[personal profile] locker_monster
I know it's not fair to compare DC TV shows to DC movies, but damn, the CW DC shows knocked it out of the park with this year's crossover. They pretty much put Justice League to shame. It does help that the crossover was basically a three hour movie split into four parts. That's a lot of time to cover a number of plot points for a good chunk of the characters.

But what I loved the most was how none of the installments felt like an hour of any particular show. Like, they didn't start the story with Kara and eventually moved on to Barry and then Ollie and then the Legends. They all get introduced in the same montage. That was the element that was lacking in last year's crossover. I hope they adopt this model for every major crossover going forward. Sure, it was probably a scheduling nightmare for the producers and the actors, but the end result was worth it.

I'm going to break down my thoughts by installments, since it's just easier that way.

Part One
- One thing I really appreciated was how they had time to work in personal plot lines from each show. Obviously, there's Barry and Iris' (non) wedding, but you also get relationship stuff with Ollie and Felicity, Alex and Kara are still dealing with their break-ups, and Stein and Jax are still trying to find a way to safely break up Firestorm. It could have been non-stop fights with Nazis, but I think they would have gotten tedious, so the quieter moments were a nice breather.

But it was also fun to have all of these characters interacting with each other. It was especially nice for Kara and Alex, since Kara's slice of the multiverse is so isolated from everyone else. My god, Alex and Sara. :-D I feel like that was the only reason Alex was written in. I also liked how happy Mick was to meet Killer Frost. He was probably thinking, "Ooh, another psychopath who also has cold skills! I like her." It was a little strange that Sara and Mick were invited to the wedding, since Sara barely knows Barry and Iris, and, like Mick says, he tried to kill Barry on a number of occasions, but I suppose the writers had to pick and choose who got to appear in the earlier installments. In my head, everyone on the Waverider got an invite, but Sara made everyone draw straws, so they would still have a skeleton crew on board to keep dealing with anachronisms. I think it's Jax who says the Waverider is in the Stone Age.

I was not surprised to see that Dark Arrow and Overgirl were evil doppelgangers of Ollie and Kara. What didn't make sense was how the Reverse Flash was also there and wearing Harrison Wells' face. Thawne was wiped out of existence by Sara in season two of LoT and he was also written out of time back in The Flash's first season. Just claiming time travel wackiness is not a good enough explanation. I guess they didn't want to be obvious and have an evil Barry, too. Plus, we also had an evil Barry last season on The Flash. Maybe this Reverse Flash was a Time Remanent.

Random: Barry asking Kara to sing at the wedding was super cute. And she got to sing "Runnin' Home to You". Was the weird waitress bothering Barry at the wedding, like, Barry and Iris' daughter, but from the future? The way she pesters him and the way she phrases some of her lines makes me think that she ran back in time to see her parents' wedding. Or she's a weird fan/stalker type. Ooh, maybe she's Joe and Cecile's daughter? Big fight during the wedding was fun. You get a Sara/Alex team up, Cisco breaches Ollie up to attack the Dark Arrow and Kara did a cool super sonic boom clap. And the amount of CGI was somewhat minimal, baring Kara doing an aerial fight with Overgirl. It was much cooler than the later fights, which had a lot of CGI landscapes and CGI doubles. It's a bit of a bummer that the supporting casts from all of the show didn't get much screen time. Wally pretty much disappears with Joe and Cecile and poor J'onn and Mon-El have, like, a ten second cameo.

Part Two
- Opening up the episode to reveal that Earth-X Prometheus was actually Tommy? Awesome. I was surprised they managed to get Colin Donnell back. I guess they worked something out with Chicago Med to release him for a day of filming up in Vancouver. Tommy as Prometheus on Earth One would have been super cool, and a much better reveal that Adrian Chase, but when the actor is working on another show on the other side of North America, that's a hard schedule to pull off.

What I enjoyed the most were the bits with the Big Three: Ollie, Barry, and Kara. I don't believe we had scenes with just them last crossover. Obviously, the best bit was when Barry and Kara show up to the break-in first and they have to wait around for Ollie to show up on his motorcycle. Stephen Amell's delivery of the "do not have super speed" line was just the best. I guess you could say that Ollie, Barry, and Kara are the CW DC's shows version of the Trinity. Ollie is obviously Batman, Kara is Superman, and Barry is, um, Wonder Woman? You know what I mean; you have one non-powered hero along with two super powered heroes.

The one thing that I didn't get was how Ollie has a Kryptonite arrow. Where did he get Kryptonite on Earth One? This implies that Krypton has been destroyed in this universe, but then where are the Earth One versions of Clark and Kara? Maybe Clark and Kara's pods never made it to Earth. Or maybe they're still coming into their powers and haven't decided to be heroes yet? Thawne has a line later on about how he fought Superman in the future. Since Thawne is from Earth One this may imply that Superman eventually shows up.

Evil!Kara as Evil!Ollie's wife was a bit weird. An invasion storyline would have been just fine, but it kind of gets convoluted when you add on that Overgirl and Dark Arrow want to cut out Kara's heart. I think that bit was thrown in so Kara wouldn't have to go to Earth-X. If she had been around, she might have solved some of the problems way too easily. Also, there was no chemistry between Stephen Amell and Melissa Benoist, charming though they are in real life, so it was hard to buy that Evil!Ollie would do anything for Evil!Kara.

Random: The exchange between Ollie and Kara about why he has a Kryptonite arrow ("In case an evil you showed up!") was also great. It also showed that Ollie is prepared for anything, just like Batman in the comics. Actually, the idea of a Kryptonite arrow was floated back in one of the fight club promos from last year. Cisco is conveniently knocked out during the fight so he can't breach people back and forth between Earths. It's kind of annoying, really, but understandable. You have all of these characters, but you don't have the time to have a storyline for each and every one of them. Hence, why everyone at STAR Labs, except Iris and Felicity, get locked away in the Pipeline. The fight in the warehouse was pretty sprawling. James Bamford knows how to coordinate fights, but there was just too much going on.

Part Three
- A trip to Earth-X was pretty inevitable. It's an obvious way to stretch out the storyline plus if you introduce a new parallel world, you better well visit it. And more doppelgangers! Evil!Lance was the best. Paul Blackthorne got more to do than be exasperated. Scruffy!Winn was interesting. Regular Winn isn't really a man of action, so you get a glimpse of what he could be if the circumstances are dire enough. And Citizen Cold! It was great to see Snart again, or, at least a version of him. And they gave him his comic book snow glasses! They seem really ridiculous since they narrow your vision down to nothing, but it's the classic Captain Cold look.

I don't get how Ray (not to be confused with the other Ray on the Waverider) is from Earth One. How did he end up on Earth-X? Maybe that's a plot point for his animated series. Still, no one comments about it. Did he fall through a breach? But it was fun to see a new hero. Russell Tovey's American accent was kind of annoying, though. Like, it sounded okay, but not great. Maybe it sounded weird to me since I know what he sounds like with his real accent. Just make Ray British! You can have British heroes. Rip was English. Ray's suit was pretty decent, but the helmet was just sad. I think the fin on top needed to be bigger and they needed to cover his eyes. The Ray's helmet in the comics doesn't show Ray's eyes. Black or white lens would have made it slightly less sad.

I feel like things slowed down in this part. The team is stuck on Earth-X, so a lot of time is spent trying to figure out how to get back home. Meanwhile, Kara is tied to a bed and it's up to Iris and Felicity to rescue everyone, but there's a lot of standing around while the Earth-Xers wait for Kara's powers to fade away. When you have a long narrative like this, you are bound to hit some lulls. And, if you think about it, the crossover was like the fifth show. Each show was still churning out regular episodes, but you also had some cast members working on this at the same time. If the writers and producers needed to restrict some of the action to one location to help with scheduling, then I don't blame them. Hey, I just realized that the structure of the story is very similar to the Classic Doctor Who serials. The third part was usually filler to get to the last part.

The whole thing about infiltrating the warehouse where the gateway was stored was kind of convoluted. Oh, there's a remote thingy. No, wait, Ollie destroyed it by accident. Oh, well, we'll just have to storm the place even though there's an army of Nazis waiting. And then there was the whole "let's split up Firestorm to hack this panel and pull this lever while there are bad guys with guns everywhere". Really? Firestorm flies and shoots fireballs from his hands. I think Jax could hack a panel just fine without splitting off from Stein. Anyway, more about this in the next part.

Random: It was obvious that Ollie would pretend to be his doppelganger because that's what you do when you do an evil counterpart story. The fight with Red Tornado (who looked 10 times better than his one appearance on Supergirl) was a little frustrating because the whole thing was CGI; CGI landscape, CGI Red Tornado, CGI Flash and The Ray. Usually I don't mind, but maybe it didn't work because it was such a long sequence. Iris and Felicity going all Die Hard at STAR Labs was a bit weird. Felicity hacking things was fun, since that's her wheelhouse, but she and Iris jumping down from ceilings and beating up Nazis? I guess both of them know some self defense since they keep getting kidnapped? Nazi Waverider? Sure, why not.

Part Four
- Sigh, did they really need to kill off Stein? Couldn't they have let him retire in peace? Instead, the writers went for maximum emotional impact and pathos. But, I suppose, a mega crossover like this needs to have some consequences. At least it wasn't a half-hearted death. They really went for the punch to the gut. So much so, that it seemed like half of the episode was devoted to Stein's death and the aftermath. Which is fine; you do get some nice scenes with the Waverider crew after Stein's death. They were the ones who knew him the best. His absence is going to affect them for weeks to come.

Since the show is all about time travel, maybe they can have a timey-wimey way to have Stein back for the occasional guest appearance.

Oh, speaking of the Waverider crew, I was a little bummed that they didn't show up earlier. I get that LoT is an ensemble show, more so than the other shows, and that they couldn't release all of the actors for the crossover, but I really wanted the crew interacting with everyone from the get go. Oh well, maybe next crossover.

But we do get that awesome group shot later on. You never get to see all of the superheroes together, so that was pretty damn cool. And then the big fight! I wanted more team-ups, though. You get Ray (the Atom) hitching a ride on one of Curtis' T Spheres and Amaya, Zari, and Killer Frost band together, but there wasn't too much else. Considering how many people were involved, I guess I should be happy with what we got. I was a little shocked that Ollie killed his doppelganger, though. Nazi or no, I thought Ollie was done killing people.

Actually, they did set up some nice parallels with the Big Three and their evil counterparts. Barry's bit was obviously the weakest. Oh noes, it's Reverse Flash again. I think with Ollie and Evil!Ollie they were trying to show just how dark Ollie could have gone had he not had his team around him. Kara's contrast with Evil!Kara was the best. She's been trying to repress her human side and suddenly she confronted with who she could be if she completely gave up her heart and love for humanity. I hope this encounter gives Kara some perspective and she can go forward with a little more optimism the rest of the season.

Now, Overgirl and Dark Arrow die, and Reverse Flash just runs off, but what happened to the remaining Earth-X Nazis? I assume no one was killing them, so suddenly Central City is left with an army of defeated Nazis? Maybe Cisco opened a breach and sent them packing. But the day is saved and everyone gets to go back to their respective places. I thought maybe Barry and Iris would have an informal ceremony, to make up for their ruined one, but a small private ceremony with Dig as officiant worked, too. I wasn't expecting Ollie and Felicity to get hitched, too. I was so certain Felicity would never marry Ollie, but facing death at the hands of alternative reality Nazis can change your mind, I guess.

Random: Zari got a costume! Why did Citizen Cold stay on Earth One? He just met these people. Why hang around? Also, his boyfriend is back on Earth-X. Why just abandon him like that? Obviously, for real world reasons, Wentworth Miller is hanging around for a bit because this is his farewell tour, so to speak. After this, I read he's done with the Arrowverse. Caitlin at Stein's funeral: "Say hello to Ronnie for me." Gah. :-( Overgirl died because she exploded from too much solar radiation. Um, sure? Poor Dig. Just minding his own business in the Arrowcave and here comes Barry to whoosh him away.

Now what can they do for the next crossover? Last year was an alien invasion and this year was an invasion from an alternate Earth. Invasion plot lines seem the most likely because it's the only threat big enough to warrant having everyone together. Personally, I want to see the Thanagarian invasion that was mentioned all the way back in season one of LoT. Alien hawk people! Live action version of Shayera Hol! Though, doing realistic wings that don't conveniently disappear would be hard to pull off.

Maybe everyone could travel to Kara's Earth? It'd be nice if J'onn got to meet everyone. But Kara managed an alien invasion just fine on her own last season... Hmm. The only other big thing I can think of is an adaptation of "Crisis on Infinite Earths", but that would involve a giant reboot. Maybe some time travel is in the cards? It'd be a good way to involve all of the Legends. Meh, we'll see. I'm sure the producers have something in mind already.

Not to be undone, but Marvel released the first trailer for Avengers: Infinity War a day after the crossover was done. Coincidence? Or calculated timing to steal some of DC's thunder? ;-)
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

locker_monster: (Default)
locker_monster

May 2019

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
1920 2122232425
262728293031 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 1st, 2025 10:16 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios