Spoilers Supergirl - Season 1
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I feel it's the anti-Smallville. That was "no flights, no tights" -- this is flights and tights all the time. Smallville's Clark spent the first seven seasons resisting the call to be a hero, while Kara embraces her heroic side in the first act of the pilot.
That reflects how much the culture and media trends have changed in the interim, I guess. Smallville started out trying to repurpose the Superman backstory for a non-comics audience and strip away the more overt comics/superhero aspects, and it only gradually embraced that side more as superhero movies became more popular. But now the general audience has had plenty of time to get acclimated to superhero stories and embrace their tropes and conventions. So The Flash and Supergirl have been able to throw in all the comic-book stuff right up front.
Well, for me this 2nd episode almost seems to be going too fast.
Both Jimmy & Winn find out about each other...funny scene, but tat could've been a few episodes down the line...and Astra could have pretended to be Allura for t least an episode, and through off Kara, to try to "turn her" in a more subtle way.
I hope they have the season plotted out so I will for those thoughts.
So far, so good. Hope it keeps up (quality & rating wise)
Both Jimmy & Winn find out about each other...funny scene, but tat could've been a few episodes down the line...and Astra could have pretended to be Allura for t least an episode, and through off Kara, to try to "turn her" in a more subtle way.
I hope they have the season plotted out so I will for those thoughts.
So far, so good. Hope it keeps up (quality & rating wise)
It looks like that character is going to be Win's father, not Win himself. Which actually makes more sense, since they appear to be setting this up as taking place after most of those big Superman characters have already been established.
I wonder if/when we'll start getting Lex Luthor references. We already know most of the major characters in the Superman mythos exist, so I'm kind of surprised haven't seen references to him, or at least LexCorp.
Did they just waste a billion dollars worth of missiles?
Where exactly is the poverty line in National City?
Where exactly is the poverty line in National City?
T E R R I B L E!
that's more like it!
I don't know if the culture and media have turned that much. Maybe the "no tights..." was just a bad idea in the first place?
The general audience had embraced other Superman-series before, so why not that? I guess they just wanted to make something different after Lois and Clark, which was already a little different from Superman shows before.
"Hey, let's make a Prequel" was the standard answer everybody had at that time.
When I started watching Smallville it was okay but in season three or four I expected steps forward towards becoming Superman. The show went on for 10 years - if the young Clark was supposed to be 16 he wouldn't be Superman till he's 26.
Oh, and Smallville was sooo terrible cheesy. Remember those "Alexander the Great" speeches/talks the Luthors had?
And nothing really moved forward at all, I stopped watching at season 7 or 8.
I'm talking about Winn alone, not James or her sister (but that might go south).
Smallville had flaws, including a few huge ones like its almost hatred of comic book elements for over half its run, but I'd say it had a generally more likable main cast than Supergirl has, and no regular or recurring character anywhere near as annoying as Henshaw, Cat Grant or Supergirl's adopted sister. Its no use having a lot of flying and superhero action if the other half of the episode is Cat Grant being an idiot and Henshaw being an ass. Supergirl has embraced its superhero elements better than the first 6-7 seasons of Smallville did, but its non-superhero stuff is much weaker. I'll give Supergirl a pass on the villains because we're so early in its run, but I'd say the out of costume/non superhero stuff on Supergirl is weaker than almost any other superhero show of the past few years, with Arrow post season 2 being the only show with worse out of costume stuff.
It's still a variation of it.. "Taking National City" was the exact quote i believe which can imply anything (and from the looks of it she wouldn't shy away from killing humans). It's still a cookie cutter type of villain who are evil just because.
Unless the writers have something in store that surprises all of us this may be the weakest part of the show.
Nah, I was VERY glad to see that Kara recognized her aunt right away, and that the writers didn't try to make her look like a complete idiot.
Obviously it will still be emotionally conflicting for her to fight someone who looks so much like her mother, but she also grew up with both of them as a child so should be able to easily tell them apart.
She actually thought it was her mom for a second, until Astra immediately spilled the beans.
And Kara was 13....while it wouldn't have taken long, Astra could've easily played that out, at least for one scene (i.e. a getaway move)
I'm not saying it should have been a long time, but they could've easily squeezed an episode or 2 out of it.
Did mom have that shock of white hair that aunty did?
Those were from decades before, and they were seen as cheesy in retrospect. Besides, The WB's goal with Smallville was to adapt the Superman story to appeal to the Dawson's Creek audience that was their prime demographic -- an audience that wasn't interested in superhero stories but was interested in teen-focused soap operas.
Consider -- a couple of years after Smallville began, The WB did a Tarzan series that stripped away all the fanciful elements and moved the action to New York City, where Jane Porter was an NYPD detective and John Clayton had already been rescued from the jungle and was trying to adjust to city life. He only referred to himself as "Tarzan" once in the entire series.
And it wasn't just that network. It was the whole trend for quite a while. The Nolan Batman films tried to ground things as much as possible, to minimize the fanciful stuff and provide plausible explanations for what they did keep. The X-Men movies avoided colorful costumes and even actively mocked the idea of them. Even something as recent as Arrow tried to avoid the costumes and nicknames and superpowers in its first season, so as not to scare off the general audience. And Man of Steel was so embarrassed about the name "Superman" that Henry Cavill was only billed as "Kal-El/Clark Kent" in the credits (just as the latter two Nolan films billed Christian Bale solely as "Bruce Wayne" and left "Batman" out of the titles). Even Marvel has started out slow and eased the audience into the zanier stuff -- we got Iron Man first before the more fanciful things like Thor and Thanos started to be introduced, and Agents of SHIELD started out as a network-friendly procedural about a team of non-powered government agents before gradually phasing in more superhero/supervillain stuff. This has been the trend for a long time, to assume that the audience isn't comfortable with the more fanciful elements and thus either minimize them or ease the audience into them gradually.
But we've finally reached a point where that isn't deemed necessary anymore, since the general audience is acclimated to the headier fantasy/sci-fi stuff now. So a superhero show can just be an overt superhero show and embrace the costumes and nicknames and wild powers and all of it. And it's refreshing and wonderful.
I believe he was supposed to be 15 at the start of the series and 24 at the end. I remember noticing that Welling was the same age at the start of the series that Clark was at the end of the series. (And yes, it was 10 seasons, but spanning just over 9 1/2 years, from October 2001 to May 2011.)
I gave up for a while in season 7, because it had become awful, but in season 8 it got new showrunners and became a much better show again for a while, although it floundered again in season 10. Clark finally broke out of his rut and started to embrace being a hero, and it became essentially a Superman series in every respect except that Clark didn't wear the costume, fly, or call himself Superman. They'd pretty much established the entire Justice League and burned through all of Superman's major foes by the time Clark finally put on the cape and tights in the very last moments (but Welling never actually did so on-camera, so it was massively anticlimactic).
I wouldn't buy that. I knew a pair of twin brothers in high school, and once I'd had time to get acquainted with them, it became easy to tell them apart by their mannerisms and subtle differences. And that was just someone I saw for a few hours a week. If you had twins in your family, if you'd grown up around them, you'd probably have an even easier time telling them apart.
Unfortunately, you're right.
Why didn't someone just drive the boat away 5 minutes before Kara showed up?
Not "the whole trend." One year after Smallville's debut (2001), the Raimi Spider-Man films exploded on screen as runaway blockbusters, beginning with Spider-Man (2002), which unabashedly played up the costumed super hero, equally costumed, fantasy-heavy villain, and paid tribute to its source throughout the film. Although the end result of Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) left so much to be desired, there was no avoiding the extremely comic book-based, fantastic character showpiece of a giant green "monster" running loose. There was no hiding it behind attempts to make it "real" for those uncomfortable with (or resentful of) comic book heroes.
When Superman returned in....Singer's Superman Returns (2006), it was released in the middle of efforts such as Smallville and the Singer's own X-Men films, which you say mocked the idea of colorful costumes. Superman Returns--being an unofficial third chapter of the Donner films--never backed off from the costumed man in a cape, doing things right out of the comics in inspiration or appearance.
@Christopher: From that perspective you're right. It's always interesting to observe closely what companies think the general audience can handle or not. Of course I have noticed the teen soap factor, it was hard to miss. I can accept that to a certain amount if it doesn't get out of hand (like with The 100, totally terrible).
Same with Supergirl, I don't really mind the sister or the boss. I guess they will "adjust" the roles a little bit and draw back the annoyance factor. Ally McBean reminds me of Buffy in some shots.
Smallville was sometimes so silly - the storyarc about witchcraft with Jensen Akles. That was really baaaad. Thanks for the summary of season 8 to 10. I never felt much urge to rewatch the thing and add the end this time. To me Smallville is something better to forget.
But I'm really a Superman fan since I had a concussion and had to stay in bed and my neighbour gave me a ton of comics.
As for the other shows/movies. I didn't like Man of Steel and I'm cerainly not waiting for Ben Afflek as Batman. I've watched season 1 of Arrow (very bad acting sometimes, very odd but entertaining). I wait the Flash and the other Arrow to watch it en bloc. Some day... But Superman/Supergirl - that can't wait.
Same with Supergirl, I don't really mind the sister or the boss. I guess they will "adjust" the roles a little bit and draw back the annoyance factor. Ally McBean reminds me of Buffy in some shots.
Smallville was sometimes so silly - the storyarc about witchcraft with Jensen Akles. That was really baaaad. Thanks for the summary of season 8 to 10. I never felt much urge to rewatch the thing and add the end this time. To me Smallville is something better to forget.
But I'm really a Superman fan since I had a concussion and had to stay in bed and my neighbour gave me a ton of comics.
As for the other shows/movies. I didn't like Man of Steel and I'm cerainly not waiting for Ben Afflek as Batman. I've watched season 1 of Arrow (very bad acting sometimes, very odd but entertaining). I wait the Flash and the other Arrow to watch it en bloc. Some day... But Superman/Supergirl - that can't wait.
That movie was about an insecure stalker and his bastard love child.
To a Kryptonian, a human being, 10s of millions of years less evolved, is a primate?
Is it more or less illegal (on Krypton) to marry a primate than your cousin?
Ships like that need tugs to leave the pier. The fire fighter commented that the tugs wouldn't make it in time.