Batman and Smallville

I was a big fan of Smallville when it first aired. I was a fan through the second season. The third season I began to drop off a bit. I stopped watching during the middle of it.

I should have stayed with it. Borrowing DVDs from the Library I began to catch up recently. Smallville didn’t jump the shark until the fourth season, but jump it did. When a series is waning and about to jump, you do one of a few things, kill off a main character, bring in a new cast member, throw in a cliffhanger, briefly and radically alter the main character amongst others. Smallville season four opener did ALL of these things. Killed Chloe, made Clark Kryptonian, cliffhanger, and introduces Lois Lane.

I dislike the fourth season for this and other reasons. I was dreading the “very special episode of Smallville” which I was certain would come eventually. It came in season four. If you stretch things you might be able to convince yourself that Clark didn’t lose his virginity but it’s a real stretch.

As we go on the appearance of other superheroes and even the creation of costumes (for a JLA???) just grates. Those of us with any continuity mind were driven crazy. I gave up about halfway into the DVD set and caught the rest of the way up with Wikipedia.

The saddest thing is that it didn’t have to jump. If this series had a predetermined lifespan of say, four or five years, we could have had a beautiful arch and a well done storyline. Moreover, the cast would have been ready for movies, just about the time Superman Returns went into production (perhaps a year later). Don’t get me wrong, I like Brandon Routh, but Tom Welling is just SO much more perfect for the role (not to mention Michael Rosembaum’s Luthor; the BEST Lex Luthor to EVER grace any screen – sorry Mr. Hackman), and it would have been the payoff for the series.

There is a perfect replacement waiting in the wings if someone would just revive it.

The original pitch was not for a young Superman series, but a young BATMAN series. It was nixed because Warner Brothers didn’t want any competition for their new batman Begins movie, also an origin story. I’m not sure that it would have been competition but nevertheless, that factor doesn’t exist any more. Imagine a series about Bruce Wayne at boarding school. The excitement of batman with some of the charm of Harry Potter. Take half of the season or even a third of it and show summer break, go to exotic locations in the Orient and India and others. We get an almost young Indiana Jones feel here.

How many villains have they tried to shoehorn into Smallville? It would be so much easier to fit pre-origin Batman villains in a series like this. Not all of his foes are contemporaries. We could have teachers like Victor Freiss and Jonathan Crane. Rubbing shoulders with businessman Oswald Cobblepot. Going to school with Pamela Isley and Floyd Lawton. Perhaps working with Detective (or lawyer) Harvey Dent?

Again, a set lifespan of five years or so would be good, and could make this series superior to Smallville and this is coming form a Superman fan, not a Batman fan.