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Why Do All Serious Superhero TV Shows Suck?

Dusty Ayres

Dusty Ayres

Commodore
That's the question this article poses:

Here at TWoP, we bitch a lot about Smallville and Heroes, with their dull characters and their hackneyed and/or convoluted plotlines, but maybe we should stop being so surprised that they're terrible. Because while superhero comedies are usually hysterical (if short-lived -- see The Tick and The Middleman), superhero dramas are often the worst things on television. We looked back on over a decade of terrible super-powered TV, and found that most of the time, we really didn't need a hero.
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Why Do All Serious Superhero TV Shows Suck?
 
Well, if they are going to count some of those shows where the heros don't even have super powers, then they oviously missed shows like "Buffy the Vampire slayer" and "Angel", which did not suck.
 
Ah, but they're talking about shows based on comic book superheroes that can't even have the characters in costume (I'm looking at you, Birds Of Prey & Witchblade!) Not to forget shows like Lois & Clark.
 
Makes me wonder, if they had done "Spectacular Spiderman" as a live-action series instead of a cartoon would it have flopped? Because it had good characterization, plotting and writing. If it did flop, I'll just have to say it's because people just don't like live-action superhero shows.
 
S1 of Heroes proved that there's nothing to stop a serious superhero show from being good. You just need writers who know what they're doing. I have no idea how they could have gone so badly off track after S1, but they didn't have to.

Then the question becomes, why can't these shows attract better writers? Maybe because the really good writers don't want "junk" on their resumes? They'd rather write The Wire for HBO.
 
Plenty of good writers write for stuff that can easily qualify as "junk". "True Blood" and NuBSG could both qualify as junk (NuBSG was closer to that...) but both have good writers and producers. Heck, same for Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dollhouse/Kings. All good writing and writers, all can be considered "junk" depending on how biased a guy is towards sci-fi/fantasy as legitimate writing.

Like I said, the recent Spiderman cartoon could easily have been a live-action show with it's quality.
 
Anwar said:
Plenty of good writers write for stuff that can easily qualify as "junk". "True Blood" and NuBSG could both qualify as junk (NuBSG was closer to that...) but both have good writers and producers. Heck, same for Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dollhouse/Kings. All good writing and writers, all can be considered "junk" depending on how biased a guy is towards sci-fi/fantasy as legitimate writing.

Like I said, the recent Spiderman cartoon could easily have been a live-action show with it's quality.
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The interesting thing about superhero cartoon shows over the past 10+ years is thatmany are very good with writing and direction. Looking over at the DCAU, that's some damn good stuff.

I don't know why that is. Do we, as a viewing audience, come down harder on stuff that is live action and expect more?
 
Maybe it's because superhero comics are usually over-the-top with bulging muscles and explosions and action, and you just can't do that same extreme level with real people and fx so that why live action shows just *feel* different and lesser.
 
RichMerk said:
Maybe it's because superhero comics are usually over-the-top with bulging muscles and explosions and action, and you just can't do that same extreme level with real people and fx so that why live action shows just *feel* different and lesser.
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BULLSHIT!!!!

It's called lazy writing and lazy directing, as well as lazy budgeting.

If they don't want to spend the serious coin to do it live action, let them stick to animation instead.

Either way, they should stop shortchanging people.
 
Dusty Ayres said:
That's the question this article poses:

Here at TWoP, we bitch a lot about Smallville and Heroes, with their dull characters and their hackneyed and/or convoluted plotlines, but maybe we should stop being so surprised that they're terrible. Because while superhero comedies are usually hysterical (if short-lived -- see The Tick and The Middleman), superhero dramas are often the worst things on television. We looked back on over a decade of terrible super-powered TV, and found that most of the time, we really didn't need a hero.
Click to expand...
Why Do All Serious Superhero TV Shows Suck?
Click to expand...

Because they're written by TV writers who panic when they have characters who can solve problems they are faced with easily.

This usually involves someone pulling a lump of Kryptonite out of their arse or their long lost supposedly dead father taking their powers away.

They never think that maybe they're giving these superpowered characters the wrong problems to solve in the first place.
 
There was a live-action Spider-Man show in the 70's, sort of a short-lived companion to The Incredible Hulk. However it's seriously outdated, even more so by the Raimi movies. Although they did okay with the Daily Bugle aspect, pretty much everything else about Spider-Man was utterly missing. Granted, the Hulk show wasn't that similar to the comic either, but Bixby had enough charisma and the show had much better visuals with the green-painted Ferrigno. Nick Hammond's Spider-Man was just kind of a guy in pajamas....

Spider-Man would require a pretty big budget for the web-swinging scenes, I think, as well as a good chunk of the Rogue's gallery, like in the movies.
 
The Rami movies are dated?

Hells bells.

I thought they sucked as they came out.

Now, a 35 Spider-man, played by Bruce Campbell, who had been doing the Job half his life facing off against villains who didn't need 30 minutes of the movie for hackneyed origin filler, because Spidy had already punched them in the nose 30 times before the reels started rolling might have passed the mustard.
 
Broccoli said:
The interesting thing about superhero cartoon shows over the past 10+ years is thatmany are very good with writing and direction. Looking over at the DCAU, that's some damn good stuff.

I don't know why that is. Do we, as a viewing audience, come down harder on stuff that is live action and expect more?
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Quite possibly, those animated shows have given us the "more" but we seem to want something else when it comes to live-action. What exactly is that "more"?
 
Not all "serious" superhero shows suck.

Oat doesn't take into account the first season of The Adventures of Superman before it became strictly a kid's show. That first season is a serious crime drama with a Noir movie quality in both the production and the writing.

Moreover, I disagree with his statements on Lois and Clark because Oat ignores the first season of the series, which, imao, is fun and interesting to watch because of the interaction of Clark and Lois, not only that but the writing is much better than the last few years of Smallville. Now Oat's statements do hold up for the second season onward, especially that last season. Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane, unfortunatly, becomes annoying and dumber as the series goes on.
 
Well, with effects getting better as time goes on that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I mean if space opera shows can afford the alien makeup and the like then it can't be much more money for superhero/villain costumes and their fancy equipment they use.
 
Makeup is one thing, but excitingly choreographed action? Network TV series just don't have the time or money for that kind of thing unfortunately. That's why sometimes it feels like half the fight scenes on Heroes happen behind closed doors or during a commercial break.
 
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