"I don't think you have to be a connoisseur to tell the difference between
the characters."
-Michael Martinez
Absolutely. The character differences you listed are astute (& funny.)
I think we've been talking apples & oranges.
You were referring to the characters of Herc & Kull as written, & most of us
were referring to Sorbo's acting. He's not exactly Daniel Day-Lewis, he's
not a chameleon, i.e. you won't see Kevin Sorbo playing (with absolute
believability and a commanding presence) an Irish paraplegic (My Left Foot),
a weaselly, unlikeable British officer (Mutiny on the Bounty) and a boxer
(the Boxer) so well that you almost wouldn't know it was Lewis from one part
to the next. Sorbo is always Sorbo. While his characters have different
roles and characteristics, he's always the same guy.
-Shane
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Martinez [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 1:34 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [rehfans] some Qs on Kull
At 10:37 AM 4/30/2001, you wrote:
>As far as the difference in Sorbo's acting between Hercules and Kull (and,
>indeed, his acting in the new UPN Gene Roddenberry series Andromeda <?>),
>I'm not sure I'll ever be enough of a Sorbo connoisseur to tell the
>difference. He's always the same character to me, in Ancient Greece,
ancient
>Hibernia, or outer-space. And that is not to say I find him any worse than
>Ah-nold himself.
I don't think you have to be a connoisseur to tell the difference between
the characters. But first impressions are strong and long-lasting. It's
still the same person playing the two characters. He walks the same, talks
the same. You could say the same thing about John Wayne and all his
roles. But Rooster Cogburn was definitely not Nathan Brittles. And yet
I've seen people diss the Duke's acting in exactly the same way people diss
Kevin Sorbo's acting. Both men bring a certain style to their characters,
but they both go beyond that style and play their characters independently.
The two characters from Greece and space (Hercules and Captain Dylan Hunt)
are like night and day. Hercules was a half-god. He almost never made
mistakes, he usually won every fight he got into, he always knew how to
deal with his enemies, he was always confident, always right, always
perfect or nearly so. Dylan Hunt is human; he makes mistakes; he is
definitely out of his element, having little knowledge about the universe
300 years after his time; he lets other people make plans for him (he often
relies upon Tyr and Rev Bem); he struggles with his morality.
The only time they ever showed Hercules really doubting himself was in the
story arc where Iolaus was dead. That was the first time in several years
that they really gave the character of Hercules a chance to act
human. Dylan doesn't need excuses to act human. He is trusting and
generous enough that people take advantage of him and he has to scramble to
deal with the inevitable betrayals.
I wouldn't say that Andromeda has put Kevin into a formulaic role, but they
are definitely playing up the vulnerabilities of his character, probably at
his request, because he wanted to play a role which was so unlike Hercules.
But he still has that Kevin Sorbo pause (sort of a William Shatner pause)
when Dylan needs to emphasize some point. He still has that Kevin Sorbo
swagger (not really a swagger, but his walk is a very confident walk). You
can tell it's Kevin Sorbo under the uniform. So what? The stories about
the characters are completely different, and the characters react
differently. And Kevin gets to portray a whole range of emotions with
Dylan that he didn't portray (at least not often, certainly not regularly)
with Hercules.
A lot of people watch Andromeda, and they do so for different
reasons. There are hard-core Gene Roddenberry fans who wanted to see how
Robert Hewitt Wolfe would develop a Roddenberry concept. There are Keith
Hamiton Cobb fans who wanted to see him make the transition from daytime
drama. And there are Kevin Sorbo fans who hated to see Hercules end. I'm
one of those Sorbo fans.
I miss the old banter with Iolaus. Dylan doesn't have a sidekick to play
off of. He has to lead a crew from completely different cultures than his
own, and a lot of the early episodes showed that crew was rebellious,
didn't work well with him, doubted his ability, etc. People just didn't
react that way to Hercules.
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