MacGyver

You know what TV series should get rebooted as a Hollywood blockbuster series, played straight?

An independent Nerd Rōnin who travels light, abhors violence, knows how things work, improvises, and saves the day when institutions fail!

The original MacGyver series got stale and silly because it was impossible to come up with 20+ episodes a year worth of contrived situations for him. But doing a feature film with a tight script and a moderate budget every couple of years? That could really sing.

Here’s my pitch:

I would return McGyver to the root ideas from the pilot episode.

In the cold open we get a five minute thriller like the HBO Chernobyl series. Authority figures make a mess. Then they make it worse out of a combination of ego and institutional perversity. Sweat. Yelling. A ticking clock before a lot of innocent people pay the price.

Cut to MacGyver in the middle of doing something awesome. Setting up equipment at a run-down hospital together with some doctors trying to help refugee kids. Fixing pumps and other Dam Stuff together with preservationists trying to fix a damaged ecosystem. Something collaborative and strategic which makes the world better.

Then Mac’s phone rings. Seeing who is calling, Mac makes a face, almost sends it to voicemail, but answers, “Who screwed up?”

Cut to MacGyver hugging some comrades goodbye, as a helicopter arrives.

Cut to introductions to a bunch of government or corporate types in suits, maybe some soldiers. MacGyver is indifferent to looking out of place with an Action Nerd battered jacket and duffel bag.

Some soldier asks, “Is this civilian cleared for this?”

“No, but you need it fixed, right?”

“You’ll sort out this SNAFU all by yourself in a jiffy? With what you have in that bag?” Smirking, dismissive.

“No. The bag just has duct tape and few other things; it’s mostly for what I find on the way. Speaking of which, may I borrow one of those?” says MacGyver pointing to something not obvioulsy useful which will, of course, have a clever application later.

Mac keeps asking “who screwed up?” in a tone of polite exasperation as the suits and uniforms infodump the plot obstacles Mac will spend the rest of the movie overcoming.

Then MacGyver heads off to save the day. Mac uses the duct tape … and a Swiss Army knife, of course. And wits. And friends made along the way, each of whom knows something, or how to do something, which turns out to be surprising and useful.

I hope that I don’t need to explain Mac and these new friends never using a gun or weapon or threat.   

Solving the crisis requires solving a little mystery. What really happened here, and why? Mac discovers, of course, that the trouble came from powerful assholes cutting corners which they knew would put people in danger.

After MacGyver has prevented disaster and a few rich assholes or callous soldiers or whomever get walked off in handcuffs, the suit who called Mac in the first place says, “Well now we know who screwed up.”

Mac replies, not bitter, just matter-of-fact, “Yeah. You did, by letting them do this. You better not need to call me again.”

We know they will.

Over the end credits we see MacGyver back to his regular thing, helping on the project from the opening, now setting up an expensive new x-ray machine or hydraulic pump or whatever that the project needed, happy among friends, maybe with someone from this movie’s adventure having joined that crew.

And you get that this MacGyver is not a white guy, right?

And fergawdsake get Aldis Hodge to do a cameo as Hardison from Leverage. Or maybe Kate McKinnon as Holtzmann ….