I am an oxy-moron of sorts. I'm a big fan of super hero stories and super hero comics...and generally NOT a fan of the same on TV and in movies, as, more often than not, the result is painful. I am always hopeful at first but as I watch, those characters just break my heart. Recently, a show called No Ordinary Family launched with a sort of real-life Incredibles vibe going on. I can understand there are people in the world that don't read comics and may not be acquainted with he finer points of being a successful hero, but when Michael Chiklis starts fighting crime, concerned for the safety of his family...not wearing a mask..I get annoyed. It's stupid. Flash forward a month or two and Spider-Man hits Broadway..and their actors hit the stage in a number of wire mishaps. In this particular case, the creators were so set on creating a spectacle the audience would never forget, they completely ignored what it was that has made Spider-Man great for many many years. They could do it better. They are failing miserably.
Now comes The Cape. From the start, the commercials never hid the fact that their super hero fights crime with a super cape and up close magic. They seemed to take pride in their "rouge's gallery" of colorful no-goodnicks seemingly ripped from the pages of Dick Tracy. Setting aside all that flashy ridiculousness, I decided to give the show a shot. Man. I'm going to let the ever eloquent
Nate Cosby handle the finer points of my complaints (as re-posted from his live Tweets tonight) and then after, I will probably curse a lot...
- I watch real people in costumes fighting, and all I can think is "WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE GUNS."
- The Cape is like watching The Dark Knight scene where Morgan Freeman bullshits about sonar cellphones on a continuous loop.
- Wait, when The Cape isn't using his cape, do we just call him The?
- "Don't talk to strangers, kid. Unless they're creepy & right outside your window."
- Tarot is a secret society of killers that have GIANT SQUARE TAROT TATTOOS ON THEIR ARMS.
- The Cape's main adversary is named Gambit LeDouche.
- "The Cape is just a tool." You got THAT right, Keith David.
- Saying #TheCape is better than Heroes = saying Phantom Menace is better than The Last Airbender
- That...that was absolute horseshit. But God help me, I might have to watch this show again.
All that is super fucking hysterical IF you watched the show. If not, here is a list of the show's offenses to comic readers and people of below average intelligence who would know better...
1. If you're a police officer who just got framed and faked his own death, COVER YOUR DAMN FACE when going out to fight crime!!
2. When you finally do don a mask, covering your nose, cheeks and ears doesn't really hide your identity (but it seemed to work fine against your arch nemesis in this dumb show, so carry on.)
3. When tattooing your super villains for your ultra secret super villain group initiations, maybe put the tattoo somewhere where people won't see it (ie; not on your wrist.)
4. If you need to knock off a politician to further your evil agenda, only hire the super villain assassin IF..and only IF..you aren't going to be sitting next to the guy at diner sometime..like say...when you've hired the super villain assassin to kill them. Just sayin. We are in a recession. Save some cash.
I would rather have watched Keith David knock over banks and throw smoke bombs while Martin Klebba whaled on people's balls with a giant wrench for 2 hours. WHO gets these ideas past all the checkpoints and when it comes time to shoot, WHY does no one say OK, what we are making is profoundly dim. Sure, someone got people to cry over giant blue cat people, but we are talking about a super hero grabbing people with a whip cape and throwing them across the room. It looks HYSTERICAL but not in a funny haha I'm enjoying this way. If this was made by Troma and the hero decapitated people with the cape and then fucked all the femme fatales, it would work. If the WHOLE show was filmed in Japan, directed by Noboru Iguchi (director of Machine Girl) and made slightly pervy, it REALLY would have worked. What I saw tonight did not work.
And like Nate Cosby, I will be watching again next week... until I'm sick of the taste of throw up in my mouth.
Was it the ill fitting Party City stripper gear costume? Was it the images of the show's star Adrianne Palicki bolting down a city street, hands flat and chopping away like an awkward middle aged man in vintage 70's basketball shorts? Maybe it was the script which saw this powerful Amazonian princess curled up in her PJ's eating ice cream after seeing her x boyfriend, singing loudly in her car and countless other girlie movie tripe Hollywood likes to throw out there. I haven't read the script myself, but I can only imagine scenes of her singing into her hairbrush and a montage of her support staff (dubbed the "animals"..and no I'm not making that up) cheering her on as she tries on countless outfits for a big date were not far behind. Whatever may have been the magic bullet that made NBC go Nyooooo..nyooo...no..., Deadline is reporting the project is toast (at least at NBC.) This may be for the best. Would the public rather see the determined uber-woman with the piercing eyes and unflinching demeanor beat the holy hell out of re-imagined for real life baddies every week? Probably not. Could this have worked with a slight age regression, seeing Diana introduced in her early 20's as a woman among the male dominated world of super heroism who also has the disadvantage of being raised on an all female island stuck in the middle ages? That could have been funny, endearing, quirky and action packed all at once...basically everything we are looking for in a geeky weekly TV series. Let's hope the WB goes back to square one and stops second guessing the incredible writing that is most likely already out there in the Wonder Woman comics. Surely, someone has written some excellent stories in the past 50+ years that they can translate. Let's see some faith in the source material..hmm?
I am an oxy-moron of sorts. I'm a big fan of super hero stories and super hero comics...and generally NOT a fan of the same on TV and in movies, as, more often than not, the result is painful. I am always hopeful at first but as I watch, those characters just break my heart. Recently, a show called No Ordinary Family launched with a sort of real-life Incredibles vibe going on. I can understand there are people in the world that don't read comics and may not be acquainted with he finer points of being a successful hero, but when Michael Chiklis starts fighting crime, concerned for the safety of his family...not wearing a mask..I get annoyed. It's stupid. Flash forward a month or two and Spider-Man hits Broadway..and their actors hit the stage in a number of wire mishaps. In this particular case, the creators were so set on creating a spectacle the audience would never forget, they completely ignored what it was that has made Spider-Man great for many many years. They could do it better. They are failing miserably. 
