Hopefully they do better than say, Vartox, when using legacy villains.
Spoilers Supergirl - Season 2
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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I don't think that was the point.
Bear in mind the context and time of that interview, it was after the show was announced when the general media and fandom reaction was "Who wants to watch a Batman show without Batman?", so that interview to me reads more like "No, no, guys, this is really true Batman stuff, honest! Give it a shot."
So despite that, I'm still not convinced they could do Batman on the show.
Frankly, I think he was fibbing when he implied they could jump ahead. Note he didn't explicitly say how far ahead they could jump. Also, when he says they have "all the rights", there is a caveat of "for this series" at the end of that sentence. They did not negotiate a deal for Batman franchise rights and then decided to do a series with a 12 year-old Bruce Wayne, the process was reverse, they pitched a series about young Jim Gordon (and a kid Bruce Wayne) and acquired the rights for that context.
Besides just ask yourself, if they actually had rights to Batman, at a time when superheroes are an extremely popular phenomenon across the globe, which network would acquire the rights to arguably the most popular superhero ever and then not use them?
Ok. But if this is the case, can we then make the argument that the producers of this show are MONUMENTALLY stupid? You get the rights to the whole of the Batman franchise. You then choose to use every single element of that license EXCEPT Batman. Even their marketing is largely "Look at what Batman character we're using next!"
I more or less gave up on Gotham in S1, but I watched two episodes of S2 because somebody I work with said it had improved. (I disagreed and dropped the show yet again. Honestly, I think it's a terrible, terrible show.) They're using all of Batman's rogues, but no Bat. At this point, just put Gordon in the damn suit. It makes as much sense as anything else they've done.
Thus, I don't think they actually have the rights to Batman himself. They can claim they do publicly all they want, but the proof is in the pudding. If you had the rights to the most famous and popular superhero in the world, and you didn't actually use him, you're dumb. Even for Hollywood, which I give no credit whatsoever, that's stupid.
Compare with Supergirl. They spent S1 avoiding Kal-El as best they could, so that they could build up Kara and make sure she was the centerpiece of her own show. But now? Superman front and center. I expect him to be a solid recurring presence from now on, as he should be. Ignoring whole elements of your world is foolish and limiting.
^ They ARE using Batman; they're just not putting him in the suit.
Personally, I think what they've done with the license thus far has been brilliant, as they've managed to craft a story that feels very much rooted in the mythos, but without treading "old ground".
Plus, it's been fun getting to see a new and different take on the motivators that eventually lead Bruce to put on that cowl.
Personally, I think what they've done with the license thus far has been brilliant, as they've managed to craft a story that feels very much rooted in the mythos, but without treading "old ground".
Plus, it's been fun getting to see a new and different take on the motivators that eventually lead Bruce to put on that cowl.
I'm not sure that's even the producers' fault. The original idea, judging from the early announcements, appeared to be to do a cop drama about Jim Gordon and his struggle to clean up the Gotham PD. Just like Smallville was originally trying to repurpose the Superman mythos to appeal to non-comics fans by turning it into a Roswell-like teen-alien drama, so Gotham was supposed to offer a corner of the Batman mythos that would appeal to audiences more interested in gritty cop dramas than capes and cowls. (Remember, Smallville was originally going to be Bruce Wayne, but they switched it from teen Bruce to teen Clark to avoid conflicting with the Batman movie plans that were then underway.) But Smallville started in a time when superheroes were still seen as a niche interest, something you'd want to minimize your association with to maximize audience appeal. Now, by contrast, superheroes are the biggest thing in media, and everyone wants to get on the bandwagon that they shied away from 15 years ago. So it seemed to me like someone at the network must've panicked at the idea of a Gotham show that avoided the familiar Batman mythos and insisted that all those popular Batman elements be grafted onto the pre-Batman premise. So we ended up with this clumsy, tonally inconsistent hybrid trying to be both a gritty crime drama about Gordon and a campy superhero show about Batman's world at the same time.
Although that could still be the producers' fault, in the sense that they didn't have enough faith in their original premise to commit to it fully and stand up to the pressure to make it a pseudo-Batman show.
Or maybe it's just that viewers today have so much less patience. Everything has to unfold at a faster pace. Smallville was able to take its time getting to key plot points or the introduction of familiar characters. It was something like four years before Lois showed up, another year or two before Jimmy showed up, and we got maybe one new Superman archvillain per year. New characters discovered Clark's secret once every 2-3 seasons. These days, everything is so much faster-paced. In Arrow's first season, a new character discovered Oliver's secret practically every four episodes like clockwork. The current crop of superhero shows pile on familiar comics characters and elements from the start and introduce new ones almost weekly, and big revelations come several times a season. There's just no room for a slow burn anymore. Gotham's premise should've been the ultimate slow burn, taking years to gradually fold in or foreshadow familiar elements from the comics, but instead they've tried to cram in everything as soon as they could. The problem isn't that they lacked the rights to Batman; the problem is that they lacked the patience to commit to a consistently pre-Batman story.
I had been thinking that Arrow killing off their Suicide Squad related characters was because of the movie, but now I'm wondering if it was because of Gotham. A lot of the Suicide Squad characters are also associated with Batman, so if Gotham got the rights to all of the Batman related characters, that might have also limited or prevented other shows from being able to use them. I think not wanting two shows to use the characters at the same time would be make a lot more sense then being worried about shows and movies using them.
I don't think they ever wanted to make Gotham a Batman show, it's always been a origin story for Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne. I don't see any reason to think they the producers couldn't use Batman if they wanted to, they have just chosen not to, for now at least.
Ben McKenzie even made a comment during a SDCC that has lead some people to believe we might see Jim Gordon take on the role of Batman before the next season is over.
If the embargo on Suicide Squad characters was due to Gotham, there would've been an embargo placed on R'as al Ghul, Nyssa al Ghul, and the League of Assassins as well.
I'm pretty sure that somebody associated with the Suicide Squad movie asked Warner Bros. to embargo the characters, which meant retroactively stopping Arrow from using them further.
I'm pretty sure that somebody associated with the Suicide Squad movie asked Warner Bros. to embargo the characters, which meant retroactively stopping Arrow from using them further.
Oh, come off it man, we're nerds. You know damn well most of us can remember dialogue from a thirty-year old episode better than we can recall what the girl was wearing the night we lost our virginity.
They have killed of R'as and Nyssa isn't as big of a deal as the other al Ghul sister. We did see Talia briefly in Legends of Tomorrow, but that was as a kid, and I honestly can't remember if her name was even said on screen.
I could easily see them being allowed to continue using Nyssa as long as they avoided Talia.
I just saw on IGN that Season 1 comes out on home video tomorrow.
I could easily see them being allowed to continue using Nyssa as long as they avoided Talia.
I just saw on IGN that Season 1 comes out on home video tomorrow.
Christopher will hate this, but if this rumor is true... then the merging of Earth-SG with Earth Arrow will commence by the end of the year (from the ArrowVerse website).
A lot of handwaving.. as someone who started with TOS, that's easy for me to do....and I think just fine for DC-CW fans... as long as it doesn't negatively impact each show (i.e. character dynamics), I think it will be fine...and have a lot less contrived reasons for team-ups or cameos.
I also see this as some kind of Justice League build-up in the future.. (maybe as a mini-series... it would be good team-work marketing if they did such a miniseries event when the JL movie opens)
A lot of handwaving.. as someone who started with TOS, that's easy for me to do....and I think just fine for DC-CW fans... as long as it doesn't negatively impact each show (i.e. character dynamics), I think it will be fine...and have a lot less contrived reasons for team-ups or cameos.
I also see this as some kind of Justice League build-up in the future.. (maybe as a mini-series... it would be good team-work marketing if they did such a miniseries event when the JL movie opens)
BAD BAD IDEA, first of all why should flashpoint have such a huge effect on Earth 3 or whatever its called. Supergirl should remain connected via the multiverse only and not part of Earth Prime. If they screw with the history of Arrow & Flash and the whole verse to force Supergirl into everything then a backlash will probably occur within the fanbase and turn people off.
Ewwe! 
Scandalous!
I refuse to believe that is real...
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