I feel like for a story this big and epic I should have a better intro prepared, but I honestly can’t think of anything, I just want to get right to it. Heroes Vs Aliens sees the four big DC Shows coming together to take on one big enemy, in this case, aliens. So instead of reviewing these separately like I do usually, let’s take a look at the story overall, so sadly that means little talk of Supergirl.
Something to admire is how with each episode the story felt consistent in tone and writing, but also feeling unique to each show’s style. Flash’s episode had the most over the top science-fiction elements and action scenes, Arrow was more focused on character interactions and emotional payoffs, while Legends was the adventure with the most light-hearted tone. The Dominators themselves were an enjoyable antagonist, even if for the majority of it they felt like a very generic alien invasion plot, their motivations of seeing Meta-Humans as a danger to the entire galaxy and wishing to erase that problem before it begins was a believable enough incentive. Though how they went about this didn’t really make much sense, in fact for a lot of this story it felt like they were stalling up until the final showdown in Legends, but unfortunately those are the type of plot holes you just have to deal with in shows like these.
The DC-TV Universe has always remembered the most important rule of superhero storytelling, the end of the world scenarios are not what drives the plot, the characters are. The heroes fighting aliens should work as an excuse to have these characters come together and explore their own emotional arcs with new perspectives. In other words, it was a chance to see the casts of 4 different shows come together to tell Barry how he fucked up. So let’s talk about that because that was the bit emotional crutch throughout this whole story and was supposed to be his redemption. Barry messing with the timeline has messed with most of these characters, and Cisco had a lot of great points on how just because he feels sorry doesn’t erase his mistakes. Then of course they had to fuck it all up by the end! How? By one: having Cisco fuck up, which for some reason the writers think that instantly makes things better for Barry, no, it just means now Cisco is as bad as him. But two: Barry was the main Meta-Human the aliens wanted because he is the most powerful, so he’s willing to sacrifice himself to save everyone else, but of course they don’t let that happen. Thing is, I don’t feel this was enough, his heart was in the right place and if he had to go that far, he would have sacrificed himself, but we’ve established good intentions aren’t always enough, Barry needed to make some form of sacrifice in order to get redemption in my eyes.
Bizarrely enough, the characters that received the best emotional development were the characters from Arrow. Understandably seeing as this was the 100th episode this would be the one where they put the most effort into it. Besides, they’ve spent 5 years ripping off Batman, why not rip-off Superman for a change? Not that I’m complaining, because ‘The Man Who Has Everything’ storyline is one of the most powerful for character development of any variety (Although technically this was done in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, but Supes did it first). Seeing Team Arrow stuck in a prison in their minds where everything is perfect and having to sacrifice it in order to leave was really effective stuff, particularly for Sara and Thea. It has been established in Legends that Sara would do absolutely anything to save her sister, regardless of the consequences and it came to the other Legends to stop her. Here, we have her facing a variation of her sister and finally coming to grips with her passing and moving on. Thea likewise is the most abrasive to leaving the fantasy because the vigilante lifestyle was never what she wanted. She has normal life, her parents are alive, nothing is necessarily exciting, but it’s not as torturous either. In fact, initially she was going to stay; but then for some reason changes her mind off-screen, so I’m going to assume there was a deleted scene there explaining that.
Though Supergirl as a series didn’t contribute that much to the crossover, I loved having Kara being part of the team; I loved seeing all the different interactions and relationships she develops with all of the other superheroes, especially between her, Barry & Oliver, their personalities just perfectly bounced off of each other and were some of the most entertaining scenes in the crossover. But really, there is no logical reason why she wouldn’t have brought J’onn or Clark along with her to help. They could have at least has a line of dialogue explaining that Cisco & Barry could only be in her universe temporarily and they didn’t have time to contact them, but nope, nothing. Oh well, at least now they have a way to teleport back and forth between universes for plenty of crossovers in the future (Including that musical episode which I am dying to see).
The only character centric plot that I didn’t get that much into was Professor Stein’s daughter, mostly because this just seems really out of nowhere and didn’t feel like it belonged in the crossover. I know I said the character stuff is the hook and not the superfluous battles but…did you really think people would be more interesting in a new dilemma between characters-one of which we’ve never met-instead of superheroes fighting aliens? All of the other character arcs were established prior to the crossover, and between characters we already know and care about. This is something that most certainly could have waited until next week. Oh, speaking of bad characters, Wally actually did something! And wasn’t annoying! Hallelujah it’s a Christmas miracle!
To sum this up, this crossover was everything I wanted it to be. Everything from the emotional character heavy stories, to the popcorn munching action scenes, I enjoyed every minute of it. If they want to make this an annual thing then that might be difficult to constantly find a threat that requires all four shows to team-up, but it’s like I said, the draw are the characters, and even with a 4-part crossover there is still plenty of character dynamics and relationships that they didn’t get a chance to explore. While I am really disappointed with how Barry’s arc ended, and I wish Supergirl’s cast (And show in general) played a bigger part in the crossover, that doesn’t change how fun it was and how much I enjoyed it. 9/10.
-Danny
No comments:
Post a Comment