@Christopher: Gotham added Bruce as a central character
solely because of David Masouz's performance.
True, Masouz was the one thing that really worked about the show during the time I watched it. I guess I can understand them shifting the emphasis more in his direction, but it just goes to highlight the incongruity between the original idea of a Jim Gordon crime drama and the end result of a teenage-Batman show. The premise was compromised from the start by not committing to be one or the other.
Christopher already addressed the DCEU continuity issue (and he's right, this show isn't part of it, as the producers have explicitly confirmed), but I'll just add that totalitarian regimes, theocracies, what have you, have absolutely no problem denying reality for purposes of politics or power. (Nor do many of our own politicians -- climate change deniers, anyone?)
That's true, but it would take some doing to erase public knowledge of an actual history of interstellar travel and colonization. Sure,
Interstellar showed a future where people had forgotten we'd actually gone to the Moon, but that was a brief enough flirtation with spaceflight that it's possible people could forget.
Well, they're only "premature" in the context of the source material, not on the show's own terms. Since Gotham is an adaptation, I'm confident you're not saying the traditional Batman backstory and continuity can have any relevance at all to what the series does or doesn't do.
Hardly. My argument about adaptations is that it makes no sense to apply the same standards uniformly to every one. A blanket license is just as lazy and thoughtless as a blanket condemnation. What matters is what is right or wrong for each
individual work. It's not about how it relates to the source, it's about how well or poorly it works in the context of the story itself. And having Batman's entire rogue's gallery come into being while Bruce is still in his early teens because the producers chickened out of committing to a Jim Gordon crime drama was not a good decision in the context of the story itself. It shows a lack of faith in the original premise to stand on its own merits, and that wishy-washiness underlying the creative process is what led to such a sloppy, stupid, undisciplined mess of a show. A story whose writers are afraid to commit to its core idea
By contrast,
Smallville was relatively successful at doing a superhero prequel series. It folded in elements of the future Superman narrative only gradually, maybe one new character or element per season, while mostly focusing on Clark's life in Smallville and the characters and situations that fit there. It was only in later seasons, when it outlived its intended lifespan and had to strain for new material to keep going, that it started bringing in other superheroes and becoming Superman in all but name while Clark dragged his heels on getting a costume, but even then, it took its time, adding those elements gradually over years.
Gotham doesn't have that kind of patience. It's piled everything on within the first couple of seasons and just rushed ahead too fast, in a way that shows insecurity and lack of faith in its ability to hold an audience
without falling back on lazy pandering to familiarity.
Early
Smallville, for all its problems, managed to establish a cast and situation that were engaging enough without having to constantly drag in elements from Superman's future. If
Krypton is able to make its 200-years-ago cast and situations engaging enough on their own merits, if it has faith in its own premise the way
Smallville did and
Gotham didn't, then it won't need to wave shiny familiar objects in front of us to keep our attention from wandering. It can keep the connection to the future as a supporting element but not let it take over the show.
)
