I’d just like to note that the taxi Chaz ferries Constantine around in is number 173.
I never read the comics, but I have seen the Keanu movie and enjoyed it (though I know it wasn’t an accurate adaptation of the comics). I really enjoyed this pilot and am excited to see how it progresses. I love the darkly sarcastic main character and the world they have set up.
Living in Atlanta, I loved seeing the city portrayed so modern and, well… cosmopolitan. Usually Atlanta is shown less ‘city’ like (if that makes sense). I’d love to see them stay in the ATL, but I don’t think it will happen.
The pilot was what pilots are: A mad dash to jam the setup into 42 minutes of screen time. The lead didn’t put me off, seemed fine to me. Might be good, given time and material. The friend’s daughter that he was protecting didn’t impress me, so if she’s not back, that works for me. It has elements that interest me, so I’ll probably give it a good long leash.
But man, some of the posts I’ve read from comic-book fans on other message boards are just obsessive BS. “The lead actor has brown eyes, everyone knows John Constantine has blue eyes!”, “He doesn’t smoke enough, they only showed him putting a cigarette out at the bar.”, “The accent is wrong! It’s not Scouse!”, “OMG, he’s not bi! I can’t believe they didn’t introduce his bisexuality in the first 42 minutes!”, and my personal favorite, “Con-stan-TINE, not Con-stan-TEEN!” Hell, if it sucks as bad as all that, I’d think you’d be glad to change his name and further separate him from the comic masterpiece.
I read the comics, I bought them when they came out. Hellblazer and The Sandman were my favs at the time. Eventually I moved away from comics and sold them to finance some computer purchase, so maybe I’m not hard-core enough, but I don’t expect them to translate every last color dot from the page.
He’s bi? That’s weird. There was something I think towards the end that made me think bi and then I thought, “nah. Never happen. It’d be cool though.”
I know almost nothing of the character, but this felt like a huge waste of an hour.
Hey TV people, if for some reason you’re dropping a character/actress after filming the pilot, for whatever reason, when that whole pilot seems focused on how important that character is, maybe you should just do a different first episode focused on the direction your series actually will be taking and leave the original version as a DVD bonus or something.
Nice cameo by Dr. Fate’s head, though.
Far and away the best part of the episode. Possibly one of the only good things altogether.
What cameo and who is that?
When the girl first goes to Dad’s old hangout, she picks up what looks like a kind of Roman-esque helmet. That’s the helmet of Dr. Fate, who is actually several potential characters in the same way lots of folks have been Earth’s Green Lantern.
I liked it. Definitely going to keep watching. Don’t mind drift from the comic. Hardly remember the comic really.
A fairly minor point, overall, but important to a couple storylines - including his current origin. (He, Zatanna, and a third character named Nick Necro were in a 3-way relationship that was explicitly connected on all three sides of the triangle.)
Hmm…the part that struck me as a reference to his sexuality was about 1/3 of the way through… John’s noticeable pause after Liv asks him if he was close with her father.
I’ll have to skim back though it.
I recognized Dr. Fate’s helmet, but didn’t know Constantine was a DC character. Does he ever team up with regular superheroes?
Yes. He and Zatanna appear together a lot. He was one of the main characters of Justice League Dark until recently (everyone else basically told him to fuck off after Forever Evil).
He’s usually rather condescending to the capes and cowls community, except for the period after Hellblazer (and other Veritigo titles) were removed from the DCU and before they were put back (so, a bit less than 10 years, I think?), and thus he didn’t live in a universe where there was anyone to be condescending towards.
So that was kind of a replacement episode one. Zed is the new sidekick. This feels like one of those shows that gets messed with, shown out of order and canceled before the end of its first season. Hopefully they get back on track quickly.
I would be pretty doubtful that the production team arbitrarily decided to switch actors. It’s more likely that she won a different role just after finishing the pilot and decided to go with that offer instead, or that she had been a complete a-hole on set. A TV show can keep going for decades. And as the show becomes progressively more popular, it’s going to get harder and harder to write a character out who’s played by someone that’s a complete chore to work with. Better to nip that in the bud.
Though I do admit that I liked the Liv character better than Zed.
Yep, it was not a great episode. It was pretty much a subpar X-files or Fringe episode.
I still have confidence in the show, but that episode was not the best these people are capable of. The show needs to go “Hannibal” dark. Go dark and then go darker until it is hard to look at, but equally hard to look away.
Nope. At the panel I attended for this show at SDCC where they showed the pilot, they said that character of Liv wasn’t interesting enough/didn’t have enough potential storylines/wasn’t strong enough, so they got rid of her in favor of Zed.
This vibes with what I’ve heard. Usually, they fire an actor during the filming(Firefly did this) instead of letting the pilot air as filmed. Still, they changed their mind.
It’s been decades, but I remember Zed appearing in only a few issues. In the premier issue she was a narrative conceit, mostly, there so John had to explain his history and the seedy side of magic he trafficked in.
You know, I liked the pilot well enough to want give the show a chance (on the understanding, of course, that pilot episodes frequently have a lot of rough edges that get smoothed out as the series goes on). Halfway through episode 2, I don’t know if I haven’t changed my mind. Charmless acting; witless, lumpen dialogue; and, worst of all, I can’t believe in Constantine himself, as a character.
Memo to the writers: the city of Liverpool is (rather famously, I thought) a sea port – not a coal mining town. Also, the word “blighter” is not something likely to be said by any Englishman less than 100 years old – certainly not a working class northerner.
The new psychic girl sidekick is barely different than the old psychic girl sidekick. So I’m pretty skeptical the problem was with the character rather than the actress. If they’d wanted someone who could do drawings instead of talk to ghosts, they could’ve just added a scene or two to the pilot to make that the old girls shtick. It wouldn’t have made it any more of a choppy mess than the cut of the pilot they actually used ended up being.
Anyhoo, whatever weird dysfunction is mucking up the show, I hope they get it ironed out. Seems to have potential, and with some tighter writing could be pretty good.