This show has been waaay under my radar for some time. What kind of job do they do showing powers and effects for all these heroes? I can’t imagine they have a huge budget for it.
Are any of these shows worth watching? I watched a few but the execution of the Superboy “powers” were extremely lame. The effects I saw were practically 70’s “6 Million Man” quality and the show seemed far more about soap opera interpersonal drama than superhero stylin’.
Um…why?
Well, Clark has a huge destiny coming up, and Cosmic Boy told him part of his destiny is learning to fly on his own, or something like that.
I don’t know anything specific about the shows budget, but it does seem to me that it can’t be that great. The special effects are cheesy to say the least. Powers tend to be dealt with in a straight forward, understated manner. Flight is usually portrayed by the character simply zipping off into the sky for a few seconds, a quick CGI creation. When Clark moves at super speed everything around him just slows down. (The show makes extensive use of slow motion and “bullet time”.)
That really depends on what you’re expecting.
Personal thoughts…
You’re exactly spot on here. The show has a heavy soap opera quality to it and it really remains it’s biggest strength. In the early seasons the high lights were easily the interactions between the characters. Clark struggling with being “different”, his friendship with Chloe and his back and forth with Lex. (Michael Rosenbaum, while not a traditional Luthor portrayal, was probably the best actor on the show, and he created an interesting character. I can easily see his Lex as evolving into the over the top humanist “Superman represents an alien threat” that has under pinned the character in the last few decades. The show has struggled with his departure. Mileage varies on how well they’ve dealt with it.)
I like the show myself, but with the constant drama between the characters it does feel like they’re spinning their wheels pretty much constantly. You could probably tune into the first few and last few episodes each season when it’s at it’s best, (decisions are made, changes actually happen), and still pretty much follow what’s going on. A lot of it’s appeal lies in the actors and their portrayals. I like Chloe, Lois, Oliver, and Lex, and Lionel, in the earlier seasons. Even Welling works for me, he’s very wooden but it seems to fit Clark’s hesitancy and naivete as a young man.
It’s not a traditional superhero romp, and it’s ramps up the character drama to absurd levels. But it works for me.
If you’re into classic superhero yarns I’d recommend tracking down the 2 part JSA show from earlier this season and give it a look. It delves deeply into DC lore and treats it with respect. Geoff Johns, (a consultant on the show, and a writer for DC comics), penned the script.
Must admit I watch this show when I can. What particularly interest me are the occasional visitors from the DC universe who pop in, such as the selected members of the LSH and JSA, Doomsday, Metallo, Brainiac, etc. Of course, they’re really adaptations of the original DC characters, but still interesting. Then you always have Ollie as the Green Arrow and John Jones as the Martian Manhunter. If it were just Clark and Lois and Chloe all the time, the show would be a bore.
I’m pretty far behind most people, as I’ve just gotten to season 5. He lost his virginity with Lana near the beginning of season 5 when he lost all his powers from disobeying Jor-El. They make a big deal of them saying they are both virgins, they hug and kiss, and then the next episode they wake up together and get told off by Clark’s parents. (Well Ma is a little more accepting.)
The reason given for why he can’t fly is his debilitating fear of heights. At least in the early seasons, he always makes a big deal out of how scared he is when he’s up high. When he has something that removes his inhibitions (and thus his fear) he can fly just fine. Until then, he at least has his super jump ability, which is actually more true to his origins.
Also, the special effects aren’t quite as bad as the posters above make them out. The understatement is actually their strength. The big cinematic parts are the ones where it looks the most fake. Well, that and metal bending, which they never use CGI for. Think Million Dollar Man style, or even old Superman shows.
Oh, and I’m a bit peeved that Lois and Clark get together, as that’s really messing with canon. The whole point is that she originally likes Superman and doesn’t even think of Clark as a romantic anything. (Then again, I’d say she’s almost a different character, with her original stand in character Chloe being a lot more like the Lois of the comics.)
I’m really not sure how they can arrive at where all the characters are actually supposed to be when all the Superman stuff starts, without some massive retcon.
Smallville is not meant to be Superman: Year One. It’s a completely different continuity, and it has no reason to end up in the same place as regular Superman stories. Having one parent alive and one dead when he went to Metropolis is already a pretty major change (pre-Crisis being twice orphaned was fairly major, post-Crisis, they only just recently killed off his father, and the Kents were major characters both for him and for Superboy).
In terms of showing off powers, I’d say it’s as good as Heroes, if you’ve seen that. Actually, with Heroes, I get bored with the story sometimes and just wish they’d have more super power action. I guess I like the silly soap opera stuff in Smallville. The show does not take itself too seriously and is not for serious comic book nerds who get their blood pressure up over canon and such.
Costumes are generally downplayed, with some exceptions. Clark’s current BFF is Oliver Queen, AKA Green Arrow. He runs around in costume but it’s well done. The Legionnaires who came back through time had regular street clothes with mostly just a suggestion of the comic book costumes. Recently Clark hooked up with some older Justice League/Society (can’t remember) heroes with more conventional costumes but it wasn’t eye-rolley or anything. J’onn J’onzz/Martian Manhunter is a regular human-looking police detective wearing regular police detective clothes, but he’ll usually have something red and green on, just like Clark often wears a blue jacket and red t-shirt or something.
I"m actually impressed with the special effects. They don’t skimp, and if Clark needs to get smacked through a building or something, they’ll do it.
I was always much more interested in Lex Luthor’s road toward super-villainy than in Clark’s toward super-heroism. He was an exponentially more interesting and complex character.
I started losing interest even before Michael Rosenbaum left, and have completely abandoned the show since then. I guess enough people are still watching, but it’s simply not the same show I used to enjoy.
I do vaguely remember that. You might have me there.
This involves a fairly major spoiler from season 7, so for those who haven’t seen season 7 yet, don’t read! I’m not kidding! Clark was battling Bizzaro at the beginning of the season, and shortly after Clark & Lana’s super-powered shag, it was revealed Clark was trapped in ice at the Fortress of Solitude, and Bizzaro was masquerading as Clark. But, I can’t remember when exactly Bizzaro took over Clark’s persona. That could have been Bizzaro.
I didn’t watch much of the first two seasons, but I really don’t remember any mentions of a fear of heights after that. He’s never hesitated about jumping out of planes, or standing on the ledges of really high buildings.
How or why would you be afraid of heights when falling from any height isn’t going to cause you more than a minor inconvenience?
Well Clark isn’t human, but in the mythos he’s generally portrayed as having a base human psychology as a product of his upbringing, as are most aliens who spend a prolonged amount of time on Earth in the DCU. Most phobias aren’t rational, they’re emotional, and if he did have a fear of heights I imagine it was a result of some accident in his childhood. I myself used to have a phobia of dogs when I was child, even small ones, and I can speak from some experience that it was not rational at all. I’ve since gotten over it, but I think it was a matter of simply not being exposed to many animals when I was really young.
That said, Smallville goes with the origin story for Superman where he was largely unpowered for most of his childhood. It was only as time went on and he absorbed solar radiation that his powers began to manifest, mostly in his teenage years. At the beginning of the show the only powers he possessed were his strength and invulnerability, both of which he still didn’t seem to completely grasp. If he had fallen from a great distance when he was still a toddler, for example, he still would have been seriously injured.
The fear of height thing seems to be largely in the past however. As previously mentioned he’s done things like jumping out of flying airplanes and he’s taken up a habit of hanging out on rooftops since that time.