Everyone has pet peeves. Maybe you don’t like stories about, I don’t know, talking animals. I have a friend who can’t stand centaurs. And just about everyone hates sparkly vampires.
Personally, I can’t stand Leonardo da Vinci. I mean, I’m sure the actual guy was totally fine. He did a lot of important shit, and I can respect that. But I hate it when he or his made up inventions pop up in movies. Mentor to Cinderella? Hate. Holographic Mentor to Borg? Hate. Super secret airships cleverly called War Machines? HATE.
And now, Starz presents . . .
. . . the untold story of young da Vinci as a young, tortured dreamer/lover/inventor/idealist, and hero who’s armed ONLY WITH HIS BRAINS.
Shoot me.
My Geek Blasphemy 
Mentor to Cinderella?
WHAT???
Holographic Mentor to Borg?
WHAT???!?!
Super secret airships cleverly called War Machines?
EH?
I suppose that second one must be a Star Trek TNG thing, right? But where are these others from? (Mentor to Cinderella? Are you kidding me?)
I know that one! It’s from the Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston, Melanie Lynskey movie I should remember the name of… Ever After. The other one sounds like The Three Musketeers, maybe? I haven’t seen it, though, so I dunno.
Two points to Teacups: da Vinci is the mentor to Cinderella in Ever After, and the super secret warships are from the most recent remake of The Three Musketeers. The Holographic Mentor to Borg is actually from Star Trek: Voyager, and to be fair, I should have said Holographic Mentor to Reformed Borg. (Also, Holographic Mentor to Captain Janeway too.) But I don’t really think that makes anything better.
As far as Cinderella goes — I don’t know if you’ve seen Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Fatpie, but since it’s a retelling, da Vinci is not technically a mentor to Cinderella. He’s a mentor to DANIELLE. Who is totally Cinderella, so, yeah. It’s not my favorite movie in the world, but I will admit that Anjelica Houston is AWESOME in it. As she usually is.
This is that da Vinci-alternative-to-Sherlock-Holmes think, right? They’re always advertising some show like that (and the Sherlock comparism is theirs, not mine) when I visit my family and get access to cable. Anyway, I think that is deeply funny. Like they wanted to cash in on Sherlock Holmes but figured the market was overstuffed, so they just substituted da Vinci instead. Because they’re pretty much the same guy, right?
To be entirely fair to the show, I don’t know if it actually will be about da Vinci using his talents to solve the crime-of-the-week at all. I just looked at this very flowery plot summary (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094262/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl) but it was a bit vague. I think he’s fighting a religious conspiracy, but I have no idea how. Maybe he could invent gadgets and shit to become a sort of Renaissance Batman.
I think I have to check this show out now though. It sounds so silly and pretentious.
You know, I’ve never seen any actual commercials for it — I’ve just seen some ads in magazines and banners on websites. So, I wasn’t aware of the alternative-Holmes advertising scheme, which is hilarious. And yeah, I saw that IMDb summary too, which only managed to make me LESS interested in a show that I would never have wanted to watch anyway. I WOULD watch a show called Renaissance Batman, though. I mean, I’d just have to. (That would also be an awesome band name, if you could get past the copyright issues, which I’m sure you couldn’t.)
You check it out, you let me know. 🙂
I’m sure the point is to make him look like an angel (which, hee and blagh) but I feel like that poster does imply the Renaissance Batman thing. Now I’m going to be disappointed when he’s actually just solving conspiracy murders or hiding messages in his paintings or something.
I’ve seen the first couple of episodes now. It is both silly and pretentious, although not entirely in the way I thought it would be. Half the show is a light, swashbuckling, cheerfully historically inaccurate adventure, similar in tone to the first Pirates Of The Carribean movie. It’s the sort of thing you might watch with the kids, if it wasn’t for the sex, violence, and close-ups of corpse dick. But then the other half of the show is all political corruption and manipulation, along the lines of early Game Of Thrones, or probably The Tudors or The Borgias if I’d ever seen either of those shows. It’s a rather strange combination, and I don’t think the genre-mixing works very well.
The show definitely feels like it’s being derivative of Sherlock to me, althoughI haven’t seen enough Sherlock Holmes thins to know whether it’s of the BBC show or the franchise in general. Leonardo clearly comes from that same mould – he’s got that whole “tortured, arrogant, rude genius,” thing going on, and the scenes from the first episode where he boasts about his abilities, or comically insults members of the establishment, strongly remind me of various scenes from Sherlock. Except in Sherlock, along with the comical, inconsequential antiheroic moments like that come genuinely darker and more serious scenes showing off that side of him. I don’t think Leonardo really got much in the way of that so far, or at least not moments that were portrayed that way. He just goes around being a dick for no real reason, and it’s meant to be charming?
Also, Leonardo did a whole bunch of drugs, built two very implausibly flying robot birds, and befriended a mysterious and wise foreigner, who talked a lot about destiny and gave him a quest to find the Book Of Leaves, a book full of lost knowledge and secret history and possibly something about Leonardo’s mother, which is located in the Vault Of Heaven, which is in South America, which Leonardo is now supposed to discover and travel to… So that’s his big quest for knowledge that the plot summary was so vague about. Maybe they were worried it would sound a wee bit silly.
Leonardo clearly comes from that same mould – he’s got that whole “tortured, arrogant, rude genius,” thing going on, and the scenes from the first episode where he boasts about his abilities, or comically insults members of the establishment, strongly remind me of various scenes from Sherlock.
. . . aaand my interest managed to drop even further. I actually do like Sherlock, but the arrogant genius detective character is an archetype that’s been wearing a little thin for me for years now. Benedict Cumberbatch is kind of brilliant, so it’s working for me right now with his show . . . but I will say that I enjoyed second season less than first, and I thought it might have something to do with my tolerance for that type of character waning. So, yes. I think I’ll continue to not pay for Starz. 🙂
Thanks for the review!
Maybe he could invent gadgets and shit to become a sort of Renaissance Batman
If they do that it won’t really be DaVinci – none of his actual inventions would have worked!
Now I’m going to be disappointed when he’s actually just solving conspiracy murders or hiding messages in his paintings or something.
That I would probably prefer. I wonder…the real DaVinci I think was into dudes…although nothing was ever proved. Wonder if they’ll keep that.
To answer your question – not really. There’s been one line of dialogue nodding towards him liking guys. But otherwise, he’s been drooling over some mysterious, morally ambiguous, forbidden-fruit noblewoman, or when she’s not available, having a fling with one of his (female) models. So, definitely not based on the real guy’s love life then.
So….if you pay money for a fast car and it drives you by the mall where some 80’s boy band is playing is that the car’s fault?
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Not sure I’m following — what’s the fast car in your analogy, my TV? The show? da Vinci himself? All I’m saying is that I typically don’t like when da Vinci pops up in movies or TV shows because, more times than not, it comes off as lazy, if not just downright ludicrous. Usually both. And from the little I’ve seen about this television series, it looks like more of the same. Secret histories and conspiracy stories are not really in my wheelhouse, either, so this particular show is hitting my trifecta of Not Interested. The show could end up being good. I don’t know. But I doubt it, and I’m not exactly going to be tuning in on premiere night to find out.
It’s by Starz so it’s unlikely to be good. It also seems to be in the Tudors tradition of hardcore, absolute, almost pedantic historical accuracy.