The producers have constantly mentioned that the show is more faithful to the source comics than the movie. It shows in how John Constantine is portrayed and the stories they are dealing with.
After all, what are you selling otherwise, a TV show based on a Keanu movie, but this time with less Keanu? And movie wasn’t exactly Iron Man or anything. $230mil box office looks nice, but the aforementioned Daredevil had $175mil (while Iron Man 1 had $585mil). If you don’t attempt to build on, hey this is like the comic book more than the movie, you don’t really have sell-able show premise.
I haven’t bought any Hellblazer comics because it’s not generally to my taste. But I don’t blame them for using the comics as their source material over the movie.
I’ve seen one episode (the introduction of Zed) and was surprised how not-dark it was.
Regardless of what Isquiddi would do, the actual makers of the TV show aren’t doing anything to connect this to the film*, and in interviews seem at pains to distance it from the movie.
But I think your overthinking it, the show is just trying to capitalize on the popularity of urban fantasy shows and comic-book based TV shows. The Constantine character checks both boxes, so the show got greenlit. I seriously doubt the execs were banking on the popularity of a cult comic book or a decade old, marginally successful film (the movie wasn’t even the highest grossing film of the weekend of its release).
*I actually think the show might be better if they borrowed more from the movie and followed the comic less slavishly. But that’s clearly not the route they’re going.
From my experience, 99% of people couldn’t tell you the name or plot of a movie they saw two nights ago. Keanu, in particular, seems to specialize in movies that are generically reasonable and immediately forgettable. Outside of the fanboys who saw it - and hated it - I doubt that there’s any built-in audience that one could leach from the movie.
Indeed. It may make sense to deliberate reference a movie that came out 2 years ago… but one almost a decade old and moderately successful? Why?
Also the landscape has changed. The internet is far more ubiquitous and people are seemingly far more concerned about continuity (or at least they have more avenues to check and recheck things), and that includes fidelity to source. And fans of the source who feel they’ve been slighted in an adaptation tend to be fairly loud voices on the internet… and their complaints bounce around all over the internet on sites like io9, AVClub and the like.
One guy gets strangled and Constantine nearly drowns. In a truck. Where are the cops?
Widow who had a public fight with Constantine vanishes underground, leaving behind a messed up house. Where are the cops?
Constantine blows up the mine. Where are the cops and the ATF?
“Person of Interest” isn’t just a show on another channel. No legal problems for him? That’s just preposterous. I can suspend my disbelief enough to watch a show about an exorcist, but that shit cuts all ties with reality. Look at all the problems they are having with the Feds on SHIELD. This is just stupid, which was always a problem I had with DC.
Others have addresses some good points but also: unlike Superman, Spider-man and other recent movies, Hellblazer has always been a niche title and Constantine a fringe character. Anything using him is for the 10,000 fanboys.
A little better, maybe. But it had not one but two instances of “secondary character shows up seconds before the main character is about to die to save him”. And the plot was resolved by some random magic-babble that hadn’t even been referenced earlier in the episode.
And finally, having the good-guys trying to solve mysteries is kind of boring when one of them is a psychic, since it basically just lets the writers hand them all the answers.
So the mill is bigger on the inside? And he’s got a card that shows those who look at it what he wants them to see? Where’ve I seen those things before…
Unless British English has changed significantly in the past 30 years – which, I grant, is entirely possible – Zed does not mean zero: it means z (as in the last letter of the alphabet). Zilch is what means zero.
:smack:
Yeah, that was annoying. Coupled with my growing dislike of both Constantine’s and Zed’s accents* and my recurring feelings of “this could really be a better show,” I decided to cancel my season pass after this episode.
*I’ve mentioned my problems with Constantine’s accent already in this thread. The actress who plays Zed hasn’t had many English-speaking roles, and she has just enough of an accent to be distracting – and sometimes hard to understand, because it’s inconsistent. I’ve always had a hard time listening to “in between” accents: either have a consistent Spanish accent, or learn to do a cleaner American accent.
Just saw Episode 3 - now that’s more like it! A very fun and plot laden episode. Avoided the dullness of last week. I know some reviewers said this ep was too packed, but I think that’s where the show works best. I really enjoyed it and if it continues like that, I’ll enjoy it very much.
Never read the comics, and one thing I frequently hear from Constantine fans is how he uses his wits and generally manipulates everything and everyone around him instead of using magic. Personally, I like my warlocks to use lots of flashy magic. But anyway, so far the show hasn’t impressed me with his wits or flashy magic. It’s only ep three though.
She’s picking up some of his accent. A couple phrases were toned more British (“Air ye okay?”). I, though, have absolutely no problem with people who grew up bilingual, as I assume she did in Tucson. You might as well get used to it. The days of everybody on TV speaking in flat, Midwestern accents are behind us.
HOWEVER, Martin Luther King Drive is North-South, not East-West and 3809 East Anything in most of Chicago puts you in the lake, though a bit is blocks from Indiana.
