To All Things An End
May. 14th, 2011 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thelostmaximoffSo unless you just really don't care about it, you probably already know that the final episode of Smallville was last night. I thought I would post my thoughts about it.
So to give you a little background, Superman was technically my first superhero. I usually claim Batman as such but I can remember around age five or so watching some of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies (particularly the fourth one though in hindsight I think it's atrocious). Flash forward a few years and I watched the Superman animated series mostly because nothing was on at that time-slot and I had nostalgic memories of Superman from my earlier childhood. Today, I don't consider myself a Superman fan but there's still something undeniably loveable about Clark Kent that makes every comic book fan a little bit of a Superman fan as well.
So this brings us to Smallville, which aired its first episode roughly ten years ago in 2001 when I was a senior in high school. I think it was the whole "teenage Superman" thing that first caught my interest because I don't think Clark's formative years had ever really been explored before. Usually we would just get some generic stuff with him as a kid and then zip forward to when he's an adult working at the Daily Planet. So what was adolescence like for the world's greatest superhero?
The first three or four seasons of this show were great. I thought some of the casting was stellar and the characterization was pretty strong. Michael Rosenbaum's performance as Lex Luthor was, and still is, an amazing thing to watch and I can't imagine anyone else being Pa Kent except John Schneider. I didn't really like the inclusion of Chloe Sullivan but she turned out to be one of the best things about the show.
Like all good high school shows though, their luster starts to fade once it's time for the characters to grow up and graduate. I can remember the same thing happening with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the season where she graduates from high school is still my favorite of the series) and unfortunately it happened with Smallville. There were some seasons where the show really began to flounder. Pa Kent died, I began to hate Lana Lang with an undying passion, the writers tried to integrate more of the comics into the show and showed us why some of this stuff works better on paper than real life, lots of stuff. Maybe my expectations for the show were just too high but I found myself wondering season after season why I was bothering with this show. They killed Lionel and Lex Luthor in roughly the same season and we lost those two great actors. They killed Jimmy Olsen. Seriously, who kills Jimmy freakin' Olsen?
Yet throughout all these bad things, there were small glimpses of hope. I really love the way they did the Clark/Lois relationship in this series. I loved the episodes Geoff Johns wrote and I loved some of the guest stars like Bart Allen, Booster Gold, and Zatanna. So yes, there were some really terrible things about this series that I absolutely hated but there were also some really cool and interesting things about the series that I loved.
This brings us now to last night's finale. If I had to sum it up in one word I would choose "satisfying" as that word. I think the one thing that comic book fans wanted from this show was closure. We wanted to see Clark become the hero everyone knew he could be. We wanted to see him put on the suit and fly off to save the world from certain doom. I think last night's finale gave us that closure. Lois and Clark do get married, he does put on the suit and become Superman, Lex is back (through huge contrivance I might add) and he eventually becomes President Luthor, everything works out the way it should be. I would've liked more action in this finale. There was a lot of standing around and talking along with the requisite flashback montages but I don't think there was enough action. I think the fight between Ollie and Darkseid's trinity could've been longer. Hell, they could've done more with the whole "Ollie is evil" thing in general but at this point in the series I just kind of sigh at those things and say "Hey, it's Smallville".
I actually wasn't disappointed with the Clark/Darkseid fight because I already knew they weren't going to really fight or that it would be short like the Clark/Doomsday one. If I want a good Superman/Darkseid fight, I'll go watch the last episode of the animated series or even the last episode of JLU. So for fans who feel disappointed about that fight lasting like thirty seconds, I just sigh and remind you "Hey, it's Smallville". There were lots of good things about the finale though. Again, I love the relationship between Clark and Lois. I loved the scenes where they read each other's vows and I thought those vows were perfect for the characters. Also, maybe it's just because I haven't seen him in a long time but Lex was in rare form last night. That exchange he has with Clark in the ruins of the Luthor mansion was great. And how good is John Schneider as Pa Kent? Awesome stuff with him and Clark.
I think the thing that made me tear up the most (aside from the thing with the vows) was at the end when Clark is changing into Superman and they play the theme from the Christopher Reeve movies. Like I said, those movies were my childhood. So all in all, I think last night's finale gave us closure. It took a long (sometimes painfully long) time for Clark to become Superman but he finally got there. It was a satisfying though not surprising way to end the show.
I think this series should be considered a milestone not only in Superman history but it comics history. Love it or hate it, it's helped bring Superman to a new generation of fans and I think it will be remembered for a long time to come.
So to give you a little background, Superman was technically my first superhero. I usually claim Batman as such but I can remember around age five or so watching some of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies (particularly the fourth one though in hindsight I think it's atrocious). Flash forward a few years and I watched the Superman animated series mostly because nothing was on at that time-slot and I had nostalgic memories of Superman from my earlier childhood. Today, I don't consider myself a Superman fan but there's still something undeniably loveable about Clark Kent that makes every comic book fan a little bit of a Superman fan as well.
So this brings us to Smallville, which aired its first episode roughly ten years ago in 2001 when I was a senior in high school. I think it was the whole "teenage Superman" thing that first caught my interest because I don't think Clark's formative years had ever really been explored before. Usually we would just get some generic stuff with him as a kid and then zip forward to when he's an adult working at the Daily Planet. So what was adolescence like for the world's greatest superhero?
The first three or four seasons of this show were great. I thought some of the casting was stellar and the characterization was pretty strong. Michael Rosenbaum's performance as Lex Luthor was, and still is, an amazing thing to watch and I can't imagine anyone else being Pa Kent except John Schneider. I didn't really like the inclusion of Chloe Sullivan but she turned out to be one of the best things about the show.
Like all good high school shows though, their luster starts to fade once it's time for the characters to grow up and graduate. I can remember the same thing happening with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the season where she graduates from high school is still my favorite of the series) and unfortunately it happened with Smallville. There were some seasons where the show really began to flounder. Pa Kent died, I began to hate Lana Lang with an undying passion, the writers tried to integrate more of the comics into the show and showed us why some of this stuff works better on paper than real life, lots of stuff. Maybe my expectations for the show were just too high but I found myself wondering season after season why I was bothering with this show. They killed Lionel and Lex Luthor in roughly the same season and we lost those two great actors. They killed Jimmy Olsen. Seriously, who kills Jimmy freakin' Olsen?
Yet throughout all these bad things, there were small glimpses of hope. I really love the way they did the Clark/Lois relationship in this series. I loved the episodes Geoff Johns wrote and I loved some of the guest stars like Bart Allen, Booster Gold, and Zatanna. So yes, there were some really terrible things about this series that I absolutely hated but there were also some really cool and interesting things about the series that I loved.
This brings us now to last night's finale. If I had to sum it up in one word I would choose "satisfying" as that word. I think the one thing that comic book fans wanted from this show was closure. We wanted to see Clark become the hero everyone knew he could be. We wanted to see him put on the suit and fly off to save the world from certain doom. I think last night's finale gave us that closure. Lois and Clark do get married, he does put on the suit and become Superman, Lex is back (through huge contrivance I might add) and he eventually becomes President Luthor, everything works out the way it should be. I would've liked more action in this finale. There was a lot of standing around and talking along with the requisite flashback montages but I don't think there was enough action. I think the fight between Ollie and Darkseid's trinity could've been longer. Hell, they could've done more with the whole "Ollie is evil" thing in general but at this point in the series I just kind of sigh at those things and say "Hey, it's Smallville".
I actually wasn't disappointed with the Clark/Darkseid fight because I already knew they weren't going to really fight or that it would be short like the Clark/Doomsday one. If I want a good Superman/Darkseid fight, I'll go watch the last episode of the animated series or even the last episode of JLU. So for fans who feel disappointed about that fight lasting like thirty seconds, I just sigh and remind you "Hey, it's Smallville". There were lots of good things about the finale though. Again, I love the relationship between Clark and Lois. I loved the scenes where they read each other's vows and I thought those vows were perfect for the characters. Also, maybe it's just because I haven't seen him in a long time but Lex was in rare form last night. That exchange he has with Clark in the ruins of the Luthor mansion was great. And how good is John Schneider as Pa Kent? Awesome stuff with him and Clark.
I think the thing that made me tear up the most (aside from the thing with the vows) was at the end when Clark is changing into Superman and they play the theme from the Christopher Reeve movies. Like I said, those movies were my childhood. So all in all, I think last night's finale gave us closure. It took a long (sometimes painfully long) time for Clark to become Superman but he finally got there. It was a satisfying though not surprising way to end the show.
I think this series should be considered a milestone not only in Superman history but it comics history. Love it or hate it, it's helped bring Superman to a new generation of fans and I think it will be remembered for a long time to come.
