‘MacGyver’: The movie

Fans of the 1985–92 TV series MacGyver "have a new reason to be excited,” said Fangoria. The show about a resourceful secret agent who could get himself out of any jam—often by using nothing more than a paper clip and a stick of chewing gum—is headed to the big screen. (Watch the intro to the TV show) This is great news—let’s hope that the original MacGyver, Richard Dean Anderson, will at least get a cameo in the movie.

The powers that be in Hollywood just couldn’t let this “little corner of pop culture lie underexploited any longer,” could they? said Jennifer Armstrong in Entertainment Weekly. First Saturday Night Live did their “MacGruber” skit based on the series, then that character “sold out” by doing Pepsi ads (watch here), and now Hollywood decides to cash in. With MacGyver being made into a movie, “we're officially declaring this '80s property overexposed circa 2009.”

Well, for better or worse, said Ben Child in the Guardian, it’s not surprising that the '80s show is being turned into a movie—it has so permeated our pop culture that MacGyver’s even regularly mentioned on shows like The Simpsons. But the producers of the upcoming film reportedly want to “acknowledge how the series has found a place in pop culture while delivering a serious but fun movie”—we’ll see if they succeed.

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