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Post by WildKnight on Oct 26, 2011 11:17:09 GMT -5
Dick stopped being Robin before Crisis. He's only the best Robin retroactively speaking, because Dick Grayson is far and away the most readable character in DC comics, and has been for years.
Tim Drake is actually a good character in his own right, but he's no Dick Grayson.
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Post by WildKnight on Oct 26, 2011 11:18:00 GMT -5
but I feel like you’re singling out things that you wouldn’t mind in any other series. That's inaccurate. I make it a point to hate everything, for the sake of consistency.
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Post by Hypester on Oct 26, 2011 12:18:39 GMT -5
This show is, in a word. Awesome. I love all the changes, I love how the team fits together. I love the way they just pull from all over the JLU.
There's a couple things I didn't like. I thought Joker was unintimidating AND unfunny. I think they morphed Robin from being very Damien-like to being very Grayson-like, which is understandable cuz of fan outcry, but I'm really glad they kept the whelmed. Really glad.
The whole stealth team storyline, to me, is a brilliant way to make the squad relevant. I like that they're over their heads, and that the villains are "winning." But you just know the kids are eventually going to put it together, and their actions thereforward are going to be so much more meaningful.
Edit: Just a few of the character choices I love: Aqualad - He's the token black guy, yeah even with the inescapable black man's electric powers, and yet, he's the actual leader, and he has that leader's arc. He has romance arcs. He's a character, not just a demo filler.
Robin - Eccentricity is what keeps him from being a one man team, and Robin needs to be an incredible character who is not capable of making the others obsolete. It's okay when its more kiddy, like Teen Titans, but if we're supposed to believe these guys are savin the world, you can't make 5/6 of them dead weight. Him being young and eccentric keeps that from happening, gives him something to do other than be the best or be Batman-redux and makes his interactions with the team interesting. Brilliant.
Artemis - Oh, let me count the ways. She's useless AND interesting. You don't get that much. She's the predictable a-class mole, but she's still empathetic, because she's in over her head, even as a potential traitor. It's great. Then she has a family storyline. The fact that she's not pasty white but has some kind of ethnicity and still gets to be the deadpan snarker is just plain awesome. Even little stuff like "Not in a fun way," just makes her, more than any of them, a person. She's is the realest, or at least most down to earth character, it's pretty awesome to watch her grow, which will make her inevitable or even reluctant betrayal all the more hearkening.
Superboy - He's the Wolverine of the team, which is an incredible dichotomy with his legacy. Him being different from Superman, even powers-wise is what helps it to not be Justice League Junior more than perhaps anything else. The horrible representation of Superman aside, his arc: not being able to, or wanting to live up to Superman's legacy is pretty danged good.
Kid Flash - Jokester + Science = win, imho.
Red Arrow - He has the Nightwing storyline, as he well should, since Nightwing's not using it. It's a good storyline.
Miss Martian - This is the powerset that was needed. Despite the missteps in the portrayal, she is to the team, what she should be. She could use smore likeability though. Hello Megan!
Cheshire - Bad guy with personal connections to the heroes, but not in a forced 'the mastermind happens to be my father' way, but more the 'we're trained fighters, children of trained fighters and we eventually cross paths again.' More plz.
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Post by WildKnight on Oct 26, 2011 13:16:36 GMT -5
If ANY of what you just said was accurate, YJ would be an amazing show.
Unfortunately, it's all delusional. What show are you watching, actually?
Rather than bothering to pick it apart piece by piece, which I"m just much too lazy and disinterested in this overhyped show to do at this point, I'm just going to take this one point you made and use it as an example of how and why everything else you said is similarly incorrect.
Superboy is Wolverine. Which WOULD BE a dichotomy from his Legacy. IF... Superman weren't also a complete douchebag on the show. But wait. Superman is ALSO his teams Wolverine.
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Post by Beacon on Oct 26, 2011 14:01:47 GMT -5
On Character Choices:
Red Tornado, Captain Marvel, and Tempest deserve honorable mentions.
Red Tornado – They have a robot on the team so you expect him to be featured prominently in an arc examining the “humanity” of non-human characters. Of course he’s a secondary character so they can’t let him hijack the overall arc by giving him a wife and kids like in the comics. Instead they made him the red-herring during the traitor storyline while simultaneously dealing with the “humanity” arc in a heartfelt* way.
*”Your logic is faulty. You were never human. You were always heroes.” Awesome.
Captain Marvel – Easily my favorite take on the character. He’s right up there with Brave and the Bold Aquaman. I love this kid’s enthusiasm.
Tempest – The new Aqualad has become a pretty cool character but a lot of us – myself included – were wondering what happened to the old one. The Atlantis episode gave us a pretty good in-character reason for not having him around.
Also, Robin’s characterization changes make a lot of narrative sense. He’s a performer so you see what he wants you to see. He’s also the one with the most demanding mentor so it took a while to shift gears from being a sidekick to a kid who is just hanging out with his friends. Heck, it took him several episodes to really become friends with any of his teammates.
On that note, I’d really rather see more of Robin and Kid Flash’s friendship than Superboy and Miss Martian’s romance. I don’t really care that my two least favorite YJ characters are dating. I love that the weird smart kid has become buddies with the guy who has a lot more going on in his head than he pretends.
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Post by takewithfood on Oct 26, 2011 14:04:59 GMT -5
Superboy is Wolverine. Which WOULD BE a dichotomy from his Legacy. IF... Superman weren't also a complete douchebag on the show. But wait. Superman is ALSO his teams Wolverine. Being emotionally distant to your clone hardly makes you the team's Wolverine. ~TWF
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Post by Beacon on Oct 26, 2011 14:37:26 GMT -5
There’s a joke about Superboy’s choice in girlfriends and pets in there somewhere.
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Post by WildKnight on Oct 26, 2011 14:38:13 GMT -5
Superboy is Wolverine. Which WOULD BE a dichotomy from his Legacy. IF... Superman weren't also a complete douchebag on the show. But wait. Superman is ALSO his teams Wolverine. Being emotionally distant to your clone hardly makes you the team's Wolverine. ~TWF Refusing to listen to your teammates advice does. Of the Justice League characters we've encountered, Superman is the only one who talks in a unnecessarily low tone and refuses to acknowledge any ideas that aren't his own. When Green Arrow is more of a team player than Superman, you've got an issue. Of course, that's in keeping with the New52 version of Superman as well. So maybe it was planned.
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Post by WildKnight on Oct 26, 2011 14:40:25 GMT -5
There’s a joke about Superboy’s choice in girlfriends and pets in there somewhere. I actually think that's one of few well thought-out angles on this show. Superboy hooking up with a mind-reader follows the old logic of why Scott Summers is always bedding psychics. Only people who can read his mind really know he's not a complete jagoff.
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Post by takewithfood on Oct 26, 2011 15:11:57 GMT -5
Being emotionally distant to your clone hardly makes you the team's Wolverine. ~TWF Refusing to listen to your teammates advice does. Really? Not taking advice on a single personal subject makes you a loose cannon akin to Wolverine? That's one hell of a stretch. ~TWF
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Post by WildKnight on Oct 26, 2011 15:24:01 GMT -5
Really? Not taking advice on a single personal subject makes you a loose cannon akin to Wolverine? That's one hell of a stretch. ~TWF Given that it's all we've seen of him. I don't think it's that big of a stretch. He even talks in the "so low you know I'm kind of a jerk" tone.
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Post by Hypester on Nov 2, 2011 14:55:57 GMT -5
^There's no doubt they derailed Superman's character, but there's a wide range of personas between being emotionally crippled (non existent?) and being a loose canon. I agree it would be better all around if Superman were noble in some way. It totally reeks that Superman is up for derailment to help make Batman look cooler, but it's not really Wolverine-ish. After all, Wolverine is the leader of the X-Men.
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Post by WildKnight on Nov 2, 2011 15:03:34 GMT -5
And if it were just that one thing, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. The problem is, that's one tiny example that's symbolic of everything that's wrong with the entire show. All of the characterizations are terrible, none of them are even remotely accurate (except maybe Red Tornado), and for the most part, they're not all that interesting, either. They're all super-generic, it's like they put a bunch of lame personality cliches on a dart board and tossed darts with characters names at them randomly.
"Hey, Dick Grayson is a pedantic computer nerd. Who knew?"
WHY???
The closest thing the show has to a protagonist that I actually care about is Aqualad, and he's... Aqualad!
There are too many characters, meaning that nobody is getting significant story time, and that's really bad for a dramatic show. Even if they were, which story was I supposed to give a crap about? The Kryptonian clone falling in love with the obnoxious Martian cheerleader? Yeah, nothing more unique and interesting than the story of a silver spoon jock who secretly hates his Dad and a good-hearted cheerleader falling in love.
It's all crap, and I'm absolutely at a loss to explain all of the people on this board thinking otherwise.
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Post by Hypester on Nov 2, 2011 15:21:23 GMT -5
Okay, trying to keep it general, then. I like almost all the changes, and there are varying amounts of clichedom, but they're put on archetypes that don't usually have those particular cliches, so it seems very fresh to me. Like Mexican Pizza, or Italian Nachos. It strikes me as a deliberate attempt to change things up, and there's a bit too much synergy in some of the choice for it to seem completely random. The Arrow family-Cheshire debacle for instance.
There's a lot of stuff in the show I can't vouch for, and basically go fix a sandwich during. I totally zone out on Superboy and M'gan. I roll my eyes everytime Superman appears or is mentioned. But I love Grayson as a pedantic computer nerd... just like I love Italian Nachos. It sounds like you like Normal Nachos better, and they're pretty good, we've been eating them for years. But this might be our only chance at Italian Nachos. It makes eating them that much more special for me. This will almost assuredly be our only time on Earth-17.
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Post by takewithfood on Nov 2, 2011 17:17:21 GMT -5
I'm immune to most of the character derailment stuff, as I don't pay much attention to the DCU. And there has been more character development than in most super hero TV shows, and frankly we aren't even through the first season yet.
~TWF
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