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Crisis on Earth-X (2017)
349 Plays2 years ago
Alex Marcus of The Pop Break returns to the show to discuss one of the best crossovers to come out of Arrowverse. We discuss the legacy of the Arrowverse, where things started to go off the rails, and how Crisis on Earth-X holds up now that the Arrowverse is almost at an end.
Listen to Alex's podcasts: Bill vs. The MCU, Batman By The Numbers, and TV Break Podcast. And follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd.
Want to tell us what you think? Have any questions or comments for Perry about superheroes in media or comics? Leave a voice message to play on the show. You can also apply to be a guest on the show.
Patrons get to listen to episodes before everyone else and they also get access to my exclusive companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. If you want to join in, please consider supporting us through Patreon!
This episode is brought to you by BlendJet. Use my special link, zen.ai/supercinemapod12, to save 12% at blendjet.com. The discount will be applied at checkout!
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Transcript
Introduction & Health Journey
00:00:00
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Alternate Earths & Nazis
00:01:40
Speaker
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00:01:55
Speaker
Okay, but why would Nazis from 1945 want to crash my wedding? Crab lights. They're delicious. Well, Iris has a point, though. If they're out of time, they would have targeted the military or law enforcement. Tommy was clucked from five years ago and put in the Prometheus wardrobe. That doesn't make any sense. It does if we're not dealing with an anachronism. Visitors from another Earth? Well, there are more than one. There are 52, actually. I'm hard-pressed to think of one where Nazis are ascendant. I can.
00:02:24
Speaker
There's a 53rd Earth, and it's called Earth-X. It doesn't have a designation because it's a place so awful, so horrific.
00:02:45
Speaker
No sane person ever traveled there. Basically, our Earth, same history, same timeline with one crucial and critical difference. Let me hypothesize. The Nazis developed the atomic bomb before the United States did, and they're more than happy to use it. Yes, the Nazis won the war. In New York, London, Paris, Moscow, all obliterated. The SS set up outposts not only all throughout Europe, but also all throughout the Americas.
00:03:13
Speaker
And Hitler continued his brutal reign, made it by prime ministers and presidents and pathetic to him, until his death in 1994. Now they're not happy ruling, just one Earth. God, this is making me miss a great hell. Yeah, my stuff's behind me. We have to find them. I mean, do you think they're using the breach to hop between worlds? That or they're operating from a staging area. Some are in Central City or close by.
00:03:41
Speaker
Well, good thing we have a metric down to smart people in this building. Don't worry. Let's get to work on finding our new friends from Earth-X. Earth-X.
Podcast Dynamics & Guest Recommendations
00:03:50
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine. And in probably a record turnaround for this show, I'm not sure. It might be kind of neck and neck with some other guests, but Alex Marcus is back. How you doing, Alex?
00:04:03
Speaker
Great. How are you? I'm doing good. It's funny. We're having you on the show again When the first episode you've been on at the time we're recording has not even come out yet
00:04:14
Speaker
Yes, it's true. It just goes to show what a great experience we had together that we want to have a rematch even before anyone gets to hear it. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I was not expecting when you said that you'd like to be on the show. Again, I wasn't expecting you to schedule it so quickly, so it's a nice surprise. But anyway, I don't think we have to remind people of who you are, so let's just jump into it and talk about
00:04:41
Speaker
Is there anything that's really kind of catching your interest at the moment? Anything that you're really interested in? Movies, TV, comics, books, video games, whatever it might be.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, not to place us at the exact moment in time that we're recording this, but next week, Succession, one of my all-time favorite shows, is coming back. So I'm mostly excited and anticipating the return of Succession. But I will give a shout out to Ryan Johnson's Poker Face, the TV show starring Natasha Lyonne that's on the Peacock network.
00:05:11
Speaker
in the US, a really fantastic show, really fun kind of balance of a murder mystery of the week versus some serialized elements and just like the most high quality version of a show that we're used to getting in a much lower quality. So really recommend checking that out if you have the chance and have access to Peacock, which I know not everyone does. Yeah. I mean, I can access Peacock. Is it on the premium service?
00:05:37
Speaker
It is, yeah. Okay. That's the sticking point for me then, because I don't want to pay for peacock. I think you can watch the first episode for free. It's great. Ryan Johnson directs a subway, as in the sandwich shop, making it the most beautiful place I've ever seen on screen. It's remarkable the level of talent behind a show that is ostensibly just a whodunit murder mystery every week.
00:06:04
Speaker
It's really fun. A lot of great guest stars. I've been hearing a lot of good things about it from various podcasts and chatter on the Internet. And I've been hearing a lot of people kind of say like it's it's a new take on the Colombo concept where the viewers know who committed the crime. And then we just we go along with the characters to try and see how they figure out how it ends up getting. It essentially it's essentially a show that in three acts, the first act
00:06:32
Speaker
you meet the characters for that week, the kind of special guest stars and you get to know the characters and you see the murderer and you get a sense of why the murder takes place and by whom it is. Then you kind of move into act two where you rewind to the clock and realize that Natasha Leon's character has actually been around in the background of all of these events from the beginning. We didn't know that she was there, but now we turn the lens towards her and we see what she was doing there.
00:07:01
Speaker
what type of emotional personal investment she makes with some sort of there she always has some sort of connection that she makes either she becomes friends with the with the victim or with someone that the victim cares about or something along those lines.
00:07:14
Speaker
And then so you catch up with her and see where she fit into everything. And then the third act is her solving the murder. And what's really interesting is that she is actually kind of on the run herself throughout this. So she is not able to just kind of like call the cops and be like, hey, I found a murderer. So she also has to kind of find interesting ways in which to inflict justice on these people, which is also a fun kind of reveal at the end of each episode.
00:07:43
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that sounds really interesting. I got to check the streaming services here because sometimes some of that stuff that's on NBC or HBO in the States, it'll usually end up on one of the major streaming services here in Japan like Netflix or Disney Plus or Amazon. But the season is still in progress, right? Or is it finished? No, it's all finished. All the episodes have aired.
00:08:07
Speaker
So then, yeah, I'll have to check that out, see if it's coming out on one of those services soon, or might even just be coming out to DVD release. Because I love... I mean, I'm one of the people who actually loves The Last Jedi, and also... I'm one of them as well. Awesome. Good. You're a good company. Frequent guest, Adam Lance Garcia. He's a huge fan of that movie as well.
00:08:27
Speaker
And I think at the I'm not exactly sure about how the recording works out, but I think he will listen, he'll be on the episode right before this one is coming out. And also, you know, the the knives out movies, right? Those are just incredible. Sure.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm a huge Ray Johnson fan from way back, going all the way back to Brick and Brothers Bloom and the stuff that he was doing, Blooper, all that stuff before he was a household name. I was loving his stuff, and so it's so cool to see him get the opportunity to just do whatever he wants to now, and the choices that he's making are very exciting. Brick was just incredible.
00:09:03
Speaker
It is, it still blows me away how effortlessly he was able to adapt Red Harvest and put it in a high school setting. Basically doing what Kurosawa did with Yojimbo, but now he's moving it to a completely different setting. And it's one of those things that it's like, you know, imagine Yojimbo or Red Harvest or Fistful of Dollars, but it's set in a modern day high school instead. It doesn't seem like it should work, but it does.
00:09:33
Speaker
It seems like it should be terrible when you hear that pitch. You're like, oh no, what a disaster that's going to be. But it's so excellent.
00:09:39
Speaker
And Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of course, the star of that film, the star of Looper. And he has a really fun role in one of the episodes that Ryan Johnson does direct of Poker Face. So definitely worth seeing. He plays a bit of a not great guy, and he does it very effectively. Yeah, I mean, I think Brick was probably the first instance we had of him taking him actually really seriously as an actor, if I'm not mistaken.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, it was that and it was mysterious skin, which was another indie from around that time that really put him to the test as far as like a dramatic actor. And that was kind of like those two roles back to back sort of helped kind of establish him as like, oh, he's not just a kid from Third Rock from the Sun and angels in the outfield. Like he's a real actor we need to take seriously.
00:10:24
Speaker
And I wish he would do more stuff because I've always been a fan of his. And my daughter's wandering around in the background here. But anyway, we'll find out.
00:10:40
Speaker
Okay.
Crisis on Earth-X Overview
00:10:41
Speaker
But anyway, today we're talking about something a little bit different than Ryan Johnson. We are talking about Crisis on Earth-X. This was one of the CW crossovers that they did. You know, long back in one of the early episodes of the show, we covered Crisis on Infinite Earths. And I've always maintained that these crossover events, they're basically like movies as well. And so when we talked about Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it actually, it's funny, at the local DVD store,
00:11:10
Speaker
that I go to here in Japan, they have these available as movie compilations, essentially, where they've got all the episodes. They're separated by title cards, a little annoying, but they do have them all bundled in one DVD. So that's kind of nice. Yeah, that's awesome. I know that when they aired, the year that Crisis on Earth X aired,
00:11:30
Speaker
if you went on the CW app, it was available to watch like that as if it was its own mini series for the, for basically like the whole year. But now if you try to watch it, if you don't have access to that very special cool DVD that you have, it could be really complicated because it took a little bit of
00:11:48
Speaker
You have to pull it up on Wikipedia and be like, okay, it's episode eight of season six of this show and episode eight of season three of this show. You just kind of have to like piece it together and make sure you have the right order. Otherwise you will be very confused, but it's worth the investments.
00:12:03
Speaker
I agree. Yeah. So let's see where we're headed. I mean, it's, you know, for a movie that's a few years old, I'm pretty sure everyone watching, listening to this right now has already watched Crisis on Earth X, or they already, they had already given up on the CW stuff long before that. So it's, I don't think we're gonna be, you know,
00:12:22
Speaker
breaking anyone's brain here when we talk about this. But before we jump too much into crisis, let's talk a little bit about the CW shows. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you were not really as much of a comic book guy. You came in more through movies and TV into the superhero space, am I right?
00:12:39
Speaker
That's correct. Yeah, I can count on one hand the amount of physical comic books I've ever read in my whole life. But I grew up on the Fox kids animated TV shows of Batman and Spider-Man and X-Men. And that was my gateway. And then going into the movies with the X-Men and Spider-Man movies and then the MCU hit. Now I host two separate podcasts on comic book characters.
00:13:06
Speaker
It's become a pastime, but yeah, I did not read any comic books and that made the DC stuff a little bit more of a, you know, confusing for me because I definitely had less of a basis of understanding for this sort of wider DC event, like a crisis on Earth X or a crisis on an infinite Earth. So that made watching this, you know, probably a new experience compared to what some people who maybe have had expectations for what it might be like going in.
00:13:34
Speaker
Right. So let's talk a little bit about those CW shows. How did you jump into into them? Were you on board from the very beginning with with the first season of Arrow? Did you jump in later? And, you know, are you still invested or have you fallen off? Well, at this point, they are really just the kind of it's like the Al Pacino meme of like every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in. You know, I keep trying to give up these shows because they definitely have
00:14:01
Speaker
lessened in quality over the years, shall we say. But they always kind of trick me into giving them another shot. So I'm still watching the ones that are left. But, you know, through gritted teeth, sometimes like I came back for the final season of The Flash, because it was the final season, like, of course, you have to watch the last season and it's just, you know,
00:14:20
Speaker
It's not the show that it once was, but the way that I got into this whole universe is actually through the Flash, because I remember I'd watched Smallville, which is not part of this continuity. I'd watched it, you know, in middle school and high school, and I didn't watch it completely until the end, but I was a fan of it for a long time. And when I heard that they were making an Arrow show, I was like, oh, is it going to be a spin-off of Smallville? And then when I found out, oh, it's not a spin-off of Smallville, it's its own thing, and I saw their previews and everything, it just seemed like they were trying to
00:14:48
Speaker
Do a rip-off of that man begins but with an arrow for some reason I was like that's lame and cynical I don't need to watch that But then cut to like two years later and I find out that one of my favorite Supporting characters on the television show glee, which is a show that I did regrettably watch back then
00:15:06
Speaker
Grant Gustin who played sort of like the cute gay couples mean prep school bully, which is so funny to think about now And he was great on that show. It's so wild I've never knew that because I've never seen glee although there I don't believe in guilty pleasure. So you're totally fine with that But you know, it's so weird to hear that because you know, he seems like the most likable guy ever on the flash Yes, and he played such a bitchy character on glee and he did it
00:15:33
Speaker
perfectly. And that's, and so I was excited. I was excited that he was getting this opportunity. I was excited that he was going to get to play such a different character. And I had heard that he had already appeared on the, on the arrow in the same role. And I was, but I didn't see that, but I heard it was like well received. And so then when the flash came out and it got really good reviews, I was like, okay,
00:15:53
Speaker
I'll watch The Flash. I don't need to worry about Arrow. I'll watch The Flash. And then the way that these shows work, you know, it's like they're like these like multi-tentacled monsters where like eventually you just get sucked into all of them. So with all the crossovers, they all worked perfectly on me and eventually like talked me into giving Arrow a chance. And then I watched, so I caught up with Arrow.
00:16:12
Speaker
And then I enjoy, I caught up with Supergirl once it moved to the CW and I really liked Supergirl. And then I watched, I was in and out on Legends for a lot of the show. I would kind of like pick and choose when I would watch that because it was really kind of, I mean that show has been 12 different shows before it was over. I think it actually is the rare CW show that actually ended really strong. I think it finally figured out what was good about it and put out a really strong last season.
00:16:38
Speaker
But I liked Black Lightning a lot, especially its first season. So I ended up watching all the shows. In fact, at one point I was even writing a column for the Poppery.com that was trying to do a roundup of all of the shows every week, which was definitely my death because those shows are very plot heavy and to try to do like four
00:17:00
Speaker
episodic recaps and one article every week was that was a difficult fall for me. But yeah, that's, it's been an up and down journey since then. Batwoman also, Batwoman the first season of Batwoman was really rough. The second season I thought was much better. Third season so so but um, yeah, and I just I really liked the opportunity when you sent me some ideas of what we could talk about getting to talk about this because
00:17:23
Speaker
We are winding down the Arrowverse as a property and it is really ending on a faint whisper of what it had been. I thought it was cool to get the chance to revisit it when it was really going on all cylinders and everything was working. I really think that this Crisis on Earth X miniseries is a
00:17:45
Speaker
a high watermark in that respect. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I came in with the first season of Arrow. And like you, I'd also, when they first announced it, my first thought was, oh, they're doing a Green Arrow spin off from Smallville because that was kind of like the spiritual precursor to the CW shows. Because a lot of the stuff they did on Smallville, they also ended up kind of
00:18:12
Speaker
Imitating in some ways or or taking the baton and kind of running with it like, you know Mixing this whole superheroes with you know Teenage drama type thing that the CW loves to do so they really kind of merge those two together. Although And especially that first season of arrow it was calling it Batman begins but with but with green arrow is a really good way of describing it because it is I had recently started rewatching some of those
00:18:39
Speaker
some of that first season and it's a good it's good TV those are they're good episodes but it you can really tell that what they really want to do was make a Batman show and they didn't have access to Batman so instead they decided and this is a weird thing that the WB Warner Brothers has been doing for
00:18:57
Speaker
since before Smallville, they've had this idea of making Batman TV shows without Batman in them. So they did goth. They originally, before Smallville, they were gonna do young Bruce Wayne. And then that ended up, then they decided not to, they decided to do Smallville instead. And then later they- I forgot Birds of Prey. I remember they did Birds of Prey before that. They were like, what if it was about Batman's daughter? Yeah.
00:19:22
Speaker
Although Dina Meyer was great in that as Oracle. I watched every episode, all six of them, that aired. I tapped out after like three episodes and I was done. I think you were older than me. I think that's probably why you knew what you were. You saw the writing on the wall. But yeah, Arrow was kind of, it was funny because that first season, you could really tell that they were really kind of ashamed of being a superhero show almost.
00:19:51
Speaker
He's not the green arrow. He's the hooded vigilante or something like that. He doesn't wear a mask. He wears grease paint over his eyes. This is serious. This is serious stuff. This is not a superhero thing. And then Avengers comes out, and in second season, they're like, we're going to have Black Canary. We're going to have the League of Assassins. We're going to start. And then third season, it's like, fuck it. It's a superhero thing. We've got the Flash now and all that. Yeah. The Flash is here. We got magic. We got Assassins. We got everybody.
00:20:21
Speaker
Which I thought was, I'm glad that they kind of made that shift and they were able to bring in The Flash. And that first season of The Flash, that is like, I don't want to say peak superhero television, but it is so solid. Like that first season is amazing. That is a show that was not at all ashamed of being a superhero show. It just completely leaned into the concept. And same thing with that first season of Super Bowl.
00:20:48
Speaker
The Flash, the first season of Flash did that thing that genre TV shows sometimes do and also sometimes like youth oriented TV shows sometimes do where they just burn through plot as quickly as possible. They don't hold anything back, which is exhilarating in the moment because you're like, wow, anything can happen.
Arrowverse Show Evaluations
00:21:04
Speaker
There's no rules. Like this is a weird comp, but it's really similar in the sense of like the OC when the OC first came out. It was a show where it was just like they were putting, they put out like 26 episodes in their first season and they did as much plot as other teen shows would have done in four seasons, right? Cause they were just going like, boom, boom, boom. Every episode there were new revelations. There was pushing into the limits and you felt like anything could happen. And the flash was really like that in that first season. And I think ultimately,
00:21:32
Speaker
you found out why shows don't typically do that because then they ran out of runway and then it became increasingly difficult to match those exciting heights. But that first season, I remember the mid episode, the mid season finale of the first season of the show where there's like this moment where like a giant tidal wave comes and takes out all of Central City and Barry has to go travel back in time to save everybody. And you're like, this is happening in the middle. This is happening on episode eight of this television show. This is insane.
00:22:01
Speaker
And yeah, it was it was a great first season, but they just they unfortunately could not keep that up. Yeah. I mean, I think the peak of the Arrowverse shows are from that first season of The Flash up until Crisis on Infinite Earth. After that, I think that is like probably actually probably for all when all seasons, all shows are running on fire and all sudden there's it would probably be up until this movie, Earth X. And then
00:22:28
Speaker
The show's definitely diverged in quality after that, but I was still enjoying The Flash and Arrow for the most part. Legends on and off, Supergirl was starting to fall off on. And then Crisis on Infinite Earth, I thought, was a great bookend to that. Unfortunately, then after that, it completely ran out of gas after that.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think like for me, Supergirl, I think the third season is a bit of a weak spot. But then I feel like it really figured it out in season four. And I really like season four a lot. And I think season five is also pretty strong, especially given the sort of constraints that they were under because of Melissa's pregnancy and then her decision to end the show. For Arrow, I think that ultimately that first season is kind of hit or miss. They're really trying to figure out how much of a CW show they want to be.
00:23:18
Speaker
Like, how much Gossip Girl do we want in our Batman is really kind of the tension of that first season. Yeah. But I think the second season really figures it out. And, you know, the third season is also pretty strong. And then it just becomes so up and down after that, where you just have like good seasons and bad seasons and good seasons, bad seasons.
00:23:34
Speaker
And you know, like, okay, well, we're halfway through the season. That means that team arrow is going to break up because they don't trust each other. And then there's going to be a couple episodes where they're upset and then they come back together and they fight the new guy again. So it became very predictable. Um, and with the flash, I think it just, that was definitely, like I said, they just ran out of things to talk about and then they tried to kind of construct these things and.
00:23:55
Speaker
There was a lot of turmoil behind the scenes as well. You know, Andrew Kreisberg, who was kind of in charge of the Flash initially, he was outed as a, unfortunately, a sexual monster, as it turns out. Really? And fired from the show. Yeah. And after that, they had a kind of like, it was a bit rocky during that transition. And then Todd Helberg came in and kind of righted the ship and
00:24:15
Speaker
I think season five is a pretty good season. And then he kind of gets, he leaves the show to start making the Superman show and the new guy comes in and I don't think it really, Eric Wallace, and I don't think the show's ever really recovered. It just kind of shifted into kind of everybody's just there to collect a paycheck. It kind of feels like a lot. It's like very kind of leaning on supporting characters that the fan base just doesn't really care about. And the main, the principal actors are almost never in scenes together anymore because they're all just kind of get their days in.
00:24:44
Speaker
and it really feels like a show that's on its last legs. But I will say the final season of Arrow was a surprising return to form, in my opinion. I think that the last season of Arrow is really fun. It's kind of like a tour through the history of the series in a way. It sets up the big crisis on Infinite Earths, and then it has a really nice, satisfying conclusion of the series. So I'll stand up for that last season of Arrow, but there's a lot of rough patches in between.
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah, so there are flashes on the season nine right now, right? It is. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so season seven and season eight, those are really, those are really rocky for me. I mean, I think like I, I was just struggling to get through with the whole
00:25:25
Speaker
the different forces and all that and how they were thinking of Barry and Iris as their parents and just like this weird, I don't even know what they were doing with that. And I'm just watching it. Because at that point I had, because at first, when I first started watching these, they were, it was like next day on Hulu, the new episodes came out. And then eventually they stopped that and it was all, you know, day after airing, they'd all go to Netflix. So then I just, I just wait until it comes on Netflix. And then
00:25:50
Speaker
God, that last season, I can't remember which one it was where it was the different force. I think it might have been seven. And you had all this stuff with Chester and Allegra, and I'm just like, I do not give a fucking shit about any of these characters. I'd be like, just give me more of Barry and Joe. Give me more of Tom Cavanaugh. Give me more of Cisco. That's what I want.
00:26:12
Speaker
And we had talked about this on another episode with Anthony Desiado about when we were talking about secret identities. And one of the things we talked about how one of the things we felt like kind of lost its way with a lot of these shows was when everybody became like a superhero. And it kind of, you know, so you've got, you know, you've got Flash and you've got
00:26:35
Speaker
you know, you've got vibe and then you've got Killer Frost and then you've got, you know, whatever the hell. Elongated man. And all these other characters that keep coming in or an arrow when there's the whole concept, it gets away from the idea of him as a vigilante with, you know, some help from, from Diggle and Felicity to now he's got a whole team with, and Mr. Terrific is in there for some reason because we needed a character. And yeah, and that was when it really started to lose me.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, it has that sort of thing that all genre TV shows get over time, which is the sort of power creep, where you feel like, well, the show is most interesting when the supporting cast can be involved in the main plot. So there's only so many ways that you can contrive having a medical emergency for Caitlyn to be involved in. So eventually, if she's going to be involved in the main plot, she's going to have to get powers. And if Cisco is going to need to be involved in the main plot, he can't just be behind the computer.
00:27:35
Speaker
Like I created an algorithm every single episode. So you need him to get powers. And then it's like all of a sudden now the team is just way too powerful and the person who you're supposed to be most invested in is getting overshadowed. And so then you have to kind of pull everything back. And the dismount of that is oftentimes very rocky. And I think we see that in Arrow and in Flash and in Supergirl too had that same problem. It just eventually everybody gets superpowers. I think that those shows each all handled it
00:28:04
Speaker
in different ways. I think Flash handled it the worst, where they just loaded up all of their characters on powers, and then they realized that they couldn't tell stories with all of those characters having powers. I'm sure we'll get into this more once we talk about the main miniseries that we're here to talk about.
00:28:19
Speaker
But like Wally West, for instance, is this characters like, Oh, we got to get Wally in the show. And then they were like, wait, but if we have two speedsters on the team, like, there's no problem that we could present that they're not going to solve immediately. So we just have to find reasons for Wally to not be involved constantly until we just write him off the show completely. And it's like, yeah.
00:28:38
Speaker
what a complete waste of that iconic character and an actor who I think was really game and brought a lot to it in the early seasons. We just don't know what to do. We can't make plots that actually deal with all of these powers and it doesn't feel ridiculous. I think Arrow did it better
00:28:57
Speaker
because everything is so like hand-to-hand combat fighting and so the idea of like scaling up you're still, they initially tried to scale up with actual super powered people and they mostly got rid of those characters pretty quickly and then they rebuilt the team around people that just also fight for the most part and I think that worked a lot better because I think Oliver having to trust people, having to lead a team
00:29:19
Speaker
there is dramatic attention to that. There is growth for that character in particular that I think benefits from that sort of dynamic. So there was ways that I think Arrow handled it better. And then with Supergirl, I think Supergirl did a really good job with it because Supergirl is this source of optimism for her community. That's a core
00:29:41
Speaker
part of her character that's a core part of all of her plots. So the idea that she is shepherding in new heroes and getting them to bring out the best in themselves, there was a lot of plot there. It didn't just feel like, well, now we need a bad guy with two really strong henchmen because we have two supporting characters with superpowers. There was actual plot there. And so that's why I think that Supergirl actually got better as it went along because it actually made the best use of that superpowered supporting cast.
00:30:10
Speaker
I don't think I could agree with you on that because I have not been able to finish that last season of Supergirl yet. It's just, I don't like the supporting cast at all is I think one of the biggest problems for me. Whether they handled well or not, but I just like, you know, got Brainiac Five and Dreamer and all those. And like, I miss it back when it was like Wynn and James and Cat Grant. And that was the supporting cast I definitely liked a lot better.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, we definitely differ on that because I definitely like Dreamer and Brainiac better than
00:30:41
Speaker
when James Olsen, man, that's a character that that show just did not know what to do with. It made me laugh when I saw in this series, it opens with him being murdered, because it was like, yeah, they never knew what to do with him. It's so, I think what they did with James is really kind of indicative of the problem that the show had with a lot of these characters was just like, we don't know what to do with them. Let's put them in a superhero costume. And that's kind of what, that was kind of their go-to for almost every single show.
00:31:10
Speaker
an arrow this is just you know one final point i'll make and then we'll jump into the the series and this is this is really just the the green arrow comic book fan in me but one of the things that always as much as i did like the show for most of it one of the things that i always found annoying on uh on this show and to a lesser extent on smallville i think smallville captured a little bit more of the oliver queen personality is this idea of well we can't get batman so let's use green arrow instead when
00:31:39
Speaker
And yeah, if especially, that's how they started out. Green Arrow was definitely an Ursatz Batman back in the Golden Age. But when you get into like the Silver Age and what Neil Adams and Denny O'Neill had done with him, they really reinvented him as this social crusader character. And that's the Green Arrow I like best, the guy who's basically
00:31:59
Speaker
you know Bernie Sanders the bow and arrow is how I always describe him and I wish we could have seen a little bit more of that in the series and there are points when it seems like they're starting to lean in that direction because I've been you know on and off in the background I've been rewatching that first season on Netflix and
00:32:15
Speaker
There's definite social commentary going on in there, and I can see the whole class warfare struggle, and then it's like they get so close. They go right up to the line, and then they pull back, and they go back into the Batman territory, and that's just, that's my personal thing just on it.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I think so when I first started watching the show, I didn't know about that character in that way. So I was just kind of taking it as it came. But I definitely over the time that it was on learned much more about that. And it always struck me as kind of an unfortunate missed opportunity, because especially this Greg Berlanti burst, like we call the Arrowverse, but really, it's like,
00:32:51
Speaker
super producer Greg Berlanti is the one who created all of these shows and act and like really created this incredible shared universe between them and fostered that. And he has very progressive values. He really has, he populates his shows with a really diverse group of people, putting them front and center. We're getting to see Brown and Black and Asian and American people in like in superhero roles. We're getting to see,
00:33:18
Speaker
queer people and trans people and superhero roles. We're getting these stories like this one, which is about fighting Nazis. And it came out the year after Trump was elected. It's not a mistake. This is all part of the message that they're selling.
00:33:32
Speaker
having the green arrow as socialist vigilante would be perfect for that universe. But I think ultimately that wasn't what they initially were willing to do. And once they had the clout to do it, I think they were just kind of locked into Stephen Amell. And I think that Stephen Amell can be effective in this role, but I think he's limited in what he can do. And I don't know if he had the range to pull off
00:33:57
Speaker
what he would have needed to if he was going to be a more political character. It's so ironic where you've got arguably the most progressive hero, the most politically progressive hero in the DC universe. And on these shows, his show is the least progressive of them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is the class warfare thing, which is baked into it from the beginning, but it's definitely more, you know, it's it's
00:34:24
Speaker
It's two levels removed so that way they could protect themselves from any criticism of making it political in a way that none of these other shows do.
Crossover Evolution in the Arrowverse
00:34:33
Speaker
There's a whole season of Supergirl all about totalitarianism and fascism rising and stuff. There's a whole season on The Flash about subjugating different types of people just because of aspects of who they are. This is a thing that these shows really care about.
00:34:52
Speaker
and yet on arrow they just you know whenever they try it like with that like gun control episode for instance it's just like guys what are you doing you just can't pull this off uh okay so let's jump into um crisis on earth x so um
00:35:07
Speaker
This was, I think this was the second really big crossover because when Flash came out, they had started doing, you know, crossovers between just the two of them. So they had that, they had like, I think they, and then they brought in Legends in one of the crossovers. And then when they brought in Supergirl, that's what really started like what I call the event crossovers. So you had, Invasion was the first one. And then, this was Elseworlds before this? This is the one after.
00:35:33
Speaker
No. Elseworlds weirdly comes after you. Think in the way that it's scaling up that Elseworlds would have come first and then this, but that's not how it goes. They actually, because they use Elseworlds as a little bit of a downbeat crossover to set up crisis the next year. So this actually comes before all of that. The trajectory is super interesting because in the first
00:35:55
Speaker
When Flash first came out, the team behind the two shows really thought that they would be able to cross over characters all the time and they were like, we'll have these cast just constantly shuttling back and forth Vancouver and into each other's plots and it's going to be great. And they realized very quickly that the
00:36:13
Speaker
the realistic demands of a production, like a TV production, make that impossible. And so they very quickly gave up on that idea. And in the first season of The Flash, they had one week where there was a big crossover where The Flash came to Arrow, and then Arrow came to The Flash, but they were completely separate episodes.
00:36:32
Speaker
And then the next year, which would be the second year of The Flash and I guess the fourth season of Arrow, that's when they did, okay, we're going to use a crossover to launch Legends of Tomorrow. And so they had a big two-part crossover event that kind of sets up the Legends of Tomorrow team, which then was also kind of like a backdoor pilot for that show. And then that show starts the following year.
00:36:54
Speaker
And then you get Supergirl involved with the invasion storyline, which was always funny because they said like, oh, Supergirl is going to be on it. And they told us that the miniseries was going to start with Supergirl. And then you just have a full normal episode of Supergirl. And then in the very last minute of Supergirl, Barry and Cisco pop out of a bubble and is like, Supergirl, we need your help. And everyone was mad.
00:37:17
Speaker
But it's a fun miniseries outside of that. And then you get here with Crisis on Earth X. Yeah. So even though this is the fourth crossover event, this is like the first really true crossover event with all the series coming into it. Yeah. Where all four active shows were fully involved for all four episodes and you had main characters from each of the shows and they were telling one coherent story from episode one to episode four.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, this is the first big one and this is, it brings in the Earth-X, which is basically the Nazi Earth in the multiverse. And they come in and they invade during Barry and Iris's wedding. And before we jump too much into it, what did you think of the crossover, the movie at the time when it came out and how's your opinion on it rewatching it overall?
00:38:13
Speaker
So I mean, I was so excited for this when it was airing originally. I was like, I can't wait for the first episode. And like every episode that came out afterwards, I was like glued to my TV right away watching it. So I really was excited by it. And I thought for the most part, it did a really good job of meeting those expectations. I remember feeling like maybe it got a little slow in the middle. Maybe there were some choices that I didn't necessarily love, but overall,
00:38:39
Speaker
Totally exactly what i wanted from the crossovers re watching it now just this past week i was really surprised by how effective it holds up it really you know i picked this cuz i felt like.
00:38:52
Speaker
this to me felt like a high watermark, like I said, of the whole project, right? And watching it, I was worried like, well, maybe that's just kind of like nostalgic goggles, you know, a little bit. But no, it's really well built. You know, they're really smart about the character pairings that they that they use. They really take the time. There's really good pacing across the four episodes where they are willing to use the whole first episode basically to set up all the character dynamics, which is
00:39:19
Speaker
impressive. There's that big fight scene at the end, but outside of that, it's all just putting in the time to invest in the characters and the relationships so that way the next few episodes will pay off in a way that works. And I was really impressed by the patience of that and the willingness to really commit to the project. And yeah, they did a really nice balance of the character pairings and keeping a coherent set of storylines that we could track across the four episodes that
00:39:46
Speaker
all have satisfying conclusions. So yeah, I was really impressed. I really enjoyed it. I will say, I was surprised to find that I definitely liked this a lot more than Crisis on Infinite Earths, which I also liked at the time, but I think this is much better done than that.
00:39:59
Speaker
I'd have to come back to you on that, because it's been a while since I've seen Crisis on Infinite Earths. In fact, I actually don't think I've seen it since we did the episode on it. So I do have to go back and rewatch that all the way through. But my memory of Crisis on Infinite Earths, at least at the moment, is that I still prefer it. And maybe that's just the comic fan in me, because I love all the multiverse stuff in it. And the fact that we actually got to have
00:40:24
Speaker
two different supermen on it. So my opinion is probably definitely colored by those things. But and this one, yeah, you're right. I agree. I loved it at the time. And it still holds up for the most part. There are some little stickling points here and there. And these are just minor things like going through wedding planning myself right now. I thought it was so funny that
00:40:48
Speaker
the day before the wedding they're like oh yeah we're gonna go to the wedding we forgot to RSVP we're gonna check the card down just like that that's not how it works I'm like if no yeah you can't send the card back the day before the wedding pick up the phone at the very least that was that made me laugh too
00:41:07
Speaker
Also, some of the pairings at the weddings were weird because you have, I love Mick's line when he comes in to the wedding. He's like, well, I've tried to kill the groom a few times, so I guess I'll sit on the bride side. And he goes sit on the bride side, but you've got Captain Singh on the bride side, which seems more like he should be on Barry's side because he's his boss, even though I know there's the Joe connection. Yeah, he's Joe's friend before he's Barry's boss, so I think that's probably why he's there.
00:41:33
Speaker
But it was also like Iris doesn't get to have any friends on the show. So like who else is going to be there? And we're just really telling which one from the newspaper and he died. So, you know, after that, what are we going to do? And it's really telling because when they're doing the bridal stuff and it's like all her friends are just very superhero female friends. Yes. Who like she maybe shared like three scenes with in the past. Like she's definitely not best friends with these people. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of funny.
00:42:03
Speaker
What did you think of that way of introducing everybody by doing the kind of like you get the cold open, right? Where, you know, we see the who we don't know who it is yet, but you can reasonably assume it's like evil Oliver, right? Killing. Poor Jimmy. And he gets and then you and then you cut to all of the different teams.
00:42:25
Speaker
Basically checking in on the wedding stuff, right? And you get to see all of their powers and you get to see like a little bit of their dynamics and their own little In their own little bubbles as a way to kind of be like and now we're all gonna get together What did you think about that? Did you think that was fun or it was fun? Like, you know last-minute wedding Well, we have to go to the wedding tomorrow that that that's that that contrivance aside It was a fun way to very quickly introduce you to all these all the main players who are gonna be involved in this See I thought that was done very well
00:42:56
Speaker
Although I did find the idea of, it's almost like they're trying to keep Dark Arrow and Overgirl's identities a secret in a little bit, because they're like, we're not showing their faces. I'm just like, come on, who else could it be? Yeah, for me, I feel like that I had the Sami's Act reaction, but I have two things that made it a little bit better. One is like these shows are also for kids, right? Like they're made for kids and for grownups. And I think kids would probably be surprised.
00:43:25
Speaker
by that reveal, right? Because it's not even in their head, you know?
00:43:28
Speaker
Although, I mean, she literally looks exactly like Supergirl just with the mask on and she's floating. So that's- And she's got the same exact hair, yeah. Yes. But the other thing I think helps is that when you do get the final reveal at the end of episode one that, oh, they take their mask off and it's the evil doppelgangers, you also get the reveal that the reverse Flash is there and he's- Yeah. And that is something that we didn't, it wasn't on the table up until that moment. So then you get a fun reveal anyway, even if you think the
00:43:55
Speaker
the reveal that they're setting you up for is something that you were way ahead of them on, they still surprise you, which I think is fun. And on that note too, I love that the two versions of Tom Cavanaugh we get in this are the Reverse Flash and the Earth 2 Harry, because those were my favorite iterations that he played on those shows. When he got into some of the other ones, the
00:44:18
Speaker
the French detective and all that. I'm just like missing that stuff. But these two, this is a solid stuff, especially Harry's interactions with Cisco. I love that stuff. Yes. I wrote that down too in my notes. I was like, man, this is so fun. This is the sort of thing that current day flash is just really missing. It's just the two of them really fun in the pocket bickering in a way that's really funny and moving the plot along but also having fun.
00:44:47
Speaker
And they hate each other, but they love each other. It's just fun. And there's just nothing like that on the show right now. It's all just super over lit. And everybody is angsty. And nobody talks to each other. There's no camaraderie to this team. And in this show so quickly, you get
00:45:03
Speaker
so much camaraderie, right? You get so much chemistry bouncing off each other. It's really fun. It reminded me of what I loved about these shows. It also reminded me of how much I liked the, not so much the episodes they were doing at the time, but this team of legends, like, you know, when you had, when you had, you know, White Canary and Firestorm and, and Steel and the Atom and, and Isis and Vixen and all of the, and, you know, but also, you know, we also had the reunion between, um,
00:45:31
Speaker
between Mick and Captain Cold, who's, you know, Citizen Cold in this, the Earth-X version, made me miss, maybe remember how much I missed those two interacting, too, and how much, how much that show really lost once they, uh, what was, Wentworth Miller, I think, is his name?
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah, I went with Miller. Yeah, yeah, how much he came back a bunch of times. Yeah, but it was just in these short appearances, every time he came back, and I'm just like, Oh, man, I wish he would stay around this time. And it made me realize how much I missed seeing him as Captain Cold on these shows, because he was one of the perfect castings on this on these shows. Well, because he is just so when Mark Miller is so talented at being incredibly campy,
00:46:13
Speaker
and yet sliding that real actual pathos underneath it. So that way you're actually, there's something there, right? Like these shows sometimes leaned into campy in a way that was maybe not always the best and it just felt kind of like too sugary sweet. But what he was so good at is it's like, there's no doubt about it. He is giving very campy over the top diet, like line readings. But underneath it is this kernel of like a real person that is like broken and wounded and you actually care about.
00:46:39
Speaker
And that's just really hard to pull off. And it was a loss when he lost that for the Flash and it was a loss when he lost it for Legends. Yeah. And also just like the way he delivers those lines too, not only the pathos thing you mentioned, but he's got this almost slightly snarky delivery of, I don't even know how to describe it, but it's just, you know, you see it in a way that's just so
00:47:02
Speaker
Perfect. It's so great. I love him. And I love that they let him be gay in the crossover. That was really fun because the actor is gay in real life. And that was nice to see. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, he plays the character in a way that is consistent with that sexual orientation from the beginning. I can say as a gay person myself, I felt seen from the beginning. So it was nice to get to like make the subtext text, you know, finally.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, so all that stuff I loved, I got the firestorm stuff. I, you know, I was really disappointed when they had, we found out that Robbie Amell wasn't coming back and they'd killed off Ronnie Raymond. And then when they brought in Jefferson, Jax at first, I wasn't as invested
Legends of Tomorrow Discussion
00:47:48
Speaker
in him. But in Legends, I actually kind of grew to really like what they were doing in that and
00:47:55
Speaker
I miss having those two on that show too. That was another interaction. Then when we see Isis and Vixen and, to a lesser extent, Steele in the Legends episode, I'm like, oh god, I remember this. This was when Legends was
00:48:12
Speaker
Again, it was never the best series, but this was one of those periods when I was far more invested in it. How long did you stick with that show? Did you stick with it till the end? No. What was the last season? Was that five? No, I believe they went six seasons. Six. I think I lasted to four and part of five.
00:48:39
Speaker
I just haven't been able to get back into it just like with the last season of Supergirl. I just haven't found much of a need to. And I do want to see at least the last episode of it because I love Donald Faison and I heard he's amazing as Booster Gold in the final episode.
00:48:55
Speaker
Well, whoever told you that is overstating it. He's in literally one scene. So I would not watch the final episode for him. It's literally one scene and it's like the cliffhanger scene. He can't be in it for more than 45 seconds. I would recommend the final season of the show because I think that that was it. Legends, not to go on a huge tangent, but
00:49:17
Speaker
you're right that this team was a really functional team and then it slowly just completely imploded, right? And they, and it took them a few years to kind of rebuild the show. But when in that final season, I think they found a really great balance of characters and relationships that were really great and matched the new tone that they were going for in a way that worked. And something that I think was very effective and it was mostly because of budget reasons, but I think they made the most of it for the story is they were
00:49:43
Speaker
for the most of that season they're stuck in one time period in the past and it's like they at the end of the season before their time ship blows up and so the whole quest of that season is to kind of like
00:49:55
Speaker
create a new time machine before they get found out as time travelers, basically. And so they're stuck in one place for a full season, and they get to have an arc throughout that. And it really helps make you feel much more invested in the relationships and the dynamics and everything else, instead of the constant, every single episode, we need to be in a new place in a new time. And that episodic thing, I think, could sometimes get a little tiring. And results definitely varied.
00:50:22
Speaker
I really liked that last season. OK, I'll have to give it a try then. One of the things, too, I always felt like was a missed opportunity, especially after Earth X and Crisis on Infinite Earths is. I mean, I think one of the things that would have made and this is, again, just the sci-fi comic geek in me, I think I would have liked it a lot more if it was more like if it was more like Sliders, where it's instead of going to different time periods, they're going to different multiverses. I think I would have enjoyed that a lot more.
00:50:50
Speaker
I think that would have been a lot more of a creative use of those characters and what they could do. Yeah, I think that they weren't allowed to do that because the Flash, when the Legends of Tomorrow was happening, the Flash was all in on multiverse stuff. And I think that they were just like they seeded that storytelling to the Flash show. That makes sense. In the same way that they kind of seeded aliens to Supergirl, right? Supergirl got to be the alien show. Flash was the multiverse show. Arrow was the crime show.
00:51:19
Speaker
Legends was the time traveling show, you know, the time traveling. We're just throwing anything at the wall and see what sticks. Yeah. Yeah. And then and yeah. And Black Lightning kind of became very heavy on the social commentary stuff, even even more so than some of the others in a very effective in a very effective way. Yeah. I got to. That's another one I have to catch up on because I've only seen I think the first two seasons of that.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's a show that is just so hampered by the by the budget like it's at a certain point It's so clear that they were just like that their budget was slashed and like the writers are really trying to make the most of it and the Actors are doing a great job and every other action scene is just in like a sci-fi hallway that looks exactly the same Where you don't know where the ceiling or the floor is you're like, what is happening? So it's like that just was rough. Everybody was trying their best
00:52:08
Speaker
It is kind of interesting, too, because that was almost like a proto Superman and Lois in a way, because that was at least that first season, it felt like it had like a much more serious, more mature degree of storytelling in it. And it wasn't really connected to the Arrowverse stuff really until Crisis on Infinite Earth. That's the first time they actually connected them.
00:52:28
Speaker
And up until that point, they're just kind of like, well, it's, it's kind of connected. And they were kind of doing the same thing with Superman and Lois at the beginning. We were like, he diggles here and you know, it's kind of connected. And then once they get to the end of the second season, they're like, no, it's not part of the universe. It's a different earth. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And unlike all of the other shows, Black Lightning, Black Lightning was actually filmed in Atlanta instead of in Vancouver. And I think that also made for.
00:52:54
Speaker
a lot more complications over time because they couldn't just like rely on the same six location shots that all of the shows get to go on. There's like one building that on all of the shows that like on Supergirl, it's a corporate office and on The Flash, it's a museum and narrow, it's a bank. You're just like, I know that building, I've seated six times. So they couldn't capitalize on that on Black Lightning because they were just in Atlanta. So I think that made the budget cutting a lot more obvious over time, unfortunately.
Progressive Themes in Crisis on Earth-X
00:53:24
Speaker
So another thing that I really liked in this show as well was in Christ on Earth X was the one night stand between Alex and Sarah and how they handled that. I thought that was
00:53:40
Speaker
You know, talking about how progressive this show is when, you know, Alex is, you know, mortified of the fact she had a drunken one night stand and Kara and Kara is just like, you had fun. So what? Who cares? And I love that they completely didn't go into the they went the opposite of the slut shaming route that usually happens in those types of moments.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, and so I fully agree with you, but I'll take it one step further in saying that not only do they do everything that you said, but then they also take the time to allow Alex's reaction to be more complicated, right? She has that initial negative response of like, oh, no, I'm not this person who just sleeps around. And like you say, Kara is just like, well, you had fun. It's fine. You shouldn't be so judgmental of yourself. Don't be so hard on yourself. And then you realize, no, what she's actually freaking out about isn't the one-night stand.
00:54:27
Speaker
like what the one night stand signifies to her, which is like the fact that she is no longer with Maggie, the person who she loves so much that she gave up because Maggie didn't want to have kids. And instead, she's thinking, is this what the rest of my life is going to be? Just a series of empty sexual
00:54:44
Speaker
encounters and it's like oh that's actually really strong writing and very great kind of way to maximize just the characters that you have on screen and there's no reason that this show needed to have that as a subplot but it's so much better off for it right also and you know i mentioned the firestorm stuff too i really enjoyed the the stuff between uh jack's and stein and this and that whole push and pull that they were having they're going through and
00:55:11
Speaker
You know, it's funny, I've seen this twice now since I got it. And, you know, once, like, I think, like, maybe last year when I picked it up, and then and then last night for this episode, both times, I forgot that this was when Martin dies at the end. And, and, and both times, it kills me both times, because, you know, he's
00:55:30
Speaker
Especially because I lost my father a few years ago, so this is still very fresh in my mind. I'm a father now myself, so all of that stuff was really ringing true to me. When he's talking about how he's going to retire, he's going to work on a project with his daughter, he's going to tell his grandson all about the stories of his adventures and all this.
00:55:53
Speaker
You have Jax struggling over the fact that at first it seems like he likes being a superhero, but no, it's really that he's kind of losing his dad again for a second time. And all of that stuff I thought was handled very well. Yeah, and they gave it the space to breathe, right?
00:56:09
Speaker
You knew as soon as they introduced it where that story was going, maybe not the point where he dies if you don't remember that that's the conclusion of it. But at least the idea of like, OK, there's going to be tension. They're going to finally talk about it. It'll get resolved. They'll also they love each other and they'll be able to move past it. Right. Like it's kind of like a very easily accessible story. But they give that story the space that it needs to really feel rooted in these specific characters in a way that is really impactful. Like I think that the actors, Victor Garber, who plays Stein, who's
00:56:37
Speaker
you know, an absolute legend on Broadway and on film who is way overqualified. And I can't believe he was on that show for as long as he was. And Fran's drama who plays Jacks, they made me cry at the end of this when in that final death scene, like it made me cry. And I was not expecting to cry because I remembered that he died. And these were not characters that I inherently felt connected to, but they played the drama of it and the emotion of it so real and so raw.
00:57:05
Speaker
And they get the space in the episode to really take that time to do that. And it really, really was effective. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he, Victor Garber, he was, he was amazing in this series and just like this entire run from being on the flash and then onto legends. And he was.
00:57:22
Speaker
him and Brandon Routh, I think, were my favorite parts of Legends in those early days. And so when he went off, I think that was the first domino to fall for me with Legends. Because I felt like it really lost something special when he was gone.
00:57:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a big hole. And that show really doesn't fill it until they bring Matt Ryan in as Constantine. And now it's like he's this source of information in a different way that functions differently. But I feel like it wasn't until then that that hole that he left really was filled. 100% agree. Yeah, absolutely. What are some of the things that you liked about this crossover? So one of the things I wanted to bring up was just the fact that, and I said this a little earlier,
00:58:06
Speaker
is that they give us basically like six plot lines to follow throughout the whole show outside of the Nazi invasion stuff, which I thought was so smart because it really is kind of saying like, okay, we have all these characters on the table. How do we
00:58:19
Speaker
create an actual story for our audience to follow instead of just being like, wow, all these characters, you know, here they are. Here's like, you know, and here's like, you know, Easter eggs and, and inside jokes. And it's the other thing, like, it's like, no, we actually need stories to tell about these characters. And how do we maximize the interesting dynamic of the fact that all of these people aren't usually together. And so the one would be the firestorm breaking up storyline that we've already talked about.
00:58:43
Speaker
The other is that Alex and Kara and Sarah, like kind of trio of characters bouncing off each other. And that one I think is maybe the most interesting because it really evolves. Like it starts out where we started, where it's like, oh, of course, Alex and Sarah, they're so similar in so many ways. They would be drawn to each other and they would have this connection romantically. And then that's that's a fun thing to play off of. And, you know, it kind of informs the romantic troubles that Alex and Kara are both having in different ways.
00:59:11
Speaker
And then Kara becomes the source of tension because Kara is in danger. And now Alex and Sarah can really bond in a real way over that shared love of a sister in danger. And I thought that that all was really well executed. And then there's the kind of the illicit marriage kind of subplot, which I think we'll probably be able to talk to you. I've got something to say about that. I have a feeling you do.
00:59:39
Speaker
And then there's also like just there's a cut and then there's like Barry and and and thon Fighting again, which is kind of like, you know, okay, I guess we're doing this again But they at least take it seriously enough to help the audience if you're not watching the flash know why he would be upset about this which is
00:59:54
Speaker
It was good, I guess. And then the thing that I think was a really fun runner throughout the whole four episodes was Rory and Caitlyn Frost dynamic, where it's mostly just for fun, but it's really fun to be like, oh, let's have the kind of curmudgeonly fire guy with the young girl who shoots ice from her hands and have them bounce off of each other for comedic effects throughout the whole thing. And it works out well by the end, they're fighting together, and it's fun.
01:00:21
Speaker
So I really liked that those were kind of the pairings that we were really focusing on. And everything else is just kind of operating around that and orbiting it in a way that was really effective. Yeah, I agree with that too, especially I think this is one of the best ways that they handled Mick, like the way he plays off different characters here. And I think this is one of the best uses of him. He said he gets like a million
01:00:42
Speaker
He gets a million one-liners in this, and it's like a really high hit ratio, honestly. It's really impressive how many actually land. Maybe like the highest of his run, I think, in this one. I agree. I mean, he's just, he's on, you know, pun intended, he's on fire in all these scenes here. And it's funny because fairly recently we had, I had done an episode on Blade Trinity where he played the villain in that, and it's just like, God, he was so terrible in that. And then going back and seeing this, I'm like,
01:01:10
Speaker
This is his sweet spot. This is where he belongs. Yeah, because he can hit that similar to his partner on screen, Leonard Miller. Dominic Purcell can really hit that can't be silly, tough guy act just perfectly. In a way, if you transpose that into a serious story, I don't know if that would work necessarily very well, but here, it's just pitch perfect. If you've never seen Blade Trinity, trust me, it doesn't work.
01:01:39
Speaker
I mean, well, everyone in the world has told me not to watch Blade Trinity, so I have tried to avoid it. They were right. They were right. It's just an awful movie. It's just to give you one thing. What are some things that spoke? Oh, OK. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, I'm like, just to give you an example of how terrible it is, you've got Jessica Beale listening to her iPod as she fights vampires, as an excuse to have an iPod product placement.
01:02:06
Speaker
places in a real moment in time at the very least. Sorry, you were going to say something? No, I was just going to ask, what are some things that you really liked about that, or at least what are some things out of the ones that I spotlight that worked for you? All of those worked for me a lot.
01:02:23
Speaker
We'll talk about the Olicity thing in a minute.
Multiverse Twists and Nostalgia
01:02:27
Speaker
But I also just, I'm a sucker for multiverse stuff. So I love seeing the characters we know in different roles. So this whole idea of the Dark Arrow and Overgirl, these twisted versions of Oliver and Kara, I love seeing that. I love seeing Tommy Merlin come back too. That was another, that was an example of
01:02:49
Speaker
If you're gonna do this reveal, where you reveal a character we know, this is the way you should do it, right? Like, but they're doing dark arrow and overgrow, it's like,
01:02:58
Speaker
we know it's the Nazi versions of Ali and Supergirl. Come on, how stupid do you think we are? But when we get to Prometheus, it's like, oh, oh, okay, that's not the Prometheus we know, that's Tommy Merlin. I think that's a better way to do it is when you pull the rug out from under people like that, which I guess maybe partly the way that works is because you had the obvious Ali and Kara reveals, but so I'm kind of arguing against myself in that. But I liked seeing him back again,
01:03:28
Speaker
And just, you know, I love watching Nazis get the shit out of them too. I mean, that's just... Any time you can fuck up Nazis, I'm there for it. I don't care what the story is. I'm there for it. Yeah. I mean, sadly, that's a more controversial take than it was a few years ago, but I would definitely agree with you on that. Even back then, people were getting up in arms about it. I'm like, they're fucking Nazis. Of course you're going to punch them.
01:03:55
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And this is in some ways a direct response to that right after the kind of the 2016 turbulence and like it's very this this was in the fall of 2017 and that is like it's you just never forget that that's the case because it's so when you remember that you're like oh right like this is really responding to something in the culture as well like this kind of feeling of like we need to stand up for
01:04:17
Speaker
diversity of our of our universe that we created on this like silly superhero thing but as a metaphor for as like our actual world and I think that they really the creative team did that on purpose from a political angle and I think that they kind of they don't shy away from the fact that these are actually Nazis like sometimes in genre stuff they like people throw out Nazis just as a shorthand for like silly evil villains and
01:04:43
Speaker
And they don't really want to dig into what it means that they're actually Nazis, but this show, this miniseries actually really gets into it in a way that I was surprised to be watching and I had forgotten a little bit that they really go into like,
01:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, there's people in camps, right, who are going to be killed, who are gay and who are Jewish and stuff like that. And there's like that scene of the Felicity on Earth X, who is in a prison camp. And then later, you know, you get the, our Felicity brings up the fact that like her parents survived the Holocaust as Jewish Europeans. And like, that's like, that's all part of it. They're not running away from that. They weren't just like, oh, it'd be cool if it was Nazis, but like, let's not get too political about it.
01:05:26
Speaker
I think, unfortunately, what some of these stories end up being like, and that's like, no, if you're going to tell a story about Nazis, own the fact, own why they're evil, not just like as a shorthand for evil, you know? Agreed. Yeah, absolutely.
01:05:41
Speaker
I will make one argument against what you were gonna say. So I think that the Tommy Oliver thing, or sorry, not Tommy Oliver. Tommy and Oliver, Tommy Oliver, different superhero universe. But no, the Tommy Merlin thing, I think didn't work as well for me. I had forgotten that that was happening. And when it happened, I was like, Oh, that's cool. He's in this. And then like, he just immediately kills himself. And it's like, well, that's boring.
01:06:04
Speaker
I think that what you're talking about is actually much better rendered later on in part three when Quentin Lance appears and he is a general of the Nazis and you see this person who is you've like if you've watched these shows you've come to
01:06:19
Speaker
love and care about and you're so invested in his complicated relationships with his family and getting and seeing this twisted evil version of him who's willing to kill these people who look like his family. That I think was really, really affecting. Yeah. Another thing too is you'd mentioned the Barry and Thawn stuff.
01:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, it does kind of feel like a retread of what we've had before. It doesn't really bring anything new there. But at the same time, I just love Kavanaugh so much. I just thought, so any excuse to bring him back, I'm on board for that. And, you know, he's just, again, he's one of the
01:06:57
Speaker
watching him back in that role was, because I can't remember who they had playing him when Reverse Flash came back on Legends, but the original Reverse Flash before he had taken on Well's appearance, but I just so prefer Tom Cavanaugh in that role. He's just, his performance is just dripping with like sinister humor. And it's just like, I love him in that role.
01:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, I fully agree. I think he's excellent. I think he's excellent in many roles on The Flash. I think the two that you highlighted earlier are his two best roles. I think he pulls off some of the other roles much better than you would expect. The Harrison Wells from the Earth, where he isn't actually very smart, I think also is a completely different character for him.
01:07:48
Speaker
to play. And I think he also does a really good job with that. And it suddenly like it reconstitutes the whole chemistry of the team in that season in a way that really works. And then yeah, it kind of just goes off the deep end when they're like, well, we need another Harrison Wells. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he's French. Like, come on, guys. I did like did like that version of him.
01:08:08
Speaker
I can't remember which one he was called, but anyway. I think they just called him, they called him HR. HR, that was it, yeah. He took a while for me to warm up to, but I did warm up to him a little bit towards the end. Yeah, I think that the performance was strong throughout the writing wasn't always strong for that one.
01:08:26
Speaker
Um, but also what kind of surprised me too is just, you know, how many people who we only get in very small parts. Like we just see, you know, you mentioned Wally before he's got like no part in this. He just appears. I forgot he was in this until I saw him at the, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's right. Wally was in this. And then he's gone. And then, um, and Diggle doesn't come in until the, the last episode and, and, and we'll talk about that. Um,
01:08:54
Speaker
So yeah, those were kind of disappointing. I think that Diggle wasn't involved because I think they used that actor and that character in the, because the way that they would do these crossovers is basically they would, they would find a way to mostly write out some of the main characters in an episode or two before or after. So that way for production reasons, like an episode of Arrow was able to be still be in production while they were filming other
01:09:17
Speaker
like the crossover stuff. And so I'm pretty sure they did that with Diggle a couple of times. I think he has his suicide squad arcs that would be completely separate from Oliver. And I think that that's why Diggle wasn't really involved. But yeah, it's funny when you're like, oh, right. I think the thing that's good about that is that there's so much going on.
01:09:40
Speaker
And there's so many characters to track and they're investing you in those specific character stories that you almost don't mind. And you maybe even don't even realize at first that these other characters that are important to this universe isn't really around at all for a while.
01:09:56
Speaker
Another thing, and this is not so much a criticism of this, but one of the things I liked about Invasion when they did that is how each episode of it that was still kind of catered to that specific show that it was in. So when you had the Arrow episode, it was all focused on that dream sequence when Ali and Sarah didn't become vigilantes. And so that was kind of a nice way to make it feel like an Arrow episode.
01:10:23
Speaker
There's a little bit less of that in this, which works when you're watching it as a full movie, but as those individual episodes, it doesn't really so much feel like part of those, necessarily part of those shows. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm curious how you feel, but for me, I think that I would prefer the way that this miniseries handles it versus the way that Invasion handles it.
01:10:49
Speaker
feels less distracting to me that like like I can more easily buy in I should say that these are the group of characters that are on this mission together and the other people aren't around and that's okay you know whereas it's like oh all of a sudden it's the arrow episode so all of team arrow shows up and helps out and then they all go away after and you're just like wait what like why oh because this was the arrow episode so they get to have more of a supporting cast and it's like that
01:11:12
Speaker
is a little bit of a distraction from me. But I can see what you're saying in terms of you're losing a lot of what makes that show special if you do it the other way. Yeah, I'm of two minds of it. On the one hand, I do like that this feels like a more cohesive movie when you watch it in isolation. On the other hand too,
01:11:32
Speaker
I think there's a middle ground that you could find with that and I don't think either version really quite kind of nailed it. I think the better way to handle these crossovers though
01:11:43
Speaker
is instead of, and I think Crisis on Infinite Earths kinda did this, right? Instead of saying, you know, oh, it's Supergirl and it's Flash. Instead, it was just like, this is Crisis on Infinite Earths part one, this is Crisis on Infinite Earths part two. And I think where it's kind of like a mini, it's billed as a mini series within these shows. It's kind of a better way to do it. Yeah, well, Crisis on Infinite Earth X did that as well. That is how it was packaged in. Yeah. And if you look on like Netflix, like
01:12:07
Speaker
Like if you go to Arrow, it'll say Crisis on Earth X Part 2, like when it's the Arrow episode. Okay. I was thrown off on that then because on the DVD I have, they have the episode title cards right before. So that definitely threw me off. Ah, okay.
Easter Eggs & Nostalgic References
01:12:22
Speaker
Yeah. And like for when you watch it, like if you just watch it on streaming now, like you don't get the introduction to each episode with each TV show's like opening intro.
01:12:33
Speaker
you just get the kind of, basically the MCU ripoff, Marvel Studios ripoff of Crisis on Earth-X with all of the characters flashing through the words.
01:12:44
Speaker
Um, I also like some of the little Easter eggs they had in here. So, you know, there's that line when, um, when Kara tells Thawne that my cousin will come, will come for me. And the person who rescues her is actually the Adam, Brandon Routh. So, which is a callback to the invasion when, you know, because he played Superman years ago, and then an invasion, um, you have this line at the end when, uh, Ray Palmer says about Kara, you know, she kind of reminds me of my cousin.
01:13:11
Speaker
Uh, so there was that nice little call back to the fact that he, he's a Superman himself. Um, and then that's a final. Yeah. And then also when, um, I love the line reiterating the line from Superman to the one good thing that they had in the lesser cut of Superman two was when Superman goes to the daily planet and calls outside and says, general, would you care to step outside having supergirl do that here? I'd love that too. Yeah, that's nice. That's the deep hole. I didn't even realize that that's awesome.
01:13:39
Speaker
a kind of I picked out a different one where they kind of mentioned they're talking about I believe this is like Oliver talking evil Oliver talking about like how upset he is over what's going on and he mentions like I will blow that
01:13:53
Speaker
place to kingdom come. And it's like, oh, kingdom come, right? Because they're like evil superheroes. Like that's a nice little ball. But I think the best little Easter egg is the one that's an Easter egg pitched towards the future, which is that at, you know, the West Allen wedding, Nora West Allen time travelers makes her debut appearance.
01:14:12
Speaker
uh checking in on um her parents wedding before we even know who she is and they make a point to be like hmm who are you she's like i'm a totally normal person don't worry about it and like you never and then you don't see her again for the entire rest of that season and then she of course in the next season is revealed to be barry and iris's you know time displaced daughter and it's a huge part of the show moving forward and i just like that's really cool that they called their shot that early and they're like we're gonna we're gonna do this next year so we're gonna
01:14:40
Speaker
go through the trouble of casting that character now and just placing her here for the future. I thought that was really cool. That was something else because didn't that first episode, it was Supergirl, right? That first episode?
01:14:51
Speaker
Which is yeah. Yeah, which is which is kind of goes technically a supergirl episode kind of get back to that point I was saying where you've got this This element that is so tied into the flash tv series, but it's not even happening on the flash episode um, right well, I mean the first barry and iris wedding happens on supergirl and the second barry and iris wedding happens on legends of tomorrow, so That is that is a funny thing about the way this worked out. So let's let's talk about that wedding then because um
01:15:19
Speaker
Sure. I understand wanting to close that circle of Barry and I was being able to get married and finally it's just like, let's just do it quickly before something else happens. I get that part and you know. Yeah. But this is also where it feels like, oh shit, we need someone to perform the wedding. Let's bring in John real quick. It feels like a bit of a contrivance. I can almost forgive that though. But then when you have,
01:15:47
Speaker
Ollie and Felicity hoarding in on their wedding as well. That's when it pushes it too far for me. And like, I'm not- I agree. I know the, the Olicity stuff has been debated to death and I'm not going to hate on it too much. Like it's, it is what it is.
01:16:04
Speaker
I'm not a fan of it, but I also don't get as incensed about it as some people on Twitter do. I just never really cared one way or the other. It became a bit too much of the focus in the show. I do agree with that, but it's not something that I was getting furious about either. No. Some fans on Reddit need to calm down with that stuff, in my opinion.
01:16:29
Speaker
I liked them as a couple. I always liked them as a couple. I thought that it was smart that they pivoted away from their plans and like leaned into the chemistry between the actors because I feel like, you know, Stephen Amell is a very particular kind of performer, like I mentioned earlier. And I think that when he's in scenes with Emily Beck Richards, like there's a pop to those scenes that aren't always present in other places. Right. It's similar to when he's in scenes with Grant Gustin.
01:16:52
Speaker
He's just such a stronger performer when he's in a scene with Grant Gustin. Grant really brings out the best in him. So I'm glad that they leaned into it. I think that if we're talking about Arrow, the writers often didn't know how to turn their relationship into story. And so they threw in a lot of really contrived bullshit as a way to break them up and bring them back together. And it did not service those characters well. But I put that on the writing and not necessarily on their relationship.
Critique of Storytelling Choices
01:17:19
Speaker
But I feel like this is kind of a good microcosm of that because
01:17:23
Speaker
the idea of like, oh no, Mary, like Oliver proposes to Felicity at the rehearsal dinner, and then she rejects him. And then there's tension between them for a few episodes where they're like deciding, do we actually want to get married? I don't know if I want to, even though before I did, but now I don't think I do. Okay, let's get married. It's so contrived and it's so clearly like, well, we need some emotional like story for these two to have during this miniseries. So let's have it beat us. And it doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel earned.
01:17:49
Speaker
and it makes that resolution feel even ruder as a result it also feels it feels so tacked on because it happens like right after it happened because you've got the whole thing with
01:18:02
Speaker
some of this because you know you have you have the whole thing with um martin stein's death too and his funeral there and it's like that almost feels like that should be the end of the of the movie but then they have to but then they have but then they i don't know what was happening in the writing but it's like someone said like we have to have we have to resolve the barry and iris wedding and also the oliver and felicity fight over whether would they should they would they
01:18:32
Speaker
should they not wedding thing. And we have to find a way to resolve that too. And it feels like they're almost like it undermines Stein's funeral by putting it right before that Nazi battle. And then, whereas I feel like that works so much better at the end. And then you save the wedding stuff for once they're back in their own shows.
01:18:53
Speaker
So I haven't spoken to the writers of this miniseries, so I can't speak with authority on this. But I feel like that wasn't an accident. I think that they probably felt like at the end of this giant event, we don't want to end on a downer of this really emotionally wrenching funeral and then, OK, bye. That they wanted to leave the audience on a high note. And so I think ending with the wedding that you started with makes sense. I think that it's clear that they've
01:19:22
Speaker
created this, like, illicity plot line, so that way they could have the kind of fun of like, oh, Barry and Oliver both get married at the same time, because they probably liked that idea as a concept. But I think that the execution of that idea just really doesn't work because the
01:19:39
Speaker
The drama leading up to it feels so contrived like we talked about and also like really rude just throughout like you shouldn't be talking about whether you want to get married at someone else's wedding really that's like everyone knows it's not cool so it just it also just feels kind of tasteless on those act on those characters part like they just feel very kind of narcissistic in a way that I don't think the writers intend.
01:19:59
Speaker
So I think that it was, I think that they probably came up with the idea of having them have a double wedding. And this was the way that they brought them to that point. And they maybe should have done another draft of like, figuring out a way to not have it feel so kind of rude as a result. I mean, yeah, I understand that not wanting to end on a downer note, but that
01:20:20
Speaker
Like, Martin Stein's death just feels like it should be so much more important to what happens in this show compared to the Barry and Iris stuff. And that's why, you know, that's why I said, like, you know, the last two times I watched this, when I get to that scene, I'm like, oh, that's right. I forgot he dies in this. When that should be like...
01:20:39
Speaker
You know, yeah, it's it's such a great, great actor in this series, one of the best actors on these on these shows. And it's his last performance, and it's a good one. And it's a dramatic one. And it, it leaves such an impact on that universe. And then it just, it feels so overshadowed by the, it gets overshadowed by the wedding stuff at the end instead. Right. I think that
01:21:03
Speaker
I think that the scenes would have played better if there was one more scene between the funeral and the weddings where you get a moment where people are kind of like reflecting on what they just experienced. Like maybe you cut to it's the next day you're in a new setting. People are still kind of feeling sad about what happened. And then they get this feeling of like, you know what, life is too short. We should just get married now. Right. And it's like you're in that emotion.
01:21:25
Speaker
is informed by the funeral. But it's not like I was just at a funeral minutes ago and now I'm getting married in a park. So I think you need maybe one more interstitial scene to kind of get you emotionally to the place where it doesn't feel like it's all kind of getting rushed and smushed into one giant thing. But they only had so much time. And I will say that they let a lot of scenes play out a lot longer than they probably
01:21:51
Speaker
then another version of this miniseries would have let them. And in all of those cases, letting those scenes play out really was beneficial. So I think that ultimately, that's the downside of that, is that then when you get to your conclusion, you're out of time. Yeah, yeah. Any other things you wanted to mention about this crossover?
01:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I'm like sticking up for this a lot, but I definitely did have some criticisms. So for instance, I thought that the metallo every time that showed up was just a complete disaster. Like deus ex metallo really needed to go. Um, it was a number one, like just, I mean, I'm not a CG snob. I think that like we all have to accept the fact that like this is all kind of silly and it's okay if it doesn't look photo realistic. Like that's fine. These are all cartoons at the end of the day.
01:22:39
Speaker
But that was like, distractingly bad. It just, there was no wait list. It was just completely wait list and never felt like it was in the room. And so for it to pop up so many times in these critical moments without any context, you'd be like, oh no, Mattalo, boom, green laser, done. That kind of sucked. I didn't love that so much.
01:22:55
Speaker
Um, and I also, I thought that the inclusion of the Ray was just really not well done. I liked him. I love Russell Tovey. I liked that actor a lot. I actually, and I was so hyped for this mini series that I also watched the animated, the Ray and the freedom fighters cartoon that they did for CW seed. Um, which is, which they said was like a kind of preview of like a, you know, like a prequel, which is it's not, he does, he does the voice and also in that doesn't he?
01:23:25
Speaker
He does, yeah, he does the voice. And they really set that character up as like, oh, maybe he'll be part of the universe. And then he just never comes back because I don't think that the execution of that was really great. I think it looked, I think that he did okay when he was in scenes with, you know, with Wes, um, um, but, um, with Wentworth Miller, I should say, but, um, uh, like when he's paired with the flash and they're doing, they're trying to take down another robot. It was just like, I don't know if that stuff worked so well for me.
01:23:51
Speaker
So those are some criticisms I have. Also, I'm curious if you noticed the connection between this and the last thing I was on your podcast to talk about Spider-Man Homecoming. No, I don't think so.
01:24:07
Speaker
Okay, so there is a sequence, and I think the second episode, where the evil doppelgangers face off against our Trinity, right? The Flash and Arrow and Supergirl. And in order to get away, evil Supergirl shoots lasers to that kind of construction site tower.
01:24:28
Speaker
And then they completely just crib the Staten Island ferry rescue from Spider-Man Homecoming, where instead of Spider-Man, it's Oliver is just kind of like jumping around with his bow and arrow, like looping around in like very, very not great CG. Try to like tie the beams together just like Spider-Man does. And then like Supergirl comes just like Iron Man does and kind of like holds the beams together so it doesn't fall and Flash rescues all of the people who are in need.
01:24:57
Speaker
I was like, this is literally just Spider-Man Homecoming again. This is really funny. I do not even pick up on that, but you're right. Yeah, it's a nice little tie in.
01:25:08
Speaker
And I also found, not to be too much of a Marvel, like Homer, but I found that the final action sequence at the end just felt so indebted to Civil War, Captain America Civil War, and the idea of like, oh, it's heroes facing off against heroes in a concrete space with just a kind of crazy madcap, kind of different pairings and stuff. And I thought that they did their best to make that fun and try to capture that magic again. But it did give me renewed appreciation for what
01:25:38
Speaker
Civil War was able to do obviously with the totally different budget and right. Yeah, you know production constraints So it's like a little bit unfair, but they're really drawing the parallel. So it's hard not to comment on it Yeah, I give I give those things a wide berth because they just they don't have the but the same budget and I think that's That was one of the criticisms I remember a lot of people had about crisis on infinite earths But but I admire it for willing to
01:26:00
Speaker
to take a big swing like that and do Crysis on Infinite Earths. I never thought I would see a live action version of it, let alone on a TV budget. In fact, when they did Crysis on Earth X, I thought, this is the closest we'll ever get to Crysis on Infinite Earths. And then when they did that stinger at the end, next year, Crysis on Infinite Earths, I'm like, holy, or two years, Crysis on Infinite, I'm like, holy shit, they're doing it. Yeah. That was exciting in that moment. That was really exciting. Yeah.
01:26:26
Speaker
Um, but so I guess my last question, Oh, I had one other nice thing to say about this, which is I really liked when in the middle of the whole miniseries, when it's just Felicity and Iris kind of like skulking about star labs together, like taking on bad guys. I thought they had like a really fun dynamic. They kind of balanced the sort of expositionary dialogue that they have to get through. Cause it's a CW show, um, with the kind of fun kind of action beats and kind of like, Oh, you wouldn't expect these two to be in this situation. And they like hold their own and it's, it's really fun. I thought they had a really nice dynamic.
01:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, that goes back to what you're saying about finding some interesting pairings with these different shows.
Character Pairings & Potential Twists
01:27:05
Speaker
That was also taken back to Marvel briefly too. That was one of the great things about Infinity War, right? Because when they found these different pairings, like you have Iron Man and Doctor Strange, you have
01:27:15
Speaker
uh, you know, Star Lord and Iron Man, then you have, uh, you have all these different characters that you're matching them up and seeing how they interact. Rocket and, and, uh, and Winter Soldier in that one brief moment too. Uh, Shuri and, and Rocket and, Rocket and Thor. Rocket and Thor, yeah. Which you would have thought that, you know, Star Lord and Thor, or then you get, um, you know, even, even Shuri and Banner in that one brief scene too. So you find all these really interesting pairings and, you know, just,
01:27:41
Speaker
Give them a moment and let them breathe and that was that was fun when they were able to find those really cool pairings here like with with Alex and Sarah and or with with Iris and and Felicity and that one seemed to or even just you know the whole idea of The the Nazi Ali and Kara them being in a relationship. That was another interesting pairing because you know in invasion Ali was very mistrustful of her. So we're seeing
01:28:07
Speaker
a flip side of that and we're seeing a twist on that, but it's like two degrees twisted. Yes, I agree. I agree. I think that it's fun. And I think something that I like about this better than Crisis on Infinite Earths is that all of those examples that you gave felt fun, but they also felt like they were moving the plot forward. They felt like they were naturally occurring interactions between these characters.
01:28:33
Speaker
that weren't drawing too much attention to themselves. They were just nice little things to like kind of accentuate scenes. Whereas in Crisis on Infinite Earths, I think sometimes it just felt a lot more fanservicey of like, oh man, you're never going to believe the people that we got together in this scene. This is like, and it kind of made everything kind of just stop. So that way we could do the fanservice and then move on to the next thing. And I think that this much better does a much better job executing on that scene.
01:28:57
Speaker
That's a fair point. Yeah, I think, again, I have to watch Crisis on Infinite Earths again to see where I would rank it, but I think you're right. I think the character beats, based on my memory from Crisis on Infinite Earths, I think the character beats in these pairings felt a lot more organic in that way.
01:29:15
Speaker
Except the one exception I think I'd make is the Black Lightning and Flash meetup. I thought that was really well done. Yes, which was, yeah, and that was the highlight of the show. And it's like a shame that we only got to see them one more time after that together because they had a really great connection on screen.
01:29:32
Speaker
Now I have a question to end things for you, which is, you know, we didn't talk that much about the, you know, evil doppelgangers of it all. I for one loved getting to see Melissa Benoist play evil Kara, I thought she had like a great time and it was really fun.
01:29:49
Speaker
to see her. Are you at all disappointed that we didn't get to see Evil Barry? Now, I know that they specifically said they chose not to do Evil Barry because Savitar was this was the villain in the previous season of The Flash, which spoiler alert turned out to be Evil Barry. So like we just did Evil Barry. Well, we can't do it again. But are you are you disappointed that we didn't get to see like a straight up pairing of the of the Trinity against each other?
01:30:11
Speaker
Not really, because I agree. I think they made a good choice with that, because it would have felt like, oh, we're doing Evil Barry again. And I thought it was nice to just focus on, it really helped to solidify that relationship between Dark Arrow and Overgirl by just having them as the core two villains. And then you complete that evil trinity by bringing in Thawne, where he's someone outside of that. So I thought that was, it made sense for me the way they did that.
01:30:39
Speaker
I mean, another way to do it would have been to bring that Savitar, but I don't think that would have worked as well as Thawne. And so I think the way they did it, I thought it worked well. So yeah, I was fine with that. I thought that that was handled well. And speaking of what you said about Melissa Benoist doing her
01:30:58
Speaker
Because one of the things I especially loved about her in Supergirl is just how infectiously enthusiastic she is throughout that show. And even in its weakest moments, that's one of the things that kept bringing me back to it. So seeing her and playing this same character, but in such a dark, twisted version, and doing such a good job with it, it really gave me a new appreciation for her acting ability.
01:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, they actually liked seeing her in this mode so much that they decided to do the Red Sun Superman storyline from the comics in season four, where you get some crazy thing happens at the end of this current season of Supergirl, where she actually splits off into two versions of herself by accident, and she doesn't realize. And one of them lands in Russia and gets brainwashed, or not Russia.
01:31:49
Speaker
slightly not Russian country based. Yeah. And just so that way they could have that more of that dynamic on their own show of like not like Evil Kara versus not Evil Kara. And then they complicate it. So it's not just the same thing again. Right. Yeah. Are there are there any other characters that you wish you did get to see an evil doppelganger of? Like we got we got Lance, we got a Tommy and we got the main villains. We didn't get really much of anything else. Are you disappointed that we didn't get any other doppelgangers?
01:32:20
Speaker
Just because it would be very much playing against type, I think it would have been interesting to see like a dark version of of Ray Palmer. Because, you know, we especially like, you know, seeing him in like a Dr. Mengele type role or something like that would have been interesting to see how he would have played that. I think he would have had a lot of fun with that. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good call. That's for me offhand. Yeah, go ahead.
01:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, I like that they wrote they like they had Sarah not be there for a real reason where like she was, you know, because of her queer identity, you know, the fatherland as it was, you know, disposed of her and that's why she's not there. But I think evil Sarah has a lot of potential as it could have been fun. And I also think like, you know, we got evil
01:33:06
Speaker
Evil Cisco already on the Flash, so I know why we didn't get that. But Evil Joe could have been really interesting as well. I mean, I guess it could have been similar to the Quinton Lance beats, you know? But I still would like to see. Yeah, Joe was... Evil Nazi. I guess he can't be a Nazi, though.
01:33:25
Speaker
Even the situation. You never know because they've got some people who are in the current movement. They got some Nazi people who are definitely of those persuasions. Sure. I guess that's true. I think it was when they released Himmler's Diaries a few years ago, he wrote in it that even the most ardent Nazi has his favorite Jew. I guess you could see a situation where they would have someone like that in
01:33:51
Speaker
in those situations. I think that's probably too dark for even probably what they're going for. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, that's not good. I mean, like, you know, evil Nate could have been cool, though, even because he's such like, you know, he's if you don't watch legends, like he's like this historian who really cares a lot about
01:34:08
Speaker
American history and like you could so easily subvert that into like a Nazi version where it could have been fun Oh, yeah, you certainly get much to do in this him being like, you know, a modern-day take on Goebbels or something like that I could definitely see yeah, that's a good point Yeah, that would have been an interesting one. Um
01:34:25
Speaker
I can't think of any others I would have felt like it would have been nice to see in this. I will say I didn't like that they had, even though I get why they are doing it, the whole idea of how the Earth X, Mick, died trying to save a precinct full of cops. In this world, it feels like the cops would be on the side of the Nazis, so. Yeah, that felt like a thing that, yeah, they didn't really think that through, I don't think. They just did it for the joke. They did it for the joke, and I like the joke, and the first time I watch it, when I watch it this time, I'm like,
01:34:54
Speaker
Wait a minute. He kept trying to save a precinct full of cops. Wouldn't those cops be serving the Nazi regime? I would have much preferred him barbecuing the cops then. But that was just that, I get why they did it that way. It was just for the joke. Overall, yeah, I think, again, I'm not sure if I'm willing to go as far as to say that this would be the best airovers crossover, but it's definitely,
Final Thoughts & Podcast Sign-Off
01:35:23
Speaker
If not, and again, I have to rewatch crisis again, but if not above crisis, it's definitely on par with crisis in my mind.
01:35:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think that crisis probably has the highest highs, like the most fun moments out of all the crossovers, but I think it's also so inconsistent in quality. Having watched it, I've watched it three times through, don't ask why. So I feel like I've seen it enough to say, and it's like, it's just, it just has, like I said, it has those moments of where it just feels like overt fanservice in a way that's distracting. There's also like the big climax in the second to last episode,
01:36:01
Speaker
when they're all in the void and they're in that quarry, basically. And they're all kind of like doing, it's so incoherent, like what is even happening on a logistical level where you're just like, whatever they were going for, they just didn't pull that off. So there's moments like that. And in this, there's never a moment like that. It works so well from start to finish in a way that is really impressive.
01:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, it holds together really well. And like we said before, the character beats are really good, really well done in this. At least from a character standpoint at this, I think this would definitely be the high point of the Arrowverse. I'm glad I won you over to my side. At least on one aspect of it, I think. And again, have to rewatch Crisis again to double check on that. Yeah, I think that's all we have to say about Crisis on Earth-X. So Alex, why don't you tell people where they can find your stuff?
01:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, so the best way to find me is to go on to www.thepopbreak.com, click on the podcast tab. I'm the director of podcasting over there. So you could definitely check out all of the shows that I host, then that I supervise. Two of them are comic book related. I'm the host of Bill versus the MCU, my co-host Bill Bodkin. We went through all of the MCU last year, one episode a month of three or four movies or TV shows at a time.
01:37:19
Speaker
Now we just spent the spring and winter months going through the Defenders saga. Those are the Marvel Netflix shows. And in the summer, we're going to be tackling some episodes of Agents of Shields, which is going to be a lot of fun as well. And in the meantime, we'll also have a couple of episodes kind of checking in on the current MCU releases, although
01:37:40
Speaker
Those episodes are becoming less and less crowded as the year goes on and those schedules keep changing. I also have the part-time co-host for Batman by the Numbers with Dan Cohen. He's the main host of that show. That's where we go through reviews, rankings, and news on all things related to Batman and the DC universe as a whole. You definitely check that out. Both of those appear on the Pop Break Today podcast feed, or like I said, just go onto popbreak.com, click on the podcast tab.
01:38:08
Speaker
Okay, great. And we'll have links to all those in the show notes too, just like last time. Alex, thanks so much for coming back. This was fun to revisit this crossover.
01:38:16
Speaker
Yes, thanks so much for giving me a chance to just talk about the Arrowverse for 90 minutes. It was a blast. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the discourse on the Arrowverse has become so negative, so I'm glad I was able to have a, for the most part, positive discussion of it, because even with all its flaws, even as it kind of ends with a whimper, I still overall, I think I like more of it than I don't like. And so it's good to find someone else who I could have a positive discussion about this with.
01:38:43
Speaker
And rewatching this really reminded me about a lot of the reasons why I ever cared about this universe in the first place. It was nice. It was nice to have that opportunity. Yeah, I agreed. Agreed. Well, that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, and we are SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk to you next time.
01:39:04
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:39:25
Speaker
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01:40:08
Speaker
Thank you for listening, and as always, good night, good evening, God bless.