Search options (Page 55 of 80)

I can't see this working at all. Frank loves Karen. I don't know that it's necessarily romantic, but there is a devotion. A caring that goes beyond pleasantries and deeply into respect, appreciation, longing, and there is nothing Karen could say that could keep him away if she were in danger nor would he keep his distance even if Bullseye's only trying to scare her. And if Frank doesn't answer Karen's phone call or isn't at her doorstep within an hour of a voicemail, then Frank is being written out of character.

There is no way to mention Frank briefly and have him be unavailable when a person he cherishes and treasures and to whom he has the utmost loyalty and respect is being hunted without having Bernthal onscreen to establish that he's physically unable to get to Karen for whatever reason and the only way to make that plausible would be to turn it into a PUNISHER story when it's a season of DAREDEVIL. I don't think Frank is in love with Karen -- I don't think he's over his wife and he may never recover from her loss, but (by process of elimination), Karen is the most important person in the world to him. Could YOUR wife convince you to stay away if she were in trouble?

What explanation would satisfy? Frank had food poisoning? Constipation? Flu? Silent retreat in the wilderness? Would any of these convincingly keep Frank away?

This is pretty much they were going for, I think. They couldn't come up with a convincing answer, so they decided not to raise the question. If Bernthal had been available, they probably could have done a few episodes where Frank is helping Karen but Frank is injured or arrested by the Fisk-corrupted FBI and taken out of the series until he escapes for the finale and helps Matt get through security to confront Fisk in his penthouse. You could even do a thing where Frank sizes Bullseye up, determines that he can't beat him and leaves it to Matt and Matt's supersenses, choosing to focus on helping Karen instead. But the actor was filming his own show.

If I HAD to explain it, I would probably say that there were many, many, many more attempts on Karen's life than we actually saw onscreen and Frank was dealing with them off camera so covertly, so quietly and in such a black-ops manner that nobody ever knew he was there. A similar joke was made in an AVENGERS comic (actually, it was an issue of THE ULTIMATES) where Hawkeye yells at Quicksilver for not helping out in a battle against Ultron and Quicksilver says that he saved Hawkeye's life 30 - 40 times at superspeed and he's annoyed that Hawkeye isn't grateful. Or that episode of COMMUNITY where Jack Black was edited into flashbacks or that episode of LOST that I can't remember, but I know you like LOST references.

Karen will be in PUNISHER's upcoming season, but I'm not sure how much she'll be in it as the actress was busy filming DAREDEVIL.

My guess -- and it is just a guess -- they simply couldn't get Frank's actor in Season 3 to the degree in which they would have needed him. He's a difficult character to bring in for a cameo and usher away if Karen's in danger and you'd spend the rest of the season wondering why he didn't come back. So rather they decided not to raise the issue at all. It reminds me of when Worf got married on DEEP SPACE NINE and production could only secure appearances for Riker and LaForge, which would leave the audience wondering if Picard, Data, Crusher and Troi didn't like Worf anymore, so rather than bring up a question that could not be satisfactorily addressed, it was set aside entirely.

Hey, Slider_Quinn21 -- since you've seen FALLOUT now -- what do you think of seeing Ethan Hunt in this movie as an image of what Quinn Mallory would be in his forties? Posts below:

http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7578#p7578
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7645#p7645

The expectation for reshoots is that they're for a limited number of insert shots for pre-existing sequences such as, say, one shot of Captain America sitting at a table. Under this expectation, actors usually aren't asked to retain their principal photography look as a wig or a slightly different figure or a computer-generated jawline isn't going to be noticeable in brief shots added to otherwise complete scenes.

In the case of FANTASTIC FOUR and JUSTICE LEAGUE, the stories were radically restructured in the reshoots with completely new scenes that don't fit into the principal footage. The majority of Superman's scenes in JUSTICE LEAGUE were filmed by Whedon.

I am guessing that the original material with Superman set in a soft cliffhanger where the he'd fought off the Anti-Life Equation (which had infected him in the BVS Knightmare sequence), but Darkseid would be coming to Earth after Steppenwolf's failure and Darkseid might retrigger the Equation and turn Superman into an agent of Apokolips with the plot to be resolved in JUSTICE LEAGUE II. But when Zack Snyder decided to leave both JUSTICE LEAGUE and the DCEU, WB decided to reshoot all of Superman's scenes to offer conclusive closure. Just a theory, of course.

While Paramount was within their rights to refuse to shut down M:I's filming, they'd better hope they never need WB to do them a solid. Admittedly, Paramount might safeguard against that by making sure to contract their actors to maintain their filming appearance any extensive reshoots -- or by having a policy of hiring directors and writers to make movies and then let the resulting product stand or fall without attempting to turn the project into something else mid-filming. WB could have asked a new director to resolve the hypothetical Snyder plot without him.

My opinion is that SUPERNATURAL is not the real world and that a planet Earth with monsters and angels and demons roaming the streets, even in secret, would be in a very different political place from our world. Dean has spent most of his life living off the grid; I can't imagine him bothering with politics.

I think trying to figure out if he voted for Trump or Clinton or third party or whatever is searching for something that just doesn't exist -- and honestly, I don't think we should bring it into existence. For all my Views about Informant, I would prefer that Informant could look at Dean and see whatever he needs to see. It's already tough for him when Superman is presented as an alien citizen of the world who was raised by a hologram of Jor-El instead of being Clark Kent raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent in Kansas. I would not wish to add to his burden.

There's also the fact that many, many, many different writers and showrunners have written for Dean and many fans have reacted to Dean differently and created their own Dean.

For example, Lauren's personal vision of Dean: he's bisexual. I cannot see this at all; Dean to me is one of the most hilariously, ridiculously heterosexual men on television and while I don't think he's homophobic, he's averse to homosexuality. It makes him uncomfortable. If he saw two men kissing, he would avert his eyes, apologize for his discomfort, declare he's trying to give them privacy and then say something like, "My problem, not yours. You do you, boys."

I don't really see Dean as a sexual harasser, either. Yes, Dean is very into casual sex, but Dean's attitude to women seems to be to approach with a compliment and a willing smile and then let the woman make the next move or fail to in which case he immediately moves on to another prospect. Dean is also deeply, innately unattracted to women who are unassertive; if a woman didn't seem interested in flirting back with him, Dean would lose interest straightaway. Dean wants women who match his sex drive.

The pre-1944 Superman was a very different character from the post-1986 Clark Kent. Jonathan and Martha Kent had died when Superman was 18 or so. The characters were at most cameos. There was the sense that Superman (as opposed to Clark) had an amiable but distant relationship with his parents; he never mentioned them, it was like they didn't exist -- and there was the sense that Superman based his identity on the databank in his spaceship and the Fortress of Solitude and spent most of his childhood in hiding until his parents died and he made his debut as Superman.

However, this was undermined in 1944 when Superboy debuted and showed Superman's career as a teenager and depicted Jonathan and Martha Kent in a loving, close relationship with their adopted son. The Superman and Superboy comics were hopelessly at odds, having teen versions of Lois and Clark meet each other in contradiction to their first encounters in the Superman comics. Superman's origin story would be updated with his Superboy career in flashback issues, but Superman and Superboy would continue presenting two irreconciliable versions of their lead character and his life with Superboy as a very American and human character and Superman as an extremely alien character for whom "Clark Kent" was a constructed psych experiment. There was the (probably unintended) implication that the death of Jonathan and Martha would lead to Superman drifting from his humanity except in terms of the "Clark" identity.

The Superboy adventures were (retroactively) declared to have taken place in a "pocket universe" separate from the main DC Universe, although this had less to do with the Superboy/Superman contradictions and more to do with explaining how the Legion of Super Heroes could have featured a Superboy who never existed after the 1986 reboot. The 2010 Secret Origin mini-series, however, restored Superboy to Clark's origin story and fit in a lot better with the modern Clark Kent than the pre-1986 Superman.

Anyway. My point is that the alien Superman is just as valid a take as Clark Kent of Kansas. Yes, Clark Kent has become the main personality and this has ultimately proven to be a good move and a natural progression for the character. But every adaptation should feel free to choose whatever aspects of Superman suit its purpose whether it's the alien Superman or the human Clark and SUPERGIRL, in depicting Kara's role model, chose to have Superman reflect more of his Kryptonian heritage in his dialogue which served as an effective contrast to Kara being more defined by her human connections.

My niece and I were recently having a conversation. She told me that she's in the process of separating her online handle from her real name because, as a film student hoping to enter the industry, she doesn't want her real name to show up in association with her fan fiction. "Are you ashamed of your writing?" I asked her. "I mean, your descriptions could use some work, but the stories are solid like Dean and Cas being ice skaters."

"I just don't want that stuff to represent me," she said in a slightly evasive fashion. So I turned it around, asking her: should I be worried that my name is on my SLIDERS REBORN scripts? She replied that I wasn't looking to get into the film industry and even if I were, those scripts wouldn't be a problem because SLIDERS REBORN actually looks like scripts. They were written in screenwriting software. "Also, I've looked through your stuff and there isn't anything to be embarrassed about. I mean, you basically wrote STAR TREK novels. They're media tie-ins. If there were SLIDERS novels, you could probably have sold them."

"So what you're saying," I said cautiously, "is that your writing is embarrassing in a professional context because it delves into your fetishes and your desire to see two attractive men kissing and having sex whereas my writing is acceptable because it's an attempt to meet the professional format and falls within the content restrictions and also because my material isn't particularly romantic and not at all sexual."

"Yes," she said.

Hunnh. I have to say, it really bothers me that she doesn't feel comfortable putting her name on her writing, but there is that old saying that autobiographies can lie but fiction reveals all. I, personally, am very proud of what my fanfic says about me and it's a significantly more flattering image than the flawed reality of the actual me.

Conversation with the niece!

IB: "So, something I noticed in the episode with the resurrected zombie boyfriend and the serial killer shopgirl -- "

LAUREN: "Yeah?"

IB: "Well, at two points in the episode, Jack and Dean have a clear line of fire to take Harper the Serial Killer Shopgirl out -- but they don't take it. They're keen to stop the zombie boyfriend, but the direction and the blocking and editing are very careful not to show them being physically aggressive towards a woman."

LAUREN: "Well, yeah."

IB: "And a couple seasons ago -- the British Men of Letters organization turned Sam and Dean's mother into a brainwashed assassin who'd killed any number of Sam and Dean's friends. So when they corner the lady who runs the Men of Letters, Sam should be well within his rights to execute this psychotic murderess -- she's declared honest-to-God, all-out war on hunters which is the moral equivalent of sending a sniper after firemen and paramedics. But Sam waits for the lady to pull her weapon BEFORE he shoots her."

LAUREN: "Yeah, it's totally justifiable -- but the show just doesn't want to show men killing women onscreen. Because even if it's not real, it's still -- it's a really disturbing image in real-world situations because in real life, when men kill women, it's about power and dominance and control and SUPERNATURAL doesn't want to endorse that or have footage for that."

IB: "Well, for the third time -- Harper is a serial killer."

LAUREN: "Oh, like Sam and Dean haven't murdered lots of people."

IB: "Like who!? I mean, there was that lady whose blood Sam drank, but she was possessed by a demon -- and there was the werewolf mercy killing -- "

LAUREN: "How about that Frankenstein family member who got dragged into breaking into the bunker?"

IB: "Oh, that's fine."

LAUREN: "How was that fine!?"

IB: "He was part of a home invasion! I'm sorry, but you invade someone's home, you die. Sam and Dean will never feel safe in the bunker again!"

LAUREN: "Oh, I hate the bunker. Sam and Dean are supposed to be working class heroes; I don't like them being heirs to the Men of Letters legacy."

I've set up a Create Account link in the top menu. It links to a Google Form that allows people to submit their username and email of choice. The form will send me any username requests and I can use that to create new accounts for people instead of asking them to email me personally. This isn't ideal, but the PunBB software hasn't been updated in some time and its extensions for spambot filtering have been falling into disrepair. I'm wondering if it's time to switch to something else, but I'm hesitant to move this Bboard to new software after all the upheaval of the past.

I also disabled the mobile theme as it wasn't working well with new mobile browsers.

Tyler Hoechlin's Superman is great; he's just not the Superman whom Informant wants to see. Informant has an extremely particular vision of Superman based on the 1986 John Byrne reboot and the SMALLVILLE series. Prior to 1986, Superman was the alien inheritor of the legacy of Krypton's culture and technology who disguised himself as Clark Kent for what looked like a bizarre sociological experiment.

Given that Informant threw a fit over one line of dialogue where Hoechlin's Superman referred to English as "your language," I think it's safe to say he wouldn't enjoy this version of Superman.

Pre-1970, there wasn't a lot of thought put into WHY Superman pretended to be Clark beyond (a) positioning himself at the Daily Planet to catch news of emergencies that needed Superman and (b) giving Superman a vulnerable human persona so readers could relate to him. Elliot S! Maggin, the primary Superman writer of the 1970s, took the view that Superman enjoyed living as Clark the way cosplayers enjoy dressing up as Superman; Superman found civilian life thrilling. But there were a lot of challenges with this character and that led to the 1986 reboot.

The 1986 reboot Superman determinedly does *not* see himself as Kal-El of Krypton, son of Jor-El. He thinks of himself as Clark Kent, son of Jonathan and Martha. The reboot goes so far as to say Kryptonians don't have sex but harvest sperm and eggs to be formulated in a mechanical "matrix" which only completed 'birthing' Clark after the pod landed in Kansas. Clark only discovers his Kryptonian origins at age 36 from a holographic Jor-El. "I may have been conceived out there in the depths of space," says Clark, "but I was born when the rocket opened on Earth, in America."

He respects his Kryptonian heritage and the hologram uploads a vast databank of Kryptonian knowledge into his brain, but this character is distinctly Clark Kent with Superman being his disguise. This version was certainly a much stronger *character* in contrast to the complex, alien, unknowable Superman before 1986. Since the reboot, every film and TV adaptation has gravitated to the Kansas farmboy version.

But it is untrue to claim that Clark of Kansas is only acceptable version of this character. The original was good enough for 48 years and created a media empire that continues to this day. Both versions of the character have their advantages and disadvantages. At times, Informant blowing a gasket over Superman being presented as a strange visitor from another world reminds me of John Rhys-Davies having a tantrum over not seeing himself in how Arturo is written.

Tyler Hoechlin's Superman is neither lacking in strength nor devoid of presence -- he just isn't strong or present in the ways that Informant wants, but all of Superman's actors have had their strengths and weaknesses.

Christopher Reeve played the alien Superman and he exuded warmth, charisma and he had the physicality to convince you that he was flying instead of dangling from wires, but his Clark was such a bundle of comical mannerisms that it made him seem sociopathic and self-torturing in his desire to live as a belittled incompetent who annoyed the people around him. Any time Reeve's Superman or Clark interact with anybody -- Lois, Jimmy, Perry, strangers -- there's a situational falseness that isn't part of Reeve's performance.

This culminated in KILL BILL II: the villain remarked that Clark Kent's clumsy unassertiveness looked like Superman's contemptuous critique of all human beings. This leaves one wondering why Superman bothers to protect us at all. It is the primary weakness of the pre-1986 Superman and why the reboot reversed nearly all of these characteristics.

Dean Cain's Clark Kent was the 1986 Clark. Cain had a superhuman grace, charm and politeness that was truthful, allowing this Clark to have emotional arcs and actual relationships. However, his Superman was awkward. To differentiate Clark from Superman, Cain's Superman was simply Clark with Cain suppressing all his natural mannerisms and clearly feeling awkward and silly in his costume.

It's noticeable that Cain's Clark is a full-bodied performance while his Superman never quite knows how tall to stand or how to move with the cape or where to hold his hands. Thankfully, Superman was at most a cameo role in a show where Clark was the leading man. And this is the main failing of the post-1986 Superman: there is no distinction between Clark Kent and Superman, undermining the plausibility of Clark going unrecognized and failing to create any meaningful conflict involving Superman's dual-identity because, in terms of characterization, he doesn't have one.

Tom Welling was unusual in that Welling isn't much of an actor. Welling played himself onscreen and his Clark exuded Tom's own warmth, care and kindness matched with Tom's incredible physical presence. As a male model and amateur athlete, Welling had Reeve's ability to convey superhuman powers through his natural body language. Welling is the sort of person who spends his free time going to toy stores, buying out their inventory and sitting quietly in his living room wrapping them one-by-one and then driving them to various children's charities before Christmas. Welling reportedly earned no salary on the SMALLVILLE series finale, redistributing his pay to offer Michael Rosenbaum a bigger paycheque to win him for two days of filming.

Welling's personality was perfectly in sync with his character (although not always with the writing which made Clark seem selfish and indifferent). He also did a great job with performing the withdrawn and solitary Clark Kent in contrast to his Red Kryptonite affected persona and his alternate universe double, both of whom had a swaggering, dominant physicality that the usual Clark didn't.

When watching him onscreen in Seasons 1, 8, 9 and 10, the truth of his performance overcomes his weaknesses as a performer -- which are many. His perfect screen presence is marred by a lack of technical ability as an actor. His enunciation can be awkward such as his inability to pronounce "vigilante." His reactions to events and other actors are muted. He performs poorly with post-filming special effects; note his blankness when conversing with onscreen doubles and see that Tom cannot pretend he isn't looking at a tennis ball on a string.

Over time, this was finessed into his Clark being a thoughtful, low-key personality and it added a beautiful gentleness to his persona as he supersped into burning buildings, gunfights and car wrecks. Tom Welling and the SMALLVILLE special effects team made saving people look exciting and awe-inspiring and conveyed Clark's power and compassion.

And this is where the Brandon Routh Superman crashed hard. SUPERMAN RETURNS has no combat; Superman spends the film saving people just like Clark on SMALLVILLE, but SUPERMAN RETURNS directed in such a dull, unexciting fashion that there's almost no visceral intensity aside from the plane crash. Brandon Routh, as directed, was asked to play Superman and Clark Kent as the same low-key, quiet personality, much like Welling, but with far less scripting.

In fact, Routh was so underwritten in SUPERMAN RETURNS that it's hard to understand why this Clark Kent works at a newspaper (can't he get news of emergencies on a smartphone?) or even bothers with a civilian identity (the only person Clark has a relationship with is his mother). While Routh has the physicality to convince that he's superhuman, it's noticeable that where Reeve and Welling could shift between personas, Routh needs the blue contact lenses, S-curl hairstyle, costume and wire effects to be Superman. In SUPERMAN RETURNS, Routh might as well be a CG animatic considering how little personality the script provided him to perform. Routh's Superman is a blank slate.

In contrast, Henry Cavill in MAN OF STEEL is filled with personality, arguably personality enough for five separate movies. He's the teenager itching to flee his small town; he's the wandering nomad keeping his distance from others; he's the guilt-tormented son who let his father die; he's the humble inheritor to the legacy of Jor-El; he's the god who surrenders to humanity in order to defend them. Kal-El of Krypton, Clark Kent of Kansas and Superman the superhero are different combinations of all these personas, but Cavill is quite definitive that he is from Kansas.

The 1986 incarnation of Superman began shifting towards this multi-faceted identity in 2000 as Superman began to explore his Kryptonian heritage more while identifying as American. The change cemented fully in 2006 with writers Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns fully committing to the multi-identity situation. This version of Superman is less likely to default to American culture and seeks to balance his alien and human heritage. This led to a brief arc where Superman renounced his American citizenship and Informant had that nervous breakdown with him shrieking pre-MAN OF STEEL that Henry Cavill couldn't possibly play Superman because Cavill was a foreigner.

It was a dark time for SLIDERS fandom. I like to think we made it through, and now we come to Tyler Hoechlin. Hoechlin is playing a very different Superman from the previous actors. Reeve, Welling, Routh and Cavill were all struggling to shoulder their responsibilities, but Hoechlin's Superman has a decade of experience and found his bliss.

He isn't juggling two legacies; he's settled into both. He isn't working through his identity confusion around Lois; they're a very happy couple. He isn't nervous about his relationships; he works closely with scientists to share Kryptonian technology with humanity but holds the DEO at a distance because they want to be ready to kill him. He keeps watch on Kara but keeps his distance with texts and instant messaging because he doesn't want to be a helicopter parent.

The result is a Superman who is at the end of his character arc with his demons vanquished and his conflicts resolved. Even when disgruntled with the DEO, Hoechlin's Superman is all civility and graciousness, making sure to shake hands and thank DEO staff for all their hard work.  Hoechlin's Superman isn't designed for internal conflict or personal struggle, not because he's incapable of it, but because he's a supporting character who is Kara's role model.

This problem with this Superman, if you could even call it a problem, is that he can't sustain an ongoing TV series because he has resolved all his issues. But Hoechlin's Superman isn't meant to be a series lead anyway. His greatest superpower might be his superhuman relaxation. He has the effortless calm that would come with being bulletproof.

This is the most laid-back version of Superman ever onscreen. A Superman who has reconciled his dual origins isn't going to hit the notes that Informant prefers for this character.

The parts of Superman's legend to which Informant has a deep connection are not the only parts of Superman that exist. And it's not a crime that Tyler Hoechlin's Superman isn't Informant's Superman. It's not a weakness. It's not a flaw. Hoechlin's Superman is the perfect Superman for this SUPERGIRL series.

What it comes down to, really, is that Informant sees Superman as a self-portrait. The farm and the American heritage and the parents seem to be vital factors for him, and if he doesn't see himself in Superman, then it's not Superman to him. And I might not see my Superman in certain adaptations, but I would take it a step behind Informant's intensity.

So many writers and actors have written for and performed as this character and each one will have a very different take on the same source material. Zack Snyder, J. Michael Straczynski, Joss Whedon, Ali Adler, Jeph Loeb, Mark Waid, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bruce Timm, Paul Dini and more each created their own individual Superman. Between them all, Superman has been an angsty teen, a loving father figure, a meatloaf addict, a vegetarian, a tormented soul, a cheery wisecracker, a hard-boiled reporter, a nervous milquetoast, a down-to-earth human and an unrelatable alien. Nobody should draw a box around any one incarnation as the only one that works.

My favourite incarnation is the Red Blue Blur of SMALLVILLE's eighth season and I would say this version is completely unworkable and should never be perpetuated in subsequent adaptations. My least favourite is Frank Miller's, although Clark in Seasons 2- 7 of SMALLVILLE is also pretty bad.

Weirdly, I don't even put Tyler Hoechlin on my list of favourite Supermans because he's quite distinctly *Supergirl's* Superman and he's best compared to Melissa Benoist rather than other Superman actors.

It's interesting. During Seasons 1 - 2, John described his role as "walking furniture" and ranted about what he felt was the poor quality of the scripts and his disdain for Arturo being written as cowardly or unheroic. Torme's view was that John needed to stop seeing an unflattering portrayal of Arturo as an unflattering portrayal of John. John was also unhappy about the sliders surviving the multiverse in Season 2 as opposed to a single Season 1 episode where they saved a whole planet. He also disliked the "light comedy" approach of Season 2.

However, after Torme left the show and Peckinpah took over and fired John, John took a completely different view in his latter interviews. "I think Tracy did a very nice job early on," he said after "The Exodus Part 2" had aired. Clearly, John saw the Season 3 changes and realized what Torme had been holding at bay -- except Epstein would have us think FOX didn't interfere with SLIDERS at all?

That's fantastic! I probably won't see it in theatres. I have enough to keep me busy at home and I won't even be through my queue by the time that movie hits home video. Honestly, the only movies I've seen in theatres in recent years are AVENGERS movies.

I don't see why it's unreasonable for Deegan to repeatedly overpower Superman -- Deegan clearly rewrote reality to be stronger than the real Superman.

I also think that we should probably ascribe any and every continuity error ever to Deegan's interference with reality.

The behind the scenes reason for some of the peculiarities of this episode -- LEGENDS needed to offer some rationale for why the LEGENDS characters weren't involved in ELSEWORLDS, so they had the Legends as we know them erased from existence for a week. Due to a shorter episode order this season shortening their schedule and actor availabilities, LEGENDS couldn't schedule the shutdown days needed to participate in the crossover and still complete their full 16 episodes.

You'll recall that the first crossover, INVASION, featured Oliver, Barry and Kara prominently in the first installment only to reduce them to glimpses and cameos with the next three episodes. Production filmed all episodes of INVASION within a week, within the normal one-episode-a-week schedule, and it was impossible to film any more material with the core three actors within a single week. Recognizing this issue, CRISIS ON EARTH-X set up a different schedule where they filmed all four installments over the course of a month, scheduling days where the shows would stop production and devote their resources entirely to the crossover, so each show produced one episode when they would normally have made four. LEGENDS couldn't do that this year.

From a creative standpoint -- the characterization of this LEGENDS episode made absolutely no sense. I confess that the fuzzy logic of LEGENDS is a constant; after three seasons of the Wave Rider operating on some sort of zero-point, self-renewing fuel source with a fabricator for all food and materials and items, they're suddenly worried about an accountant performing an audit of their budget? The replacements for the Time Masters, a force that existed outside the timestream in the distant future, is now a branch of the US federal government? All fine and good, but suggesting that Nate and Ray or Sarah and Gideon would go on homicidal rampages over the deaths of teammates is absurd. They've lost teammates before: Professor Stein, Rip Hunter, Leonard Snart -- so the idea that losing anyone in Season 4 would turn the survivors into murdering lunatics is a non-starter.

It's at this point that the logic of the episode seemed to degrade, almost as though some cataclysm of reality in the distant future involving a dimensionally detached scientist and his efforts to combine realities had reached backwards into the past, breaking sense and reason itself within the universe and causing the boys or the girls to become an absurd parody of 80s genre schlock -- but it's more likely that this was the result of Dr. John Deegan scrambling reality with the Book of Destiny and causing such havoc that even the Time Bureau couldn't detect or contain the damage.

It’s as the ancient saying goes: “Give someone a superhero comic book and you entertain them for ten minutes. Teach someone to live without superhero comics and you save them from a lifetime of materialism and poverty.”

I dunno. Whether I like it or not, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is oriented not around the very excellent DAREDEVIL series, not around AGENTS OF SHIELD and not around AGENT CARTER or the MARVEL ONE SHOTS or the tie-in comics. The core MCU content is the AVENGERS movies and I wonder what they'll do with AVENGERS ENDGAME. Here's the trailer.

https://www.newsarama.com/43019-avenger … ailer.html

Yup! And it’s likely HR Wells holding William in this dream world and HR will reveal himself as being Abra Kadabra. Any day now. Temporal Flux is always right about such things.

I wonder if WB actually kicked Snyder when he was down. From what I can tell, Snyder left JUSTICE LEAGUE. He had to. Nobody should be editing and directing a major motion picture (or Season 3 of SLIDERS) under such circumstances. His daughter killed herself, a horrific, traumatizing event that put Snyder in a terrible place.

When David Peckinpah's son, Garrett, suddenly died of meningistis, Peckinpah didn't take the time to heal or mourn; he accepted stewardship of SLIDERS in Season 3 and never recovered from his torment. He dulled it with rage, affairs, heroin and cocaine. His grief never went away, he never learned to live with it or past it and in the end, it killed him.

Snyder decided to leave. When Whedon took over, he was in an impossible situation. Asked to complete a film he didn't really agree with. I think Informant himself would note: it’s not about how choice A is right and choice B is wrong: it's instead about committing to the choices one makes with style, craft, grace and conviction. Except in Whedon's case, many of these choices had been made and he was being asked to change some but not others.

I think it is very difficult for another creator to come in and complete someone else's vision when they have a completely oppositional style, and to complete it with pieces that have already been produced. If WB didn't want Whedon to be Whedon, they should have hired someone else, gotten Adam Kane or Greg Beeman or Allan Arkush (HEROES) or promoted Snyder's director of photography -- but it's clear that they wanted the AVENGERS director to make a Snyder movie more a Whedon movie and Whedon did what he was paid to do.

From what I can tell, the parademons feeding on fear was not part of the original storyline. Instead, the plot was that the parademons could consume and assimilate human beings and turn them into parademons.

This is just conjecture based on bits and pieces of what's been leaked. I think that that in the Snyder version, Superman, still unsteady after his resurrection, would be attacked by Steppenwolf's hordes and nearly corrupted into an agent of Apokolips. But during the process, Superman would have a vision of the Knightmare future -- Lois dead, the world a devastated wasteland, Batman fighting a losing rebellion, Superman under the control of the anti-life equation -- and Superman's horror would allow him to cast off the parademon infection. Superman would defeat Steppenwolf but now be struck by a new vision of the future -- the coming of Darkseid, the fear that the anti-life equation is suppressed but not gone and could turn him into a soldier for the other side in the war to be fought in JUSTICE LEAGUE II.

But Snyder left JUSTICE LEAGUE and it became clear that he needed a clean break with the DCEU and would never direct JUSTICE LEAGUE II. Whedon was instructed to conclude without a cliffhanger within the footage Snyder had shot with limited resources for reshoots.

The best Whedon could do: he shot a new opening in the film to indicate that the parademons feed on fear, something that was not a part of the original story. Whedon wrote in a line of dialogue for Steppenwolf saying his demons were hungering to feed on the humans and their fear. Then Whedon shot the end sequence where Steppenwolf, now frightened, is attacked by his own minions and in his defeat is suddenly removed from Earth.

The parademons feeding on fear -- it's not sufficiently maintained throughout the film, existing only in the opening, one line of dialogue and then the ending. The failure to address the Knightmare sequence in the previous film is peculiar. The third Mother Box being forgotten on the roof of a car is an awkward 'fix' where the original course of events couldn't be maintained. But there's other stuff I'd defend: Bruce using the same logic he had for killing Superman to argue in favour of resurrecting him is a beautiful moment of character development.

As for the DCEU, there clearly wasn't a lot of planning. MAN OF STEEL was intended as the start to a Superman film series, not a DC universe. But it was a respectable hit instead of a global blockbuster. The thinking was adding Batman and Wonder Woman could raise earnings. The results have been mixed.

Just as JUSTICE LEAGUE fails to entirely match BVS, WONDER WOMAN is also at odds with it. BVS shows Wonder Woman claiming she walked away from humanity, but WONDER WOMAN had her inspired by it; Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins, developing the character in their film, found they had moved in a different direction in BVS, meaning BVS had introduced Diana without a clear direction in mind. JUSTICE LEAGUE attempts to rationalize the discrepency saying Wonder Woman never abandoned humanity but avoided leadership and notoriety.

At every point in the DCEU, films have been made in an extremely improvisational fashion. BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN was re-edited to shrink Superman's role; JUSTICE LEAGUE was reworked from what was clearly a superhero horror film with jokes into more of an AVENGERS movie.

Given that in the aftermath of JUSTICE LEAGUE's box office, we have no JUSTICE LEAGUE II, no MAN OF STEEL II, no Ben Affleck BATMAN film, DC Films division producer Jon Berg dismissed, DC chief Geoff Johns demoted, it's safe to say JUSTICE LEAGUE didn't do well. It's a simple metric that a film must earn three times its production budget to turn a profit and JUSTICE LEAGUE having cost $300 million to earn $660 million, the film's short by $240 million.

If the first AVENGERS movie had earned $660 million on its $220 million budget, it would have been considered an adequate (but not spectacular) return. But it cracked 1.5 billion -- and yet, Perlmutter fought any budget increases for the subsequent films. Financially, DC has been spending too much before it had won its sought after billion dollar success and the Marvel film division was spending too little after it had proven to be a billion dollar earner.

And yet... when the Netflix shows were first announced, Informant noted the costly New York City location filming and how he doubted the project could justify its costs. He was dead wrong for the first season of DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES and PUNISHER but he has proven correct for LUKE CAGE, IRON FIST, DEFENDERS and the subsequent seasons of DAREDEVIL and JJ. The viewership fell drastically after the double bomb of IRON FIST and DEFENDERS and Netflix no longer wants to pay for any of it.

Anyway. Marvel Entertainment (TV, comics under Perlmutter) has the Marvel Unlimited service for digital comic books. They could conceivably reinvest in that and restructure it to give the TV division a new home, but currently, their business model has been to shop shows to networks and streaming services who then pay to produce and air it.

However, Perlmutter brought Marvel Studios (film) into existence with the view that they shouldn't be selling film rights (and profits) to other studios when they could make the films themselves and keep the earnings. Perhaps he might consider that Marvel Entertainment needs to start airing their own shows...

I don't think Perlmutter is necessarily a problem in that he's been isolated to the TV department which is doing pretty well? He has no influence on the film division anymore.

There are things about Perlmutter that I think are admirable and things that aren't. His penny pinching was, during the first phase of standalone movies, a pragmatic process to the successes of IRON MAN, THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA and AVENGERS.

He set a budget that forced producers and directors to work out a clear filming schedule, effective reshoots, extensive use of sets and locations to get as much money onscreen as possible -- and he refused to engage in the massive amounts of waste of other blockbuster films. This didn't work for me personally in that AVENGERS seems to be set almost entirely on the Helicarrier, but the world at large seemed fine with it.

In contrast, movies like JUSTICE LEAGUE overpay their actors with far more money than anyone could spend and unnecessary luxuries. Perlmutter mandated hiring newcomers like Evans and Hemsworth or diminished stars like Downey Jr. for their lower rates. He also refused to pay entourage travel expenses, allowing only one free travel companion per star. WB hired Ben Affleck and the Ben Affleck machine. Perlmutter demanded advance planning to minimize reshoots and cut down on unnecessary set days and location filming. JUSTICE LEAGUE blew hundreds of millions on sequences that aren't in the film. Perlmutter had premieres catered by Subway. The bulk of Marvel's money went to what's actually on the screen.

However, after the success of AVENGERS, Perlmutter continued to treat Marvel Film like a startup company, refusing to expand budgets even though the return on investment was now a certainty. This led to a massive fight over CIVIL WAR which originally had Downey Jr. booked for a few weeks of filming in a very small role for Tony Stark and a sizable role for Iron Man (in the armour, performed mostly through voiceover). Downey Jr. expressed the wish to play a larger role and receive a larger salary, feeling that Marvel Film's success could now afford it. Producer Kevin Feige felt the same way.

Perlmutter ordered Feige to fire Downey Jr. for asking for more money (even though he was offering to do more work). Perlmutter ordered that Tony Stark be written out of the script. Feige protested as CIVIL WAR was the story of Captain America vs. Iron Man.

Disney, observing Feige's success and uncomfortable with Perlmutter's bizarre behaviour, demoted Perlmutter to managing Marvel's comic book and television properties and promoted Feige to run the film division.

There's a lot to admire about Perlmutter when Marvel was struggling through a bankruptcy, when Marvel was trying to launch films after they'd sold Spider-Man to Sony and X-Men and Fantastic Four to FOX. But once Marvel Film was a success, Perlmutter's philosophy didn't make any sense. I haven't seen the IMAX INHUMANS (or any INHUMANS), but IMAX publically apologized for the cheapness of the production.

Perlmutter's attitude makes sense for a startup situation and I think his money management is the right approach for TV (but definitely not IMAX). TV is a factory of limited budgets and tight schedules; Perlmutter's obsessive planning and pennywise tactics are a good fit. You wouldn't see Perlmutter blowing the bulk of AGENTS OF SHIELD's season budget on, say, hiring Roger Daltrey and his band to perform a rock concert with filming to be done between binge drinking sessions. You'd never see lax safety standards leading to an actor dying while filming a car chase -- not because Perlmutter cares about safety, but he certainly cares about not wasting money on getting sued and fined. (That last one's conjecture, but work with me.)

I can also appreciate how Perlmutter, despite being an ardent Trump supporter and friend, permitted AGENTS OF SHIELD to actively mock the Trump administration in various lines of dialogue. Without Perlmutter, Marvel Film and Marvel TV wouldn't have ever gotten off the ground, but Marvel Film needed to fly free without him and maybe Marvel TV would benefit from the same -- if only to get its content onto the Marvel Film streaming platform.

As of this writing, Informant is flat out wrong about the Netflix shows moving to Disney's streaming service. DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES, LUKE CAGE, PUNISHER, IRON FIST and DEFENDERS were all projects from Marvel TV made in a co-production deal with Netflix. The Disney streaming service is being driven by Marvel Film which, despite branding, has little to no professional collaboration with Marvel TV right now.

We need to understand that Marvel Film and Marvel TV are currently two separate entities due to an extremely acrimonious divorce. One side got the movies and the other side got the TV shows.

Marvel Film's billion dollar earnings allow it to dictate the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel TV is a lower-tier branch run by a former Marvel Film executive who was ousted from the movie division but retained control of the TV properties. Essentially, Marvel TV is like Pocket Books for STAR TREK, doing media tie-ins that just happen to be TV shows rather than novels.

However, despite the internal division, Netflix views a Disney streaming service as direct competition and is understandably disinclined to produce their competitions TV shows. Marvel Film has no involvement in the Netflix shows or the ABC shows (well, just one now) or the Hulu shows; they have about as much interest in these properties as J.J. Abrams would have in STAR WARS novels when directing the next movie except in this case, the Marvel Film/Marvel TV relationship is coldly indifferent on a good day and hostile on most days.

For this reason, it is currently not in the cards for the Disney streaming service to feature Peggy Carter, any Netflix shows or any Marvel TV content.

Could that change? Right now, I'm mildly astonished that Marvel Film hasn't simply ordered the ABC, Netflix and Hulu content to be stricken from the record, but the Marvel TV head seems to own too much Disney stock to be entirely dismissed at this point, so Marvel Film has settled for icily ignoring the TV shows.

Marvel TV content isn't going to be moving from Netflix to any platform led by Marvel Film. If Marvel TV wants a fourth season of DAREDEVIL or a second season of DEFENDERS, it's going to have to find a network or streaming service that will tolerate working for their own competition or come up with a Marvel TV streaming service of its own.

Any analysis that treats Marvel Film and Marvel TV as the same entity is simply misinformed.

I ordered Season 3 off eBay for $7.81, but then -- well, I was converting some old PC game discs to ISO files for hard drive storage. One disc wouldn't copy, but then I gave it a cleaning using a cloth dampened with lens cleaning fluid and it worked. It occurred to me to do the same with the inoperative Season 3 disc rather than just using water -- and now "The Guardian" is playing fine off the DVD. I've asked the eBay seller to cancel the order and hopefully they'll do it or I'll have the dubious honour of owning two sets of the season from hell.

DAREDEVIL has been cancelled.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/181 … -iron-fist

Sad, but not surprised.

I dunno. I feel like the format requires that he and I aren't actually in physical proximity, just texting each other.

Sorry for forgetting that BIRDS OF PREY was likely to go ahead. It slipped my mind. Weird, because I love the TV show.

And now, having stood up for DOCTOR WHO, I must condemn it. “Kerblam,” the seventh episode of the Chibnall era, is a well-paced, exciting story that balances all the cast members well and structures its story beautifully except it has the Doctor confronting a fictional version of Amazon, a corporation that abuses and exploits its workers to exhaustion and injury and leaves them homeless and broken and encourages sociopathic sabotage among its workforce – and the Doctor ends up delivering a lecture to the one labour activist in the episode. The one advocate for labour rights, fair wages and responsible management of workers is presented as a mass-murdering terrorist whom the Doctor promptly blows up before leaving the universe safe for Amazon to carry on its horrors.

This is so wrong it’s hard to know where to begin. The Doctor has been a figure of revolution and anarchy since 1963, bringing down establishment structures as a force of chaos who just happens to be against the monsters. She has always been an anti-authoritarian figure and to see the Doctor defend corporations’ right to grossly mistreat their workers for a pittance of a salary is an absurd depiction of a character who has historically always brought bureaucracy and capitalist empires crashing down. It’s one thing to have the Doctor refuse to intervene in historical situations, but to have the Doctor confront Amazon in space (dubbed “Kerblam!”) and take no issue with it is a betrayal of DOCTOR WHO.

The strange thing is that it’s probably not even intentional. DOCTOR WHO, a product of a massive corporation whose streaming rights were sold to the real-life Amazon, is probably not in a position to show the Doctor toppling Jeff Bezos’ castle with her sonic screwdriver. DOCTOR WHO, having cast a woman, a Pakastani actress, a black man and a senior citizen as leads, is probably not intending to have the Doctor defend corporate abuses.

More likely, DOCTOR WHO, having to appeal to its whole audience and not just left-wing liberals, attempted a polite middle ground: the climax of the episode has the Doctor declaring that the problem is not the Amazon system (offering the lowest prices for its products in the speediest delivery at maximum profit). The problem is how people use the system, whether it’s to pay workers the least the company can get away with to maximize its bottom line or our labour activist who decides to use the Amazon-style delivery system to send bombs to the customers.

Now, this is an argument I have a lot of time for. Tom Cruise made this argument in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION. Quinn made a similar argument in "World Killer," saying, "The universe has no conscience, so WE have to."

Except the only person the Doctor feels the need to argue against, stop, trounce, confront and defeat is the labour activist and then space-Amazon makes some noise about hiring more humans and fewer robots and the Doctor is off. At no point does the Doctor confront space-Jeff Bezos; no analogue even appears in the story. And the problem here is a lack of imagination.

A Steven Moffat edited version of this script introduces space-Bezos and has the Doctor rewire the space-Amazon AI so that space-Bezos can only ever live in the conditions on the wages of his lowest-paid employees, forcing him to improve conditions. A Robert Holmes edited version of “Kerblam!” has the Doctor drown space-Bezos in so much bureaucracy that he’s forced to hire and retain a decently paid workforce just to manage. A Russell T. Davies version of this script has the Doctor blow space-Bezos up (he was less imaginative).

But a Chibnall edited script? Well, in attempting not to say anything too provocative or offensive to any particular party, Chibnall has inadvertently presented the Doctor as an enforcer for the establishment who keeps people who protest mistreatment in line while declaring labour rights to be terrorist ideals. I don’t think this is deliberate; it’s more likely incompetence. It’s clumsiness. It is a massive screw-up and it’s not the first. DOCTOR WHO has often made terrible mistakes. At times, the Doctor has been written as racist, abusive, militaristic, spineless, needlessly violent emotionally dysfunctional – and over time, such portrayals are left behind as errors to be explained or forgotten. “Kerblam!” is one such story.

It seems to me like WB is keeping DC films in development without actually proceeding to make any they can't back out of aside from WONDER WOMAN II, AQUAMAN, SHAZAM and the JOKER movie. There's a lot of scripting and considering for BIRDS OF PREY, BATGIRL, NIGHTWING, THE FLASH, THE BATMAN (which may or may not have Affleck) -- but what it comes down to is that WB is unwilling to attempt a TRANSFORMERS-level superhero project after JUSTICE LEAGUE crashed so hard even Informant wouldn't defend the financials. Superhero movies that earn 600 million dollars at box office should be made for no more than 100 million dollar budgets and preferably half that.

In terms of what makes financial sense, WB are waiting, I think. They're going to wait for WONDER WOMAN II, AQUAMAN and SHAZAM's performances before engaging in anything beyond non-committal development. Given how badly JUSTICE LEAGUE did, I wonder if the DCEU is simply going to be waiting until enough time has passed to start over. They may make a third WONDER WOMAN, a second AQUAMAN, another SHAZAM -- building on what's already been built without throwing too much more money after what's been lost. I doubt they'll want to make THE BATMAN or MAN OF STEEL II on the blockbuster level that Affleck and Cavill level salaries would demand. The DCEU with regards to Superman and Batman seems to be going the way of the SUPERMAN RETURNS sequel -- it's just not enough of an earner to press forward on this sort of financial scale.

When the LOST IN SPACE 1998 movie failed, there were no sequels, but because there was going to be some time between the next iteration, there were some novels set after the film -- just to keep the copyright going and to earn some revenue. I don't see WB demoting the DCEU to novels, but it's going to be some sort of scaled back exploitation that won't be the bold, continuing adventures of Superman and Batman.

I imagine the DCEU closing out with a final WONDER WOMAN film before making a new attempt at a live action DC Universe. I wonder if it would spin out of the Arrowverse, but the Arrowverse probably has only another 4 - 5 years left before it too is laid to rest with a good finale.

The future may be in the DC streaming service -- TV level productions that, like DOCTOR WHO, eventually make the leap to the big screen. Thirteen episode shows at 1 - 2 million dollars an episode before a $30 million feature film emerging from the shows that can make 200 - 500 million dollars at box office and be considered a strong return on investment. Perhaps in 2022, when enough time has passed, a new Superman and Batman will debut on the small screen and lay groundwork for leaping to the large.

I really enjoy LEGENDS because of the cast, and Ray Palmer is my favourite character on the show. I think Brandon Routh is great. What follows is armchair psychoanalysis regarding Brandon Routh, the way I theorized as to Jerry O'Connell and David Peckinpah and James Gunn's inner thinking. It's theory. Don't take it seriously. I said don't take it seriously. Why are you taking it seriously? Stop taking it seriously!
 
Ray Palmer's character on LEGENDS is one of the high points for me, but there's clearly been a shift from ARROW with Ray almost a different character. Yet, Ray's character rings true for me because of Brandon Routh's performance. Acting isn't about pretending; it's about finding your truth and presenting it in a fictional context, and Ray's trajectory mirrors Routh's.
 
Routh started out as a jobbing actor who worked on soap operas and tended bar and sometimes played bartenders in soap operas before getting laid off soap operas and just being a bartender. Due to auditioning for shows produced by McG, he managed to get an audition for McG's SUPERMAN and the audition videos were kept when Warner Bros. went with another director. Routh was cast as Superman, his career going from zero to blockbuster. 
 
The resulting movie was trounced at box office by romcoms and pirate movies. But Routh was told he'd be in a sequel; the movie had done adequately. Then three years passed, his contract expired and Warner Bros. made no move to renew it and now clearly planned to move on from him.

Routh was quietly shattered by this: he had expected the next decade of his life to be acting as the custodian of Christopher Reeve's legacy. He'd thought, at least, that playing Superman would lead to many other offers. But he didn't get any other offers.
 
He had to go auditioning again and he confessed in a podcast that he was embarrassed at going from playing Superman to TV guest star roles. Routh was depressed, it affected his work. Looking at his acting, it's like he was afraid to make strong, individual choices that might offend anyone and cost him another job (even though he couldn't have done anything differently to see SUPERMAN RETURNS get a sequel). 
 
You can see an anxiety-depression complex in his work on CHUCK and in ARROW's third season: he's earnest and sincere, but it's the only note he hits, making his characterization wooden. He's afraid to embrace the words and make them his own. He's also extremely low energy; he's not enthusiastic, he isn't impassioned. In real life, Routh was tired; onscreen in ARROW, it came off as Ray being a detached, distant, mysterious scientist, haunted by the murder of his fiancee. At the end of Season 3, he went missing and Season 4 revealed that he'd been trapped in isolation for months.
 
This led to LEGENDS where Routh's performance suddenly changed, as did Ray. Stepping aboard the Wave Rider, Ray became hyperactively enthused about time travel, adventure and superheroics, diving into situations impulsively and constantly making bad situations worse before learning to make them better. 

His high energy was an irritant to the team; his screwups every week led to Reddit starting what the community termed a "Fuckup Counter" for Ray. He was a handsome hero who made a lot of mistakes and he had to struggle and persevere to triumph and needed a lot of help from his friends. He had no ego; he always accepted responsibility for his errors and took his spot on the chore wheel. It's hard to imagine the suit and tuxedo Ray of ARROW doing laundry on LEGENDS. 
 
Onscreen, there was no direct explanation for this change, although Routh's performance suggested that Ray's months of isolation had caused him to regress to a more childish state. After all, the ATOM suit had proven to be a damp squib in the tech community; he'd come to rebuild Star City only for it to carry on without him. All this had eroded Ray's previous superiority complex. 
 
The result is a character I find deeply endearing: an excitable, charmingly earnest and sweet manchild who screws up. A former mogul who's been cut down to size and accepts his diminished stature with a mix of humiliation and grace. And a vastly improved performance from Brandon Routh who has embraced this flawed and lovable character with gusto. Routh is a lifelong gamer and fantasy fan, and he really sold Ray's joy at seeing dinosaurs and the Wild West and the 60s and space.
 
The real reason Ray Palmer changed, however, is that Brandon Routh changed. By the time LEGENDS started, his son was two years old and Routh realized that his depression over Superman was affecting his family life and career. He accepted that he had to audition for roles; he wouldn't be offered leading parts based on SUPERMAN RETURNS. He came to grips with how he would never play Superman again and he would have to find some other life-defining character to play. He understood that becoming Superman had meant skipping over guest-roles, supporting roles and roles as part of ensembles -- roles he would have to not only accept but embrace to rebuild his career.

As he emerged from his depression, Routh also became obsessed with nutrition, discovering the peculiar beverage that is "Bulletproof Coffee," a grammatically curious name for a combination of grass-fed butter and coconut oil into coffee from mold-free beans as well as a high-protein and fat diet with low carb intake. Routh's physical health went on the upswing, his energy levels ramped up significantly and the once withdrawn and quiet Routh became a manic chatterbox. The LEGENDS writers proceeded to rewrite Ray with Routh's new hypercaffeinated personality.
 
In real life, Routh is known to never shut up about Bulletproof Coffee leading to the Season 3 joke where Nate only realizes Ray's been kidnapped after a morning has passed without Ray espousing the benefits of this beverage.
 
Ray Palmer in the third season of ARROW was a deeply depressed person over the death of his fiance just as Brandon Routh was quietly miserable for years over losing his franchise. Depression doesn't always manifest in binge drinking (Jerry O'Connell) or ugly rape jokes (James Gunn) or self-detruction (David Peckinpah). Sometimes, it's just low energy, low enthusiasm, and a low sense of self-worth. And then there's the gleeful joy of a new begnning; just as Routh accepted his career had taken a backwards, Ray became a less mature but happier figure on LEGENDS and took a new path forward.
 
There's a really strong moment in Season 2 where Ray has to destroy the ATOM suit to save the day and he's trying to help Nate trigger his powers. Ray agonizes that by destroying the suit, he is destroying the only thing that makes him special -- a moment that Routh played with such heartfelt grief and loss, undoubtedly drawing on how it felt when Warner Bros. let his Superman contract expire.
 
There's also Season 3 opening with Ray, off the Wave Rider, working as an intern at a dating site and being mocked for having once been a big shot in tech. It isn't remotely realistic; Ray Palmer would have still had his profits and savings. But it's *true* -- that is how Routh felt auditioning to play Cop #3 characters after he'd played Superman. 
 
And that's why I really like Ray Palmer on LEGENDS. Ray is a man who, in losing his fiancee and his company and then the ATOM suit, lost what gave his life meaning, just as Brandon Routh lost what gave him purpose and reason for being when he lost the Superman role. And both men had to rebuild themselves and create new lives. Yes, there are some breaks with strict character continuity, but this character rings true because it's Brandon Routh's truth.

Is anyone as bemused as I am by Ray Palmer’s character trajectory from aloof, distantly mysterious scientist on ARROW to hapless, awkward goofball on LEGENDS?