GETTING DC COMICS' CHARACTERS BACK ON THEIR LIVE-ACTION FEET

I miss the old "bullet" logo.

In my last "Pete Saves" piece, I wrote about how I would have made BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE.  It's a great candidate for my treatment since it really was pretty rough.  Likewise, the live-action world of DC Comics is pretty rough.  While Warner Brothers and DC have made millions off of recent live-action versions of DC Comics properties, it can easily be argued that they could be making even more if the quality of the stories and characters was more toward the level of Marvel's Cinematic Universe.  This is the key to turning things around for Warner's efforts with DC's characters.

Full disclosure, I've always been more of a Marvel Comics guy.  Something about the real life problems of some of their most successful characters appealed to me at a young age--even before I was aware of why it appealed to me.  That said, I still enjoyed DC's books a lot, too.  I found both the darkness of Batman and the optimism of Superman to resonate with me during my teenage years (depending on my hormones, I am guessing). 

There are also some amazing stories told with quite a few DC characters.  I'm not just talking about the obvious ones, like DARK KNIGHT RETURNS or the myriad other BATMAN titles that seem to catch all the attention.  There have been great story tellers across all of the best DC titles for decades.  Finally, we are at a place in both American and pop culture where comic books are big bucks when translated into the live-action world.  The problem lies in how you adapt the stories and the characters so that they both fit their new media and still capture the essence that made everyone fall in love with them in the first place.  That said, there is a structural issue that can have almost as big an influence on quality.

The solution is right under their noses...

POWERS that (Should) Be (Better)

I am finally getting around to writing up my take on the Sony Playstation Network series POWERS.  For anyone who is not familiar, this is a show that is based on the Brian Michael Bendis comic series of the same name.  It's a comic I am unfamiliar with, so I won't be talking about it's adaptation, but I will talk about how the show adapts the general super-hero idea to the small screen.

"REAL POWER LIES WITHIN" a better script. :(

One thing I won't be doing is praising it.  This show falls prey to a number of common problems.  The biggest is giving into the syndrome I described in my piece about the Wachowskis SENSE8 (read it here).  Internet First Syndrome, put simply, is when producers and writers behind the show decide they can take advantage of the no-commercial structure of Internet-First TV shows and just take everything slowly--too slowly.  In too many cases, this manifests itself in the form of padding. In this case, it takes POWERS about 7 episodes of not much importance to get to a big plot point.  Remember how Netflix's DAREDEVIL took what should have been a pilot episode and stretched it out into nearly an entire season of episodes?  Yeah, like that.

POWERS in a nutshell

Sadly, POWERS comes across like a show on a budget--gritty, but featuring weak-looking gore, no FX make-up,  props that look hokey, featuring a very simplistic, predictable story.  There were no surprises, no interesting characters, and action that looks like a fan-film.  Actually, I recently saw the fan film, PREDATOR DARK AGES, and it had better action and FX than POWERS.

POWERS left me wanting so much more.  I will never read the comic if this is how good it is.  The show tries to be tough and gritty, but it fails on almost every practical level.  It tries to say important things about the nature of fame and power, but does so in a way that is not compelling.

Ultimately, it felt like a show that didn't know exactly what it wanted to do beyond that one huge (and hugely obvious) plot point that takes forever to actually happen.

Look--even they seem underwhelmed by this show and they're
starring in it!

What worked in POWERS

Not much.  The universe of POWERS is developed, but boring.  The budget, I assume, keeps the story in Los Angeles, and it's an LA that looks a lot like real LA--not like an LA that would change due to having super-powered people around.  That said, we know there is a world beyond the borders of the story.  That's cool and interesting and not something other shows get right.  ARROW and FLASH never give the impression that there are is a culture evolving around super-heroes.  POWERS nails that and it's the most interesting thing about the show.  Sadly, that's not the focus of the show.

Another thing that worked, but was also not the focus of the show, was Retro Girl's place in the universe.  I really understood where she was in her life and career as a super-hero and I got her conflict.  I also liked what they were going for with the African-American partner.  The dynamic between her and the lead white guy was interesting, but really underdeveloped, sadly.  I really wish the show had been about that partner because her character is far more interesting than a washed-up, ex-super-hero-turned-police-detective.  I mean, that is a pretty old character archetype, isn't it? This doesn't mean it's an inherently bad choice, but it sure as hell doesn't make it instantly a good one.

One last thing that (sort of) worked for me was the gritty violence.  I thought it looked not-so-great, but I got the point. When there is violence, it's a mess and it's brutal.  I got the sentiment, even if the budget wouldn't allow for it to show like I felt it should have.  Seeing blood splattering everywhere is cute, but not all there is when making disturbing visuals.

What Didn't Work in POWERS: IT'S SPOILER TIME, KIDS!  You've been warned!

Netflix's DAREDEVIL should be Cast Out (part 2)

This is part two of "Netflix's DAREDEVIL should be Cast Out" (read part 1 first! It'll make more sense!). Do I still think that since I wrote part one? Well, as I wrote both parts as one giant thing over the span of a few weeks, yes. Of course. This is not because I felt the acting was bad or the production or anything else was bad--aside from the script.

If you haven't already read part one, go read it now. It includes a nice little spoiler-free mini-review that covers the basics of the mess that I think Netflix's DAREDEVIL really is. It also covers:

Spoiler-rich, What Worked in Netflix's Daredevil
Netflix's Daredevil is a Man without Sense
Time to Pick a Couple Nits
My Problem with the Kingpin of Crime

In part two, we will cover:

Enough with the Origin Stories, Guys!
What really got my Blood Boiling About Daredevil
World Building and How Daredevil Screwed it Up
How I would have Written the first season of a DAREDEVIL show

OK, here we go with part two! Remember This is a SPOILER-RICH ZONE... YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Enough with the Origin Stories, Guys!

What is probably the biggest problem Netflix's DAREDEVIL has, is that it's lead character's arc is too long and too boring.

Netflix's DAREDEVIL should be Cast Out (part 1)

OK, that title may be a bit strong, but I do feel that way, if for just one reason. I'll get to that one reason in a bit. Other than that one reason, I still think Netflix's DAREDEVIL series is a mess. Obviously, it entertained a lot of people, but for this comic book reader, it was tedious and meandering and, honestly, pretty misleading.

As this is a series that is effectively 13 hours long, there is a LOT to say. So, I'm breaking this up into two posts. This post will cover the following:

My spoiler-free mini-review
Spoiler-rich, What Worked in Netflix's Daredevil
Netflix's Daredevil is a Man without Sense
Time to Pick a Couple Nits
My Problem with the Kingpin of Crime

Part two will explore:

Enough with the Origin Stories, Guys!
What really got my Blood Boiling About Daredevil
World Building and How Daredevil Screwed it Up
How I would have Written the first season of a DAREDEVIL show

Already read Part 1? Check out Part 2 which is live now!

Spoiler-Free Mini-Review

My mini-review is that, as an action show, it was really well made. The action sequences were realistically staged and felt more like real life than anything else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The acting was nearly perfect. I had a few issues with both Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio's choices, but I stopped caring about the ones with Cox as the show progressed and the ones with D'Onofrio only got worse as the show went on. More on that, also, in a bit.

Honestly, I was left a little flat by the show, both as an adaptation of the DAREDEVIL comic and as a TV show. When I said it was misleading, earlier, I meant that this show is called "DAREDEVIL" but it really should have been called "MATT MURDOCK" because of how not like the comic character he was.

I'm not a huge fan of the comic, but I read it for a few years back in the late 80s/early 90s. I know the character's abilities and origin story and really thoroughly enjoyed how he was a kind of blue-collar Batman. To be clear, I am no expert on the comic character. That said, the show does stray from the comic that I remember in many places, so using "that's the way it was in the comic" should not be used to excuse a weak choice in the Netflix version. Honestly, I found the comic book version much more fun and intriguing. His powers were much more developed and understandable in the comic than in the Netflix version. I understood how he could be fearless. In the Netflix version, he just came off as kind of an idiot.

I know Daredevil got his ass handed to him a LOT in the comic. The thing is, somehow the Netflix version didn't manage to make him seem dauntless, so much as stupid. To go into more detail, I need to take you into a spoiler-rich zone. You have been warned.

SPOILER-RICH ZONE BEGINS NOW: Enough with the Comic Comparisons, What Worked with Netflix's DAREDEVIL?

I loved the relationships. I got where everyone was coming from and genuinely enjoyed seeing them interact as humans. The really nice thing about the Netflix-model for episodic storytelling is that you don't have to break for a commercial. You can let your scenes run a little longer and it's great. In the first few episodes I LOVED Matt's discussions with Claire and Foggy. I really dug D'Onofrio's choices early on. Loved loved loved them. More than that, I ADORED Vondi Curtis Hall's take on Ben Urich. Urich is probably my favorite non-powered Marvel comics character (SPOILER ALERT: it is how the show treats this character that makes me think Netflix's DAREDEVIL should be tossed in the trash and done over--more on this in part two of this review).

I don't have a problem with the general idea of the series--to be a sort of DAREDEVIL: YEAR ONE kind of thing. The problem with that is, it ultimately doesn't work. And that's my biggest general problem with Netflix's DAREDEVIL. It was the most boring, repetitive origin story EVER. It made me long for the runtime of Ben Affleck's DAREDEVIL movie. My wife, at one point, looked up the Netflix DAREDEVIL hashtag on Twitter and found many tweets echoing the following sentiment: