A new show is coming to television: Lucifer, based on Neil Gaiman’s version of the Lord of the Underworld.
One Million Moms, the right-wing moralizers, have launched a petition to block it. Natural News, Mike Adams’ terrible anti-science site, is unhappy that America is so pro-Satan, and calls the show “blatantly evil”. And it’s going to be broadcast on Fox…well, two out of three ain’t bad.
The pilot is coming out sometime in 2016. I may have to watch it. I think it’s mandatory for atheists, right?
While Fox > Fox News, it also means if it’s any good it’ll be cancelled before the season ends.
I love it – Pat Robertson is certain to have an apoplectic fit on the 700 Club.
“I think it’s mandatory for atheists, right?”
Of course not. You keep telling us atheism means more than just not believing in God. It also means not believing in Satan.
I hope it’s better than Constantine. Much too much religious palaver.
#3: atheism also means believing in sarcasm!
Unfortunately it looks terrible – or at the very least, drastically different to the source in an unpromising way. Gaiman’s and Carey’s Lucifer really shouldn’t be a cheeky assistant to the LAPD. It’s not like he moved to LA under the false impression it was a bastion of human virtue…
I didn’t know TV was still a thing.
Damn.
I may have to get a television.
Excellent! There really isn’t better publicity than upset christians. Geez, I might have to cave and get teevee again.
I think it’s encouraging that TV and movie scripts are doing treatments based on christianity. It demystifies the subject matter. It treats it as mythology not fact. Speaking of Constantine, as an example, doesn’t it look and sound silly to voice an incantation and have it invoke something even sillier? There are people who sincerely believe in demons, but a show like Constantine or Supernatural poke fun at demons and show them to be nothing but… nothing.
I’ve always loved Greek mythology as a child, then discovered Egyptian, Meso-American, Chinese, etc. lore. Really cool stuff and frankly some of the Christian lore can make for some really entertaining material. And that’s the point, turning that book from a way of life to what it is, entertainment.
I suppose the downside is we’re still right at the time when the bibble is used to hurt, demean, and ostracize people. But what better time to change the perception of what that book is.
Looks like fun, but they’re turning it into another damn police procedural. They just bore me to tears anymore. Lucifer is teaming up with a hot cop to solve murders. Bleah…
Not sure if I’ll watch it, but I like the idea of Lucifer being treated as a three-dimensional character who can change. I had an idea for a book where Lucifer does some serious navel-gazing and realizes that he shouldn’t be torturing people for non-crimes. He transforms Hell so that it not only punishes those who have committed evil acts but rewards those who were good overall just not “get into heaven” good (worked on the Sabbath, weren’t of the “correct” religion, defied abusive parents, etc). Imagine the reaction when the personification of evil evolves into an actual moral being who storms heaven and demands God answer for his actions.
My television currently serves as a large, wall-mounted computer monitor and gaming screen. Now what did I do with those rabbit ears…?
I don’t so much believe in sarcasm, as I accept it as the best explanation for some of the things I read.
@13 – Don’t need rabbit ears anymore, most major networks stream their shows for a week or two after broadcast. So you can get it all in high def, with fewer commercials, on your schedule. And that’s assuming it won’t come to Hulu/other providers.
@4 I really enjoyd Constantine and am quite sad it was cancelled. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.
Does anybody know if this is based on the comic books pin off of Sandman called Lucifer directly or is it just a few key points (Lucifer moves to LA and opens a Piano Bar).
Morgan @6 wrote:
Not being familiar with the original Gaiman piece, my anticipation is that Lucifer joins the LAPD to help them catch the actual perps, rather than the innocents they usually take in mistakenly. And Luci’s attitude will be that he’s “just doin what Gawd commanded him to do”, not that he sadistically enjoys catching the perps. IE “just followin orders”, kind of attitude.
But only Gaiman knows if that’s how Luci will be portrayed; it’s how I would portray him if I was as talented as Neil G.
[if only they would do his American Gods, or Bad Omens. Neil’s attitude toward religion causes me to be a Gaimanfanboy. (i.e. Gaimaniac (???))]
bojac6 @15:
Here’s an ‘inside look’ at the show.
From what I know of the Bible, God is a far worse character than Satan, but Satan is the more stupid of the two: he thinks he’s leading people away from a Hero, not a Bully.
I wonder if having a persecution complex is a cause or effect of being an Abrahamic believer.
Why does Lucifer look like Tony Stark? Is this some snark on DC Comic’s part?
I see absolutely zero connection between this character and the Sandman/Lucifer comics. The Gaiman/Carey Lucifer was inspired by David Bowie. Also, his defining characteristic is his pride; he never deals with other people as equals and is quick to seek overwhelmingly disproportionate vengeance against anyone who doesn’t treat him with the respect due his station. The dialogue in the trailer is all wrong for that.
If they need to have a Gaiman tie-in, why not just say that the character is the demon Crowley from “Good Omens”? The character and dialog are both consistent with Crowley.
Or better yet, they could buy the rights to Reaper and finish that up. That was a fun program and got cancelled too soon.
I tend to be pretty fascinated by depictions of the devil. Seeing what writers do with the “big bad” often show interesting things about what people think about that particular cultural meme. I agree with The Count that cultural exposure of the character is a good thing. Competing portrayals sap some of the power from how the devil gets used culturally and makes using it the way it usually gets used more difficult.
As for sarcasm, that is often a difficult one to get across on the internet. It’s very easy to focus on the sarcastic statement and lose the context that is suppose to flip the emotions.
Damn, nobody should be that handsome. It can’t be healthy.
Alverant:
Sounds like breach of contract to me. Heaven Inc. quite clearly outsourced the whole punishment thing. If the Devil is getting cold feet now, he should sell the outfit to a CIA front or Erik Prince.
Meh.
They should just call it “Jerry Bruckheimer’s Lucifer, with a nod or two to Neil Gaiman”.
Oh, “. . .and Mike Carey, who was the actual writer of the Lucifer spinoff.”
Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer was a lot more cruel, dangerous, aloof, and amoral than this twinkling trickster.
Also, I saw no sign in the clips of a woman in a half-mask who could be Mazikeen, and I am pretty sure they wrote her out of the story, because the half-rotting skull (at one point tongue-kissed by Lucifer) probably wouldn’t fly with the target demographic.
Heaven — or rather, the Silver City — worked around Lucifer’s abdication by giving the Key to Hell to two other angels (Duma and Remiel), so the disparity with Gaiman’s story is obvious when this other angel (something like Benezeel?) “requests” that Lucifer go back.
Lucifer sometimes could foretell the future, or perhaps manipulate people’s fates, as well as being able to invoke dark admissions.
@bojac6
Going by my memory of how Lucifer is depicted in Gaiman’s stories, it looks like it’s just the latter.
@slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem))
??? I see nothing to indicate that Gaiman will be doing any writing whatsoever for the show.
@davidgentile
No idea what this is about. Satan in the Bible is the adversary. The most characterization he has is in Job, where he manipulates God into demonstrating that God is indeed a bully, and God kinda admits it. (“and still he [Job] holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.”)
@busterggi
Capitalizing on the decadent-but-secretly-sorta-good-hearted-playboy look may well have been in their minds.
@Chaos Engineer
Yes; this. Bruckheimer’s Lucifer is way too good-natured and egalitarian.
a thought just occurred to me about mythology. I think it is true that it does contribute to the demonetization of mythology when it is appropriated by entertainment. One of the roots of mythology is just the make-believe quality of stories and our love of stories. We respond to the images psychologically to them. Problems arise when we take the story and it’s images as based on fact and reality. Very few would take Jack and the Bean Stalk for reality but many take do take stories for physical truth. The original Count Dracula is full of Christianity.
Constantine is the same the bogies he fights are derived from christian mythology so it is absolutely consistent that the rest of the pantheon and language show up just as you would expect that in the Odyssey the cyclops calls out to his father Poseidon. No one thinks that really happened. So I think it is good that the Devil has been drafted into popular entertainment.
Then I thought what other popular myths do we believe in that are influencing us? What ones do we believe in?
The heroic western lawman/gunman fighting the good fight and beating the black hats?
The continental OP private detective solving the big crime ? Dirty Hairy fighting the incompetent and corrupt administration (liberal government) to finally kill the evil criminal?
What is it about he ancient myths that makes them easier to see as myths and the modern ones harder to disbelieve?
uncle frogy
Ahem, slithy tove – it’s Good Omens. The BBC radio adaptation featured the authors in cameos as two policeman who find something nasty in Crowley’s car. It was repeated to mark Terry Pratchett’s death. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04knt4h.
The Fox series might be crap – but I am delighted to see it upholds that fine old American tradition of the baddie with an English accent.
Damn. Policemen. I’m supposed to be a linguist. Arrgggh!
Do detect some Crowley? Or am I getting caught by the English accent?
I have to object to the victim blaming which may be occurring around the 0:39 mark. Although personal responsibility is a thing, what you have is Mr. Morningstar lumping the choices to drink and drug to excess with the choice to pose topless in a selfie which (at least as it happens in real life most of the time) was meant to be private, but which is subsequently exploited. And don’t give me this “Well it’s the devil! What do you expect!” crap, because the devil is portrayed as a worldly, man of the people, likeable character who we are meant to sympathize for.
Was that in Gaiman’s original? If so, that’s a real shame.
Not to worry. I’m sure part way through the season, there’ll be some executive meddling, and Lucifer will be rewritten to be someone cynically exploiting and entrapping people to build an army of the damned in Hell to destroy all the True Believers. We can’t have cherished beliefs being challenged, right?
Looks like he’s not going to be as powerful as the version in Sandman.
The angel who confronted him in that nearly wet his tunic after the encounter.
Kind of a shame. the Lucifer comic series was a sprawling and complex tale all about had the devil giving up hell in order to to start up a new universe with true free will, free from the authoritarian strictures of Yahweh. Not so much about punishing evildoers. Yuck.
No interest in this show, but I’m glad to see who it’s pissing off.
@karpad:
According to Wikipedia, this is only partially correct. The woman cop immune to his powers is Chloe Dance, and there is another woman named Maze: “Lover, confidante and a devoted ally of Lucifer Morningstar. She is the war leader of the Lilin, a race descended from Lilith”, which is indeed obviously an adaptation of Mazikeen. I still bet she doesn’t have a half-rotting skull, though.
Thinking about how these things work out dramatically, I suspect that Chloe will turn out to be the unknowing daughter of an angel; possibly even Lucifer’s own daughter.
Considering how big of a budget would need to be for the Lucifer comic, or really any of them by Gaiman, to be properly translated to the television or big screen and do it justice, I am perfectly fine with how this is going to go. Its a loose adaptation inspired by the comic. Just like the Marvel movies are adaptations inspired by the comics.
So long as they are semi faithful with the characters, Im ok with it being a police procedural. Besides, it will probably be better than anything Law and Order ever made.
Arawhon #36
Yes!
At least the supernatural element will explain how they solve the crime in 42 minutes.
THIS IS AWESOME.
(Maybe guilty of abuse of pretty faces, but I guess it’s how it works…)
Kinda weird that this is getting an adaptation before Sandman. Especially as I read the first two volumes of this series and found them punishingly dour.
I’d heard that there was an American Gods thing in the works, but not this. Trailer isn’t terribly inspiring, and seeing the name Bruckheimer in it is downright disheartening, but I guess I’ll give it a shot.
Funny how it’s Fox always doing these terribly controversial shows. And then Fox News drums up outrage and feeds on it. I know they’re different divisions and separate entities, but you do have to start wondering if the top secretest internal Fox memos have an Ouroborus logo. I’m kind of surprised Dan Savage’s show isn’t on Fox. But that would probably cross some line into masturbatory gluttony. The whole corporate colossus would just suck it’s tail* until the entire thing collapsed into some kind of self-flagellating singularity.
*{Hannity}crammed down our throats {/Hannity}
why do people keep saying the Lucifer series was by Gaiman?
it wasn’t.
It took the original Gaiman character and built an entire story line for it, over many years, and Gaiman had nothing to do with it.
Mike Carey is the genius behind Lucifer, not Gaiman.
I happen to be reading the series right at this very moment, coincidentally, and it’s pretty good. not the best I’ve read, but certainly a page turner, and the artwork is good as well.
easy to find as a torrent.
and yeah, from what I can see from this trailer, this new show is about as far away from the writing of Mike Carey as you can possibly get, and still have a character called “Lucifer” in it.
do not in any way expect this series to reflect the graphic novels.
it will either be watchable on it’s own (doubtful) or not.
Another mythological character becoming a super hero.
Well, the only sane character in the whole bible does deserve some recognition.
Was the One Million Moms around when The Witches of Eastwick came out with Jack Nicholson as a wonderful devil, or as he explains who he is, “Just your average horny little devil.”? It is funny.
I heard comic fans complaining about it because “oh my god another procedural” But I do enjoy the format.
One of the best things I heard from the trailer is a link to this selection of 30 Rock clips. “God Cop”
@Ichthyic
why do people keep saying the Lucifer series was by Gaiman?
Because Gaiman created the character (my pet peeve too) – It’s like Sam Keith being credited as creator for Sandman.
not the best I’ve read,
Taking the series as a whole , including the ending – I rate it higher than Sandman.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the last time a Vertigo comic was turned into a police procedural, it turned out pretty well. Then again, that was as much due to the creators as anything; Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas was also one of the people behind the iZombie series. This show, apparently, can claim the creator of Californication. Guess we’ll see if that pedigree works out or not.
That said, I’m more interested in seeing what happens with Preacher. Not sure Seth Rogen is the right person to adapt it, but it’s also being handled by one of the Breaking Bad veterans, so I’m at least going to check out the pilot.
They rely on thoroughly outdated tropes.
This looks really bad. A lame combination of at least two hackneyed television dramas spun into one lurching story. Its a cop drama with a hot female officer plus another drama with devils and angels. It is so bad that I may have to try watching it because, you know, it is an unintended comedy.
On his Tumblr, Neil Gaiman weighed in on the cancellation petition:
@ owlmirror
Then surely a Christian Bale look-a-like would have been more suitable? Batman embodies those traits more than Iron Man, to me at least. Mainly because everyone knows that Stark is Iron Man, so there’s nothing “secret” about his supposed good-heartedness.
Looks like Fox are doing their very best to ruin that concept.
I mean look at that trailer, it looks… awful. Apparently “hidden desires” means that tired old cliche, “everyone secretly wants to have sex with absolutely everyone, all the time”. Boring…