SMALLVILLE's fun and all
Well,
that's open to debate (I really dislike that show, right from its very premise), but it's also something for another thread -- except as mentioned below.
[...]now would really be the time for a good Superman TV series, with traditional Superman elements like flying, the Daily Planet, the costume, and so forth. I mean, how could something like this not be a hit? It's got adventure, and a recognizable character. In other words, it's the sort of "safe" project that "suits" love.
Maybe, but I can't see it happening for some years -- not until
Smallville has run its course and its memory has faded and then been buried at a crossroads with a stake through its heart... Because, you see, the suits are going to do what CBS was said to have done to Gene Roddenberry when he pitched
Star Trek to their suits: listen attentively, take notes, and then turn around and say, "Sorry, but we've already got a show like that." And the show in question is
Smallville. Or possibly
Heroes as well, but definitely
Smallville. And that's assuming no legal problems; just what exactly do the makers of
Smallville have the rights to, I wonder?
The movies are another complicating factor, as nightwing points out. I'm inclined to think he's right about Superman being better suited to TV than movies (SFX budgets being reasonably equal), for the simple reason that Superman has always been more than just super-brawls. It was a more-or-less accepted truism in the late pre-Crisis era that Superman comics primarily sold on "human interest" -- in other words, on characterisation -- and that's what TV can do so much better than movies for one fundamental reason: air-time.
With the best will (and actors) in the world, a two-to-three-hour movie every two years cannot compete with 44 forty-five-minute-long episodes in terms of character development, if done properly. Of course, you've got to be prepared to
let the characters develop, so no Reset Button
TM at the end of every episode, but that sort of thing is more acceptable these days. However, never underestimate the power of suits to mess up a series; ABC's meddling with
Lois & Clark illustrates that as well as anything could.
If it did happen, though, the one thing that I would want more than anything else, the one thing that could make the difference between a
good Superman series and another SNAFU is this: let Superman
be super. STAS was the most marked example of this in recent years: Supes spent a good half to two-thirds of each episode being knocked about and screaming in pain from the attacks of some of the lamest villains imaginable. He wasn't Superman, he was Slightly-Above-Average-Man, and it was soooooo tedious. Epic battles against Darkseid are one thing, but Volcana? Give me a break!
L&C had its problems that way, too, and it boils down to consistency; if Superman can flash around the world and back in five seconds or less, then there should never be a plot in which he can't get somewhere in time. Get somewhere too late, yes -- have the bad guy do his evil deed before Superman knows about it (the speed of sound is the writer's friend here; by the time Clark hears something, it's already happened), but otherwise let the Man of Steel be super-powered.
This is easier these days with the advent of CGI, but it requires a story editor/producer to make the effort to be consistent. Do that, and the potential is there for a live-action Superman to be the godlike figure he was meant to be in a way that only animation (and not much of that; probably only the Filmation cartoons of the 60s have
really let Supes cut loose) has allowed until now.
I'd like to see it, but I don't expect it for some time, if ever.
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