Watching Television
I’m a television watcher, of sorts.
The new fall season is right around the corner, and DC is kicking Marvel’s ass on the small screen, as usual. Gotham, Constantine, and The Flash are all new this season, along with a third season of Arrow. What does Marvel have? Agents of SHIELD, and Agent Carter.
To be honest, I have high hopes for all of these shows. I want them all to do well. The reasoning is simple: if the shows do well, we’ll get more of them. And isn’t that what we really want? Realistic representations of what we’ve been reading and collecting for decades?
Some things aren’t going to happen. We aren’t going to get a large special effects budget for television. Costuming, sure, but not for special effects. They cost too much and are too time consuming to be done with such a minimal return, both in terms of screen time and money. So we should never expect movie quality special effects on these–not even a lot of special effects. The Flash? I’m not expecting a lot there. Constantine? Not there, either. I didn’t watch Smallville because it didn’t interest me, but I don’t think they had a huge special effects budget.
However, if these shows do well, we can expect more shows to come to television, increasing the importance of the shows for Marvel and their cinematic universe, and hopefully bringing some sort of cohesion to whatever DC is trying to do.
(And for those who think DC had the perfect opportunity to mix movies and TV with Liam Neeson playing the Demon’s Head on Arrow…don’t forget that that was a universe unto itself, and that the Chris Nolan Batman is now done. Tying Arrow to that would have been suicide.)
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Category: Columns, The Daily Dose
