Thanks for the long & thoughtful replies!
What do you expect? Should he do cartwheels to get to the chair or on the space ship?
A ha ha, that made me laugh!
What I would expect would be for the stunt guys to choreograph some interesting & difficult physical battles for RDA before he reaches the chair. Reaching the chair should have been
an epic struggle, not an effortless cakewalk that any senior citizen who still has mobility ability could accomplish easily.
I.e. They could have had aliens firing lasers at RDA that he has to dodge; bladed weapons in the form of booby traps that spring out from the floors/ceilings/walls from which he has to roll out of the way; commando aliens who ambush RDA and jump right on top of him and and force him to fight terrifying hand-to-hand battles to the death, etc.
In other words, I expect the kind of stuff that would force RDA to use his athletic skills which he had in MacGyver...but which maybe he didn't have any more in SG1? Maybe that's why his SG1 scenes suck so badly in comparison, because he couldn't do athletic things any more? But if he couldn't, I'm not sure why?
Even if what you are saying is a good point, that there are legitimate script reasons for why that one clip has an absence of the kind of athletic stuff I'm talking about...that absence applies equally well to
most of the SG1 show, doesn't it? I've watched a few dozen reruns at least, and RDA never did anything athletic in those episodes either.
The
entirety of RDA's actions in SG1 can
usually be summed up as: walk/stand around/sit around/talk/yell/aim a gun and pull the trigger. Is that not so? If he does other actions, what am I missing?
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barbarapaulmayer
8 years ago
There are fight scenes with him, granted in the earlier seasons, but this example is particular bad, because in this scene they tried to get to the chair as undetected as possible.
plus - and that is a huge, enormous, vast, significant, important, monumental plus:
You don´t put they only guy who can operate that ancient chair on the front line where he might get killed.
next, plus - not that big:
Jack O´Neill had much more serious injuries in his lifetime, in addition wouldn´t have been Jack O-Neill at least 5-10 years older than Angus Mac Gyver? I don´t know how old Angus is supposed to be, but isn´t he around his late twenty´s in the beginning of the show, which would make him around 35 in the end. And Jack O-Neill is in his 40´s in the beginning of the show?
So there are reasons, to make that character look and behave older, and maybe not so spry anymore.
Also: Angus was trained in some Martial Arts, Jack O´Neil not - so different fighting styles are normal and RDA pretending O´Neill had basic training and boxing would give this character a different style of fighting.
These are also differences in the characters you need to consider when comparing Angus Macgyver and Jack O´Neill. O´Neill is a military guy and always rather rely on weapon. Angus was the oppsite, almost never touching or firing a weapon, he is anti-military.
By the way: Why would there be bladed weapons? That would make no sense - The ancients built that room and why would the bad guys install bladed weapons afterwards, they just arrived in that room themselves. There would have been no time for them to install booby traps.
Second, we know the ancients were arrogant, pretentious of their on intelligence and abilities, so why would they bobby trap the chair room?
With all that in mind: Don´t blame RDA, he just played two entirely different characters in two entirely different TV shows. Blame the writers for making Jack O´Neill a high ranking military officer (Air Force), who rather uses his gun and is pro-military and not trained Martial Arts spy, like Angus.
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Navaros
8 years ago
I see what you are saying and I appreciate the time and effort you put into your posts.
Although I don't buy the premise that these changes are due to character differences, because:
1. It makes no sense for the SG1 writers to write RDA to be a geriatric-like guy if he is capable of so much more. That is a waste of their money to pay for untapped talent that they let lay dormant.
2. Even if he did have logical character-based reasons to be geriatric-like, the show still would have been better if RDA performed like an athletic superman anyway, so they should have/would have done it if they could.
3. RDA's radical change in overall demeanor, from "happy-go-lucky, always cheerful guy" to "perpetually grumpy & stodgy old man who always looks and acts constipated" goes far beyond just when he is playing these two characters. The personality of RDA's SG1 character also has carried over into all of his post-Mac out-of-character moments (i.e. RDA's real-life) too (as far as I can tell).
For an example of Point 3., I bet no footage exists of post-Mac RDA ever again being anything remotely like his super happy self as is clearly evident in his demeanor on the Arsenio interview I've linked to above (here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMoHI_yx9Yo )
Do you know of any evidence of post-Mac RDA ever being like that again? If not, that seems to corroborate my points that the discrepancies I'm pointing to in this thread go beyond just the characters; rather it's a real-life-RDA-personality-level change for the worse.
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