Future Man Season 1

Hulu Original shows have been a difficult subject for me. I haven't always consistently had the streaming service and the times that I did (through roommates or family), there weren't the quality of original programming that we have today. I saw descriptions and trailers for Future Man and was interested, but not enough to really binge the show. And then I got a personal recommendation from a friend of mine and he happened to mention that the episodes are half hour long episodes and suddenly I was totally sold. After watching the show, I'm actually really bummed I didn't check this out earlier.

Future Man follows the story of 20 something year old janitor, Josh Futturman (played by Josh Hutcherson). Josh lives at home with his parents and works as a janitor at a big science lab called Kronish Labs. His boss, Dr. Kronish (played by Keith David) is researching the cure for herpes. He is a bit of a mentor to Josh who finds himself in a bit of a rut, unable to figure out what he wants to do with his life. So he plays video games for a form of escapism. He is obsessed with a game called Biotic Wars. Biotic Wars is an almost impossible game in which Josh has been working so hard to get to the end of. Finally one night he does it. He beats Biotic Wars and he is named The Savior at the end of the game.

I will note that the representation of gaming is not at all accurate. Not only is Biotic Wars a really low res game in comparison with the other games that are out there today, but it's also a linear game that is considered impossible? There are a couple of articles out there that have made this point already but although the gaming aspect of the show is inaccurate, the gaming culture isn't that far off, especially in the form of Josh's friends, portrayed by Awkwafina and Paul Scheer. I'll try and attach a link to article that talked about this at the end but the point is, this is the first nod towards fandom that Future Man gets right, even if it gets the specifics wrong.

When Josh beats the game, the two characters from the game, Tiger (played by Eliza Coupe) and Wolf (played by Derek Wilson), come to him and assume he is the savior who will help them prevent their dystopian future, a future Josh thought only existed in the game.

What follows is a really hilarious romp where this trio is traveling back and forth through time, fighting evil agents from the future, and trying to put the timeline on the right course in what is self described as a plot similar to The Last Starfighter and Quantum Leap with a lot of Back to the Future and Terminator all squeezed in there.

This show is produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg so a lot of the humor feels like something you'd see out of Pineapple Express or Sausage Party but it all works really well. The three main characters are really hilarious and their dynamic really works out. At the start, you think that it's going to be a fish out of water story with Josh being the fish out of water. But it works in the opposite direction as Josh is actually more in tune with the "rules of time travel" and just rules of human decency then the two time travelers are so it often is put on Josh to teach the other two how to behave and not murder everyone they come across.

The show is riddled with references to all the classic 80's movies from Back to the Future, to Top Gun, to a lot of other pop culture. If you're a fan of gaming, movies, or pop culture in general like I am, you are going to absolutely love this show. If you're not, I think you'll still enjoy the comedy because this had me laughing quite a bit.

Tiger and Wolf are two characters that I wasn't sure I was going to like at the beginning. I don't think they are the best characters in the world but somehow they manage to create characters that are cold blooded killers that really have no regard for human life as long as they get to their goal, and yet manage to make you care about them and the really funny moments they create. A lot of it comes from the up ended premise that the time travelers in every movie with time travel are always the all knowing person. In this show, Tiger and Wolf are really out of their element and it really becomes hilarious, especially when they start time traveling to the sixties, to a future where James Cameron is the founding father of a new world order, and to the birth of Keith David's character back in the 40's.

Among Keith David are a bunch of supporting characters that really color in the background for the main trio. Josh's parent's (played by Ed Begley Jr and Glenne Headly) are hilarious and Robert Craighead plays a really, REALLY funny role as a police officer who is continuously haunted by these three as they travel through time.

I think the thing that really made me love Future Man was how simple it was. The episodes are only a half hour long and that's really good. If they had been an hour long I feel like I would have gotten bored with the premise or I would have gotten sick of the humor, that let's be honest, is very typical Seth Rogen dick joke humor. But the episodes go by very quickly and they keep you engaged in a self aware time travel story that you kind of forget how silly a lot of it is or how weak the narrative can be at times. The story has a pretty good grasp on the use of time travel as a story device and even when it meets some pitfalls, it is very quick to point out how that is a pitfall just in general in the way other people have used those story elements.

I gave myself a little bit of time to marinate over Future Man. While I was watching it I was having a really fun time. I blasted through it very quickly and all of that I can give it a lot of credit. But it's not a show I'm really going to remember. Compare this to Ready Player One and I would take this as a more true to form homage to 80s movies and pop culture, but overall, I wouldn't subscribe to Hulu to solely watch this show. It's good, but not mind blowingly good. Entertaining, but not a show I will put down as my favorite of the year.

But have you seen Future Man? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews I post from this blog.

Thanks, see you next time.


Footnotes:
Article about Gaming in Future Man: https://www.polygon.com/tv/2017/11/17/16666552/hulu-future-man-pilot