Last night I watched the series Nikita on the CW, and while I can't say it was a complete waste of time, I wasn't unduly surprised. It was actually good in some respects, as far as the acting and the production values. The overall story line and plot was good, and even the dialogue, while not grade A, was not that bad either.
But-sorry, it just wasn't Nikita. Neither was the older version that aired once upon a time on FX. Both seem to owe more to Alias than to the original French film version which became an overnight cult classic.
Yet, it was by no means universally lauded. It received mixed reviews, and while it did respectably good box office, it was not Star Wars, or Iron Man.
So the question is, why do they keep remaking Nikita? There have been three film remakes alone. The current series is the second television version. There must be something seemingly magical about the concept.
Long time readers are of course familiar with the avatar at the top of the blog. It is the goddess Artemis aiming her bow. I have had other pics at the top. Once I had Aphrodite, another time Odin. These are all archtypes. Although I haven't gone out of my way to advertise it, I tend to view all deities from a Jungian perspective. They are archetypes. They represent universal forces that permeate nature, and by extension, all mankind. They speak to the human experience. That is why they are so powerful, and have, in one sense of the word, ALWAYS been worshiped, albeit in differing forms, from one culture and time to the next. Through the heyday of the Christian era, they have been with us. Sometimes they work to our benefit. There have also been times when they have manifested to our detriment. Whether they manifest of good or for bane to a large degree this depends on us.
But whatever the case, they are always with us.
Nikita, in my opinion, represents one of these archetypes, albeit in fictional entertainment form. That explains why she is so powerful, why she exerts such a pull on the popular imagination to such an extent Hollywood keeps trying to recreate the magic of the original, and so far, without exception (including the current incarnation) has always come up somewhat short, in some cases woefully short.
Nikita was a feral child, a girl of the streets, a heroin addicted youth incarcerated for the murder of a policeman, who was taken out of prison, her death faked, and then trained to be an assassin. She was trained in all the ways a culturally astute woman would be trained. She was instructed in the ways of seduction, and all the different ways to please a man. And, of course, she was trained in the ways of espionage, and murder.
But at heart, she was Nikita, the wild, feral child of the streets. She only wanted to live, to survive, and did what she had to do. But when she got the chance, she exerted her need to live free.
Before she did so, she moved in with a young man who worked as a store clerk. He was an unassuming sort, with little to no ambition of which to speak. She was comfortable with him, not so much because he was easy to control, but because she was not threatened by him.
Although she loved him in a sense, it seemed to have been more in the way one might love an adoring pet than a lover one might see as an equal. But she loved him nevertheless, and was forced to leave him, and her new/old life, when it became obvious her former handlers and controllers would not, or could not, let her just walk away from what they saw as her "contractual" obligations.
We were left at the end to wonder, how would she ever make it. She was a survivor, but could she thrive living on the run, always trying to stay one step ahead of the French Intelligence service that saved, then created, and then manipulated her. But of course, we knew the answer to that. She would survive because she was Nakita. That was, after all, what she was, a survivor, a fighter, and when necessary, a killer, a destroyer of lives and souls. If anything, a better question might be, how can they survive without her.
The new series takes it a step further. They have her now on the offensive against the company (in this series, now a secret American agency), whom she is determined to destroy, even as they are in the process of training new "recruits" to carry on the cause, which they describe to them in patriotic terms (though of course there are shady, sinister overtones to the agency).
Yet, as good as Maggie Q is in the role, we see little of the original Nakita. Just another trained assassin. Admittedly, the show could evolve over time and we might see more of the wild, feral child Nikita. We do see some hints of it in the younger recruits of the agency. But so far, the magic is contained inside the allure of sophistication and CW production values. One would expect as much, since the CW is primarily geared to a youth market. As such, Maggie Q as Nikita, while suitably vengeful and violent, is yet much too restrained, much too lacking in blood lust, and far too merciful.
Toward the end of the debut episode, she stopped short of killing the man who was in charge of the mission to capture and kill her, electing to just wound him to make it look good. He himself had stopped short of killing her when he had her in his sights, admitting that he had a thing for her. He let her go with the warning that the next time they met, it would end differently.
That promise would have been the only inducement the old Nikita would have needed to blow him away on the spot. Granted, one can make the argument that this is an older and ostensibly wiser version of Nikita, one that might see him as a potential ally.
Even so, its still not Nikita.
