DC Superheroes on TV (CW & HBO Max) (Page 9 of 28)

I really liked the first part (I haven't watched tonight's Arrow yet).  What I liked is that it did feel like an event - not just a crossover.  The previous ones felt like contained episodes of each show with guest stars.  This felt like an episode of "Arrowverse: the Show" - I didn't feel like the show really babied any viewers.  They handled some real stuff (fighting Vigilante instead of just some random dude, Stein meeting his daughter, Diggle finding out about Sara, etc) and I thought most of the meetings were pretty organic and fun.  Cisco working with Ray, Stein reuniting with Caitlin, and the Kara/Barry and Barry/Oliver stuff was pretty cool.

And the aliens are dangerous enough to warrant a team-up but faceless enough that we didn't have to spend much time building them up to be feared/understood.

Now some negatives:

- I don't love much about Flashpoint.  I like that they're taking it as seriously as they should, but whiny Cisco is no fun (like whiny Felicity was no fun).  And whiny Barry is no fun.
- Wally does not work for me.  He throws this pity party for himself because he's not a speedster, and then he throws a pity party when people don't love his powers as much as he does.  Wally West is a great character, and I don't think he's being portrayed very well at all.  He's zero fun, and he's got zero charisma.
-The newspaper article changed to show a different writer, but it still says Starling City.  Does Central City's paper not acknowledge the new name for Star City, does it eventually change back, or was it a mistake?  Also, as a former journalist, that article is horribly written for a hard-news piece.  Writes much more like a human interest fluff piece.  Snapper Carr would never put that in his paper.

With regard to the Supergirl series, I've seen some complaints on other sites about how her episode was a just red skies story (referring back to the comics - many issues would feature the Crisis on Infinte Earths Crossover banner, but the story inside had nothing to do with Crisis except that the sky turned red).  However, I think this Arrowverse crossover will have more impact on Supergirl than any other series.

In the Invasion era comics, Mon'el had a significant tie to the Dominators; it was his father's sacrifice in protecting people from the Dominator's that inspired Mon'el to become a hero.  Mon'el would later beat back a second Dominator Invasion and seed their metahuman experiments on various worlds so that the Dominators couldn't find them again.  That act would lead to the United Planets and eventually the foundation for the Legion a thousand years from now.

I believe the aliens looking for Mon'el are also Dominators.  And at the end of this crossover, Supergirl is either knowingly or unknowingly bring something back that emits a signal leading the Dominators of her reality to her earth.

Incidentally, the comics version of the Dominator Invasion led to Snapper Carr being abducted and getting powers (the ability to teleport with the snap of his fingers).

Honestly, I'm much more worried that they'll kill off Barry and make Wally the primary Flash.  Considering what the CW has had to do with the Suicide Squad and Amanda Waller (and considering a Justice League movie is on the way), they might force Barry off the show and go with Wally.

Which, honestly, would be a disaster.

Bart could be interesting, down the line. I just hate that Wally West was wasted. He is a great character when done right.

They really can't kill off Barry and keep Wally. Maybe if Wally had worked out as a character, but it didn't go that way. You'd be taking away a character with charm and chemistry with the rest of the cast, and replacing him with someone bland and lacking in character. I would rather see Jesse take over.

The movie seems to be on shakier ground than the series at this point. Warner Bros better not muck this up.

After watching the crossovers, I was wondering if they should just have the supporting casts float from show to show each week, while following the leads on their own shows... like you'd have Oliver each week, but he could have Cisco and Felicity by his side, while Barry has Caitlin and Diggle, and then the next week, Barry's undercover with Thea or whatever.

Legends would be the only hitch. It doesn't have one lead, so it would be difficult to add them to the mix.

Yeah. But seeing everyone together made *me* think of it... and in the end, isn't that all that really matters?

(that was sarcasm, by the way. I'm not that big of a d-bag)

Maybe they can alter the Dominator transporter technology to create a trans-dimensional tansportation system that would allow easier access to the multiverse. Supergirl, Harry and Jesse could use it to get here more easily, and our team could go to them whenever they wanted.

They could do what Fringe did and create a place that connects all three worlds under one roof...

Or they could set up a Crisis and merge the worlds... but leave most of Kara's behind. I still think she should just be banished to Earth-1.

True... Maybe she can be banished to Earth-2 then

I just think that her whole show needs a reworking, from the ground up. James, Alex and J'onn need to go. Winn was the best of the bunch, but he may be a casualty of this overhaul if it's done right.

Or she can find a world with alternate versions of some of these people, but they can be reworked.

Yes.  I would.  Email me

(If you already did, I haven't checked )

Having said that superheroes are not the place for plot or physical logic and plausibility -- ARROW's installment of "Invasion" is really pushing it. To recount: despite the Flash reporting that Oliver, Thea, Diggle and the Legends were beamed into space and likely aboard a spaceship, Cisco needs to vibe on Oliver's old bow in order to establish that Oliver and the Legends were beamed into space and likely aboard a spaceship. The fact that this spaceship has technology inspires Cisco to try to use a shard of alien tech to break into their communications infrastructure, something that didn't occur to him while at STAR Labs and only comes up when he's in the Arrowcave. Then we have a supervillain of the week established in a rushed flurry of dialogue in order to give the ARROW cast someone to fight and the script's desperation to give the actors their contractually required screentime becomes palpable.

It's painfully obvious at this point that the script has been written around trying to hammer the cast of ARROW into the story while allowing Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin to make limited appearances in a B-plot.

Then we have the antics aboard the spaceship where the Dominators politely leave Oliver, Thea, Diggle and the Legends a conveniently marked exit door from an otherwise impenetrable prison and also have no guards and no countermeasures to at least keep their captives sedated in the event of their leaving the simulation. Then we have them boarding a spaceship that they not only manage to activate but can also pilot despite being faced with an alien navigation system!

Anyway. I still kind of liked it. The fantasy sequences were very strong, although the Photoshop effect of pasting Roy and Tommy's heads on body doubles was very silly and Deathstroke never speaking or taking off the mask smacked of pennypinching. It was fun. It was enjoyable. But I like my superheroes to be a little less overt in their silliness. Just a bit. Honestly, at this point, the only way this episode holds together in terms of plot is if the Dominators let their captives go -- and if Cisco's depression over his brother and frustration with Barry has somehow made him stupider this week.

I don't think it worked. I agree that it had a lot of heart. It was fun to watch. But there were a lot of obvious production problems that took the shine off the crossover for me. It actually reminded me of the SMALLVILLE finale where the writers scripted a global conflict and then found that when rendering it onscreen, they had to tone it down repeatedly until the visuals seemed marginal compared to the massive scale indicated by the dialogue.

The main problem for me -- the FLASH installment sets up Oliver, Supergirl and Barry as the lead characters for the crossover. But then ARROW immediately sidelines all three of them in subplots and dream sequences to focus on the ARROW supporting cast (the recruits, Cisco and Felicity) and LEGENDS again does the same with Mick, Vixen, Stein, Cisco and Felicity). It's like the writers suddenly discovered that they could not film three episodes of Melissa Benoist, Grant Gustin and Stephen Amell in a week -- so their appearances are prominent in THE FLASH and then their presences are spread out in isolated segments across ARROW and LEGENDS. That, along with budgetary restrictions suddenly reduces a planetary situation to a skirmish on a single rooftop.

Then there's awkward moments like Oliver inexplicably benching Supergirl (almost as though the actress' schedule prevented her from being in the subsequent scene and an explanation was improvised on the spot), street-level heroes winning against Dominators when the 1951 soldiers couldn't to hold them off, the Dominators having had a truce with the United States but inexplicably kidnapping and murdering the President previously in THE FLASH, no attempt to mind control the heroes again -- and it's at this point, I'm reminded of how awkward I found the first AVENGERS movie.

This is something we seem to see quite often in superhero shows when they attempt an Earth-wide threat, but they can't pull it off visually and try to bluff and bluster through it.

THE FLASH has previously pulled off epic-level conflicts by keeping the geography enclosed even as the emotional stakes peaked (Barry versus Thawne with Firestorm and Green Arrow in the mix in Season 1, the race against Zoom in Season 2). LEGENDS' epic finale in its first season spread the team across different locations while fighting henchmen. SUPERGIRL's action used blurriness and distance to suggest rather than show the titantic forces in conflict. ARROW has generally stuck to the street level stuff. But here, they attempted INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE and they seemed to be trying to punch above their weight.

It's funny -- I'm saying over in the STAR TREK thread that shows do not die just because Bryan Fuller doesn't write them, but I longed for the Fuller-technique in "Invasion." With HEROES, Fuller knew that if superfights shown in full would (a) look really lame on a TV budget and (b) didn't actually offer much meaningful content no matter how much fans craved them.

As a result, fights were always extremely brief, seen at a distance or in the aftermath and the focus was always on giving the actors some interesting conflicts to perform against each other with the epic clash of superhumans always blasting off camera and then over by the time we panned across to see it.

But still. I give the DC TV team credit for trying and yes -- there was a lot of heart.

Thinking on it -- they probably could have done the global scale fight scenes they'd wanted to do if they'd filmed the sequences selectively. By that, I mean the main action would have been in the STAR Labs command center or the Arrowcave with Felicity, Dr. Snow and Cisco reporting on what was happening around the world. And then we'd get maybe 4 - 5 slow-motion shots of Supergirl, Barry, Oliver, Atom and Firestorm performing the widescreen action -- but the rest would be narrated by the support staff and shown in terms of display animatics. You'd see glimpses of the AGE OF ULTRON spectacle. But, understandably, they wanted to do it in full-form and, also understandably, they wanted to show all the heroes fighting in the same space.

The other problem for which I have no real solution is the scheduling. These shows are all filmed with one episode per seven days, and all four shows are filming at the same time. That's why Barry, Kara and Oliver only seem prominent in THE FLASH and are then reduced and isolated in ARROW and really only return to center stage for the last half of LEGENDS. The only way I see three episodes of the BARRY/KARA/OLIVER SHOW getting made would have been if the WB agreed to commission "Invasion" as a TV movie separate from SUPERGIRL, ARROW, LEGENDS and THE FLASH with production on all four shows suspended in order to film INVASION over a month -- which would push back production and airdates for all four shows significantly.

It's a very difficult situation for production and I really can't blame them for all the issues; they were asked to do a crossover. A big event crossover. Within their existing production parameters. And the sheer impossibility of filming three episodes of Barry, Oliver and Kara in one week are self-evident.

I did enjoy it... but it was an interesting failure. A heartfelt, well-intentioned failure. On that subject, Slider_Quinn21 should check his email for script pages!!!

"Fake Wells"... ?

Who is HR?

The Flash is really on the ledge here, at risk of falling into an abyss. The time travel stuff, combined with a lot of speedsters, is getting away from them, I think. It's getting a bit messy. The cliffhanger of Barry seeing Iris die didn't seem as shocking as it seemed... done. We've seen the same idea play out so many times on different shows that it's not all that shocking anymore.

I never got a good look at the newspaper article from the future. Does it still reference Queen Industries?

Arrow... This season is still way better than those two seasons that shall forever be forgotten. But there are still things that bother me. The Artemis turn doesn't make sense. She is mad at Oliver for being a killer, so she turns evil and teams up with a guy that kills innocent people all the time, for no good reason? She is pissed at Oliver, so she puts the entire team in danger? They didn't really sell her turning like that, which made me think that she was just undercover... but they never revealed that she was undercover. So this is just how it is? It makes no sense.

Was I the only one waiting for the shocking reveal that somehow, the long lost son in the photograph was in fact Oliver's new girlfriend?

I like the interaction between Thea and Rene. It's funny how he has this crush on her, and she's totally not interested. It's fun chemistry, but I'm not sure that they should pair them up romantically. Just keep it where it is.
The funny part is, the hard-edged street guy who turns into a vigilante crime fighter is EXACTLY her type, despite what she told him.

Anyone else have a hard time understanding Ragman with his echo-y voice?

Wow, Arrow's midseason finale had some legit surprises on a series of shows that have been pretty bad about surprises.  The Evelyn stuff wasn't one because that was spoiled for us, and I don't particularly care about her character.

But Oliver killing Billy?  I was assuming that Billy *was* Prometheus (and he still might be), and tricking Oliver into killing him is a pretty great move.  I'm hoping that Prometheus is someone else because it sorta kills the move if he is Billy.

Then Laurel.  It can't be Flashpoint, right?  Because no one would remember her dying if she didn't really die.  I was thinking it might be Legends that caused her to come back, but it couldn't have been them either, I don't think.  It has to be Prometheus, but I'm not sure how he'd pull that off.

I was sorta annoyed by all the references to Flashpoint and the crossover, though.  I get that they'd probably all still be talking about it, but it felt a bit forced.

Last season, I found the anti-Olicity shippers to be absurd and crazy in their militance against the Felicity character. This year, I find that the Olicity shippers have gone completely insane on Tumblr and Facebook to the point of one crazy person regularly referring to Stephen Amell's wife as "Voldemort" and saying it's bizarre that Amell and Emily Bett Rickards aren't a couple.

... it's unbelievably creepy. As someone who considers himself a fan of the Oliver/Felicity pairing -- I consider all the scenes where Felicity and Oliver to have heart-to-hearts to be Olicity scenes. Maybe it's not romantic anymore, but it's a friendship and a partnership and a highly enjoyable onscreen pairing, albeit a now-platonic one. I thought it really showed the practical sides of both characters where not being a couple didn't mean not being friends and allies.

I am, however, extremely relieved to be rid of all the scenes where Felicity is a perfect superwoman desired by all and to be free of all the Felicity/Oliver angst and fighting plots. I'd rather stick to the same stuff Stephen Amell wants to stick to -- street-level crimefighting plots.

I was just watching the "Lexmas" episode of Smallville... Classic episode. Yeah, the series had its issues, but I have to say once again that Supergirl just doesn't compare. Smallville  movies the concept of Superman forward in so many ways, and Man of Steel picked up on that. But Supergirl just lacks so much by comparison. It lacks the heart, opting instead for hollow smiles. It lacks the care. The Character. The chemistry of the cast. The set design. The lighting. It lacks soul. And one thing that the Superman and Supergirl stories need above all else is soul.

It's such a shame. You don't realize how much care was put into Smallville until you step away for a while and then look back at it. The warmth of the show really set a mood.

Yeah, I'll skip the promo. I hear it was super spoilery.

And now for the anti-Informant perspective on SMALLVILLE:

SMALLVILLE is terrible. Season 1 was okay. Seasons 2 - 7 are an abomination. Seasons 8 - 9 were good (but fan reaction was mixed), Season 10 started out well but crashed hard (and again, mixed reviews). The thing I object to most about SMALLVILLE in Seasons 2 - 7 -- they completely lack any sense of morality and place no value on human life. High school students are murdered horribly every single week; half of Clark's graduating class in high school were either serial killers or their victims.

There is no exploration of the grief, trauma or horror whatsoever -- it's like all these lives that get lost in teasers and before commercial breaks were meaningless and Clark, presumably a heroic figure, has no concern for them beyond a pained expression now and then. The Kryptonite enhanced serial killers on the show kill for the stupidest and pettiest of reasons and are completely brazen and obvious in their assaults, resulting in shallow, empty characters who really only exist for Clark to throw them through a wall.

SMALLVILLE in Seasons 2 - 7 is more like a slasher-horror show and if Clark is a superhero, he is proven by Seasons 2 - 7 to be totally ineffectual. Seasons 2 - 7 are also a mess of directionless, unresolved ongoing arcs that are contradictory, confused and awkwardly aborted. Martha Kent's job with Lionel Luthor vanishes. Clark becoming a super-criminal and returning to Smallville with a more assertive personality is forgotten two episodes after it happened. Lana missing time and becoming a witch is largely unresolved.

The turn from Clark and Lex being friends to being enemies is so muddled and confused that no one can actually point to where it happened. Lex's transition from well-intentioned manipulator to supervillain is so vaguely communicated that it's again missing. The mythology behind the show is incoherent with Jor-El sending Clark to Earth first as a conquerer, then as a saviour, with the inconsistencies blatantly ignored.

Season 8 fixed most of this by putting new emphasis on Clark saving people, Season 9 - 10 did the same. The quality is much-improved with Season 8 - 10 and I would call these final years a very good show, except that Season 10 ended terribly due to cast unavailability (Michael Rosenbaum returned last-minute, Allison Mack was a maybe). But the bulk of SMALLVILLE's episodes are sloppy, needlessly violent, savagely brutal television that not only diminished the Clark Kent character but smeared the Superman legacy as well.

SMALLVILLE is an important forerunner in the history of superhero TV, but it's mostly awful and it's a shame that even the upswing of Season 8 and onwards is diminished by Season 10's closing episodes.

From my POV, SMALLVILLE's problem was never that it was stuck in one genre or the other -- it just had really sloppy showrunners who couldn't seem to plan with or manage their writing staff; the showrunners were often absent and working on film scripts and would return, be keen to push an episode into production, have no idea what work had been done in their absence and would casually order its deletion.

This is why Martha's job with Lionel disappeared, why Lex's cloned twin brother was abruptly assassinated, why Jor-El sending Clark to Earth as a conqueror was forgotten, why Supergirl moving in with Lex was abruptly dismissed. Every time the writing staff set up plots and arcs, the absent showrunners would return, order all development made during their absence be dismissed, be heavily involved in 1 - 2 episodes, and then take another lengthy coffee break. And when the showrunners are this disengaged, it's easy to lose sight of how Clark and Lana can't walk five steps in their school without tripping over the corpse of a student or teacher and this is something that needs to be considered for future scripts.

All four shows were renewed for the 2017-2018 season!

The episode of Legends this week was fun, but I thought it was silly...even for LoT standards.

SUPERGIRL continues to be adorable. FLASH was fun as the team employ a strategy of doing random stuff and seeing what sticks to prevent Iris' death and ARROW explored the team dynamics beautifully with Oliver quietly astonished that Felicity gave the team secret orders ("You give orders now?!") with the show carefully ambiguous as to whether it supports Felicity or not.

I really liked LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, but the ending was so weird. The Legends are running towards the Wave Rider, then Rip inexplicably meanders in the area of the entrance to the ship instead of running up into it before he gets shot. Then Reverse Flash takes him away and the Legends fly away in the Wave Rider, fleeing... Damian and Malcolm with laser guns that clearly can't penetrate the Wave Rider hull.

So why were the Legends in their armored and armed timeship fleeing weapons that were no threat to their vessel? Why didn't they threaten to vaporize Damian and Malcolm unless they convinced Reverse Flash to give up Rip or provided his location? Why didn't they follow Damian and Malcolm back to wherever they would go to rendezvous with Rip? Why didn't they take Damian and Malcolm out if not by killing them, then tranquilizing them and imprisoning aboard the ship in the medical lab under sedation?

Isn't it their job to stop these guys? The show just lost me and the scene of the gang watching STAR WARS together like they didn't basically abandon Rip Hunter, their friend and mentor, was bizarre.

lol!  H.R. just said he has a magician friend.   They are dancing all around this.

I feel like the shows are doing better at making this feel like a connected universe.  They don't actually have to use Grant Gustin or Stephen Amell to make it feel that way.  In Flash, they had a fun little cameo in the Catco office, and in Arrow they had Singh with a cool little Flash cameo.  Little things like that can make things pretty fun.

The last episode made me wonder if Wally is headed for a version of this:

With Wally speeding up faster than Barry did, it's easy to see Wally burn out faster too; Wally may end up saving Iris just to turn into a pile of dust directly after.  And now with Barry pushing Wally, you could end up with Joe and even Iris blaming Barry for pushing Wally too hard.

It would also create an irony of sorts - after all, we started this series with Thawne's personal agenda in pushing Barry to get faster; and now Barry is stepping onto that path.  You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

That's from the Crisis on Infinite Earths where the multiverse was destroyed by the Anti-Monitor (pictured above), and all realities ended up collapsed into one earth.  Leading up to that, the imminent death of a parallel world was known when the skies turned red.  That's what the future newspaper headline in the tv series is hinting at when it says Red Skies Vanish.

But in the picture I gave, Anti-Monitor was having problems destroying the main DC earth; so he built a special tachyon cannon just to finish them off.  Powered by a single tachyon, the Anti-Monitor has pulled the trigger and Barry is the only person there to stop it; so he pushes himself beyond his limits to catch the tachyon before the gun can fire.  When the other heroes finally arrive, all they find is Barry's empty costume; he burned up his body stopping the cannon (or to look at it another way - his body consumed itself to find the fuel to keep going).  Of course, this was later retconned with the idea of the speed force; but when this story came out in 1985, there was no speed force.  Barry had just turned to dust.

I don't think Wally is going to face the Anti-Monitor; but what I'm wondering is if they're going to play with the idea of Barry Allen's death in that scene.  If Wally pushes himself beyond all his limits and burns too bright too fast...he may find himself consumed in a short but brilliant flash.

That could be interesting. Alternatively, they could just ship Wally off to Earth 2.

Switching over to Arrow for a sec. I'm not sure that this Dinah Drake thing is the best idea. They made a mess of things with Laurel, first in how they handled her development, then handing her role in the story over to Felicity, and then killing her. Killing her was a big mistake, which they should have known after Sara, but I guess they didn't learn.

So then they tease a comeback that never happens.

Then they come up with a really convoluted way of trying to bring back a Black Canary element (would Dinah be Black Canary, or a whole new Canary?). I don't hate the new character, but the situation is just awkward and weird. What will Sara think? Shouldn't she get to train the new Canary (maybe Sin?). And they already have a two Dinah characters on the show. Now a third.

Like I said, I don't hate new Dinah, but it is a strange road to go down.