Max Headroom is getting rebooted | Hacker News Reader

Max Headroom is getting rebooted

vanityfair.com

47 pointsfortran7728 comments

I can't really imagine this new rendition having the same edge as the original did - but I'd be very happy to be proven wrong on this.

My prediction is, that they are going to look at the original Max Headroom material, and make a slightly more tame clone of that.

I can't imagine them making a highly critical satire that shames modern day television hosts (and youtube content creators), the same way the original did with TV hosts of the day.

The original was a bitingly harsh piss-take on everything wrong with TV. A true-to-the-roots recreation of that would have to be a bitingly harsh piss-take on everything wrong with today's social media + TV + internet culture.

I predict a dark and gritty remake where instead of cracking wise at the network executives Max mopes around questioning the existential nature of his being.

yes, where Max is even the new network executive, owning a network full of Max Headrooms on the new MaxTube or YouHeadroom or whatever

Reboots almost always suck. The only exception I can think of is rebooted Battlestar Galactica which was great. All the new star trek suck - Orville is unironically truer to the original star trek vision then Discover or Picard. So what will they do to Max Headroom? Odds are that it will be ruined, but I also would love to be proven wrong on this.

Also, a really key part of the original was the actor Matt Frewer. It'll be a tough job to find someone like him.

> All the new star trek suck

Strange New Worlds sucks?

I haven't watched SNW yet so not counting that one.

While you are certainly right that many reboots fall into "uninspired money-grab" territory, it wasn't necessarily my intention to imply that the Max Headroom reboot will suck.

It might suck - but it might also turn out to be quite good. I don't know.

But regardless of it's quality - I just can't see it having the same sort of bite. Achieving the same level of bite would require the jokes and themes to be updated to apply to the current day media landscape.

I agree with this and would add that updating the themes/jokes to the modern media landscape will not likely have the same bite as they did in the original. This is because modern media today is chock full of self-aware critiques, whereas back then this type of thing was less common and felt edgier because of it.

My expectations are low, but I will check it out if they make it - hope reigns.

Space Feather (a YouTuber who makes excellent video essays) has an awesome video essay on the older Max Headroom series: On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV [0]

Elijah Wood and Christopher Cantwell are behind the reboot, so it should be quite fun to watch!

As a beside, I still think Halt and Catch Fire is the most underappreciated TV series ever!

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU

Interesting video. Thanks for sharing. I have only the vaguest memory of Max Headroom and seeing that brought back some memories. I think trying to paint him as a stereotypical ideal Aryan is a bit of a stretch, but the rest seemed pretty on the mark.

The connections he makes later in the show from Headroom to modern Twitch streamers and saying "I want to see Max Headroom playing a video game" brought to mind modern vtubers. Certainly the tech is there now for someone to do a "real time" Max Headroom that actually is computer animated, though implementing the glitches would probably take some custom development of some sort.

That said, I think the proper approach for the show would be to do it in a retro-futuristic way and have it look much like the original media's perception of "the future" was. So as little CGI as possible, and all the TVs are still 4:3 tubes with big knobs. I highly doubt they'll take that approach, though; too much effort.

> implementing the glitches would probably take some custom development of some sort

OBS and the StreamFX plugin would get you a hell of a lot of distance before needing too much custom code I imagine. Very nice bit of kit. Cool glitchy effects if you layer stuff up

https://obsproject.com/

https://github.com/Xaymar/obs-streamfx

e.g. a clip from TheSushiDragon https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/1050161381457190912

When I heard Matt Frewer was involved I initially said, "At his age?!" Then I remembered, it's not 1987, and Max can actually be computer animated this time around. Though in fairness he was spry enough in Altered Carbon that it probably wouldn't be too bad either way.

I saw one guy doing a nice Max Headroom variant for political satire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0tdz3X8FU

The technology is definitively there.

Was that rendered in real time, though?

> Space Feather (a YouTuber who makes excellent video essays) has an awesome video essay on the older Max Headroom series: On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV [0]

I don't know if it's part of a joke, but he doesn't seem to distinguish properly between TV, broadcast TV, and cable TV. Specifically he talks a looong time about broadcast TV while calling it "Cable TV."

I have fond memories of Max Headroom but I think it worked at the time because of specific aesthetics and themes.

One could do something _like it_ today, but I'm not sure just redoing the same thing today would work.

I expect this to have a similar fate to the Knight Rider reboot.

Finally.

Max Headroom was a breath of fresh air, and it might be the breath of fresh air we need now, too.

I'd say that, by definition, the "reboot" part of it takes away the "fresh" part of it.

Since TFA is pretty light fare after the headline, check out this "oral history" of the series from several years ago:

https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8285139/max-headroom-oral-...

Thanks! also related:

The Max Headroom Incident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29319651 - Nov 2021 (197 comments)

Max Headroom Signal Hijacking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28148673 - Aug 2021 (2 comments)

Max Headroom Signal Hijacking (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923243 - Jan 2021 (1 comment)

The Max Headroom Christmas Special - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25535365 - Dec 2020 (2 comments)

Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 - Nov 2019 (54 comments)

Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18167508 - Oct 2018 (1 comment)

The Cold Case of the Max Headroom Signal Intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 - April 2018 (53 comments)

The Max Headroom TV Hack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 - July 2015 (81 comments)

Oral history of 1980s digital icon Max Headroom - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9313865 - April 2015 (3 comments)

27 Years Later the Max Headroom Hackers Still Remain a Mystery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889388 - Jan 2015 (1 comment)

The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824715 - Nov 2013 (11 comments)

Max Headroom and the Strange World of Pseudo-CGI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5803755 - June 2013 (21 comments)

The 1987 Max Headroom Pirating Incident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207937 - March 2010 (5 comments)

It's interesting how nearly all these links are about the TV signal hijacking, and not the original show/character itself. I guess it goes to show what captures the imagination.

Oof, the allthatsinteresting.com writeup (2021) is awfully similar to my telling of the incident (2007)[1]. Emphasis on awful. There are too many lazy "authors" out there willing to flirt with plagiarism in the name of generating content. And then Google rewards them for having newer content. Sigh.

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/remember-remember-the-22nd-o...

Close enough that you might be able to submit a copyright claim to Google?

https://iloveseo.com/seo/google/how-to-report-copied-content...

As a fan of your site I’d prefer to find the original high quality content rather than the ripped off material when I Google for an article.

Wow, I'm super excited about this. Having seen Elijah Wood in the Dirk Gently's adaption recently gives me even more hope that this will be good.

Now, if they also reboot "The Tripods" (with a green screen instead of a blue screen) my life will be complete.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_signal_hijackin...

There was an alien quality to the original (I rewatched it about 5 years ago). Looking at the Wikipedia article, one of the production companies is in the UK.

My prediction is this..if the reboot is because some media group is sitting on a stack of money they need to spend, they’ll make a hash of it. They’ll spend money like they’re investing, and not creatively.

Paywalled : https://archive.ph/RSc2h

Let's hope this won't be one of those insufferable woke reboots, like most other reboots the industry has shit out in recent years.

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