Smallville - Patriot and Luthor
Aug. 11th, 2011 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcWow, a lot of comics references in the past two weeks.
"Patriot" sees the return of Aquaman, and two new DCU characters; Arthur/Orin is now married to Mera of Xebel, and the man behind the VRA is revealed as Slade Wilson, better known in the comics as Deathstroke the Terminator.
I was right that Green Arrow would be the first hero to register, but apparently wrong that this would lead to a Civil War ripoff. Instead Ollie signs up to find out what's going on, and gets shipped to a "holding facility". Because for the only high-profile hero to disappear immediately after registering doesn't look suspicious at all.
They make a good stab at tying the established A.C. character with the more comic-y Orin of Atlantis (not that Atlantis actually gets mentioned; Mera calls him King of the Seas), although there are a few places where Arthur inexplicably starts speaking in broken English. "I should have been more stealth"?
Anyway, the League learn to trust each other again, Clark learns to treat Lois as an equal, and Slade turns out to be controlled by Darkseid. Although IMO, if you're using a paranoid lunatic as an analogy for other paranoid lunatics, it works better if he's just a paranoid lunatic. The X-Men's central metaphor would go out the window if it turned out anti-mutant hysteria was all fostered by Shadow King's psychic powers. On the other hand, it weaves the elements of the anti-hero story arc together a bit more.
"Luthor", meanwhile, steps back from the arc to riff on Earth-3 and Ultraman, although it has an interesting twist on it. In the DCU's Earth-3 (and later the post-Crisis Antimatter Earth) heroes and villains are reversed, so the entire League is the evil Crime Syndicate, while Luthor is Earth's greatest hero. But the point of this episode is for Clark to realise that Luthors are made, not born[1], so Clark and Tess Luthor are the only characters who are fundementally different, with the changes in Ollie and Lois merely reflecting this. (Come to think of it, Lois wasn't evil on the original Earth-3 either; she was married to the heroic Lex.)
And John Glover returns as alternate Lionel. Lionel Luthor went through so many shifts in character before Lex threw him out a window, that it's hard to say if Glover is playing him differently. But given that he starts of sparring with Clark while talking of the great plans they would have together, and ended the episode ranting about how Clark should have killed him by now, it's possibly not a huge stretch to suggest he went through "our" Lionel's entire character arc in 45 minutes. Except the redemptive and posessed by Jor-El stages.
Evil Clark ... well, between Red-K and Bizarro, it's not like we haven't seen Welling play Evil Clark before, is it? He still does it very well, but it's not exactly shocking.
The atmpospherics are nice, even if the washed-out colours of the reverseoverse are a bit overdone (and did they supersaturate the real universe, or was it just the contrast?) And nothing says "evil universe" like the Daily Planet globe proudly reading "Luthorcorp Media". (Yes, Luthorcorp owns the Planet in the main universe too, but they haven't changed the name.) I also liked the imagery of the abandoned barn, the Watchtower as Kryptonian killing-field, and the Fortress full of Luthorcorp machinery.
Although, on that last one; It really annoys me when characters go to an alternate universe, or an alternate timeline, or the future, learn some things are different, and then expect other things to be the same. So I sighed deeply when Clark wandered into the Fortress and somehow expected the Jor-El from his universe to be there.
And Lionel is now in our universe! Given that the current storyarc is supposed to be dealing with a villain much worse than any Luthor, I'm not sure how he's going to fit into it, but we'll find out soon enough.
[1]Just so he'll accept Tess's revelations, or because Alexander's arc isn't over yet?
"Patriot" sees the return of Aquaman, and two new DCU characters; Arthur/Orin is now married to Mera of Xebel, and the man behind the VRA is revealed as Slade Wilson, better known in the comics as Deathstroke the Terminator.
I was right that Green Arrow would be the first hero to register, but apparently wrong that this would lead to a Civil War ripoff. Instead Ollie signs up to find out what's going on, and gets shipped to a "holding facility". Because for the only high-profile hero to disappear immediately after registering doesn't look suspicious at all.
They make a good stab at tying the established A.C. character with the more comic-y Orin of Atlantis (not that Atlantis actually gets mentioned; Mera calls him King of the Seas), although there are a few places where Arthur inexplicably starts speaking in broken English. "I should have been more stealth"?
Anyway, the League learn to trust each other again, Clark learns to treat Lois as an equal, and Slade turns out to be controlled by Darkseid. Although IMO, if you're using a paranoid lunatic as an analogy for other paranoid lunatics, it works better if he's just a paranoid lunatic. The X-Men's central metaphor would go out the window if it turned out anti-mutant hysteria was all fostered by Shadow King's psychic powers. On the other hand, it weaves the elements of the anti-hero story arc together a bit more.
"Luthor", meanwhile, steps back from the arc to riff on Earth-3 and Ultraman, although it has an interesting twist on it. In the DCU's Earth-3 (and later the post-Crisis Antimatter Earth) heroes and villains are reversed, so the entire League is the evil Crime Syndicate, while Luthor is Earth's greatest hero. But the point of this episode is for Clark to realise that Luthors are made, not born[1], so Clark and Tess Luthor are the only characters who are fundementally different, with the changes in Ollie and Lois merely reflecting this. (Come to think of it, Lois wasn't evil on the original Earth-3 either; she was married to the heroic Lex.)
And John Glover returns as alternate Lionel. Lionel Luthor went through so many shifts in character before Lex threw him out a window, that it's hard to say if Glover is playing him differently. But given that he starts of sparring with Clark while talking of the great plans they would have together, and ended the episode ranting about how Clark should have killed him by now, it's possibly not a huge stretch to suggest he went through "our" Lionel's entire character arc in 45 minutes. Except the redemptive and posessed by Jor-El stages.
Evil Clark ... well, between Red-K and Bizarro, it's not like we haven't seen Welling play Evil Clark before, is it? He still does it very well, but it's not exactly shocking.
The atmpospherics are nice, even if the washed-out colours of the reverseoverse are a bit overdone (and did they supersaturate the real universe, or was it just the contrast?) And nothing says "evil universe" like the Daily Planet globe proudly reading "Luthorcorp Media". (Yes, Luthorcorp owns the Planet in the main universe too, but they haven't changed the name.) I also liked the imagery of the abandoned barn, the Watchtower as Kryptonian killing-field, and the Fortress full of Luthorcorp machinery.
Although, on that last one; It really annoys me when characters go to an alternate universe, or an alternate timeline, or the future, learn some things are different, and then expect other things to be the same. So I sighed deeply when Clark wandered into the Fortress and somehow expected the Jor-El from his universe to be there.
And Lionel is now in our universe! Given that the current storyarc is supposed to be dealing with a villain much worse than any Luthor, I'm not sure how he's going to fit into it, but we'll find out soon enough.
[1]Just so he'll accept Tess's revelations, or because Alexander's arc isn't over yet?
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 06:56 pm (UTC)I think what was intended was less broken english and more Joss Whedon-Buffyesque style dialogue. Which was a dumb thing to do as even Whedon only managed to pull that off seven times out of ten.
I still stand by my own review of "Luther" though. But it was nice to see Lionel back, John Glover's gleeful enthusiasm in bastardry has been sorely missed.