But you seemed to be saying that meant they would fade out when the "next thing" came along. Sure, as far as ephemeral trends go, everything has its ups and downs, but that mustn't be confused with long-term cultural legacy.
Spoilers Supergirl - Season 2
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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According to Wikipedia, Hercules has had a role (not necessarily starring) in five movies - Little Hercules (2009), Immortals (2011), The Legend of Hercules (2014), Hercules (2014), Hercules Reborn (2014), and three tv shows Class of the Titans, BBC One's Atlantis and Once Upon a Time in the last ten years, and about three times as many overall.
It's great to be in the public domain!
Just curious, but how many of those did you actually watch?
None of the movies, caught a few episodes of OUAT - but probably not the ones with Herc in them. Mostly familiar with the character from the Marvel Comics version and a couple of terms of Ancient Myths as part of History class back in high school.
Mark Addy's Hercules was the best thing about the BBC's mediocre Atlantis series. He was a very revisionist Hercules, a middle-aged, overweight drunkard and perennial screwup whose heroic legend existed mostly in his own mind, but he was a hell of a lot more interesting than the bland heroic lead Jason, and Addy's performance was absolutely brilliant.
I think it's a fair bet that most people who remember the Disney animated Hercules movie, remember it more for James Woods as Hades than the title character. I've seen that movie twice and can barely recall any non-Hades related details, beyond the superficial.
I suspect part of the trouble is that there's no *definitive* version of these characters. Sure, depending when you grew up some versions might to come mind soon than others be they Costner, Flynn, Fairbanks (or for me, it's this guy, because this!) but none of them *are* Robin Hood the way Chris Reeves is still Superman for most people. Same goes from King Arthur despite according to this, new versions of him are coming in thick and fast. It's like trying to think of a definitive portrayal of 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Sherlock Holmes' or any of those fictional characters in the nativity play. The characters are simply more famous than the people playing them for anything to have any real traction.
I think I'm going to call this the 'reboot event horizon', that is the point beyond which people stop bitching about all the reboots and just accept it as the next in an endless series of retelling of a timeless story.
So by that highly scientific and precise metric, Superman, Batman and Spider-Man ain't quite there yet.
While it's certainly possible, I think it's still waaaay too early to make that assertion. Give it another century or three.
That said, when I listed Arthur and Robin Hood, I realised those were pretty Anglocentic examples so I tried to think of some American examples and came up dry...apart from Superman. So I guess what I'm saying is that at least as far as the US is concerned, Superman is the closest thing they have to such a figure that's all their own. So at the moment, while he's not quite on par with those others, there's not much in the way of long term competition...except perhaps Darth Vader. But still, time will tell.
Mind you, I couldn't think of many other such figures period. Oh sure, I know me some Greeco Roman myths, some ancient Egyptian cosmology and even some random fables from Norse, African, Chinese, Japanese and Australian Aboriginal, but no figures that were anywhere near as well known (at least in vague terms) as those three.
Doesn't Hercules and Xena actually demonstrate the danger that introducing a character such as Superman could risk overshadowing the nominal hero(ine)?
Within her own show? No. If Superman became that popular, he'd probably get a spinoff, like Xena did.
Kreisberg said in the interview that the writers simply haven't wanted to use Superman more than they have. They're using him now because he has a specific role to play in one specific story they want to tell. But what they've wanted all along is to tell stories about Supergirl. She's the one whose story they chose to tell. Superman's story has been told many times already.
So I'm going to take the lesson that Supergirl and Cat Grant have taught us, and not let my reaction to this be shaped by fear or the reflex to assume the worst.
Just seemed like an odd example to use to make the point, going from Xena overshadowing Hercules in his own show to there's no guarantee that Superman's presence would overshadow Supergirl.
I'd say they're still kind of borderline. Old enough that they've lasted a while, but honestly in danger of fading into obscurity (think 'John Carter'.) Certainly quite a bit closer to the REH than Superman though. See also: Peter Pan, Dorothy Gale, Gandalf, Long John Silver, Captain Nemo etc. etc.
I'm a bit dubious about Zorro though as he seems like he's basically a reinvention of Robin Hood. Mind you, that might also be said for Batman. They're both very much archetypes so it's a bit tricky figuring out what's actually famous in the long run: the character itself of the current incarnation of a much older archetype.
I wouldn't say Xena overshadowed Hercules on his own show.
Xena the TV series was the more popular of the two shows, but it's not like people kept watching Hercules just to see if Xena will make an appearance.
There's a similar situation in the Arrowverse itself already, Flash spun off from Arrow, and is the more popular of the two, but the crossovers are still very much Arrow episodes with Flash guest starring.
And just like the Flash didn't overshadow Supergirl when he was a guest on her world, I see no reason to think that Superman would.
Also, they're not gonna do a Superman TV show anytime soon, that's for sure, so I wouldn't worry about Supergirl getting overshadowed as a series.
But she didn't overshadow him in his own show. Where did you get that idea? Xena appeared in only three first-season Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episodes before getting her own spinoff entitled Xena: Warrior Princess, and she appeared in only three more Hercules episodes in the subsequent five seasons. (Although Lucy Lawless appeared in a total of eight HTLJ episodes and one movie, since she played two different characters on the show before getting cast as Xena. But the character of Xena herself appeared in only six out of HTLJ's 111 episodes.) Hercules continued to be the star of his own show, but Xena's separate show proved to be the more popular and enduring of the two.
The point of the analogy, which I thought was self-evident, is that a well-established male hero with generations of myth and cultural legacy behind him was unexpectedly overshadowed by a newly invented female character that spun off from him. Superman is a well-established male hero with a long-standing cultural legacy, and Supergirl is a female character spun off from him two decades later. So Supergirl is obviously the Xena in this analogy, not the Hercules -- though of course she has the advantage over Xena that she's already existed for 57 years herself, even though her previous screen exposure has been quite limited compared to Superman.
I think you're hurting your own argument with that list. Just because people don't bitch about recasting a character/retelling a story, it doesn't make that character a bigger success than other characters for whom that's still true. Certainly I would say that (over a roughly similar time span, at least when considering that the big picture is measured in centuries), Superman and Batman have easily had a far bigger impact and better staying power than Gandalf, Long John Silver and Captain Nemo. Possibly also Peter Pan, though I'm a little iffy on that one. Dorothy is probably at around the same level as them.
I was being more than a little facetious with the whole 'reboot event horizon' thing. I'm not proposing it's a defining factor so much as a semi-humorous side-effect of a character being around for a long enough time.
Those ones I listed were just other borderline cases. Ones that you could argue in either direction since they're not (yet) as ubiquitous as the likes of King Arthur and Robin Hood, but that there's enough versions of them that it's hard to pin down a definitive one. I admit that in the case of Dorothy that's significantly less the case as Judy Garland's version has some serious staying power. I was just struggling to think of non-Anglo or Eurocentric examples again.
I also wasn't drawing a direct comparison between those characters in terms of impact or staying power, just that they're all characters from the last century or so that most people would have at least heard of, even though they might not know anything else but the name. There's really no point trying to do that anyway, since things come-in and go out of fashion and a certain character's "impact" may be huge for a while, but then slides into obscurity within a few generations. You often get secondary and even tertiary sources that are influenced by the now obscure source material, but you could go on forever with that sort of thing. See: 'Princess of Mars'/'Flash Gordon' > 'Star Wars' > literally any sci-fi adventure adventure since '77.
Conversely you get characters with low impact but somehow outlive their contemporaries and just seem to stick around in the background for decades, if not centuries.
Despite not being the more established character she is the star of her series which would make her the "Hercules" in this example, no? It seems like mixed metaphors to me at least.
Xena was the star of her own series too, a series that spun off of Hercules. Supergirl is essentially a spinoff itself, in a way; it's a new continuity, but it's presented as a continuation of a pre-existing Superman narrative that has its key elements in common with most prior Superman stories. In any case, both Superman and Hercules are characters that have a well-established history of which the specific television series under discussion is merely one facet. I'm not talking in terms of in-show continuity, I'm talking in terms of the wider public reaction to an established male mythic icon vs. a less established, derivative female character. Of course it's not an exactly perfect analogy, but no analogy is meant to be exact.
And of course I'm not saying that the Supergirl situation is guaranteed to be identical to the Xena situation. I'm just saying that Xena's breakout popularity shows that you can't assume the more established character is certain to overshadow the less established one.
Five new cast members for Supergirl - 2 regular and 3 recurring:
Further information here
It's pretty easy to see these character types and personalities filling roles that were already present in season one. I thought it a safe bet we would lose some cast, but it could turn out to be a mass exodus.
Further information here
It's pretty easy to see these character types and personalities filling roles that were already present in season one. I thought it a safe bet we would lose some cast, but it could turn out to be a mass exodus.
It does not say we are losing any cast members. I think there is a big difference between reoccuring guest stars and regular cast members. Reoccuring characters are often fazed out when their purposes are no longer needed.
Hmm, I wonder if Nick Farrow is going to be another fake out character? The description talks about "bringing out the hero", which makes me think he'll end up a superhero character, but there is no Nick Farrow on the DC Comics Database.
EDIT: I thought it had already been reported that everybody from Season 1 was coming back? Just because they're adding new characters doesn't mean we'll be losing people.
EDIT: I thought it had already been reported that everybody from Season 1 was coming back? Just because they're adding new characters doesn't mean we'll be losing people.
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