I saw the pilot at Comic-Con this year. It looked pretty good, and I am sure it will be even better with Bear McCreary's music to go with it (the pilot they showed had other music, including some from The Dark Knight).
The Cape and The Chicago Code are the only two mid-season replacements I'm looking forward to. There's a difference in quality between the two?
Yeah, though I dont mind Smallville. I would like to hope that it would be in the quality of the second X-Men film but I somehow doubt it. Ofcourse this could be the West Wing of superhero TV-shows, who knows?
Is it just me, or are the previews for The Cape giving a horrible impression? It looks like it should be intended as campy comedy, yet there's no comedy in the previews (and I doubt that's the intent anyway). I guess it's not much of a prediction to bet that NBC is going to fall on its face once again...
^ The plot synopsis doesn't give me the impression it's supposed to be "campy comedy." The show is going to follow a cop framed of a crime he didn't commit, who is almost killed and has to remain separated from his family under a new identity in an effort to clear his name, fight corruption in the city and police force, and bring to justice the person who tried to kill him. I don't think I'd want that premise to be presented as "campy comedy."
To be honest, the only preview I've actually seen for the show is the one posted earlier in this thread. You and Temis do certainly have a point about that one. If other previews have played up a comedy angle as well, I hope NBC gets better ones out soon, then, so that the initial audience doesn't tune in for a superhero comedy and tune out because they didn't want drama.
It's even worse: I think the intent of the preview they're now showing on TV is to be serious, but all the swirling cape stuff, and the shot of the guy wearing the dorky cape, and attempting to look sinister, just makes me laugh out loud. They are really botching the aesthetics, or something. I think this is going to be another case of a show tanking at least in part because of a confused audience.
I have no problems with it looking "comic-booky"...I think it will have a great premiere and then drop like everything else...hopefully not enough to get cancelled.
And that's an arbitrary standard. There are plenty of very serious, dramatic stories that have a look different from the everyday world, whether it's a heightened comic-book reality or a historical epic. (Would you be unable to take Julius Caesar seriously because everyone looks like they're dressed for a toga party?) And plenty of comedies have an extremely ordinary visual style or setting. Besides, there are plenty of shades between pure comedy and pure drama. Plenty of dramatic shows have a great deal of humor -- think of The West Wing or anything from Joss Whedon. A good superhero show should embody all the best elements of the genre, and that includes a sense of fun and an appreciation of the outre as well as the capacity for heartfelt character exploration or intense melodrama or ruminations on the nature and limits of power. Being larger than life isn't automatically campy. It's only campy if you mock it. If you present it sincerely, then it's romantic. And I say if we've reached the point where a superhero show can freely embrace the romance and grandiosity of the genre rather than trying to disguise itself as a mundane show and apologize for its own existence, then that's progress.
No, it's campy because it looks campy. It looks dumb. I have no problem with superhero stories being taken seriously or having good drama, but from what I've seen, this just looks too cartoony for me. And no, I'm not going to give it a chance. The previews have left me totally uninterested because I honestly can't tell what kind of story they're trying to tell.
You contradict yourself. First you state with absolute certainty that it must be campy, now you say you can't tell what it's going to be like. You're asserting utter certainty and utter uncertainty in the same paragraph. That doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should listen to Mark Twain: "Supposing is good, but finding out is better."
No, I am certain that it looks campy from what I've seen. Whether it will actually be campy, I have no idea, but the look from the previews is enough to turn me off from trying. I don't have time to try out every TV show on the air. It's the previews' jobs to make me interested. These previews make me the opposite.
Dear RoJoHen, Please be more careful when calculating your opinions about TV shows. Show your work to 3 decimal places please.
I saw another preview, the one with the dwarf: "Say hello to Dorothy." Now that is more like it. Maybe the dwarf should be the lead character. Maybe what they're going for is ass-kicking attitude, not taking themselves too seriously, but not campy/stupid. If so, they might be giving the wrong impression in some of their previews and/or are hitting the target in some ways and missing it in others. It's a bad sign that the "miss" seems to revolve around the way they are depicting the main character. I'm going to watch the show at least till they get to James Frain's scenes as a supervillain. That can't help but be good. No, it's campy if it's mock-able. The previews are giving a mixed message: the Cape himself looks ridiculous, but James Frain as a supervillain is a wonderful idea and the dwarf preview is the right idea: breezy, glib, but not mock-worthy. Clearly Mark Twain never heard of the internet.
I just saw a preview(from preview of shows) on NBC...looks great. Hopefully there will be video on YT soon. [edit] Here we go... [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwVFXvtFlyI[/yt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwVFXvtFlyI