TIME: Noon, March 28, 2000
LOCATION: The Crossing Studio, Vancouver, Canada
MISSION OBJECTIVE: To look good while busting heads
Dressed in a tight black cat-burglar outfit, Jessica Alba prances around the set of James Cameron's new futuristic Fox series, Dark Angel, prepping for a scene in which she'll break into an apartment building and lay waste to a pistol-packing bodyguard. While limbering up, she admits that months of gymnastics classes have taken her only so far. ''Your body just doesn't bend like it does when you're a kid,'' says the 19-year-old. ''One time I was on the balance beam, and the teacher asked me to do a roundoff onto a mat and then sort of spin around. So I go to do it'' — she giggles with embarrassment — ''and in a split second, I slammed myself with the beam right between my legs. So I'm sitting there, trying to keep my composure in front of these little girls, and I can't cry and I can't cuss. I'm just like, 'Oh, God!,' tearing up ... No pain, no gain, you know what I mean?''
Wha ... ? I'm sorry, Jessica — could you repeat everything after that straddling the beam part? Oh, never mind. Even a distracted journalist can see that Dark Angel has two things going for it this fall. First, it sports the high-concept cranium of Cameron, he of those gigantic '90s movies Titanic, T2, and True Lies. And, second, it stars Alba, the Never Been Kissed costar whose mouth-agape beauty and swollen lips have made her a buzz babe even before the first episode airs. Of course, for these same two reasons, the bar — to borrow the above imagery — has been set sky-high (which is why, if you live in a major media market, chances are when you put down this magazine and look out your window, you'll see a huge billboard of Alba riding a motorcycle).
Crafted by Cameron and his longtime pal, television producer Charles Eglee (Moonlighting, Murder One), Dark Angel is the most ambitious new ride of the 2000-01 season. Heck, the budget for the two-hour pilot alone approached $10 million. ''How do you sum this thing up in 25 words or less?'' asks Cameron. ''It's Spiderman — except it's a girl — meets The Matrix in the post-nuclear-electromagnetic-pulse, Depression-era-1930s Chicago of the future ... '' Chimes in Eglee: ''But with an urban jam to it.'' For those needing a bit more description: It's about 20 bleak years from now, and Max (Alba) is a genetically enhanced, angst-teeming teenager who's being hunted by evil military dudes from whom she escaped when she was a child; along her soul-searching way, she meets a wheelchair-bound cyberpirate journalist named Logan, who recruits her to fight against the corrupt, corroding governmental infrastructure. Butts are kicked, names are taken, and thus a reluctant superhero is born.
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