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James

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Posts posted by James

  1. Good find! Seems like a nice bloke - a lot more charismatic than comic Chas, but that's fine by me. Wish they'd given him a bit more to do in the pilot, but hey ho. It looks like he's been upgraded to a proper sidekick for the second episode, so I look forward to seeing him in that.

     

    He does seem a bit squirrelly and uncomfortable under questioning, like a guy who's signed non-disclosure agreements out the wazoo and basically can't talk about anything just yet. He also does that thing that everyone does, where they make some vague comments about 'having read the comics X years ago, and obviously I've read and enjoyed a lot more of them since I got the job...' - I recall Brian Azzarello and Denise Mina making similar remarks before their runs began. But that's fair enough, playing the PR game is part of the job, and you can't just shut down and interviewer by saying 'Nah, love, never read 'em - are they good?'

     

    There's a little talk that Papa Midnite will turn up in the series, as will Jim Corrigan of The Spectre fame. I know this stuff was mentioned elsewhere, but it's nice to have it confirmed.

     

    Had no idea he was the child abusing bloke (Reggie Ladoux) in True Detective - he's certainly got a presence when he needs it. It'd be nice if they did a Chas possession episode, or just had him unleash Chas's violent side, to see him segue from his natural, affable persona to a more malevolent one. Though we've got an 'evil' Constantine in the pilot now, so that might be overkill.

     

    TL;DR - nice bloke, good actor, glad he got the job.

  2. The problem is that most of the people who are - understandably - a bit pissed off at what appears, from the outside, to be yet another instance of bisexuality being sidelined or ignored aren't comic readers.

     

    Aye, that's the thing - it's not really about Hellblazer or Constantine at all, but about a group of people who (rightfully) feel marginalised by mainstream TV shows seeing an opportunity to be represented on TV being taken away from them. It's not like they've had much opportunity to complain until now - you can't really say, 'Oh, they should have made this straight/gay character bisexual' because that obviously looks weird and unreasonable. So when there's an opportunity to express that frustration legitimately, they've jumped on it. Which is fair enough, it's just a shame that Constantine's bisexual history is so flimsy.

     

    My answer to that, of course, is to amp up his bisexuality in the show and make it a consistent and visible part of his character (though not overwhelming or edging out any of his much more prominent characteristics - intelligence, cunning, pride, anti-authoritarianism, compassion, cruelty, loyalty, manipulativeness, self-sacrifice etc...). Though I can imagine there being some reticence to that on the producers' side, as the imagined target audience for the show (18-25 males with an interest in sci-fi and fantasy) isn't traditionally regarded as being 100% LGBT-friendly...

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  3. "Disgusts" seems strong. Can you elaborate on that?

     

    Myself, I can't stand original flavour The Spectre. Partly because I dislike the idea of god's wrath having a physical tangible form, but mostly because he rarely works outside of a one-page gimmick strip. As a protagonist, he's both boringly omnipotent and by definition reactive (cf. that dreadful David Lapham miniseries where The Spectre watches some dude abuse and murder a child because he can't act until after the deed is done) and as an antagonist he's tediously unstoppable. And in a shared universe he makes no sense. He'll take down some kid that shot a dude in revenge but he's not laying a finger on The Joker or Lex Luthor? C'mon.

     

    Okay, so admittedly people could do a few interesting things with him...

     

    * Look at how it must feel to be an omnipotent force of vengeance bound by rules that stop him from being a useful force for good; have him question the logic of a god that would create those rules.

    * Have him target someone that John needs alive - at least for a while - in order to get information; can John stop the Spectre, or even just delay him? Or is he just telling the schmuck that while the countdown to his doom continues?

    * Have a bunch of people trapped in a particular location, one of whom is targeted by The Spectre. But whom? And why? And what will they do to try to escape? Maybe the actions they take to escape his wrath end up making them a target. A chicken-and-egg situation. Perhaps in this situation The Spectre isn't a white dude in a cape, but some kind of non-corporeal entity.

     

    ...but mostly they don't.

     

    (And I'm still bitter they killed Crispus Allen just to bring the 'classic' Spectre back.)

  4. There are loads of DCU characters that would work fine in Constantine and Hellblazer alike. In fact, a bunch of them have been in Hellblazer in one form or another: Swamp Thing, Zatanna, The Phantom Stranger, Tim Hunter, Lucifer, The Sandman*... And the likes of The Spectre (though I hate him), Madame Xanadu, Dr Fate, Mr E, Deadman, Jason Blood and Doctor Occult could all work, though they might require a bit of a costume change to make them look less goofy.

     

    It's not about principle, it's about execution. The talk of making these characters into supporting or recurring cast members is good news too - suggests they know the dangers of having a whole episode revolve around some guy who then disappears from the series altogether.

     

     

     

     

     

    * I doubt the last two will turn up, for filmic reasons, but it'd be neat to have a silhouette of a shaggy-haired bloke in a cloak at the back of a dream sequence.

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  5. Sexyjohn was mostly in the Delano years; it kind of went away when Ennis started writing, and didn't really return until Diggle openly had John sharpen himself back up. The TV version seems to be based on Ennis' grungey makeover, only with better hygiene. Or is that the fabled Jenkins version? Still haven't read him. :]

     

    I suppose Azzarello played a bit with the idea of Sexyjohn, but Azz's concept of male sexiness is basically 'a permanent nightmare rictus' and not much else

     

    I don't think Ennis's Constantine was supposed to be grungey (well, outside of the stories where he's a homeless alcoholic), just kind of dressed down, with open collars and no suit jacket. That's mostly how Dillon draws him, I think. Jenkins's run is where John's clothes (and he himself) start to look more rumpled and worn in, and, as you say, that persists until Diggle's turn.

  6. Gwilym, you are by far the best poster on here that isn't me.

     

    (I'll also discount all of the people in here that I've actually met in real life, because they know what I look like.)

     

    I like the idea of an episode that's just three or four short, really well-written horror stories being told by people who met John. Maybe at his 'funeral', like in that one Ennis issue. Or, alternatively, as you suggested, John 'telling tales' (maybe about other characters in the show, lest it seem too throwaway) - that would be a handy 'Matt Ryan light' episode, if he's getting a bit overworked.

  7. I still hope the writers go their own way a bit rather than redoing storylines, but Critical Mass is too great a concept and tale to put down (though it might require a bit of preamble - First of the Fallen, Nergal's blood, Astra not being booted out of Hell at the end of the first season) and I'd dearly love the Tate Club to be relocated somewhere, though I don't know quite where. Chicago?

     

    Mostly I just want them to do some socially aware horror, along the lines of Delano's run, Damnation's Flame, etc. Would be a good USP for the show, if the writers can come up with some suitably strong concepts.

  8. And probably only half of them were overtly bigoted.

     

    I am irritated by the overstating of the bisexual aspect of the character in the petitions and articles and so on (especially those that outright lie about the frequency of this aspect appearing in the comic) but the more I think about it, the more I sympathise with their objection, and feel that, yeah, it is something that should be included in the show somewhere, even if it's only as tangential as it is in the comics. And, in fact, that the show might benefit from making it a bigger bit of the lore and working an ex-boyfriend in there, maybe. Fuck it, why not? It's the 21st century.

  9. True, but even when he was being a bleeding-heart humanist, his methods were... dubious at best. That's what I loved so much about him.

     

    Well in the pilot he SPOILER: Lets an innocent die and manipulates her into seeing the body because he needs to motivate Liv to play along, even though she would be in too much danger otherwise. Oh, and he tricks the villain into making a fatal mistake. That's pretty spot-on, I'd say. Also, the way he leans on Ritchie is pretty nasty, considering the guy is supposed to be his friend, and is mentally unwell.

     

    I'd also disagree with the claim that he's supposed to be a 100% 'asshole' - there are plenty of times in the comic where he acts with compassion and kindness to someone, just because he feels like it.

     

    Regarding the reshoot, the change to the end is as described then yes, that's lame and a really dumb way to end an already kind of wonky pilot. I guess major reshoots were out of the question, but you'd think there would've been something a bit more elegant. Killing her would at least give the impression of a 'dangerous', unpredictable show. Having her wander off by herself is just weird, dramatically speaking.

     

    I vaguely agree with most of the criticisms in that review, but I think he's overstating how serious they are - or maybe I was just delighted enough by the portrayal of John that it didn't matter. Also, lines like this--

     

    Despite being in England in the previous scene, Constantine comes out of nowhere to offer his services

     

    --make him sound like someone who's just looking for stuff to complain about. Putting aside this being exactly what John does in the comics all the time, the idea that a character catching a plane offscreen is too much for the reviewer to process is just bizarre.

  10. That would be awesome. I'd say save it for the second season, to flip the established format on its head, but I guess holding back when you don't even have a full season order probably isn't the way to go.

     

    Actually, I'm hoping that they'll mostly write new stories for the series, though if some of the old faves get a 're-imagining' then I won't complain. Which would be a first for me, obv.

  11. Bit sick of all these post-Inception BWAAAAAAMS on trailers, but the individual scenes look like a lot of fun. Most of that's from the pilot, save for stabby kid, bloody arms and the bit with the crowbar. Uh, and maybe that panning shot over all the beds or whatever they were.

     

    Anyway, I'm well up for this. Hoping it won't all be ghosts and spirits, but a possessed kid's not a bad place to start, as far as monsters of the week go. And I like the more scary, less goofy tone of the trailer.

     

    It's weirdly edited together, though. Divvying up the possessed kid plot and scattering it between the stuff from the pilot makes it look a bit unfocused. I'm guessing that it's supposed to juxtapose the Astra storyline with the other kid in peril, but I'm not sure it comes off.

  12. That's a much better analysis than I could possibly give, Gwilym. I do rather like it, but it's a bit all over the place isn't it? Fuzzy heavy metal chords, twangly gothic harpsichord, soaring operatic strings and that weird impromptu dubstep sting that doesn't quite fit in with everything around it. It's like he's not entirely sure what the tone of the series is supposed to be, so he's checking off all the possibilities in the hope that a couple will strike home.

     

    Still, like I said, I do like it. But yeah, it feels like two or three unfinished pieces strung together.

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