(no subject)

Date: 2012-10-12 06:49 pm (UTC)
Didn't JW do this with the series? Dark Willow was supposed to be Dark Phoenix, and Xander was Scott who-ever; I wondered why rip off another storyline like that. The line between "homage" and "rip-off" can be very thin sometimes but it can be done. The show itself managed it, more than once.

Well... sort of. A lot of the comics jokes/homages in the series were what I (as a longtime comics fan) might point to as an example of comics-fan poseurs; they usually only half-understood the topic they were trying to homage. E.g., the discussion about whether Spider-Man takes money for saving people's lives. Well, he doesn't, but he DOES make money from taking pictures of himself as Spider-Man, so he does indirectly get income from his powers. So he's actually the last superhero I would've chosen to illustrate the whole protect-the-townspeople-for-free principle; I get the impression that the real reason he was used an example was so that they could use the "action is his reward" quote, from the animated TV series' theme song. So in an effort to be funny, they skipped over the real details.

Ditto with the "Dark Phoenix" homage. In the X-Men story, Dark Phoenix's powers were raging out of control, and she committed suicide rather than let her lose her humanity and destroy everything she loved. (BTW, the Phoenix story itself always struck me as an homage to a classic Star Trek episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before.") You could argue that some of these themes are present in Willow's story, but IMHO Season 7 never really grappled with or resolved her issues with power - she just suddenly became able to control magic just fine, which kind of misses the whole point that humans aren't cut out be gods because we have too many weaknesses and passions. (And never mind how the drug metaphor fit into all this.)

when Andrew was given more and more importance in S7 (it seemed very important that he be given a specific redemption arc), and the references continue to pile up, I started to resent it as a viewer, as if the show was being taken away from me.

Exactly. And as the kind of geek they were presumably trying to simulate with Andrew, I actually felt more mocked than courted. And the comics only magnified this effect. Sigh...
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