Fox Releases Behind-The-Scenes Videos for Gotham
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- August 26, 2014
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)
There is a general consensus among comic book fans: Marvel knows how to do comic book movies, while DC knows how to do comic book television shows. While I think the jury is still out on that, since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has only one season under its belt, the comparisons to Arrow can’t be helped.
DC Entertainment has three new television series in the works for this fall, The Flash on The CW, Constantine on NBC (which could tie into the DC Cinematic Universe via Guillermo Del Toro’s Justice League Dark), and Gotham on Fox. While the former is a spinoff of Arrow and will definitely focus on superheroes and supervillains, the latter is an origin story.
Now Fox has released a four part behind the scenes video series on YouTube called Gotham: The Legend Reborn that delves more into what the series will be like. Check them out below or at the following links (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4).
What Fox is looking to do is actually quite brilliant… Procedural shows are huge business for most broadcasters, that’s why there’s so many of them. By bringing that structure to a popular comic book property, it should give them a nice cross demographic appeal. It’s similar to what Marvel Studios is now doing with its films — Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a political thriller, while Ant-Man will be a heist film.
So where does this fit in the ever expanding DC Cinematic Universe? Well, nowhere. Marvel Studios has been integrating all of its properties into one cohesive story, from film to television,?while DC… not so much. Both Arrow and The Flash will exist in the same universe, Gotham will sit separately from them. Both the Gotham and the Arrow/The Flash universes will be separate from the film universe that started with Man of Steel, and will expand with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.
That’s not even including Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s?The Sandman film. or Guillermo del Toro working on Justice League Dark. While Marvel is integrating everything into one full universe, DC seems to be just fine fragmenting theirs.
And that’s okay.
I love long-form storytelling. Huge series that span multiple books or television seasons, or even cross-platform multimedia projects. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.?Gotham looks great on its own and doesn’t need to tie into the upcoming Dawn of Justice film. While the consequences of the film will have no affect on the television series and vice versa, it also allows both film and TV series to explore their universes without impunity. The only issue could be if the Justice League film adds in a new Flash and Arrow, as fans have grown to love the TV Arrow, and likely the new TV Flash.
I really don’t want every comic book film project to turn into its own franchised universe. I want to see something new when I watch a DC film or television series that follows its own formula, rather than trying to do what Marvel is doing, or what Sony and Marvel and Fox and Marvel are doing. Heck, even Star Wars and the Universal Mons
