Gotham Showrunner Doesn't Think Superhero TV Works

"I don’t think superheroes work very well on TV," Heller told The Hollywood Reporter at the Edinburgh Television Festival.


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Gotham / 26 Aug 2016
Gotham Showrunner Doesn't Think Superheroes Work Well on TV
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"Probably because of the costume thing."

By Alex Osborn Gotham showrunner and executive producer Bruno Heller explained why James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is the main character in Fox's comic-inspired series, saying that superheroes don't translate all that well to television.

"I don’t think superheroes work very well on TV," Heller told The Hollywood Reporter at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

As for why he believes this to be the case, Heller said it's "probably because of the costume thing," adding that "TV is about real people and faces, and not so much about magic and the supernatural things."

What do you all think about this?

I personally feel that he sounds idiotic because while Gotham can be dumb fun it's one of the weaker comic book shows out there. Big part of it's problem is it seems to be ashamed of it being a comic book show. Not all the time but in concept it has many of the same problems as Smallville. Advertising it as a show about Super/Batman but never letting those characters show up or do anything.

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I mean he's demonstrably wrong.

anyway guess Gotham ain't getting saved when the Anti-Moniter shows up

Sorry about the IGN tag i copy pasted some of the quotes from there.

But anyway I feel guys like this are apart of the problem. They think of superhero tv as Adam West and they can't take it seriously. Meanwhile superhero tv has been better than some of the movies lately on both sides of the big two.

This producer sounds like such an idiot. He runs one of the weakest comic book tv shows and only gets numbers because of the title.

If he realized people watch the show because they want MORE comic book stuff then it would be so much better.

If he said because of SFX budget limitations lessened the scope of what can be made to look visually appealing while capturing the grandeur of the super heroes actions, this would have been reasonable criticism.

I think the problem is that the bad guy of the week setup is boring. I'd rather have a Netflix type setup that's like a 13 hr movie then what we get from arrow/flash. I will say I think Gotham is the best of the tv network shows though

This guy and that hack Snyder would get on great.

>it seems to be ashamed of it being a comic book show

Really? Gotham? That's your conclusion? The show that literally brought people back from the dead and cast them as God's Avenging angel with swords?
They are weird comments for him to make because the show is shamelessly stupid as shit sometimes. The only problem with the show is they are so desperate to actually have Batman but cannot.

Though in a way he's right. Superhero shows don't work IF YOU DON'T HAVE A SUPERHERO AS THE MAIN CHARACTER. You've got fucking Gordon as your main character, and he's pretty much almost as corrupt as everyone he tries to take down now.

I agree many characters would simply be too expensive as a show ie Nova or Green Lantern. But Hawkeye or Batgirl shit Moon Knight and Question should all be tv shows.

Him criticizing costumes is abit silly because Daredevil, Green Arrow, Supergirl, Flash have problems but the costumes were fine.

Eh that's the thing. Gotham has been amping up meta humans and villains because they realized that's what sells.

I'm saying they are ashamed because Batman isn't in the show and it's called Gotham. If they called it GCPD or Gordon it would have been cancelled half way through the first season like it deserved.

Netflix set up proves how dumb this Gotham producer sounds. Daredevil and Jessica Jones have a few pacing problems but they have villains and characters that are much more compelling then anything in the fucking Marvel movies. Which is kind of sad but whatever. DC is abit odd because they have a traditional network season so they have to spread it out more and end up with a monster of the week/X-files set up. That being said both types of shows have their problems but literally Gotham and Agents of Shield are the worst. I can't believe they haven't been cancelled. They both have the same problem of not actually featuring cape ship at all and just using the brand to keep getting viewers.

>TV is about real people and faces, and not so much about magic and the supernatural things
Come the fuck on, man. Some popstars and celebrities can go outside and wear batshit insane clothing, but people will still eat it up. Shit like True Blood and Supernatural were pretty damn popular for a while, so I don't even want to hear about magic and the supernatural not being able to work on TV.

I like Gotham and I enjoy watching it, but that man is fucking stupid.

Gotham introduced the Venom serum in season 1 user
they aren't afraid of the cape stuff they just have to deal with the show constraints

It's called Gotham and it's about Gotham.

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I wonder what things would be like if DC had it's own thing like Marvel does without Warner Bros. fucking everything up.

WB don't influence DC much more than Disney does Marvel.

>and not so much about magic and the supernatural things."

Isn't GoT amazingly popular

and GoT hasn't even reached it's final form

Then what the fuck has been going wrong?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to start a Sup Forums-tier company war. I love both Marvel and DC, but I want to know what the fuck happened.

In spite of the fantasy not because of it. At least as far as the show.

WB doesn't have its own channel anymore
I mean CW kinda replaced the WB channel for basic but a lot of their tv properties are spread out on different networks

We better get Salsa titties by the finale.

Nah, it's not in spite of the fantasy at all.

It's that it's one of the first shows with the budget to do fantasy justice visually in a long form format.

Doesn't this show have Firefly, Mr. Freeze, Azrael, even Fish, running around in costumes?

He's only half wrong. TV is about real faces and people. Supernatural or fantastical elements should only ever be the backdrop for interesting or grounded characters. That's why shows like Buffy or Star Trek worked so well.

It's retarded that he thinks that this prevents Superheroes from working on the screen though

We got Sand Viper tits. I'm content.

thats weird that he says that, because he was the most comic-booky shows on tv

damn what a semen demon that ivy is

I'm so sick of DC getting these talentless fucking hacks.

Y'know, the various Star Treks got away with a lot of space and laser shit on a budget that amounted to high school lunch money per episode. Makes me wonder what the superhero shows are spending it all on that they couldn't do a TV Green Lantern. He just makes see-thru shapes, in one color. It's a license to make the CGI look fake on fuckin' purpose.

I agree for different reasons.

Capes largely fail because they suck up too much budget to look good. And even then you get shit that just doesn't quite cut it.

This can be skatted around by using heroes who could translate well to the small screen (Batman, Luke Cage, etc) or getting a good director that knows how to make their shit work (Thinking something like Farscape)

A good recenter comparison is IZombie vs. SuperGirl/Flash. One tried to fit in for the tv world, a bit at the cost of the source material. The other tries to translate everything making it hyper cringe and cheap at times.

What abt GoT? That's all costumes and make believe and magic.

Well based on the show Gotham, he might have a point.

That's HBO, which we all know isn't tv.

Well I don't think Gotham works so...

It's not like Gotham has many capes so it makes sense he'd think that.

Most cape we've seen so far is Azrael being badass and Freeze.

This next season seems to be different but I doubt it'll change much

>weakest comic book tv shows
>implying Gotham isn't the best capeshit show
Bitch please, only Flash tickles it's balls a bit but it's not nearly as good.

GoT doesn't really do much fantasy early on. Even later on, it's just the dragons and just recently the whitewalkers.

But the big pull is the drama and fighting. The fantasy is more background story to propel characters and plot forward when they need a kick.

If it wasn't for the fantasy, Dany would probably be dead and Jon would probably have been banished elsewhere or died with Rob

The Mentalist was literally a superhero show though.

What's with DC movie/TV creators and chronic "foot in mouth" syndrome?

Does Bruno Heller even do much in the show anymore?

So he's trying to get fired?

>"TV is about real people"
This is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard, woooo baby no wonder Gotham's horseshit

No it was just a procedural with a memetagonist. An old twist on an older template.

Whatever they've been doing Superman on TV since the 50's it works fine with a good team behind the project.

Well of course the Gotham team thinks this, their show is terrible and only gained momentum because they started whipping out the bad guys regardless if it made any sense

TV Budgets don't work

If we're extending this to any live action tv and movie format, I agree.

Capes only work (or at least work best) in comic format or animated series format. Such mediums give the creative teams the most possible resources to develop their stories, settings, and characters with the least amount of limitations in regards to artistic license.

Smallville was a big success and ran for a ridiculous number of seasons, but also:

the reason Smallville initially didn't want to use the Superman outfit was that Clark would have to be Superman. He couldn't be Superboy - WB didn't get the rights to Superboy back until 2005 - so there was a danger they'd be sued (they'd actually sued the crap out of the rightsholder prior to the Lois & Clark show starting in order to force an actual Superboy show off the air) for using a character/setting they didn't really own (which was their own fault).

By the time they got it back in-house, Smallville had been going for four seasons and knew it was getting more - but it clearly didn't need the costume and they probably felt there was no real benefit to changing up a successful formula to bring that in, since the low-key Superman angle seemed to be working, and they had a movie all ready to go that might confuse the issue or cause infighting at the studio if producers felt they were competing for the same property (I know they're doing Superman on Supergirl as well as in the movies now, but this was over a decade ago when nobody did that kind of thing).

>I personally feel that he sounds idiotic because while Gotham can be dumb fun it's one of the weaker comic book shows out there. Big part of it's problem is it seems to be ashamed of it being a comic book show.

I guess I still dont know what that phrase means since last season had Mr freeze and firefly in a duel, one of the first Azreals, and several other crazy comic book level scenarios so that doesn't seem ashamed

Gotham is basically Tim Burton's wet dream. Agreed, I think OP is deluded here.

>I think the problem is that the bad guy of the week setup is boring.
If it was about people traveling around the works or son law enforcement I get the style but you would think after a while there would be more continuous storyline shows. The occasional fluff adventure is fine but like every action show is the same even the non comic ones.

I would argue that live action comic adaptations ONLY work in TV because of longform storytelling and episodic character development being staples of comics.

Indeed.

I'd be more willing to listen to his opinion if he didn't crash and burn the last good show he had and let the network turn it into a generic procedural.

We're just now starting to get costumed superheroes on TV again, but the shows will never get any better than they are now if this mentality persists.

>I dont think serial media translates to serial media
What a fucking idiot

D-Damn, Red. Whatta kinda concoctions have ya taking lately?

He's an idiot justifying and rationalizing his choices.

It's fine if you don't want to tell that story, but saying you can't just demonstrates your failure as a creator.

>has exclusive TV live action rights to Batman character
>doesn't use Batman because he doesn't think superheroes work very well on TV

Marvel has Feige. WB has Snyder.

About the best way I can sum it up

Miracle-Gro.

It's for the best. Kid Bruce is probably better than any Batman we would have gotten.

Wow Red, ya concoction work miracles

Well I was never planning on watching Gotham anyway.

My dick is going to explode

i like having the show from Gordon's perspective

he's more relateable than batman, so we get to see gotham from more of a "normie" perspective

>Big part of it's problem is it seems to be ashamed of it being a comic book show.
I think you are a idiot.

Why? Producer thinks superhero costumes don't work on tv. When we all know they fucking do.

Whats so idiotic about that?

Especially coming from the producer of one of the worse cape shows.

Much better choice for Ivy but how the fuck are they going to explain this?

Are they just finally realizing the show works better if people are in there 20s and 30s and not fucking children?

Literally stupidest thing ever. Waste of the rights.

I like watching Gotham for some of the villains now and then but it's not very good.

Wouldn't even feel bad if it was cancelled.

WB has Geoff Johns now you mean.

Fuck Tim Burton.

The show feels like 60s Batman in a bad way except Batman isn't even in the fucking show. Some of the villains are good but 10 minutes of gold out of 40 minutes of crap isn't great.

I don't even think it's the worst cape show I've seen but it's nowhere near the best kind of sad considering they have access to fucking BATMAN CHARACTERS.

Total failure.

Exactly.

Show only is good when they embrace the zany Batman villains. Even then it's pretty campy and terrible.

This producer is basically saying "I'm out of touch, I don't know what the competition is doing, superhero costumes are stupid and do you remember Adam West and Burt Ward? Fuck putting Batman in OUR show."

What a garbage person.

I think it's stupid for thinking Gotham of all shows is ashamed of comic book shows when it's probably the most comicbooky show on tv. You have to be a real idiot, that never seen the show to say something like that.

I think if they can make Supergirl work with a smaller budget on the CW and shit like Legends working then I don't see why getting a Nova or a Green Lantern show would be so hard.

This is funny because even Arrow despite it's problems is a better show than Gotham primarily because Oliver Queen actually looks and dresses like Green Arrow.

Gotham is weird because the show might as well be called "Batman" but Bruce is 12 for some reason and Batman will never appear. Literally the most boring part of Bruce's life. Fuck Gotham.

I've seen every episode of Gotham man. It's campy and fun but not really comic booky. Batman hasn't been like that since the 60s which goes to show how fucking out of touch these showrunners are.

The times it gets close to the comics ie Year One, Court of Owls is cool but it really doesn't make sense without Bruce being an adult that's starting out as Batman.

They are just being tools using the branding GOTHAM to get autoviewers but not giving us the most interesting residents of that universe is sinful to me.

One of Strange's freaks has the power to age people to death with a touch. He grabs her, but she gets away before the process is done.

Superheroes working on tv is debatable.

"Tv is about real people."

yeah bullshit

/this

Close thread.

Literally the only way capes make sense is on tv. You have anywhere from a dozen to two dozen hours of superhero action while The 2 hr origin movie / team up movie paradigm is shit to me at this point.

>it's one of the weaker comic book shows out there
>Big part of it's problem is it seems to be ashamed of it being a comic book show.

Who let Bizzaro in here?

I like Gordon on the show but I hate this "relateable" meme.

I like characters who aren't like me at all what's with all this faggy self insert crap? I don't want to be/be around Batman or Daredevil in real life but I sure as fuck like reading about him etc.

It doesn't have to copy the comics to be a comic book show. The fact that Gotham's stories and characters could easy to be from a comics what does.

I swear as soon as people try something different faggots always think that the people working on the show(or movies) don't understand/care about the characters/world. But if they actual read comics they would know that there are many stories of classic characters that have main different interpretations of them and the world the live in.

I like it but lets not pretend Gotham is even in the top 5.

It's campy and fun but it's quite terrible and feels like a massive wasted opportunity considering the characters they have access to.

Yes I get it's another entry into the Batman mythos which uses various Batman characters with different takes on them.

I just don't think it's a great depiction. I like a few of the villains but it's a mostly forgettable and silly show.

Why are you defending Gotham? The show is fun but it's barely tolerable. Also the people who work on it sound like fucking idiots.

>I personally feel that he sounds idiotic because while Gotham can be dumb fun it's one of the weaker comic book shows out there.

Gotham is the best cape show we have, though. Surely you don't think any of the CW shows besides iZombie are anywhere close to competent?

>Big part of it's problem is it seems to be ashamed of it being a comic book show.
Have you ever fucking watched it? Because I can't imagine a more demonstrably wrong statement.

What do you even fucking mean? It doesn't have enough random references like Flash? It doesn't adapt enough stories from the comics? Well no shit, its timeline doesn't overlap an existing continuity.

>Advertising it as a show about Super/Batman but never letting those characters show up or do anything.
They literally pitched it as a show not about Batman. It was advertised as a show about the denizens of Gotham City before Batman showed up.That's exactly what it is.

>He runs one of the BEST comic book tv shows

ftfy

>If he realized people watch the show because they want MORE comic book stuff then it would be so much better.
Did you only watch the first episode or some shit?

>I'm saying they are ashamed because Batman isn't in the show and it's called Gotham

deadline.com/2013/09/commissioner-gordon-fox-tv-series-drama-595831/

>In one of the biggest drama deals this season, after a bidding war, Fox has landed Gotham, from Warner Bros. TV and The Mentalist creator Bruno Heller, with a series commitment. For Gotham, Warner Bros TV is mining one of DC Comics‘ most popular character universes, Batman. It explores the origin stories of Commissioner James Gordon and the villains who made Gotham City famous. In Gotham, Gordon is still a detective with the Gotham City Police Department and has yet to meet Batman, who will not be part of the series.

LITERALLY the entire concept of the series is the origin of everyone but Batman. You are fucking stupid.

>Gotham has been amping up meta humans and villains because they realized that's what sells.
Except the producers have said that every time they add Metahumans their ratings DROP.

In your opinion. I'm sure there are plenty that think the show is very enjoyable. If you don't like the world Gotham is set in, move on.
Why do you care that I'm defending it? OP made a stupid statement and I'm going to call him on his bullshit.

Well Daredevil is fucking terrible and JJ is entirely about shitting on the concept of superheroes plus muh feminism, so I don't know where you're getting this shit.

>literally Arrow and Agents of Shield are the worst.


ftfy fampai

>Why are you defending Gotham?

Because it's good. Why are you getting riled up about people liking quality?

Too bad they can't do the same with Bruce.

>I like it but lets not pretend Gotham is even in the top 5.

But it is.

Gotham, Batman '66, 90s Flash, Wonder Woman, and Bixby's Hulk are the top 5 comic book adaptions.

While I'd very much like to see fewer superheroes on tv (and in films), the part about "magic and supernatural beings" sounds nonsensical to me.

Sometimes cape shows are fantasy, sometimes they're sci-fi, sometimes they're drama, sometimes they're comedy (e.g.g Batman '66), sometimes they're all of these things.

Sometimes you also have successful shows with any or all of these things, and no capes. Look at the Star Trek version of your choice. Look at Battlestar Galactica (the more recent one). Look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Anything can be made to work on tv -- you just need decent storytelling.

>NOT MUH BATMAN
>praising Arrow

You need to fucking kill yourself immediately.

>It's campy and fun but not really comic booky.
>not really comic booky.

Please explain this in any way, because it makes zero fucking sense. The show is about heroes solving larger-than-life problems in a fantastical world. Just because Jim Gordon doesn't wear tights doesn't mean it isn't """""""""comic booky"""""""""

this desu.

You should. It's like you combined BTAS and Batman '89.

>I'd be more willing to listen to his opinion if he didn't crash and burn the last good show he had and let the network turn it into a generic procedural.

what show is that?