Series Run: 1994 – 1995
Number of Seasons: 1
Raimi Involvement: Writer, Creator, Producer (for pilot)
If M.A.N.T.I.S. had kept its original cast and concept from the movie pilot, it could have been amazing. It was the creation of Sam Raimi and screenwriter and comic book artist Sam Hamm, and featured a Black superhero played by Carl Lumbly in the leading role. It also featured a racially diverse cast of characters, including Gina Torres as a coroner and a variety of other Black and POC characters in roles that weren’t limited to stereotypes typical of the era.
Unfortunately, “M.A.N.T.I.S.” was whitewashed to hell and back after the pilot, so in the TV series that followed the movie, there’s no Gina Torres, no meaningful diversity, and no fun. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth since the initial hype of seeing such a diverse cast with a variety of characters with the movie pilot was killed by the network’s decision to reduce such a promising and colorful cast to just one Black guy, a sassy Black maid stereotype, and a bunch of white characters who didn’t exist in the pilot at all.
Apparently, the big wigs at Fox felt that a series with too many people of color just wouldn’t be relatable to viewers — because I guess they forgot that people of any race or ethnicity can and do share a love of entertainment across various genres — and decided to make the final version of “M.A.N.T.I.S.” more palatable for a few white people who can’t handle acknowledging that people who don’t look like them exist.
A 1994 Orlando Sentinel article details the motivation behind the upsetting decision to destroy the work put into the 2-hour pilot that Sam Raimi and comic book writer Sam Hamm created. Most notably, series producer Bryce Zabel was adamant that “changes were done because the African scientists would simply be ‘unrelatable’ to viewers” and that “he felt the African aides and the overall ‘look’ of the movie — a drama that centered on African-Americans — could never hold up as a weekly series.” At the time, both Raimi and Hamm issued statements making it clear that they had no ties with this needlessly rebooted version of “M.A.N.T.I.S.”
Ultimately, I have to rank the finished product of the series — a toothless, bastardized disappointment compared to all the promise and excitement of the movie — very low. This is what happens when you let cowardice and bigotry influence art; like a venomous serpent it slithers up and injects its deadly poison, leaving behind a pale corpse of what was once brimming with so much life and color. Had Fox had the guts to stand by the vision Raimi and Hamm intended for the series, it would have easily been ranked much higher, as evidenced by the difference in ratings when comparing the positive reception of the TV movie pilot to the lackluster viewership and relatively swift cancellation of the woefully watered down TV series.
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