Her very name Supergirl, and costume defines her as an echo of a male hero.
DC has always been pretty bad/lazy at naming many of their sidekicks.
At least Robin is Robin, and not called Batboy.
Supergirl TV Series is being work on.
- Thread starter yenny
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Her very name Supergirl, and costume defines her as an echo of a male hero.
DC has always been pretty bad/lazy at naming many of their sidekicks.
At least Robin is Robin, and not called Batboy.
In the real world, sure, but not necessarily in the world of the show itself, which was my point.
Exactly. The shows are their own thing. If they want to establish that, on this show, there's a Supergirl and not Superman . . .well, why not?
"Supergirl" is such a simple and obvious name for a superhero though, and so it's not really a stretch to think people would have named her that even if there wasn't a Superman in their world.
Bingo. I mean, Superman ended up being called "Superman" despite any previous heroes by that name. So why couldn't the world's first and only supergirl get christened "Supergirl" all on her own--without there already being a Superman?
It's interesting to listen to the early, pre-WWII Superman radio series from 1940-41. It was unusual in that Superman was a secretive figure who avoided being seen in public and was just an urban legend -- much as the Flash is at this point in his new TV series. He called himself Superman, but he never told that to anyone else, at least not until he revealed himself to Jimmy Olsen a couple of years into the series. And yet characters were constantly describing him as "some kind of superman." And it might seem a bit contrived to modern ears that so many different characters are independently calling him by the same name he used for himself, but it wasn't entirely implausible, because I think that at the time, the term "superman" was in fairly common use due to the prominence of eugenics movements and Nazi ideology at the time. So it wasn't unreasonable as a generic term that various people would apply to a man with exceptional abilities. It certainly worked better than the first Reeve movie's rather corny "What a super man. Hmm -- Superman!"
More casting breakdowns from TVLine (that are only going to fuel this ridiculous whining about the show being nothing more than "Superman in a skirt":
http://tvline.com/2014/10/31/supergirl-casting-jimmy-olsen-cat-grant/
As an aside, my picks for these roles are Polly Walker (Cat Grant), Aljin Abella (Jimmy Olsen), Steven Skyler (Wynn Schott), and Sasha Roiz (Hank Henshaw).
http://tvline.com/2014/10/31/supergirl-casting-jimmy-olsen-cat-grant/
As an aside, my picks for these roles are Polly Walker (Cat Grant), Aljin Abella (Jimmy Olsen), Steven Skyler (Wynn Schott), and Sasha Roiz (Hank Henshaw).
When I read about Kara being Cat Grant 's "personal assistant", I immediately though of Anne Hathaway 's character in The Devil Wears Prada, but without being 'mousy' and without Cat being an uber-B.
My first thought in response to Cat Grant being in her 40s was to wonder if Tracy Scoggins, who played Cat in Lois & Clark, was in the right age range now. Turns out she's actually 60 now and was 39-40 in L&C. I'd figured she was younger in L&C, and hadn't realized how long it had been since L&C.
If we're going to go with Lois & Clark alumni for one of these roles, which would be neat, I'd go with that show's eponymous Lois, Teri Hatcher as Cat. Yes, she's nearly 50, but she's still in fantastic shape and could definitely play younger.
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Well, The Flash has John Wesley Shipp playing Barry Allen's father and will have Amanda Pays reprising Tina McGee (albeit an alternate-continuity version). And Smallville had Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder as original characters, Dean Cain as Vandal Savage (implicitly), Helen Slater as Lara, and Terence Stamp as the voice of Jor-El. So it's possible.
Forgot to specify which role I'd cast Hatcher in (Cat Grant), so I edited it into my post.
Helen Slater is the one I would most want to see get a recurring role on this show.
And I'm wondering, will they try to give Kara a "team" of helpers like we've seen on Arrow and Flash? Hard to tell from the character descriptions so far, but personally I'd love it if they could somehow try to avoid that trope this one time. Especially given the wide range of superpowers she has for investigating and tracking people down all on her own.
And I'm wondering, will they try to give Kara a "team" of helpers like we've seen on Arrow and Flash? Hard to tell from the character descriptions so far, but personally I'd love it if they could somehow try to avoid that trope this one time. Especially given the wide range of superpowers she has for investigating and tracking people down all on her own.
Heck, Brandon Routh is playing Ray Palmer on ARROW these days.
The only character whose description makes them sound like a direct ally to Kara is her foster sister, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's the only true 'ally'/'helper' character Kara has.
That's where my mind went as well. It would be funny if Kara is the first assistant who was able to keep up with Cat's demands.. and that's only because Kara is super human.
Well, yeah, but that's not quite as on-the-nose as Shipp playing his former character's father or Slater playing her former character's aunt-in-law. It's another DC character, but not one that has a direct connection or relationship to a character he played before. It's more akin to, say, getting Roger Moore to guest-star in Alias.
(And by the way, I'm liking Routh immensely better as Ray than I liked him as Superman. Maybe if he'd been allowed to play Superman in an upbeat and fun way like this instead of mopey, stalkery, deadbeat-dad Superman, I would've liked him more. I still think his voice is way too nasal for Superman, though.)
I haven't had a chance to see him on Arrow yet, but I hope he's a good fit. His acting in Chuck wasn't all that great. Wooden, not believable as a good guy or a bad guy.
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