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The Meteor Man is a movie that I saw when it first came out in theaters back in 1993. I was six years old then, so I really didn’t understand the movie as a whole when I first saw it. As the years went by it would come on TV and different movie channels and I would watch it every time it came on and that is when I was able to understand the movie even more. This movie is a superhero movie, with an all-star cast, with some of the roles being very surprising.
Most of the time I’m into sports movies, and not really movies that involve superheroes, but this one has stuck with me. Robert Townsend not only starred in the movie, but he also directed, wrote and produced the movie as well. Townsend plays the role of Jefferson Reed, a school teacher in Washington, DC, who becomes Meteor Man after a glowing green meteorite strikes down on him and gives him powers. Did the green meteorite make sense to me? Absolutely not. Probably one of the many reasons why this movie was barely three stars, but yet I still have a connection to it.
As I mentioned before this movie had an all-star cast. The cast included the likes of Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, Sinbad, the rap groups Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature, Don Cheadle, Luther Vandross and many more. I’m not really a fan of so many well-known actors and actresses being in movies, but since it were in the early 90s it worked here.
Even though the movie began to make sense to me the older I became, there were many times in the movie where I still lost it, which includes the glowing green meteorite. One main area where I lost it was when it came to the bad guys in the movie. Before Meteor Man came about, the neighborhood was run by a gang called, “The Golden Lords.” The emphasis with this gang comes with the word golden. The leader of the Golden Lords had a gold slinky, they drove gold Mercedes and to top it off they all had gold hair. There were three different divisions of this gang. The latter two of the three being the junior lords and baby lords. Yes…you read that right. The baby lords, who carried around gold lunchboxes and brought the lunch boxes, back with cash inside. Every time I see that scene, which it doesn’t actually show how they got the money, I always wonder how did people little kids take their money?
I like Robert Townsend as an actor, but as a director I have always wondered where his thought process came from in the making of this movie. This brings me to my next person in a surprising role. Surprising in my mind at least. Luther Vandross is well-known for his singing. His voice was amazing and he had a number of songs that I like. Well…in Meteor Man Vandross was the complete opposite. Along with the Golden Lords, the mob was also involved in the movie. Luther Vandross was part of the mob in the movie. It was a head scratching moment for me, because it was just so hard to picture even as I saw it. It just didn’t make sense to me. Vandross was the right hand man to the leader of the mob. I lost it here too, because I just can’t picture an r&b singer in the mob and from what I can remember, Vandross didn’t have a speaking part.
While there were many times that I lost it in this movie, I will always have a connection to it. This was the very first movie that I saw in theaters. The Meteor Man also had a real life feel to it. It was a predominantly black cast, and it was filmed in an inner city. A city that had a number of gangs and crack houses, which are real life situations. The goal of these types of neighborhoods is to make them better places to live. Clean them up. A lot of times people are afraid to live in these areas, even afraid to drive through them. The people in the neighborhood needed someone to step up and make their neighborhood a better place, because even the ones that had lived there for their entire lives questioned whether they should go or stay. Meteor Man became the hero they needed to take away the crack houses and get rid of the gang activity. Most people knew him as Jefferson Reed, some knew him as Meteor Man. In the end…he was a hero.
Most of the time I’m into sports movies, and not really movies that involve superheroes, but this one has stuck with me. Robert Townsend not only starred in the movie, but he also directed, wrote and produced the movie as well. Townsend plays the role of Jefferson Reed, a school teacher in Washington, DC, who becomes Meteor Man after a glowing green meteorite strikes down on him and gives him powers. Did the green meteorite make sense to me? Absolutely not. Probably one of the many reasons why this movie was barely three stars, but yet I still have a connection to it.
As I mentioned before this movie had an all-star cast. The cast included the likes of Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, Sinbad, the rap groups Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature, Don Cheadle, Luther Vandross and many more. I’m not really a fan of so many well-known actors and actresses being in movies, but since it were in the early 90s it worked here.
Even though the movie began to make sense to me the older I became, there were many times in the movie where I still lost it, which includes the glowing green meteorite. One main area where I lost it was when it came to the bad guys in the movie. Before Meteor Man came about, the neighborhood was run by a gang called, “The Golden Lords.” The emphasis with this gang comes with the word golden. The leader of the Golden Lords had a gold slinky, they drove gold Mercedes and to top it off they all had gold hair. There were three different divisions of this gang. The latter two of the three being the junior lords and baby lords. Yes…you read that right. The baby lords, who carried around gold lunchboxes and brought the lunch boxes, back with cash inside. Every time I see that scene, which it doesn’t actually show how they got the money, I always wonder how did people little kids take their money?
I like Robert Townsend as an actor, but as a director I have always wondered where his thought process came from in the making of this movie. This brings me to my next person in a surprising role. Surprising in my mind at least. Luther Vandross is well-known for his singing. His voice was amazing and he had a number of songs that I like. Well…in Meteor Man Vandross was the complete opposite. Along with the Golden Lords, the mob was also involved in the movie. Luther Vandross was part of the mob in the movie. It was a head scratching moment for me, because it was just so hard to picture even as I saw it. It just didn’t make sense to me. Vandross was the right hand man to the leader of the mob. I lost it here too, because I just can’t picture an r&b singer in the mob and from what I can remember, Vandross didn’t have a speaking part.
While there were many times that I lost it in this movie, I will always have a connection to it. This was the very first movie that I saw in theaters. The Meteor Man also had a real life feel to it. It was a predominantly black cast, and it was filmed in an inner city. A city that had a number of gangs and crack houses, which are real life situations. The goal of these types of neighborhoods is to make them better places to live. Clean them up. A lot of times people are afraid to live in these areas, even afraid to drive through them. The people in the neighborhood needed someone to step up and make their neighborhood a better place, because even the ones that had lived there for their entire lives questioned whether they should go or stay. Meteor Man became the hero they needed to take away the crack houses and get rid of the gang activity. Most people knew him as Jefferson Reed, some knew him as Meteor Man. In the end…he was a hero.