First Trailer For NBC’s Adaptation of ‘Taken’

Wow, a lot of the stuff we’re seeing today has me feeling very grumpy old man. First, some people are upset about Wonder Woman being a symbol for women because of her chest size and pan length, then we get an extremely underwhelming trailer for the third Despicable Me film, and now we are getting our first look at a TV adaptation for a film series that arguably went on at least one sequel too many.

In Luck Besson’s Taken: The Series, we will get to see the origin of Bryan Mills and how he got his very particular set of skills. Instead of Liam Neeson, we get Clive Standen (Vikings) as a younger version of the character, who joins a security and intelligence agency after losing (wife, girlfriend daughter? I’m not sure…) in a hostage standoff on a train.

Make no mistake, this is not really the same character from the films, as it seems like they’ve decided to keep this show in the present, instead of the 80’s where it would make sense, given Liam Neeson’s age. So, this is really just a throw away alternate storyline designed to milk a little more money out of a franchise that people have enough familiarity with that they they can be tricked into watching it.

On the upside, Luc Besson gets paid for this. That means he’s got the freedom to work on more interesting projects like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. AS you watch this mess of a trailer, just remember that we have that to look forward to. That is a good thing.