The CW Revives Matt Ryan's Constantine as Animated Series

That was a terrible tv series.

i loved the movie, and it got me reading the comic books, but the tv series was just _awful_.
 
Nate Hoffelder said:
That was a terrible tv series.

i loved the movie, and it got me reading the comic books, but the tv series was just _awful_.
Click to expand...

Some of us here would beg to differ.

The movie was just Constantine in name. Keanu Reeves was NOT Constantine. Matt Ryan *is* Constantine.

The TV series was patchy, some of it was because the pesky studio execs decided to show some of the episodes out of order and made the questionable decision of changing the female lead abruptly. Otherwise, it was actually hitting its stride by the time they cut off the series. It wasn't given time to finish finding its legs.
 
Nate Hoffelder said:
I don't think i even finished the pilot.
Click to expand...

Well, that's your personal taste and fair enough; but the rest of us in the Constantine section do like the series to varying degrees.

FYI: CONSTANTINE/HELLBLAZER is the grandfather of SUPERNATURAL, SLEEPY HOLLOW etc. Without HELLBLAZER and John Constantine, there would be no Sam and Dean Winchester.
 
Nate Hoffelder said:
I don't think i even finished the pilot.
Click to expand...

Agree. I don't think I finished the pilot either. I never understood why this show got the cult following that it did. It tried to be scarier/more serious than Supernatural, but with a budget-style that was smaller and cheesier than Doctor Who.
 
Cli-Fi said:
Agree. I don't think I finished the pilot either. I never understood why this show got the cult following that it did. It tried to be scarier/more serious than Supernatural, but with a budget-style that was smaller and cheesier than Doctor Who.
Click to expand...

To a scientific mind accepting supernatural is nearly impossible. Constantine wasn't cheesy. It was intriguing and it explored speculative better than many other series. In Hard SF the speculative is often a fantasy element, while in this one, the Dark Urban Horror jumped on your face.

Since you didn't you even finish the pilot, you are dooming whole series based on the bias instead of allowing yourself to explore the narrative more than a half episode. I often don't write episode reviews on the series at their first season, because I don't want to go out and claim it's something that it isn't if I'd bothered to watch some more.

Sometimes it's obvious, but in Constantine case the series was very well made even if the Studio decided to stick their fingers in the production. I suspect extreme religious views influenced the ruling on putting this series down. But they didn't succeed as Constantine is somehow staying on the small screen year after another.

I don't know how Constantine does it, but it seems to me that there are rather large audience out there that wants to see this chain-smoking, trench-coat wearing supernatural detective succeed rather than having it FireFly's destiny.
 
ctg said:
To a scientific mind accepting supernatural is nearly impossible. Constantine wasn't cheesy. It was intriguing and it explored speculative better than many other series. In Hard SF the speculative is often a fantasy element, while in this one, the Dark Urban Horror jumped on your face.

I don't know how Constantine does it, but it seems to me that there are rather large audience out there that wants to see this chain-smoking, trench-coat wearing supernatural detective succeed rather than having it FireFly's destiny.
Click to expand...

Oh believe me, I wanted Constantine to succeed as well. It just didn't grab me at all and it seemed incredibly unlike the description/logline that I was led to believe. When reading pilot description when it was first announced, I thought it would go a completely different direction than what was shown in the pilot. For that reason it was probably one of the worst pilots I have ever seen in my life! I wasn't expecting a supernatural doctor who. I was expecting a more supernatural version of True Detective and Fringe.

Maybe it was just because I generally don't read comics, and I never understood his style, but it just never connected for me in the way it has many others. I was led to believe or rather I assumed that Constantine would be more darker and scarier than Supernatural was, instead it had the feeling of Doctor Who mixed with Warehouse 13 and I can barely tolerate Doctor Who sometimes. Fantasy can be done right, Dark humor can be done right. Constantine did not do it too well in my opinion. Not on the same level as Breaking Bad, Firefly, Supernatural, or even Game of Thrones (thrones is another show I don't watch). Hence Supernatural surviving both UPN and the Writer's Strike and it's now creeping up to 300 episodes while Constantine only survived 13.
 
I thought the Hellazer pilot was weak - it didn't seem to know what to do with itself. It's telling that it's little referenced later in later episodes.

The series did have its seriously strong moments, especially when inclusive of storylines and characters from Jamie Delano's early comics - which were handled in unique and clever ways.

However, what the short 12-episode run lacked was any real sense of a plot arc. The pieces were all there, but never really seemed to begin to come together until it was too late.

In the end, people tuned in to see a homage to the comics, rather than because there was a gripping saga that made you want to see what happened next. And IMO this was fatal.
 
I agree that Matt Ryan makes a very good Constantine. And the show had some moments which captured the original character and the grittiness of his story arcs rather well. Losing friends and so on. But some of the supporting characters were weak; I don't think Constantine needs an angel hanging round him for example. Nor did the series as a whole grab me. I would like to see more though or a reboot with Matt Ryan still in the lead, (highly unlikely, I know).
 
I've never seen any of the live series, but I'm a fan of the graphic novel. The animation preview doesn't seem to make any attempt to capture Hellblazer's feel. It looks like a high-definition 1990s anime.
 
Why won't they revive the live action series?
 
Loved the series and was gutted when it ended. Matt Ryan seems to really enjoy the character. His episodes of this season's Legends of Tomorrow have been great and just what the show needed. Very glad to hear he's joining the cast full time next year. I'm still crossing my fingers it will lead the original show coming back or at least them wrapping it up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
Stephen Palmer Where You Write *Matters* Writing Discussion 2
M The struggle to automate a book recommendation website - a matter of the available data Book Discussion 9
Robert Zwilling Is Dark Matter The Key To FTL Science & Nature 21
Biskit Scientists get closer to solving mystery of antimatter Science & Nature 10
B (Found) Venture Capitalist Creates a Simulation, Assembles a top team, Team becomes attached to a girl, She Dies, Grief Driven Guy Revives her. Book Search 5

Similar threads


Back
Top