Constantine Is Faithful To The Comics, But To A Fault

zumbledum

New member
Nov 13, 2011
673
0
0
Fanghawk said:
Constantine Is Faithful To The Comics, But To A Fault

The premiere of Constantine has all the trappings of a faithful adaptation... but it still doesn't impress.

Read Full Article
couldnt disagree much more , which is fine its all subjective after all. but speaking as someone that never read the comics isnt into DC at all and has no idea about any of the mythos of the character i found the first episode to be interesting and a good watch. didnt he leave the asylum because the dead guy (who was his friend?) left him a message the girl was in trouble? and the helmet scene worked well enough without knowing what it is.
 

Zen Bard

Eats, Shoots and Leaves
Sep 16, 2012
704
0
0
I've read the comics and I liked the show, even though it was very much a "network television adaptation".

As expected, certain aspects were sanitized and simplified for the "mainstream" audience. And I couldn't help wonder what a basic cable network like FX or AMC could have done with it.

But, considering where it is, I thought it was well done.

Looks like the show (or this season anyway) will be following the early "Supernatural" template, with Constantine and Co traveling across the U.S. to battle demons and other occult creatures.

Could be interesting. I'll certainly watch through the season.
 

happyninja42

Elite Member
Legacy
May 13, 2010
8,577
2,981
118
K9 said:
I thought the pilot had its positives and negatives. A big negative to me was the sanitized version of Constantine himself; this may prove to be a fatal flaw right from the start.
What do you mean by sanitized specifically? I didn't read much of the comics, but the only signature trait of Constantine that I didn't see expressed in the show was his smoking habit. Everything else seemed very much Constantine from what I've seen of the Books of Magic, and some of the Hellblazer series.

K9 said:
I did watch the Flash pilot around the same time when it leaked online over the summer and found this one to be more compelling. That may speak more to the strength of that Flash pilot than to the Constantine one. I'm someone who liked the Constantine movie well enough and will give this show its fair shot.
Yeah, I enjoyed the Constantine movie as well. I was somewhat annoyed with bits of the pilot, mostly the use of cliched tropes, though a few of the tropes they inverted on me in a pleasant way. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a 6, maybe 7/10, with some hope that it's got room for improvement.


Though I will probably be way more forgiving of this pilot, as in my experience, no pilot is ever terribly good. Just about every pilot I've ever seen is a mad scrabble to establish what's going on and why in 40 minutes, which usually means a lot is left unclear for now. But that's ok to me, since the premise is that the answers will be given out over a series.


A friend of mine did say he felt it was basically just an episode of Supernatural to him. Seeing as I've never watched Supernatural I can't comment on that, but another friend made mention that since Hellblazer was out long before Supernatural, it was probably more accurate to say that Supernatural is like Constantine. *shrugs*

Decent pilot, several flaws, but I enjoyed the cast overall, and hope they do something with it in the future.
 

Winnosh

New member
Sep 23, 2010
492
0
0
I like that they are connecting it to the Larger DC Universe. There's a lot they can do with this.
 

Ariseishirou

New member
Aug 24, 2010
443
0
0
Call me shallow, but I lost interest as soon as I heard they were going to make him a non-smoker, straight, and just cast a brown-haired actor and dye it blond (badly). (Okay okay the last one is a personal bent because I am blond and I'm tired of the seemingly never-ending Generic Brown-Haired 30-Something Male Protagonist.) I'm not interested in network sanitized!Constantine. Sounds like I didn't miss much.
 

Travis Fischer

New member
Feb 1, 2012
126
0
0
Fanghawk said:
Given Aberdeen's departure, I suspect this episode was heavily edited to lay seeds for a new direction, and that led to these structural problems.
Having seen the original pilot and the new one, I can tell you that's not the case. The only change was the ending.

In the original, Liv comes across that crime scene at the end and it convinces her to ask John to go on a cross country helping people tour. Which was John's plan all along, he just wanted her to think it was her idea.


Sadly, it was the most spot-on bit of Constantine's "magnificent bastard" character in the episode and it got axed with Liv.
 

RavingSturm

New member
May 21, 2014
172
0
0
Aspects of Hellblazer that are probably NOT going into the show: Demonic man raping dogs, gory human violence,violent animal deaths, a subplot of an angel having a baby with a demon(which became the basis for Preacher),the "Dangerous Habits" arc(it revolves around the repercussions of smoking 30 sticks a day),killing his brother in utero, lots of cursing, the portrayal of JC as a selfish and unlikable character(I think they're going more for the anti-hero thing).
If the show is going for PG, and wont up the intensity, I feel it wont survive past 2nd season. There's nothing that's really standout about it. Some people might even think its a ripoff of the Dresden Files imho.
 

Charles Phipps

New member
Oct 12, 2013
68
0
0
I was more or less positive toward the show and wrote my review on the Bookie Monster website.

http://bookie-monster.com/2014/10/constantine-1-01-non-est-asylum.html

Still, the plot wasn't very good.
 

happyninja42

Elite Member
Legacy
May 13, 2010
8,577
2,981
118
RavingSturm said:
Aspects of Hellblazer that are probably NOT going into the show: Demonic man raping dogs, gory human violence,violent animal deaths,
Yeah probably not, it's a tv show after all.

RavingSturm said:
a subplot of an angel having a baby with a demon(which became the basis for Preacher),the "Dangerous Habits" arc(it revolves around the repercussions of smoking 30 sticks a day),killing his brother in utero,
These I could actually see happening. The "child of both sides" thing could be easily done in my opinion. The whole "love crossing boundaries" cliche is very popular, though I don't know how it played out in the comics, if it was love, or some kind of rape thing.

The cancer thing from smoking could still easily happen, you can get cancer all kinds of ways that have nothing to do with smoking. Maybe he gets liver cancer from his hard core drinking, or any number of other terminal diseases that put the fear of hell into him. Really all you need for this plot is a terminal illness that he can't recover from.

As for the killing brother in utero. Seriously? Is somebody trying to blame that on him in the comics? That seems kind of pushing the boundaries of guilt and personal accountability to me, to blame a child still in utero for murder. Hell by most Christian standards, he's basically incapable of being responsible at that age, he's not even done cooking yet.

RavingSturm said:
lots of cursing, the portrayal of JC as a selfish and unlikable character(I think they're going more for the anti-hero thing).
The cursing they can get away with by letting him use British curses. I mean in the pilot he said "bollocks", which as I understand it, would have to be censored on British tv. So yeah, in an odd sort of way, they can be really filthy with the language, and get away with it by using another countries profanities. xD

As for him being selfish and unlikeable, he did threaten the nerd hacker guy to help him, by pinning the previous case on him with the cops. That's kind of a dick move. If they continue with that, he would develop a pretty unlikeable nature. Though I agree it's probably still going to push for you to like him, since he is the tv shows protagonist. Shows with a main character the audience doesnt' like, usually don't last long.
 

maninahat

New member
Nov 8, 2007
4,397
0
0
Dull as ditch water. In the very first Hellblazer comic I read, we see a guy force feed himself to death; it's horrific and mysterious and all very ironic (in regards to what the victim was like). The devils had a lot of imagination and a lot of fun when it comes to being devilish. This pilot decided to go with a demon who only kills people off screen, and only by beating people up. Also, the demon is only visible by possessing people, so it looks like a normal person with contact lenses. That's boring!

Also, Constantine needed to down play things a bit. I imagine him being quietly snarky, melancholic and reticent. Not loud and hammy. The one character detail that was meant to carry the pilot was that he got an innocent girl sent to hell. This sounds like something that should have been left in the background to be eventually teased out by the supporting characters, rather than something they shove in your face within the first five minutes or so. We don't know who the girl is and we have been given no opportunity to previously sympathise with either her or Constantine. It's less a character building detail for Constantine, and more of a perfunctory task for him to complete by the series end. Perhaps Constantine's most interesting characteristic from the comics is that he is willing (if somewhat reluctantly) to throw his friends and lovers under the bus if it means serving a higher purpose. That should have been his character defining moment in the pilot, and it never comes up.
 

maninahat

New member
Nov 8, 2007
4,397
0
0
Happyninja42 said:
The cursing they can get away with by letting him use British curses. I mean in the pilot he said "bollocks", which as I understand it, would have to be censored on British tv.
Bollocks wouldn't unless it was a children's program, but otherwise I generally agree you could get away with it by sticking to British terms. In one episode of the The Simpsons, they are throwing the word "Wanker" quite a bit; a word which definitely would get censored in anything pre-"watershed" (along with tosser). Prat is an odd one, in that I have seen it in children's shows despite it being a borderline swearword. Berk appears a lot too, despite it being a pretty harsh euphemism.
 

RavingSturm

New member
May 21, 2014
172
0
0
They could have guest stars that get killed or sacrificed to a demon as part of the show's gimmick. I would really like to see body horror or some of the demons from the comic like Nergal, The First,2nd, 3rd and Norfulthing.