Being sick had its advantages and disadvantages. It’s a big bummer that I am forced to be in a very low-speed connection (I can’t work as fast as I can at home), and I can’t talk with my workmates as if they’re sitting right beside me (IM clients and Skype won’t help). However, I was lucky to see the first few episodes of Lastikman, a story of a “Mr. Fantastic-ish” Filipino superhero who allegedly came from a distant planet and landed on Earth to save it and fulfill his destiny of being its only defense against extinction.

Lastikman really looks like the awesomest series in Philippine TV since Darna, or maybe the best ever. I really love love the CGI, and the cinematography is so glossy it even looked like one of those Pinoy fantasy movie trailers we see during the MMFF season. This Tuesday night, they showcased a CGI-filled chase scene where Eskappar (young Lastikman) and his father Irroian (played by Tonton Guttierez) tried to get away from the earthling-allergic planet. The chase reminded me of both movies “Minority Report” and “Star Wars 2: Attack of the Clones.” I daresay that this is the best CGI that a Filipino outfit could do. It was so good in lighting and Physics it could even beat any CGI made in any Philippine movie made! It was sooo beautiful!

But like any other series in the Philippines, its only disadvantage was the pacing. It was so slow-paced and cheesy, and the sounds wasn’t really fixed up. I mean imagine a scene with lasers firing and exploding stalactites in a cave, and all you can hear were gusty winds. very disappointing. The music was too loud to the point that it didn’t match the scenes. There was this part of the scene that they somehow slowed down, but the music kept on rolling so fast, it felt awkward. Also, the chroma scenes (the scenes where production teams use a green screen to replace breathtaking backgrounds, which are usually seen in the latest Star Wars trilogy) were so choppy, it felt like one frames per second.

Another defect of every ABS-CBN soap series is being “ningas-cogon” (we have this grass called cogon, that when you burn them, they only burn wild in the beginning, but immediately stops after a small area is scorched black), meaning they just show the bells and whistles in the first few episodes, and the next weeks will be so dragging you would want to change channels (just like what happened in Panday and Rounin). They have to make each episode as exciting and fast-paced as Mari Mar (which already got into its d’enouement just this evening) or they would lose audiences again, like the way they lost audiences in Kokey.

Also, I already watched two Lastikman movies, and they all say that Lastikman was an earthling who had an asteroid encounter beside a rubber tree, and not some goo-earthling-born alien hybrid who came to Earth to save it from aliens. Sounds like Smallville for me, not to mention that he has three leading ladies, played by Iya Villania (the cheerleader and school crush, like Lana), Roxanne Guinoo (the bestfriend, like Chloe), and Toni Gonzaga (the reporter, like Lois). This was also the case for Captain Barbell and Darna.

I also saw in the beginning credits that Chito Rono is “Director for Lastikman Origins”, meaning expect Lastikman to “lose its pilot week’s flare” next week and the weeks to come.

At least, it was way better than the ever-dragging Zaido. Me and my brothers scream our hearts out to switch to Channel 2’s commercial run rather than watching Zaido. Yuck! (Take note, I watch Mari Mar so I’m not a network fan of neither Channel 2’s nor Channel 7’s).

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