NEW RELEASES
NEVER STOP DYIN’ HARD Erstwhile SNL action parody MacGruber returns to where it all began: television. BY ALEC BOJALAD
YOU CAN’T HAVE A NAKED performer use a flamethrower. This is what MacGruber co-creators Jorma Taccone, John Solomon, and Will Forte were told by the fun-killing higher-ups, in no uncertain terms, when they set out to adapt their popular Saturday Night Live sketchturned-feature-film into a TV series at Peacock. “We kept having these meetings where people would be like, ‘You know you can’t do this, right?’” 12
DEN OF GEEK
Taccone says. “We were just like, ‘Yeah, but… we’re going to do it.’” Being told to not do something and then doing it anyway is fitting for both petulant action hero MacGruber (played by Forte) and the unlikely franchise he sweatily birthed. The parody of problem-solving TV icon MacGyver was first conceived as a series of SNL sketches by writers Solomon, Taccone, and cast member Forte back in 2007. Each of the 10 sketches stars
Forte as MacGruber, the woefully underprepared special agent, who intends to use common household objects to defuse a ticking bomb and save his friends. Each and every time, however, he fails–the bomb detonates and everyone is killed. Still, MacGruber and his partner Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) somehow always return to try to defuse another bomb, usually accompanied by that respective episode’s guest host (some notable players include Betty White, Seth Rogen, Josh Brolin, Jonah Hill, and Charles Barkley). MacGruber was a popular enough character to be spun off into a series of Pepsi commercials that featured original MacGyver star Richard Dean Anderson. MacGruber then returned for his titular 2010 film. Directed by Taccone, MacGruber was a love letter to action movies, comedy, and just general absurdity. Like many other SNL adaptations, it was a massive box office failure, but became something of a cult hit. None other than
IMAGE CREDITS: JORDYN GELB (NBCUNIVERSAL)
Will Forte returns as MacGruber, an allAmerican problem solver who loves vests and eviscerating his enemies.