It's been a while, but I've decided it's time to revive this blog and to continue my experience in reviewing things. If any long time readers (all four of them) remain, they'll notice that I've deleted the older, non-review posts, mainly because I want to focus on reviews.
So to begin with, I'm going to discuss a new TV show that I've been watching. Released to a lot of buzz this year, The Flash is a superhero TV show from the DC stable. DC have really been struggling in films lately to match what Marvel have done with their shared universe and their continued success rate, but somewhere where DC has been finding quiet success is in the world of TV shows. Arrow, a show that started off as perhaps a very traditional, very American adventure show has grown in to one of the strongest on screen comic book adaptations around, and The Flash is spinning off from that show, set in the same universe, but trying something a little different.
Arrow is a very easy show to describe. Particularly when you sit down and watch the early episodes, the scene leading to its origin is easy to see. Somewhere, a group of television executives met, thrilled by the recent success of the Dark Knight movies, and desperate to find a way to cash in on that success. Suddenly, one of them pipes up that they still have the television rights to the Green Arrow, left over from his appearances in Smallville, who's a billionaire who lives in a mansion and dresses up to fight crime using his fortune while operating out of an underground lair. And so, the Dark Knight: The TV Series is born, except instead of Batman, it stars 'The Arrow', a masked (eventually) crime fighter.
And at first it started out wearing its Dark Knight influences so on its sleeve that the show really suffered. It essentially played out like the recent Nolan Batman movies, but with even more scenes reminding us how rich the hero was, and how totally difficult being a billionaire was. Suffice to say, sympathies weren't really with him. But then, about half way through the first series, supervillains began to turn up, plots to destroy the city began happening, and things began to evolve as the show grew in to a real superhero show. It was a slow build, with Arrow himself not even donning a mask until a good few episodes in to series two (up until then, he best method to hide his identity was 'look at the floor and wear a hood if they know me'), but the show soon transcended its 'trying to be Batman' routes and grew to be a really good superhero adaptation in its own right. However, as you might expect for a show starring a powerless man who dresses up to fight crime, it remained relatively grounded. There were superpowered villains in series two, but their appearance was always justified and nothing too outlandish. So, for the more surreal, out there comic book stuff, we got The Flash.
And it's a very mixed bag. For those who aren't familiar with him, The Flash is the 'Fastest Man Alive'. Of course, this particular superpower exists across pretty much all superhero franchises, from Quiksilver in the X-Men and Avengers (and making a show stopping appearance in the recent Days of Future Past) to Dash in The Incredibles. So it's nothing original, but a chance for the creators of Arrow to really explore the more outlandish aspects of the DC universe.
The show starts very earnestly, with Barry Allen (the titular hero once he gets his powers) getting struck by lightning when a Big Science Experiment goes wrong (shocking, I know). He wakes up after nine months in a coma to discover he can move super fast. The only problem is that the Big Science Experiment caused a massive storm that's given lots of other people thematic-to-their-personality superpowers too, and Barry is the only one who can stop them! Because apparently nobody else who got caught in this storm has any kind of moral centre at all. They're all completely evil.
And so, Barry becomes The Flash, aided by a group of fairly generic scientist characters (although the wheelchair bound leader gets some fairly sinister twists and turns). The problem is that the show feels incredibly rushed to get to the superheroing. While Arrow very slowly built up its world, its allies, and how it worked, here Barry awakes from a coma surrounded by a group of people, scientists who are a team who will help him, and yes, they even have a suit they prepared earlier. It all feels very identikit. "Ah, good, Barry, you're awake, I'm your grumpy mentor, this is your love interest, and over there is the annoying geeky side kick, now get to work." All that natural development in Arrow is gone (and it really was natural, one of Arrow's key characters was only meant to appear in one episode, but worked so well they kept bringing her back until now she's one of the main characters in the show) and instead we're dumped with a cast we know nothing about that are instantly formed in to a team.
To make matters worse, the chance to go 'outlandish' is instead used to go 'cheesy'. And often without the special effects to back it up. In the first three episodes, where the UK is at the time of writing, we've had villains who can control the weather, multiply themselves, and turn in to gas. It's all done without subtly, the villains don't have any particular character, and I find myself painfully reminded of superhero 'fights' from that era where superhero films just couldn't get it right. These episodes play out like the battles against the generic henchmen in Ghost Rider. It's not a good thing.
'Cheesy' tends to be the optimum word. Barry narrates things in a cheerful, optimistic tone that feels like a Sam Raimi Spider-man movie without any of the self awareness, and it's difficult to shake the feeling that an episode will end with Barry saving the day with the power of friendship at the rate things are going.
But it isn't all bad. Outside of his pre-assembled science team, Barry has some interesting relationships. His adoptive father is a police captain, and Barry himself is a forensic scientist. This helps him be involved in the weekly plots, and it's nice that he has a serious job. And his wheelchair bound mentor is revealed very early on to have some very sinister secrets that are particularly interesting, and make for compelling viewing.
Yet at the moment, the show needs to develop some serious storylines and move past 'generic villain of the week'. It needs a plot arc and it needs to allow some characters to develop. Cheesy is okay, fun is good, we don't all want dark and gritty, but characters still need to be three dimensional and plots earned, not just created instantly. While Arrow stumbled out of the gate due to being too inspired by the Dark Knight, and perhaps being too generic and focusing on the wrong things, The Flash feels like it's moving too fast and not taking its time to earn what it has. And in doing so, we're not developing any attachment, or worse, any interest, in where things are going.
In other words, the fastest man alive needs to slow down a bit.
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