Suspend my disbelief

So here’s me going back to the drawing board.

This post retains it’s original title, “Suspend my disbelief”.  That’s how it started life.  It just got lost when I started to make comparisons between Marvel and DC’s TV shows, whilst forgetting 2 of Marvel TV’s biggest and best.

So let’s get back to suspending our disbelief.

This is something that I assume all fans of American or science fiction TV shows are familiar with.  Throw comic book adaptations into that mix, and that is where I’m at.  I’ve gone deep down the DC TV rabbit hole, and in doing so have found my disbelief suspension limits.

At the start of series 3 of Arrow, episode 2.  A bad guy’s laying in a hospital bed a little worse for wear.  Team Arrow needs information from him that will lead to his boss, the big bad guy.  Needless to say, the big bad guy isn’t keen on this happening, and in order to shut him up assassinates him whilst he’s recuperating in hospital.

Here’s where I reach my limit.

The hospital bed that our soon to be dead guy is laying in is perpendicular to the window (every bad guy needs a room with a view after all).  Big bad guy stands on the roof top of the adjacent building and shoots him in the chest with an arrow, through the window.

“Where’s the problem here?”  I hear you ask.

The problem is that the arrow sticks out of the guy's chest at an angle that indicates he’s been shot face on.  No angle at all.  Yet the window is perpendicular to the bed.  A right angle, not parallel to the end of the bed.

The last time I checked you can’t bend it like Beckham when you shot an arrow.  There’s some basic physics here that’s being ignored.

But hang on a minute.  This is Arrow, right?  Where we have:

• Mirakuru
• The Lazarus Pit
• Magic herbs that Oliver eats to cure himself of…..well, anything.
• and a bow that The Arrow can bludgeon people with during fights, yet it never breaks?

That’s not to mention lots of jumping, flipping and flying that I’m sure also flies in the face of basic physics.  The list gets longer when you start to think that this is in a universe where we also have The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.

Yet in all of this, the simple misrepresentation of the trajectory of an arrow is what brings the house down.

I'm going watch the Legends of Tomorrow travel through time in order to calm down.

Marvel vs. DC, TV goes head to head...

Ok, so I forgot the great Marvel TV shows:

I was writing a post lamenting my inability to overlook ignorance of basic physics.  This in relation to TV shows that I have been watching recently adapted from comic books.  The majority of these being from DC Comics.

I’ve been watching a lot of The Flash, Arrow, and most recently Legends of Tomorrow.  For the most part I have been enjoying them immensely.  More so than Marvel Agents of SHIELD, where I have just finished the third series.  I began comparing the franchises, against each other and their big screen counterparts.  Drawing a conclusion that while Marvel are champions of the big screen, DC had the edge on the small.  For me Agents of SHIELD has become peppered with filler with the purpose of forwarding the overall series long story arc rather than that of the current episode.  The result being episodes that go off the boil.  In this DC have a knack of making solid episodes, entertaining in their own right, while still furthering the series long story arc.

Having put the finishing touches to my post, I hit save and slept on it.  Something I like to do is read with fresh eyes and a clear head the morning after as a final part of the editing process,  It was while laying in bed that night that it occurred to me that I had recently started watching the second series of Daredevil.  This in turn reminded my of Jessica Jones.  Both Marvel franchises that are bloody brilliant.  Very different to Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, and Arrow, but just as good and arguably better.

So with this in mind.  I’ve realised that the difference in the quality of Marvel’s and DC’s TV shows isn’t so clear cut, and that I need to go back to the drawing board on that post.

Maybe I need to see TDKR again?...

There will be spoilers...

Filling cinema seats by the thousand up and down the UK, The Dark Knight Rises opened on Friday.  After lots of scheduling clashes, and rearranging, I managed to be one of the faithful who went along on the opening day.

My wife and I had watched Batman Begins a few nights before, during which she made a great point.  It's the first time we see on screen what goes into making Batman so kick ass.  I get that's the point of an 'origins' film, but in all the other films Bruce Wayne just puts on a Bat Suit and takes on a slightly super human quality.  In Batman Begins, we see what goes into it, and it makes it more believable once the suit goes on.

Then we were treated to The Dark Knight.  I will very shortly be watching it again, as it sits waiting in my iTunes library.  As action films go, it's a corker, and Heath Ledger's performance has ensured The Dark Knight's place as a timeless classic.  The kind of film that I will sit down and watch 20 years from now and enjoy just as much (a great example of this I watched just last night in Aliens).

So then we have TDKR:

What a mouth watering prospect.  Bane, Batman and closure.  3 things that were, in my opinion, heavily touted by all involved.  That rare thing, a compelling and well told story, allowed to run it's course and then end.  All things pointed to modern day greatness in the making.

I left the film on Friday, and for a good hour I felt frustrated and disappointed.  My wife and I spoke at length about the ending, which she loved, and I tried to reconcile my differences with it.  I will undoubtedly see the film again at the cinema, in a final attempt.  I didn't know quite what to expect from the ending, but whatever it was, I didn't get it.

You know how for some films, when they release the DVD or Blu-Ray, they include alternate endings?  Well I think in a bid to save everyone's time from having to watch several different endings to TDKR, they just cut them all together.  First Batman/Bruce Wayne dies, then he doesn't.  Then Gotham is saved, but wait, let's hand over the mantle of protector to someone else just in case (which in itself ruins the whole closure aspect).  Then you have the scene in the café...

Whilst TDKR is a great film, it's not the triumphant sign off I was hoping for.

The saviour of DC?

As we draw closer to the release of The Dark Knight Rises, speculation increases as to where Christopher Nolan will go after this.

There has been lots to say that whilst he will not be at the helm of any further Batman films, he will help produce future Batman reboots.  The current trend for reboots is something that I'm finding myself increasingly at odds with.  Take the recent 'reboot' of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  

I'm a big fan of the 2011 film, the book, and of David Fincher.  The problem being it's critical reception due to it's proximity to the original, had a damaging effect on it's box office performance.  This in turn has put a dampener on the subsequent sequels, in particular the turning off of Fincher.  Who has pretty much categorically ruled out a return to the chair for the remainder of the films.  The current news being that both sequels are due to be filmed back to back (starting in the autumn), for release in 2013.  I'm not holding my breath.

Back to Nolan.

I'm reading lots about plans for Nolan to be the saviour of the remainder of DC Comics character stable.  Most notably with a reboot of The Green Lantern (hence my earlier comment about reboots).  I'm not hugely opposed to a Green Lantern reboot, as the Ryan Reynolds outing was particularly awful, and as a character The Green Lantern deserves better.

What concerns me more is the possibility of Nolan getting caught in a black hole of comic book adaptations (which wouldn't be the end of the world, as I love comic book movies), ultimately detracting from other projects.  Nolan has the midas touch, and I love the variety and quality of his films.

One door that this does potentially open though, and one that is currently a hot topic out there, is the Justice League being brought to the big screen.

This I would love to see...