Hey Youtubers, it's Charlie.
So tonight is the first night of Comic Con, they're screening the Supergirl pilot
so I thought it was time to do my non-spoilery review. Most of you probably won't be able to
see it 'till the Fall so I'll do another review with Easter eggs and spoilers whenever that airs.
For those that are wondering - they actually moved up the premiere date, so officially the series is
gonna start at the end of October.
It's a Monday night show at 8pm, so it's on at like the same Flash and Arrow are during the night.
So it'll be like: Monday is Supergirl, Tuesday is The Flash,
and then Wednesday is Arrow. You could also consider the other DC shows kinda part of that universe.
Like, you know - Gotham also airs on Fox.
Gotham's in there too, that's still a Monday night show
but I try to treat the Berlanti shows as like their own seperate Arrow-verse.
So just rewind in time just a little bit. If you guys remember, last year this exact same thing
happened with The Flash.
They aired it a little bit early, you know a bunch of people got a chance to see it really early in the year.
That can be bad sometimes, especially when there's a lot of marketing behind something.
Just because you don't have any context for what you're seeing.
Like you don't understand what their intent is - you just have to figure it out yourself.
So a lot of times you can misinterpret certain things, which I feel like is happening with this Supergirl pilot.
The fact that it's made by the same people that make The Flash should give you an idea for their intent.
They're really trying to go with the same type of tone for that show.
Even Arrow is swinging just a little bit lighter. I think they just had so much success with
The Flash, with the way they wrote it - the way they concieved that, that they wanted to replicate
that as much as possible with another character.
Some of you might point out that Supergirl is one of the angriest characters in the DC universe.
But that's not really the show that they're making, this is a show about a girl finding her place in the world.
Superman does exist, I mean don't plan on seeing him a whole lot, but it's like -
you know, what do you do when the world already has a God-like figure?
It's like, it doesn't need you so what are you gonna do?
I'm a big fan of the way The Flash uses humor, so I'm hoping that we get to see a lot of that on Supergirl too.
Because, you have like a super-powered being so how could you not use those powers for comedy?
It's harder to do that when she's pissed off all the time.
So, you get an idea of how it's much harder
to build a series around an angry Supergirl than it is with just like a "normal" Supergirl.
Typically what happens with pilots, though, is everyone's still trying to figure the characters out.
Like, it took them all year on The Flash,
even as different writers approached different characters, you know they all tried to find their voices
along with the actors themselves.
Like, Grant Gustin said that every single day on set he learned something new.
So you kinda look at the first season of any show
as a crash course in whatever group of characters they're dealing with.
And for those that are asking, yes,
they will be able to do other Superman universe characters. People from those comics.
But as you've seen from the trailers, the way they're surfacing a lot of those is through the Phantom Zone.
That's where a lot of the threats are going to come from.
When everyone does have a chance to watch it I'll do a spoilery breakdown where I explain:
who these people are working for, who the villains are,
and based on the way they treated The Flash characters, how everything might go down this season.
Even though it's part of the Berlanti-verse, it's technically kind of off in a bubble on the outside of the Arrowverse.
It's like a pocket universe for now.
The problem is that even though the writers, the producers, everyone that works on the show
wants to cross over with Arrow and The Flash, the network executives at CBS have to okay it.
And they said, season 1 - probably not gonna do any crossovers.
But if you remember the way Arrow dealt with super powers a couple years ago,
rewind to Arrow season 1. Super powers don't exist.
That was the Party-line from the producers. They were like, "Super powers don't exist in this universe."
Cut to season 2, we see Barry Allen. Boom. Super powers everywhere.
Season 3, we start to see some magic via the Lazarus Pit.
Season 4, we get to time travel.
So even though they say season 1 of Supergirl - no crossovers with Arrow and The Flash..
just wait 'till season 2.
And typically what happens in a season, especially a season with like 20+ episodes
is they'll do like 3 micro-arcs.
Where they'll tell this self-contained story for like the first 8 episodes, like the first half of the season
and then the second half, they'll have like a second small story arc when they come back from break
and then finally, their big final act.
Like the whole season works as a 3-Act Play.
So, the first half of the season is probably going to be her unlocking her abilities.
There's a good reason why she's just as powerful as Superman..
but she just doesn't have the command of her abilities that he does.
I can't really explain that in great detail without getting into spoilers,
so I'll explain that the next time I do a Supergirl review.
The other thing that really grabbed me about the pilot is the Jimmy Olsen character.
They're very clearly setting him up to be a big deal.
Like, one of the few characters that doesn't have any sinister motives or some side angle that he's trying to work.
Just watching out for Kara on Superman's orders.
Just to explain the timeline a little bit, they kind of explained it in the trailer, but basically:
Jimmy Olsen is post-Superman at this point.
Like, he's kind of come up through the ranks, made a name for himself at the Daily Planet..
Superman asks him to go help Kara.
So for those wondering about where this exists in the timeline of Batman v Superman in the movies,
just consider it completely seperate. Completely different characters.
For those really hoping for Justice League though, I feel like Supergirl is one step closer to that.
She could totally take his place inside like a full-blown TV Justice League.
Legends of Tomorrow kind of is that already, but it's closer to Justice Society because, I mean,
Vandal Savage - just a much bigger Justice Society villain than he was a Justice League villain.
One of the things I really think they need to work on though is the fight scenes.
Like, it's really easy to do a fight scene with Oliver.
He's a normal human, you know, he just does a bunch of Krav Maga. A bunch of spinning. He shoots people with arrows. Pretty simple.
When we got to Barry they had to alter his fighting style just based on his powers.
Like, he's not a great fighter yet, but he's super fast.
So he uses his speed in creative ways to take down villains.
So, that's really what I want to see from Supergirl.
The temptation when you have like a super strong character
is to just have them punch through walls, just do like - a lot of smashy stuff, and I don't think that that's that interesting.
But you guys can let me know, I feel like they do have some really interesting opportunities to use her powers in creative ways when it comes to taking down villains.
Or using her powers for humor.
The operating mantra is Humor, Heart, Spectacle.
The Spectatle part is pretty easy to do when you have super powers.
The heart is really where the supporting characters come in,
so I feel like it's gonna take a few episodes for them to build that team around Kara
before we get a feel for the moral core of the show.
Her family life - not exactly like Barry's family life.
She does not have like a Joe or Iris West to anchor herself to.
They do explore her relationship with her Kryptonian family, and that's like a really important part of the pilot
but it gets kind of spoilery so I'll just table that for now.
But if you do want to talk about some of the twists with respect to her family, just please use Spoiler Tags.
So really important dates to remember:
October 26 - that Monday is the premiere of the first episode, but some of you will just be watching it again.
What's probably gonna happen is, it'll probably run up to the beginning of December.
Most shows go on break by the second week in December, if not the first week or before that.
That's usually when Arrow and The Flash go on break.
Then it'll come back around the same time Arrow and The Flash come back.
That also when Legends of Tomorrow starts.
They haven't announced when that's gonna premiere, but they're probably gonna do that during the big DC Super Panel.
Just a heads-up on that, I'm gonna be backstage with the Arrow and Flash people, so I'm like, I'm super pumped up about that.
But they said that I'm not allowed to record the screen, but they will give me some B-rolls
so hopefully I will get some footage from the panel, but it's gonna be a little weird.
I will be live-tweeting though so if you want to follow me on Twitter and Facebook, there's links for that in the Description.
The first panel that I'm gonna be uploading this week is gonna be tomorrow.
That'll either be Dr. Who or Sherlock.
So just check my Youtube homepage every once in awhile, or just check my Twitter feed.
So while you guys wait for the rest of my Comic Con videos to start posting, I'm gonna add 'em to my Master List.
You can click here to see all those videos. It's just like a special Comic Con playlist.
And you can click here to learn what's going on with The Flash and Arrow at Comic Con.
Thank you so much for watching! Everybody, let's high-five. I'll see you guys this weekend.
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