Spoilers Batwoman - Season 1

[Professor Zoom]

Impressive. I hear people calling Ruby Rose a mediocre actress, but I don't really see it. I think she projects amazing intensity and presence. Maybe her tone doesn't vary much, but her default setting is really compelling. And she conveys a lot of physical power in the action scenes.

In other things she has been in, she's.... not great, especially when emotion is asked of her. She gives amazing looks, but... Not even in the giant shark movie was she very good. I mean... she's fine. But.

I'll say this: she's not a natural in front of the camera.

 

[OCD Geek]

I don't know. I think even just "fine" can work out really well. If the star of your genre series has a limited range but is otherwise "fine", just build a deep supporting and recurring cast around them populated by stronger actors so the show isn't completely dependent on them. And then write the star's character primarily within their range.

It worked for Deep Space Nine, Farscape, Angel and Fringe. People around the internet today are acting like Rose is Tara Reid or Rob Schneider or something when she's just "fine".

 

[Christopher]

It worked for Deep Space Nine, Farscape, Angel and Fringe.

What? I'd say all those lead actors had considerable range and talent -- especially Anna Torv on Fringe, who at one point was effortlessly juggling four distinct variations of the same character (Olivia, Fauxlivia, Olivia believing she was Fauxilivia, and Fauxlivia pretending to be Olivia) and later pulled off the single best Leonard Nimoy impression I've ever seen. (Unless you're talking about Joshua Jackson -- he was pretty one-note.)

 

[CorporalClegg]

None of the acting in these shows is particularly noteworthy. Each series has a ringer or two, but they usually don't last very long. Everyone else is "fine" in the sense they're serviceable. They get the job done. But dramatic nuance and gravitas aren't in these shows' DNA. Style and charm are way more important. To that end, Rose is just as capable as Amell, Gustin, or Benoist.

 

[Professor Zoom]

None of the acting in these shows is particularly noteworthy. Each series has a ringer or two, but they usually don't last very long. Everyone else is "fine" in the sense they're serviceable. They get the job done. But dramatic nuance and gravitas aren't in these shows' DNA. Style and charm are way more important. To that end, Rose is just as capable as Amell, Gustin, or Benoist.

Agree to disagree. Benoist and Gustin, even Amell are more than just fine actors. Especially Benoist and Gustin.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Nonsense. There are hundreds - maybe even thousands - of young actors in the world who could give equal or better performances. The difference is, as I said, they have a unique screen presence. Two of them can dance and sing.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Nonsense. There are hundreds - maybe even thousands - of young actors in the world who could give equal or better performances. The difference is, as I said, they have a unique screen presence. Two of them can dance and sing.

Agreed. But, again, I think Gustin and Benoist ARE better actors than what I have seen of Rose. As in, to your statement: they are more capable than Rose.

 

[Reverend]

I've only seen Ruby Rose in a handful of roles (John Wick 2, OitNB & Dark Matter, off the top of my head) and my impression thus far is that she's one of those actors who's performance quality is dictated by quality of the material and/or director. That's not a bad thing per see, a lot of memorable performers have a limited range, but it also generally means said actors don't have an awful lot in the way of charisma and screen presence to bring to the table besides maybe in an aesthetic sense. In Ruby's case I feel like there's a superficiality to her performances. Style over substance. That's fine for a guest actor, or a heavy but as the star of the show, it's going to be a problem. So here's hoping she grows into the role.

It's like someone taking over their parents' restaurant and keeping the name but getting a new sign out front, redecorating, and making changes to the menu.

Sure, but it's still generally considered bad form to complain about everybody showing up to 'Mel's Bar' or 'Al's Cafe' or whatever being under the impression that Mel or Al are still running the joint when you're 1) 5 mins into the gig and 2) didn't even bother to change the sign. I'm not arguing WHY she's wearing the cape but HOW and what that says about the character and how they're choosing to present her. I feel like they were aiming for cocky, but overshot and hit arrogant instead.

Again though, the line may very well be taken out of context but it does highlight for me what I see as a fundamental problem with how the character was presented in the comics. She seems to come across as resentful of the mantle, but it's not like anyone is forcing her to wear the stupid bat ears, it's a conscious decision. Huntress, Spoiler, Oracle and of course literally all the Robins managed to forge identities for themselves without needing to directly ape Bruce's whole deal.

Mostly I think it's an artefact of a character that was designed as a possible replacement of Batman having later being forced to co-exist with him. I suspect she would probably work better as less of a successor to/derivation of Batman and more of an alternate Earth/Elseworlds version of him. A hero in her own right that came to being Batwoman on her own and not trailing on Bruce's coat-tales.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Well that was pretty awful trailer and I was kind of excited for this. Hard pass for me.

 

[dahj]

Again though, the line may very well be taken out of context but it does highlight for me what I see as a fundamental problem with how the character was presented in the comics. She seems to come across as resentful of the mantle, but it's not like anyone is forcing her to wear the stupid bat ears, it's a conscious decision. Huntress, Spoiler, Oracle and of course literally all the Robins managed to forge identities for themselves without needing to directly ape Bruce's whole deal.

All of those people you listed started by doing the Bat thing with of for Bruce, and then did their own thing only after they parted ways from him because they came to realize that his way was no longer their way.

Batwoman is different, she started doing the Bat thing when Batman wasn't around, so she immediately started doing it her way, not Bruce's. Batwoman is her thing and always was, so why should she have to move away from that identity when Bruce came back? She makes it look good and you can't copyright bats any more than you can copyright tardigrades, so I'm real sorry Bruce but it's your fault you took a year off.

I also really don't agree she's comes off as resentful of the mantle either in the comics or in this trailer. She just doesn't take shit from Bruce that she's supposed to be his subordinate because he did it first.

 

[Soong-type Android]

Well that was pretty awful trailer and I was kind of excited for this. Hard pass for me.

It did have a bit of a fan film quality to it. I'll reserve judgement until I actually see the first episode.

 

[Kirk Prime]

When I saw the Supergirl trailer before Season 1, it was everything I wanted it to be--the character belonged in Superman's world. She had the goodness required of being Superman's cousin, which was consistent with the comics. Benoist has a perfect look for the role, and the inspiring optimism that comes with the character was there. I couldn't wait for the show to start, and for the most part, it was great for the first season and a half until they started with the politics.

This trailer gave me the exact opposite feeling. What I'm seeing here is an undeserving, entitled whining "hero" with a chip on her shoulder, that is only beating up bad guys for personal reasons. Then of course she takes unnecessary misandrist shots at Batman, while stealing his stuff.

The whole premise of the show comes off obnoxious. When watching a superhero show, I want to like the main hero. I want to see the goodness in him or her. I want to root for her. This woman is just nasty. If this is what she's like in the comics, then they really made a poor choice for a TV show.

 

[Christopher]

I've only seen Ruby Rose in a handful of roles (John Wick 2, OitNB & Dark Matter, off the top of my head) and my impression thus far is that she's one of those actors who's performance quality is dictated by quality of the material and/or director. That's not a bad thing per see, a lot of memorable performers have a limited range, but it also generally means said actors don't have an awful lot in the way of charisma and screen presence to bring to the table besides maybe in an aesthetic sense. In Ruby's case I feel like there's a superficiality to her performances. Style over substance.

Maybe, but it's a hell of a compelling style. She's certainly got the aesthetics and then some, but I think she brings the charisma too; her Kate Kane immediately comes across as an intimidating, powerful presence that you wouldn't want to mess with, a determined, driven person who won't put up with anyone else's nonsense. I personally find her icy stare scarier than Oliver Queen's "You have failed this city!" growl. That impression alone sells her character very well, so it's a great place to start from even if it turns out that she doesn't have a lot to add to it.

Sometimes a limited range can even benefit a character if you craft the role to fit it. I remember when Hong Kong martial-arts star Sammo Hung appeared in Martial Law, a TV series attempting to knock off the success of Jackie Chan's Rush Hour films by getting Chan's real-life mentor to star in a similar role. Hung was an incredible martial artist but barely spoke English and thus wasn't able to act that well in the language (he's much better in Cantonese), and in the second season, the new writing staff finally figured out how to turn that into an asset, by writing him as a very stoic and reserved character who was reluctant to open up about his feelings, and focused on how the characters around him reacted to that and tried to draw him out. So they turned his lack of expressiveness into something that revealed his personality and informed his relationships with the other characters, which I found very clever.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

When I saw the Supergirl trailer before Season 1, it was everything I wanted it to be--the character belonged in Superman's world. She had the goodness required of being Superman's cousin, which was consistent with the comics. Benoist has a perfect look for the role, and the inspiring optimism that comes with the character was there. I couldn't wait for the show to start, and for the most part, it was great for the first season and a half until they started with the politics.

This trailer gave me the exact opposite feeling. What I'm seeing here is an undeserving, entitled whining "hero" with a chip on her shoulder, that is only beating up bad guys for personal reasons. Then of course she takes unnecessary misandrist shots at Batman, while stealing his stuff.

The whole premise of the show comes off obnoxious. When watching a superhero show, I want to like the main hero. I want to see the goodness in him or her. I want to root for her. This woman is just nasty. If this is what she's like in the comics, then they really made a poor choice for a TV show.

I agree. I switched off on DC TV universe during the second season of Arrow but I watched some of the elseworlds stuff on youtube and really liked what I saw of Batwoman. This trailer left me cold pretty much for all the reasons you stated. Personally I'm sick of politics infusing nearly everything on TV. There isn't anything wrong with tv shows being topical but it's so in your face and bludgeoning and preachy that it's too much.

 

[Trekker4747]

I liked the trailer looks to be an interesting show, and I like Ruby Rose.

When I saw the Supergirl trailer before Season 1, it was everything I wanted it to be--the character belonged in Superman's world.

That Supergirl trailer was awful and not at all reflective of what the show is, the biggest problem is that it seemed to line up to much with the SNL parody "Black Widow" trailer where it just felt like every "woman in the workplace" comedy ever made that came out around the same time.

This trailer gave me the exact opposite feeling. What I'm seeing here is an undeserving, entitled whining "hero" with a chip on her shoulder, that is only beating up bad guys for personal reasons. Then of course she takes unnecessary misandrist shots at Batman, while stealing his stuff.

So you're one of "those" people easily triggered and offended by a line they head but didn't take the time to understand the context it was said in and what it actually means. She obviously knows she's using/"stealing" Batman's stuff and isn't making any claims otherwise. When she says "she's not letting a man take credit for a woman's work" she's talking about being mis-identified as Batman because just before this line we see a shot of a girl calling out to the sky she sees BatMAN. So she's saying that if she's going to be out there doing these things she wants people to know it is a WOMAN doing this, so she adds the red wig to the exterior of the costume to identify her as such.

But, go ahead, be triggered by perceived sexism attitudes, but it probably be best to keep away from this show if you're so easily set-off. I mean, there's bound to be a shot somewhere in the show of her standing heroically in triumphantly during a battle, which we just can't have in shows and movies, apparently.

 

[Ovation]

Prop bets on the exploding heads resulting from such a concentration of anti-MRA fare in the superhero world?

Begun, the head explosions have.

The trailer is quite good and has me looking forward to the show.

 

[Kirk Prime]

It wasn't one line in the trailer that bothered me. It was the whole thing. The whole attitude. The whole girl confuses her with Batman scene was just there to deliver her man hating line.

Substitute a race for gender there and maybe you'll get the point. Also, why should she care? If she was mistaken for Batman, that might be good for her, since it makes it that much harder to deduce her identity. Why should she have a chip on her shoulder or an ego?

These aren't perceived sexism attitudes. They are sexism attitudes. If writers have to put down and weaken male characters to make females look stronger, they are doing the exact opposite and making them look weaker.

And Supergirl was very much like the trailer the first season. It was only later that they decided to make it a soap box for liberal whining,

 

[Christopher]

Personally I'm sick of politics infusing nearly everything on TV.

Politics have always infused everything on TV, because everything is politics. Defaulting to a focus on heterosexual white males is just as much a political statement as focusing on other categories of people. Saying that the status quo is fine and shouldn't be questioned or challenged is just as much a political statement as saying that it's not fine and needs to be changed. Either way, it's taking a side on a political question. But people don't notice that something is political when it agrees with their own political positions, only when it challenges them.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Politics have always infused everything on TV, because everything is politics. Defaulting to a focus on heterosexual white males is just as much a political statement as focusing on other categories of people. Saying that the status quo is fine and shouldn't be questioned or challenged is just as much a political statement as saying that it's not fine and needs to be changed. Either way, it's taking a side on a political question. But people don't notice that something is political when it agrees with their own political positions, only when it challenges them.

I'd disagree that politics has always been present in everything on TV because that is just not the case. Considering I'm not heterosexual or white I don't need any lectures from you on the status quo. Also who are you to assume what my politics are?

I never said there is anything wrong with tv being topical, or with politics per se, but when it's discussed in such a heavy handed and generally unintelligent way as depicted in most of the garbage that comes out the CW and others it loses it's impact and become uninteresting to me. A recent example of a tv show that handled a political issue intelligently is the Orville and the episode featuring the all female moclan planet. Batwoman, just looks like more of the same subtle as a sledgehammer tripe that is par the course for most scripted dramas tryign to have a 'message' nowadays.

 

[Kirk Prime]

Politics have always infused everything on TV, because everything is politics. Defaulting to a focus on heterosexual white males is just as much a political statement as focusing on other categories of people. Saying that the status quo is fine and shouldn't be questioned or challenged is just as much a political statement as saying that it's not fine and needs to be changed. Either way, it's taking a side on a political question. But people don't notice that something is political when it agrees with their own political positions, only when it challenges them.

This statement alone is terrible in that it somehow implies that demonizing straight white males is ok, and that anything that features them is political. That's ridiculous and false.

There's a huge difference between inclusion and throwing things in people's faces.

I don't need smug liberal writers telling me how to think. There's a time and a place for everything and there's genres for that. The Good Wife was a very good show despite its liberal slant in part because it was not so over the top and actually on occasion, represented conservatives without demonizing them. I can't talk about the spin off, which I hear went full liberal, but that was an original show with original characters in a genre where political topics made sense.

But a superhero show should not be a propaganda machine for liberal ideals.

I never said there is anything wrong with tv being topical, or with politics per se, but when it's discussed in such a heavy handed and generally unintelligent way as depicted in most of the garbage that comes out the CW and others it loses it's impact and become uninteresting to me.

THIS makes sense. When these shows started, they were not so heavy handed political. They were superhero shows. If I want politics, there are so many avenues for it.

A recent example of a tv show that handled a political issue intelligently is the Orville and the episode featuring the all female moclan planet. Batwoman, just looks like more of the same subtle as a sledgehammer tripe that is par the course for most scripted dramas tryign to have a 'message' nowadays.

Also, exactly the point. CW clearly has check the box quotas to make sure every liberal stance is covered. I am very much on the fence with Batwoman, and likely not going to watch this one, which says a lot since I really love DC characters.