Is The New Superman Any Good?
When Supergirl premiered last year it was understood that the focus was Supergirl, so Superman was around but off in Metropolis. And that made perfect sense, they did that in the comics for years! But then they did silly things to keep Superman out of the picture too much. I mean, we would see Superman and Supergirl conversing over instant messaging and texts, and that was all! Forget that no on instant messages anymore, but the two never ever spoke in person! I mean, couldn’t he at least have a voice? How were we supposed to get the fact they were cousins if we never saw them interact in any way? We also got told things about Superman from others, making him even less of a character. The worst was when situations arose Superman should be aware of, the excuses why he wasn’t got silly. And it got even sillier in the final episodes when their attempt to keep Superman out of the story made him look, well, pathetic!
So when the series moved to CW the creators must have realized the same thing, so they set out to cast Superman. Who did they choose? First, I need to point out that those hoping for Tom Welling were foolish. Not only does Supergirl not fit into the Smallville universe, but while Welling a good Superman would not have worked in this series. Instead we got Tyler Hoechlin who has a nice resume including Teen Wolf. I knew nothing about him, and then they released a photo.
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It looks, weird. The costume is fine, except for the awkward way the cape seems to be attached. I mean the actor himself. It just doesn’t look like Superman to me. It could just be a bad photo but I am not sure I buy this guy as Superman. So then we got a promo where we got Superman in action:
and again I wasn’t thrilled. The action was awesome but not so sure I like Hoechlin’s Superman. But I hated Dean Cain on Lois & Clark at first, so maybe things will change if I watch the actual season premiere. Which I just did. And?
Well again I am not going to give anything away but the episode was pretty good, with the action being awesome as always. Superman saves people! God bless the DC TV universe! But what about Superman? It’s sort of a good and bad. While the chemistry between Hoechlin and Benoist is really good, I am just not sold on Hoechlin’s Superman yet. He looks, to young? Actually how young he looks is even brought up in the episode. Not as bad as Routh in Superman Returns of course. His Kent is pretty good though. I also like that they acknowledge he hasn’t appeared on the show yet, a lot of times a show will pretend he was always there we just never saw him. He does a great job I guess it needs to grow on me more. To be fair I liked him more as the episode went on, the feel is right. This is Superman. Not sure how often he’ll appear aside from the first two episodes but I’m glad that he is on the show. In fact by the end I thought it was even dumber than before he wasn’t in last year.
I also like the changes made for season 2 (and a new network), including remedying something I didn’t like in season one, and the villains in the episode. But the main focus is Superman, and as I said the chemsitry between him and Supergirl is great and it’s nice to see Kara actually talk to her cousin finally! There was a void without him and with him, the show feels complete. With the way their ruining Superman in the movies right now, seeing this Superman while not perfect still made me happy. This is the the comic book hero I grew up loving! Of course this is only the first episode we have a whole season ahead of us. But it looks good so far. And maybe I will come back and discuss this again when I can discuss spoilers (including one reference which made me laugh out loud).
Just some random thoughts, did you see the episode? What did you think?
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