I was talking with a friend of mine about "Gotham" yesterday and my friend wasn't sold on another re-telling of the Batman origin story or an origin of the villains that populate the most infamous city in the DC Universe. Is there anything new here for die hard Bat fans? Will this bring something fresh to the Batman mythos? After watching the pilot for the much anticipated FOX show, I can say the answer is tentatively yes. "Gotham" tells a familiar story, but by shifting focus away from Bruce Wayne and onto new cop in town, Detective James Gordon and the shifty characters that he encounters, the show helps turn something old into something new.
FOX Is Banking on a High Profile Origin Story Being the First Big Hit of the Fall
When is a show about Batman, not a show about Batman? The answer is: when that show focuses not so much on the Bat, but the infamous criminals that helped make the hero who he is. FOX is hoping that the current comic resurgence in popular culture will give them a hit with "Gotham." The story focuses on Detective James Gordon, the man who will grow to be Commissioner and Batman's greatest ally, and his partner, Harvey Bullock. While investigating the murder of young Bruce Wayne's parents, they are also dealing with the crop of villains that are popping up to terrorize the citizens of America's most dangerous city.
The big question is, will viewers want to back down this well trod path. FOX seems to betting big. If you watched the network at all over the summer, I'm sure you saw a minimum of 3 commercials per show on FOX all summer long. Rather than re-tell the story of how Bruce Wayne became the winged terror of Gotham's underworld, creator Bruno Heller, decided tell the story of some of the Bat's most fearsome foes. How did Oswald Cobblepot go from pathetic underling to the runner of Gotham's mob ties. How did Edward Nygma go from a GCPD coroner to the prince of puzzles, The Riddler? How did young orphan, Selina Kyle, grow up to be Gotham's best burglar, Catwoman? How do Gordon and Bullock fit into this? Can they do anything to stem the tide of crime and make Gotham a decent city?
I think this will make for compelling television, because it's not like "Arrow," where Ollie is striving to save Starling City. Gotham is beyond saving and these new criminals will only make things worse. You are watching everything spiral out of control knowing that Batman is the only one who can bring some sense of order to the chaos. There are heroes, but they are everyday heroes like Benjamin Mckenzie's Gordon who fights against the stem of corruption to be an honest cop, while his partner, Donal Logue's, Bullock fails prey to it.
The producer's are also introducing some new characters like Jada Pinkett Smith's mob boss, Fish Mooney. The cast is rounded out by unknowns which I think was good of the producers. It allows them to put their own stamp on these iconic characters. The producers have also tweaked young Bruce Wayne's origin by making Gordon and Bullock the detectives that are investigating his parents' murder, which ties him into the proceedings.
So, are you planning on watching "Gotham" tonight when it premieres on FOX at 9/8c? Are you excited, nervous, apprehensive? Do you have high hopes? Do you think there is anything new that producers can bring to this? Watch the trailer and then let me know in the comments.
Oh True Blood. We're coming to the end of our journey. For a long time, this show did a great job of riding that line between batshit crazy and compulsively watchable. Around season 5, with the introduction of The Authority (How terrible was that? Seriously, you have Christopher Meloni, he of one of the greatest asses on any man on the planet and no nudity at all?! I'm obviously still not over that), and then the whole Billith thing, it was not a huge surprise to learn that this would be the final season. Let's take a look at the season premiere and speculate on whether the show will finish strong or limp to the finish.
A few years ago, there was some worry that the X-Men film franchise was going to go the way of the Batman films. X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine were scattered messes that seemed thrown together and were sort of disrespectful to the source material and to fans of the comics and the films that came before it. When talk of a fifth film surfaced, it wasn't a huge shock that Fox decided to go the reboot route. Indie director Matthew Vaughn told the story of a young Xavier and Magneto and the first group of X-Men in the Sixties. It gave fans hope that the franchise could still produce quality films. Fans went crazy when it was announced that director Bryan Singer would be returning to the franchise and he would be bringing the popular story "Days of Future Past" with him.
Reboot it. That was Sony's decision when a deal fell through with Sam Raimi to continue the story he'd been telling with Tobey Maguire. Instead of another trilogy featuring the same cast, Sony decided to scrub what had came before and start a brand new series re-telling Peter's origin. Fans of the original trilogy and Spidey fans in general were not huge fans of this decision. Despite the lackluster response to Spider-Man 3, fans wanted to see what Raimi could do to sort of redeem himself and maybe give fans a concrete ending, something the third film lacked. Sony went ahead with their decision casting relative unknown, Andrew Garfield, in the title role and Emma Stone as his love interest Gwen Stacy. When the first film premiered in 2012, fans and critics responded pretty positively and Sony was able to take a victory lap. Now, it's sequel time.
Last night was the third episode of the fourth season of Game of Thrones entitled, "Breaker of Chains." The episode dealt with the aftermath of the murder of Joffrey Baratheon and showed Daenerys finally reached Mereen. It was a stand out episode except for one pretty large thing that happened in a scene that happened around the halfway point of the episode. When I first watched the scene, I was like a lot of people, really mortified and squeamish and I even tried to be a little glib about it on Facebook to try and offset how uncomfortable the whole thing made me. I'm talking about the rape of Cersei by her brother Jamie, under their son's dead body.
Movie Review: Captain America - The Winter Soldier
Steve Rogers isn't the most relatable character in the world. He's kind of like Marvel's Superman. He can come off as white bread and a little too much like a Boy Scout. He's super strong so it's hard to find adversaries that can really stand up to him. His "Aw Shucks" demeanor can sometimes come off as cloying, but Steve as Captain America is pretty big in the Marvel Universe, so Marvel Studios had to come up with a way to make him relatable to modern day movie goers and they seemed to find the right formula with the first film and that carried through to The Avengers. Now Cap is back in his second solo big screen adventure. Did this film meet or exceed expectations? Read on to find out.
