, MO

I agree with a previous poster that said the show needed better writers...and more specifically, better DIALOGUE writers. I loved the show and wish it would have continued on for more seasons. I felt Jessica Alba did an excellent and convincing job acting with what she was given.

And to the poster who said she wasn't athletic enough...you're a complete idiot! One of my first thoughts was that, besides her acting and her looks, she was perfectly picked BECAUSE of the athleticism.

I hope that they either bring the show back, or they do a feature film with the original cast.

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8 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Season 1 is alright, but tries too hard to be "hip", Season 2 sucks ass, 18 September 2005
Author: movieman_kev from United States

Jessica Alba is Max Guevera, a top secret genetically-engineered but mentally deficient hotty who after escaping captivity lives as a bike message courier in Seattle of a post-apocalyptic world of 2009, while searching for the other government experiments that have escaped,running up against the "evil" Manticor corporation, and learning of her past piece by piece along the way. Her and her wheelchair bound journalist do-gooder, try to take "the Man" down. Oh, and I hate the black lesbian with the drag queen name of "the Original Cindy", she's just an ultra-lame character. Other then that it was an alright show... well the first season was at least, season 2 sucked balls. Think of a second-rate "Alias", but with a sci-fi tinge.

My Season 1

Grade: C+ Season one

DVD Extras: Commentary on the Pilot by creator Eglee and director David Nutter, "Rising" by Eglee and writer René Echevarria, & "And I Am a Camera" by Eglee, Echevarria and director Charles Woolnaugh; three behind the scenes featurettes; Audition tapes; Blooper Reel; and "Dark Angel" video game trailer

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34 out of 66 people found the following comment useful :-
This looks like it may be a very short lived series, 4 October 2000
Author: Mr_Wall from San Francisco, CA

I was really hoping this would be a kewl series, the commercials made it look action packed and exciting, to bad they forgot to work on the set design's and costuming, unless you just paid attention to the tight outfits Jessica was wearing thru out the show. The story line was mediocre and it felt like a really bad swipe off of Bladerunner & Soldier (both partly by David Webb Peoples). The costuming was really bad, who dressed the messengers in this movie? Did they really think that a messenger would live in an abandoned building and dress in non-used/beat up/raggedy clothing? Has Wardrobe ever seen a Bike Messenger? What's up with every outfit Sara Rutherds/Max takes off another person? Why do they always fit her when the person she got it off of is at least twice her size (it's the whole Star Trek thing, any outfit will fit Capt. Kirk). The whole set looks like it was designed by the assistant of the set designer of Back to the Future II, it wasn't believable at all, and it didn't look like Seattle in the least bit. This show is bad, and I only recommend it to fans of Hercules, Xena, and WWF.

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53 out of 104 people found the following comment useful :-
What's the big deal???, 20 July 2001
Author: alleycat216 (alleycat216@juno.com)

There is nothing below the surface in this obvious and shallow show. Yes the stunts are all right, and Jessica Alba sure knows how to pout. But come on, for this she got nominated for a Golden Globe???? When she talks she sounds like a handful of marbles was stuffed in her mouth, (I guess that's supposed to be sexy). And both her and Michael Weatherly's reactions are incredibly planned and fake looking. Their performances would look fine in an Acting 101 class at a community college. It's really quite a shame, because the show had incredible promise. The scenario was good and original, and the scripts aren't half bad. But the horrible casting, which was so obviously based on looks alone, just ruins the rest of the show. But I suppose it does reach a target audience, mainly twenty something guys who drool over Alba, or twelve and thirteen year old girls who giggle over Weatherly. Personally, I'd hate to say this show was the launching point of my career, (sorry Jessica)

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