A New MFU Convert...

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

This is a nice article from a new fan who hits the proverbial nail on the head: the real men from UNCLE are stil Vaughn and McCallum
The Real Men from UNCLE

Comments

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

The author definitely gets it, unlike Guy Ritchie. Though MFU has been moved to 2am EST on MeTV, and not 10 pm.

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

How true. Thank you for the link.

[carabele.livejournal.com]

hey, I liked the movie. I didn't expect it to be the series, but it still caught the essence.

And this article was written before the writer even saw the movie. I find that pre-judgmental resistance kind of sad.

The series will always be my first love, but time can't go backward and I was happy to see MFU become part of the present stream of entertainment and hopefully the future too.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

I think you can like the movie and still acknowledge it's flaws as far as its relationship to the original. The thing that can never be is what was, and for me Solo and Kuryakin will remain Vaughn and McCallum.
That doesn't mean the movie isn't good, it just isn't the same and so we return to our TV heroes and carry on. I think this person is wondering, like so many others, why the complete departure from the original premise.

[carabele.livejournal.com]

I think it has to be remembered that WB powers-that-be actually went into this with the idea that MFU could become a 3-movie franchise for them. So it made sense to "start from the beginning" in that case.

Now whether it will turn out to be that 3-movie franchise is of course very much up-in-the-air (though I'm more hopeful now since the international box office out-stripped the domestic take by a good deal), but that niggling idea was always present in the back of the minds of the WB suits.

[carabele.livejournal.com]

I'm also not one who thinks the main appeal of the series was the friendship between the characters. Yes, that played a part, but the key to me was the idea of nationals of totally different ideals coming together to achieve a common goal. An idea that the movie still keeps intact.

This was also what made Star Trek appealing in its day during the tense time of the Cold War. But it is perhaps an idea that resonates less so today. (Thus it was a wise decision to keep the movie time-framed in the 1960s.)

So in some ways I disagree with the writer. It was more than Vaughn and McCallum which made MFU attractive to viewers.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Admittedly there were some altruistic types who helped catapult the show to its highest pinnacles, but two different actors with less chemistry and charisma would have left the audience with less interest and enthusiasm.
MFU might have been a good show without RV and McC, but I doubt it would have become the groundbreaking, number crushing catalyst for what remains an active fandom.
In all actuality, not even David McCallum could have generated the furor he did without the frenzy provided by the arrival of the Beatles and other British pop groups. It was an era of heightened awareness and Anglophile love that helped bolster MFU into what it was, and without McCallum I personally doubt it would have happened. You can love Robert Vaughn and appreciate his part in all of this, but it's seriously doubtful that the show would have had the same impact with only him in the spotlight. And that is a reflection of more than any individual actor, it's what was happening culturally and sociologically at the time. I think the impact it had on McCallum's career is fairly evident given his lackluster film career in the aftermath of it all. It was the 60's, and all that it implies.

[carabele.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely the whole Anglophile phenomenon fostered by the Beatles played a huge part in the success of the series. But you know that was the fangirl part.

MFU did (and does) have "fanguys" too, and they weren't looking at the whole thing from the McCallum phenomenon. (My brother was a huge fan of the show, just to give a personal example and it wasn't McCallum that hooked him. It was the premise and the action of course. ;-)

I think sometimes it is forgotten that we fangals are not the whole of the MFU fandom by a long stretch.

[carabele.livejournal.com]

And it's funny but Americans have always been Anglophiles in one form or another. :-)

I mean that's what made and is making Dowtown Abbey such a success in the U.S.

We got our independence but still kept an emotional attraction to all things British it seems. [lol]

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

My dad was a fan, we watched it together. No doubt Mr. Vaughn would have been his choice but I don't remember him saying one way or the other.
I think the show has obvious qualities that appeal to various interests, but the phenomenon that is was has to be due to the other contributing factors of the era, and that is primarily that it resonated with an age group highly influenced by the music and trends of 1964.
I imagine the young men who were fans were drawn in by the fantasy life they could enter as they saw themselves being those characters, whether Solo or Kuryakin. It's always about the fantasy, the what if.
Hey, I posted a comment in the canteen regarding our discussion here. Join in if you like, we'll make it more interesting :D

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

For so many of us it is the faraway homeland. Unfortunately we are sometimes regarded by those distant cousins like the redheaded stepchild, not always a fond embrace.