Hello and welcome to an unscheduled edition of The Comic Shop!
FIRST......"Gotham" made it's highly anticipated television debut last week with the second episode airing this previous Monday. I will preface all my thoughts by saying it is EARLY in the life of the show and these are snap judgements and impressions. As with all things I reserve the right to change my opinion based on the strength of future episodes (the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." amendment in The Comic Shop Constitution).
The Good:
I think that overall the performances are on par with most network tv. I think Ben McKenzie carries himself well as Gordon, and he is well suited to carry the brunt of the load for this series. Nobody really stands out at this point per se; however, I did really like the casting of Robin Lord Taylor as a young Oswald Cobblepot. Taylor fits the off beat look of the future Penguin, and it will be interesting to see what develops with his character in the run of the series.
The Bad/Ugly:
My main gripe is that for a series like this the Wayne's are not needed as an integral part of the plot. In my honest opinion I think it does a disservice to have Bruce, Alfred, or even the murder of Thomas and Martha as a central focus in this adaptation.
The thing that makes Batman's origin so powerful is not that it's a mystery that needs to be solved, but that it's a mystery that CAN'T be solved. In several interpretations of the history of Batman "Joe Chill" is a pseudonym for a faceless man. Bruce dons the cowl and wages everlasting war because every criminal is potentially the one that killed his parents. Now obviously this is tweaked with every adaptation of the source material for instance in "The Dark Knight Trilogy" Joe Chill was a flesh-and-blood man that was caught, and in "Batman" Jack Napier would eventually become the clown prince of crime The Joker.
Batman the stoic loner takes on wards like Dick Grayson so that they may find the justice that he never will, so that they do not become a brooding obsessed vigilante like the Batman. In making the Wayne's murder a mystery that is integral to the series the creators have to this point made it a bland intrigue story rather than the origin of the Dark Knight that we all know and love.
In my mind a better narrative for the show would have been to have a twenty-something Bruce Wayne in his travels around the world making sporadic appearances on the show while the main story featured a young Gordon fresh off the train from Chicago fighting corruption in the GCPD.
Like I said it is early in the life of this show and I'm going to give it some honest time, but these are my first impressions and nothing else. Judge it however you wish, because after all this is an opinion piece
SECOND.....I'm mostly done discussing Fox's next adaptation of the "Fantastic Four", but it has been confirmed that in this version Sue will be an adopted sibling of Johnny Storm. Take it as you will.
My honest feeling is that we are just seeing the beginning of an epic pissing contest between Fox and Marvel. As you may have read Marvel is planning on ceasing publication of Fantastic Four in the near future as to not lend support to this project, and there are rumbles they may do that with the X-men as well. I look at this as Fox saying "okay well then we are going to do whatever the hell we want with this adaptation because we can".
Nothing is confirmed at this point, but I think we are starting to see where everyone stands. With a hot property like "X-men: Days of Future Past" hitting the theater last summer one would have expected to see toys, licensed t-shirts, lunch boxes, and everything else under the sun, but because Marvel owns the rights to the license they put the kibosh on that. This all is allegedly due to Marvel wanting the rights back to the X-men & FF properties. Which as you may or may not know only came about because Marvel came on hard times, and needed some quick cash. This lead to the movie rights to X-men and FF being with Fox, and an actual split ownership of Spider-man with Sony.
LASTLY......Depending on your reading habits it could be a light or heavy day at The Comic Book store tomorrow. Lady Thor will be making her debut in the wake of the events of "Original Sin", and Bucky Barnes will become a space ranger due to the same event. Wolverine will continue his march toward death, and the Justice League will fight something or the other. As for your humble blogger I'm looking forward to "Green Arrow" as we pick up with a new arch from the creative team of the successful show "Arrow", and I will trudge through another issue of "Grayson".
Thanks for reading! See you next time at The Comic Shop!
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