thekilon

My beef with Superman has always been , his lack of intellect, misguided idealism and very simplistic character.

Fortunately all these gaps are filled just fine with Supergirl and the icing on the cake is that is more powerful than him too.

Of course Supergirl is far darker character, marked by her loss of the planet and not able to afford the idealistic and rather naive ideology of Superman. Which is why in the comics they may be family but as many confilcts as Superman has with Batman.

Now why I mention Supergirl.

Even though the show may have high praise for Superman, to the extend of overstating his importance to the DC universe ( a common theme among films and tv) non the less its clear the creators have been influenced a lot more from Supergirl's character's than Superman's.

The story afterall is taken place in Argo city, the birthplace of Supergirl and contains as the main villain , Brainiac who plays a pivot role in the origin story of Supergirl as well as after her origin.

The show also shared the darkness of Supergirl, her anger, but also her intellect , her intrigue and inner war of right and wrong. Which is also the character of the city.

Overall I expected a silly Superman like, teenage friendly, marvel studio style depiction of planet Krytpon. Fortunately its not, the show is focused more on ideologies and politics, than it is on heroism and romanticism. It shows a planet in the verge of destruction way before its destruction and way before its touched by the hand of Brainiac.

Unfortunately the house of El is the usual good guys , idealists and very Superman like even though Superman idealism is coming from his earth familiry than Krypton and this is the only part of the show that I have not find easy to digest.

Its a pleasant suprise that the house of Zod is not represented as the pure bad guys and even the house of Vex that may seem quick to fill that role operate on a grey area.

The strength of the show is its story and characters, it does an excellent job justifying two peculiarities about Krytponians. Why they did not leave their planet and why they destroyed it. It shows a self centered society , deeply religious and self destructive.

Another surprise is Brainianc himself. Braniac is not a very Hollywood friendly villain because he is no villain. He has no interest in destruction , but preservation and that makes his role too complicated in era of stupid marvel like storylines. Even comparing him with Ultron does him injustice because he has no intention of exterminating a specie or killing its heroes. So the surprise is how well the show stays faithful to the original character and not mere making him a mono dimensional monster.

What I did not like is how dark it is. I am more a Batman fan than I am a Superman fan, hence my clear preference for Supergirl but even I need a bit of light tones and naivety at times and I think the show tends to take itself at time a bit too seriously. But so much to annoy me. Also I feel the Kryptonian technology is not up to par to what one would expect, someone could claim that is the low budget but that is not the case.

Special effects are actually very well done and I have been impressed by the depiction of Brainiac and his ship.

Overall this is a show that looks like nothing out there, I could compared it to "Gotham" but to my surprise , it ends up being even darker than that. Also unlikely Gotham it based on completely unknown characters , with one exception which I wont explain as I promised no spoilers.

Overall I think the show is very well made, it could be better, but I still think this is by far the most original superhero orientated show I have watched. I went to it with the lowest expectation, the trailer seems that this would be nothing more than a mess and even the first couple episodes are kinda weak it really builts to an epic and completely unexpected finale which gave me some extra respect to its storyline.

If you expect to see a Superman like show be prepared to be severly disspointed as I said this is 100% Supergirl show and its follows very similar themes as in the comics But if you like the dark undertones that make DC ... well .... DC. The blur between good the evil. The fall of idealism and heroism. Then this show is for you and it wont disappoint even if you have no clue about Supergirl origin story or Brainiac.

Summary: Infinity war has all the elements of the old trusted Disney recipe. Mediocre to bad comedy, stupid story, flat characters, political correct and kids friendly style.

If you loved Thor Ragnarok , you will love this one. It's only major difference is that there is much less Hulk in this one.

In Detail:

The good thing about the film is that it brings all our favorite marvel superheroes together without feeling overcrowd and giving each one of them its own role in the film without using him or her as mere decorations. The ending although partly expected, it has a good deal of surprise.

Overall however the film suffers from a ton of issues:

1) The elephant in the room is Thanos himself, he suffers from the same issues as Steppenwolf in JL. As a villain he is everything you expect to see, a bad guy wanting to do bad things. Their only difference is that dialogue wise Steppenwolf takes the edge with some really unique lines, Thanos takes the edge of having a bit more complex plan. But overall this is a "what you see is what you get" situation for both of and sadly they also both suffer from the plastic face CGI issue. Overall much of the motivation of Thanos makes little sense and the film does not seem able to decide the most basic whether Thanos is mad or plain stupid.

2) Hulk has been a big issue in all Disney films but never as much as in this one. He is pretty much non existent in this film , gone are his old days of "we have a hulk" , maybe there is a reason a surprise element left for the sequel but after Disney turning Hulk to this big cute meatball wrecking havoc depriving him of his Marvel identify of the stuff of nightmares and horrors , my hopes are very low on this one.

3) Disney of course does not stop there at destroying any link with the comics, an art they have perfect since the first movie they made. Thor for some weird reason is completely overpowered. The guy that barely made it alive from a fight with the Hulk in Thor Ragnarok , the first fight he discovers the peak of his powers , seems unlike Hulk to have no issues whatsover taking Thanos by himself. Why ? Again none knows.

4) Spiderman once more is reduced to Iron Man's sidekick. His role in the flim is completely unnecessary , even though he does indeed participate and contributes his own powers this film, these powers are like Homecoming extremely town down. His insane agility is long gone, his spider sense just a shadow of the one in the comics and of course what remains is his high reliance on his armor of course made by tony. Essentially if Iron Man is Dr Evil, Spiderman is Mini Me. It's pretty obvious that Disney is pitching Spiderman as the new Iron Man , although Holland acting skills are nowhere near those of RDJ.

5) Comedy was always the weakest part of Marvel films. Usually its a hit and miss situation, throw random jokes on the wall , see which one sticks. This film manages to be even worse than Thor Ragnarok. Some very good jokes, most of them you see them coming miles away.

6) For me Hulk was not the big surprise on how underpowered he was but Dr Strange. Marvel has already establishes that he can run circles around Thor and Loki combined , yet in this one he seems to display a tiny fraction of his abilities

7) Which brings us to another problem stemming from this inconsistency, action scenes. None of the fight scenes are really exciting, the most exciting is nothing more than a recycle from a similar scene in Thor Ragnarok.

8) Last but not least, character development is non existent. Infinity War seems to follow Civil War but again there is no discussion on the big gap that it left to the team, the film starts with an indication that it may address the issue but then as soon as Thanos visits our planet, its no longer an issue. Disney logic at its best.

All my fears since watching the trailer have been confirmed and I would be surprised if the sequel is the first superhero movie not bothering to watch.

I rarely write reviews but I wanted to add some clarification because fans of the comic are too harsh for this TV series.

First this is like 1000 times better than the comic. Yes the comic evolves around a deep , complex , rich story. There is two problems with its story a) its far from original (see Spawn) b) the characters are plain boring. Its very difficult in the comic to differentiate one character from the other , they are miserable and they are also miserable... oh did I say they are also miserable.

On the other side we have this TV series. In comparison with the comic is pretty much the polar opposite. The story is extremely simple yet very original , the very few characters that is has very well written , interesting and multi dimensional that do not go down the misery stereotypical writing that anything relate to the devil goes usually.

Let's get one thing straight the comic is a drama this is a comedy.

No its not a cop show.

Yeah sure the theme is cop related but in the end, if you take out Lucifer and Chloe this becomes the most boring cop show you ever watched. The murders investigated are far, far ,far from interesting and they don't play any more than a decoration role for the series.

The series has more in common with Californication than it has with CSI , Law and Order etc.

It should not surprise its made by the same writer.

Essentially this polarises on the relation of Lucifer and Chloe, with every character just being there to push the story further.

It also does not glorify Satan by any means. The comic does far better job at that actually.

Lucifer is NOT himself. This is something that is made clear from episode 1. First because he decides he is fed up with the role of Satan and wants to explore something else. Second and this is the most important is that he finds, again from very early on, that he is physically vulnerable when he is around Chloe. What is implied is also that he emotionally vulnerable when he is around her as well and the more exposed he becomes to her the more vulnerable he becomes.

The final blow on the whole "glorifies Satan" comes when we find in Season 2 why Chloe is so special and why the whole story is far from accidental and has little to do with "the power of love" as you would expect in a typical romantic series.

In the end this is too binary to be compared to the comic or a typical cop show and too out of character to be blamed for Satan glorification. For the same reasons it cannot even remotely compare to Supernatural which by the way has a lot more common with the comic than this has.

Instead this is a remake of the Californication story and its great remake even though much more simple. Mainly because of the extreme amount of layers that the characters have. But mostly because of the chemistry between Chloe and Lucifer.

The show like Californication has much more to do with the human condition that is has to do with religion and mythology. Its semi serious look into the human condition from the perspective of very interesting characters with their own flaws and weakness.