Okay, let's unpack this. I want you to picture,
you know, the most famous story in Western history.
The story of Jesus. You know, the beats. The
manger, the shepherds, the robe, the sandals,
the hill outside Jerusalem. You got it. It's
an image that's pretty deeply ingrained in the
cultural consciousness, regardless of what you
actually believe. Right. Now, I want you to take
that image and just... Throw it out the window.
Right. Instead, I want you to imagine the nativity
scene didn't happen in the Middle East. Imagine
it happened in, well. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
That is certainly a choice. And imagine that
instead of robes, everyone is wearing like leather
trench coats. And instead of Roman centurions,
you have this futuristic dystopian police force.
Right. And the whole thing is set to a rock opera
soundtrack that sounds like it just fell out
of a time capsule. From 2003. Oh, yeah. Exactly.
From 2003. You're painting quite the picture.
We are, of course, talking about the project
known as Hero. And we have to emphasize that
the exclamation point is at the beginning of
the word. It's vital. It's not just hero. It's
hero. It just screams early 2000s excitement.
It really, really does. It's a very specific
artifact of its time. So here is the mission
for this deep dive. We are looking at a project
that came out in 2003, which attempted to answer
a really wild what if question. What if Jesus
was born in the USA, specifically in the Rust
Belt, and grew up to lead a revolution in...
like a cyberpunk New York City. It sounds like
fan fiction when you put it like that. But this
was a massive production. Oh, it was huge. The
sources we're looking at today are clear that
this wasn't just an album. It was a multimedia
universe. Right. We're talking about a rock opera,
a nationwide tour, a DVD release, a trilogy of
novels. And this is my personal favorite, a series
of comic books. And what makes this deep dive
so interesting, you know, beyond the letter codes
and the rock music, is that it is a fascinating
study and adaptation. How so? Well, the creators...
took these ancient texts, the Gospels, and tried
to forcefully transpose them onto a near future
setting to make them feel immediate. The sources
keep using the phrase street smart. They wanted
a street smart retelling. Which is really just
code for modern, gritty, and urban. They wanted
to strip away all that historical distance. Yeah.
If you read the Bible, it feels like ancient
history. If you watch Hero, it's supposed to
feel like watching the evening news in a dystopia.
So before we get into the wild casting choices.
And believe me, the cast list is insane. We need
to understand the world they built. For sure.
Because reading through the background lore,
this is not the New York City we know. This place
is terrifying. It is. They didn't just change
the costumes. They changed the geopolitical reality
of the entire Earth. The source material describes
the setting as a near future dystopic Earth.
Right. And the whole planet is under the thumb
of a global government called ICON. Which stands
for the International Confederation of Nations.
Exactly. And, you know, in a lot of sci -fi,
a global government might be a good thing. Like
in Star Trek, you've got the Federation. But
here, the text explicitly states that ICON rules
with an iron fist. It's a totalitarian regime
that controls everything. And here's where it
gets really specific to the genre. ICON hasn't
just taken over the economy or the military.
They've gone after culture. Specifically, they've
wiped out almost all religion worldwide. And
that is a classic trope in that Christianity
versus the government genre of fiction. Totally.
The idea is that the state sees faith as a competitor
for loyalty, so they just eliminate it. The sources
note that nearly all faith systems are gone,
replaced by allegiance to ICON. But there is
a loophole, and I love how specific this detail
is. The summary mentions that while most religions
are gone, Judaism is the only ancient religion
that survives and flourishes. As much as it can
under this regime. Yeah, as much as it can. It's
a necessary plot device, really. Yeah. I mean,
if you're going to retell the story of Jesus,
you need the Jewish context. You can't tell that
story without the prophecies and the cultural
background. Right. But since they moved the geography
to America, they had to move the religious center,
too. Right. There's a note here that says there's
only one synagogue left in existence. And where
is it? It's in Brooklyn. Of course it is. So
in this world, Brooklyn is basically the new
Jerusalem. In a narrative sense, yes. It becomes
the center of the spiritual conflict. But it's
not a nice place to live. The source describes
New York City in this timeline as a police -occupied
war zone. Police -occupied war zone? I mean,
that is a heavy description. Well, it reflects
the anxieties of the time. Remember, this is
2003. We're post 9 -11. The idea of New York
as a target or a place of conflict or under heavy
security surveillance was very real in the cultural
psyche. CRL just takes that anxiety and dials
it up to 11. Totally. So you've got ethnic gangs
fighting in the streets. You've got these small
revolutionary groups trying to fight back against
ICON. And the police are just cracking heads.
It sets the stage for a very high stakes narrative.
This isn't a peaceful countryside where some
teacher is walking around giving sermons. Yeah.
This is a powder keg. And into this powder keg
steps our protagonist. Okay. Let's talk about
the protagonist and the cast in general. Because
if you were following the Christian music scene
or CCM in the early 2000s, this cast list is
like the Avengers assembling. It is effectively
a super group. Yeah. The producers didn't hire
random actors. They went out and got the front
men of the biggest bands in the genre to voice
these characters. Leading the charge, playing
the character named Hero, who is the Jesus figure,
we have Michael Tate. A massive name. I mean,
for context, he was one third of DC Talk, which
was arguably the biggest act in that world in
the 90s, and later became the lead singer of
the Newsboys. Right. He has this very powerful,
soulful pop rock voice. Casting him just signals
that this is going to be a polished... big budget
production. And then you have the supporting
cast. And this is where the adaptation choices
get really fun. They didn't just move the setting.
They localized the names to sound more New York.
Well, that's a key part of the street smart strategy.
Yeah. If you have a guy in a trench coat named
Simon Peter, it just feels anachronistic. It
breaks the immersion. So in Hero, Peter becomes
Petrov. Petrov. And he's played by Mark Stewart.
Who is the lead singer of Audio Adrenaline. He
had this really raspy rock and roll voice. It
fits the character perfectly. Petrov isn't a
fisherman. In this version, the disciples are
usually depicted as part of the street element.
And then you have Mary Magdalene, who becomes
Maggie. Played by Rebecca St. James. Yeah. Again,
huge star power there. She was basically the
pop princess of that era. Right. And Maggie sounds
like someone you'd meet at a diner in Brooklyn.
It grounds the character. It's clever if a little
on the nose, like Judas Iscariot becomes Jude.
Jude works well, though. It sounds contemporary.
Hey, have you seen Jude? Sounds natural. Have
you seen Judas? Sounds like a Bible study. True.
But the one that made me laugh in a good way
is the antagonist. We have the chief rabbi who
represents the religious establishment that opposes
Hero. In the Bible, that's Caiaphas. And Hero,
his name is Kai. Efficient. Very efficient. And
Kai is played by John Cooper. Explicitly mentioned
in the sources, John Cooper from Skillet. Now,
Skillet is a hard rock band. They got really
huge later on. But even then, they had an industrial,
heavy sound. By casting him as the villain, they're
using that aggressive vocal style to characterize
the opposition. It codes the religious establishment
as industrial and threatening. Exactly. And Kai
isn't working alone. He's conspiring with the
secular authority. In the biblical text, you
have the Roman Empire. Here, you have police
chief Devlin. So instead of a centurion, you
have the chief of police of a dystopian NYC.
It maps perfectly. Okay. You have the religious
leader, Kai, and the law enforcement leader,
Devlin, working together to maintain order against
this new revolutionary threat. But there is one
character who is unique to this telling. He's
not in the Bible. He serves as our guide into
this world. Right, the narrator. Yeah, the narrator
is a guy named Agent Hunter, played by Paul Wright.
This is a fascinating narrative device. Agent
Hunter gives the whole thing this kind of noir
detective story vibe. His backstory is that he
is a former ICON agent. He was part of the oppression.
Right, the text says he met Hero, joined him,
and was thrown in prison. So the entire opera
is framed as his flashback. It's a testimony
from inside a prison cell. Oh, interesting. I
used to be one of them. Then I met this man,
and now I'm here. It adds a layer of mystery
and grit that a standard third -person narration
wouldn't have. Okay, so we've got our cast of
rock stars. We've got our dystopian Brooklyn.
Let's look at the actual story arc. We started
with that hook about Pennsylvania. How does that
actually play out? Well, according to the source,
Hero is born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Okay.
But because the world is in chaos, or remember,
it's a war zone, his family is forced to flee.
So the flight to Egypt from the original story
becomes a flight from Pennsylvania to the Jewish
slums of Brooklyn. Correct. They flee to the
only place where their culture still exists.
He grows up in this enclave in New York. And
then, just like in the original narrative, he
disappears for a while, grows up and starts his
public ministry. But since he's in this police
state, his message hits differently. Yeah, the
source says he begins to preach and teach the
principles of Christianity to the people of New
York. Specifically, he's teaching people to love
their enemies and care for each other. Which
honestly sounds nice and fluffy, but in a totalitarian
regime, telling people to love their enemies
is basically treason. It is incredibly subversive.
If ICON rules by fear and division -pitting gangs
against each other, then a message of universal
love creates unity. And unity is the one thing
a dictator cannot tolerate. Exactly. The authorities
immediately view him as a revolutionary. So they
aren't just worried about his theology. They're
worried he's going to start a riot. In a way,
he is a riot of kindness, maybe, but a disruption
to the order nonetheless. And that sets up the
conspiracy. Kai and Devlin team up. They find
their snitch, Jude. Who betrays Hero to them.
In this urban setting, it feels very much like
a confidential informant turning on a gang leader.
Now, we have to talk about the climax, because
this is the part of the deep dive where I really
need you to visualize what the creators did.
We know how the gospel story ends. It ends with
the crucifixion. But you can't exactly drag a
wooden cross up a hill in a sci -fi city. It
wouldn't make sense. No, it would look totally
out of place. So they made an adaptation choice
that is probably the most striking image in the
entire production. The source quotes a review
from CCM Magazine that highlights this detail.
What'd they do? The execution takes place on
a corner street sign. A street sign, like a walk
-don't -walk metal pole on a street corner. Exactly.
Hero is executed on a street sign. That is visceral.
It is. It recontextualizes the symbol entirely.
I mean, over 2 ,000 years, the cross has become
jewelry. It's on steeples. It's gold. It's silver.
We've sanitized it. We've totally sanitized it.
By turning it into a street sign? A piece of
dirty urban infrastructure? It forces the audience
to look at the brutality of the act again. It
anchors the divine and the mundane. It's happening
right there on the corner while traffic goes
by. Precisely. It suggests that this sacrifice
isn't happening in some wholly set -apart place.
It's happening in the gutter, essentially. It
fits that street -smart mission perfectly. And
then obviously, the story doesn't end there.
You have the resurrection. Yes. But even the
resurrection gets the street -smart treatment.
The source describes the scene where Hiro returns
in victorious, sin -conquering glory. But note
who he goes to see. The text calls them his hip
street friends. Hip street friends. I love that
phrasing. It dates the project so perfectly.
It really does. It sounds like a marketing executive
wrote it. It probably did. But the CCM Magazine
review, which came out in January 2004, was incredibly
positive about this scene. They described it
as an epic climax capable of inducing chills.
So despite the potentially cheesy terminology,
the emotional beat landed. It seemed so. They
said it was capable of softening the hardest
of hearts. So as a piece of theater, it worked.
It delivered the emotional payoff. We've talked
about the story and the look, but we haven't
really dug into the sound. We called it a rock
opera, but that's a broad term. I mean, the who
did rock opera, phantom is an opera. What are
we listening to here? It was a sonic melting
pot. The source lists a mix of rap, rock, pop,
dance, and Broadway -style tunes. That is a lot
of ingredients in the blender. It is. But it
reflects the diversity of the city they were
trying to portray. If you're in New York, you
hear everything. You hear hip -hop, you hear
rock, you hear club music. Right. Hero tried
to capture all of that. So you have Michael Tate
doing his smooth pop -rock thing, you have John
Cooper screaming industrial metal, and then you
have... Rap battles. There were rap elements.
Yes. It was trying to be everything to everyone.
And that leads us to a specific term used in
the review. Seeker friendly. Yeah. I wanted to
ask about that. Seeker friendly sensitivity.
That sounds like industry jargon. What does that
actually mean here? In the context of that subculture,
a seeker is someone who isn't a Christian but
is. curious or, you know, looking for answers.
Seeker friendly means art or events designed
to be accessible to those people. It means lowering
the barrier to entry. So no Latin chanting, no
insider theology that requires a degree to understand.
Exactly. They wanted this to be something you
could show to a friend who loved The Matrix or
X -Men and they would get it. They wouldn't feel
like they were in the church service. They'd
feel like they were watching a cool sci -fi musical
that just happened to be about Jesus. Hence the
leather trench coats and the comic books. Hence
the entire universe. We mentioned the comic books
earlier, but it's worth circling back to. The
source mentions a trilogy of novels and a series
of comic books released alongside the album.
Comic books feel like the most natural fit for
this, honestly. They do. The structure of the
story. A special individual with a mysterious
origin fighting an evil global organization,
ICON, with a secret base in Brooklyn. It's superhero
logic. It basically is a superhero origin story.
Even the title. Hero positions him not just as
a savior in the theological sense, but as a hero
in the action adventure sense. It's commodifying
the narrative into a format that a generation
raised on Marvel and DC would intuitively understand.
And for those who couldn't catch the live tour
because this thing did tour arenas, they released
a DVD. Filmed at the Star Plaza Theater. So we
actually have a visual record of the street sign
execution and the whole dystopian set design.
So. When we step back and look at Hero more than
20 years later, what are we looking at? Is it
just a weird piece of nostalgia? I think it's
more than that. It's a fascinating cultural artifact.
It represents a specific moment where that community
was trying very, very hard to be relevant. They
didn't want the story to feel like a dusty museum
piece. Right. They looked at the culture around
them, which was obsessed with the near future,
with dystopias, with urban grit. And they said,
our story belongs here, too. It's ambitious.
You have to give them that. Taking a story from
antiquity and putting it on a street sign in
Brooklyn is a big swing. It is. And whether you
think the hip street friends dialogue ages well
or not, the core idea is compelling. They identified
that people were feeling anxious about the future,
about government control, about war, and they
tried to answer that anxiety with their hero.
It's a time capsule of 2003 fears and 2003 hopes.
So here's a thought to leave you with. Hiro imagined
a near future from the perspective of 2003. They
predicted a world of total surveillance and global
control. And in many ways, we are dealing with
issues they predicted just in different forms.
Right. But their version was very physical. Police
on corners. Our version is digital. Algorithms
and data. So if this story were retold today,
if you want to reboot Hiro for our current version
of the near future. What would it look like?
That is the question. What does ICON look like
in the age of AI? Is the oppression a guy with
a baton or is it a social credit score? And where
would Bethlehem be? If the margins of society
aren't in a steel town in Pennsylvania, where
are they? Where would a modern hero have to be
born to be truly on the outside looking in? That's
a powerful thing to mull over. The story remains
the same, but the setting always tells you what
a society is afraid of and what it thinks it
needs. Thanks for taking this trip back to the
leather -clad days of 2003 with us. It was a
pleasure to explore the archives. We'll catch
you on the next deep dive.