It has occurred to me that, whilst I along with you eagerly anticipate the arrival of new comic book movies, I can't help but think a better format for this type of conversion would be a television series. I'll expand.
A lot of the problems with comic book movies, is that they have to develop the origin of the superhero, then the origin of the villain, then create some form of peril, then have the hero reach a resolution. This is a lot to do in a 2 hour timeslot, take for example the first Spider-Man movie. The build up of the character was done fairly well, but the film suffers from a weak, confusing plot with a villain that lacks the true evil presence of his comic book counterpart. The green goblin is nothing more than a punch bag for Spider-Man, there's nothing overly sinister about him, and he is dealt with swiftfully and finally in the end. The events unfolded much too quickly, reducing what in the comic books is an unending battle between two arch foes to a paltry 20 minute fight scene at the end of the movie.
Imagine how great Spider-Man could have been as a TV series, the build up of the character, the slow introduction of Norman Osborne, the learning of Spider-Man's secret identity, Norman's slow fall into madness. It could have been brilliant. Instead we get three films, all mediocre at best, number two being the best of a bad bunch I suppose.
Now we have news of a Wonder Woman TV series, wonderful, I'm sure they will do a good job. However, what about a Deadpool series instead of a movie? What about Thor series? Maybe The Flash? Love or hate it, Smallville has covered many of the elements of the Superman comic books, yes it's also left out lots and lots, but you can't deny the quality of the show. I'm not saying they should use Smallville as a template, instead they should refer to their source texts a little more often and maybe let their characters natrually evolve, but
with the scale of the show, creating a Deadpool TV series would be easy. And I think that the character would benefit much more from a series of hour long episodes than it would with a 2 hour movie, regardless of how good the movie script is.
Instead, we get inferior, copy-cat TV shows. The Cape, absolute rubbish. There is nothing good about The Cape, save maybe Summer Glau, yet it's on my television screen. No Ordinary Family, again, not as bad as the cape but not very good at all. Why, when there is a huge selection of superheroes to choose from, do the production companies decide to create their own?
I don't expect everybody to agree, and maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Smallville, bane to a lot of people's lives, but I stand by my assumption. I'd rather see a great TV show, with a few bad episodes than an awful movie with a few good scenes. What do you all think?
Wiley C