The Cape

I was quite excited when I saw the previews for the new series "The Cape" though I will confess that while it is true I never really got much into the reading of comic books nonetheless there was always something about them which held for me a certain degree of interest. I love comic book movies and I am intrigued by comic book characters, and the vigilante fantasy of which they offer as well as the alternative reality involved in many of them.

So upon watching the the perimeter for "The Cape" I was left with some mixed feelings about it. I was not completely blown away by it as I would have liked to be, and yet there were still some things which I very much enjoyed and other things which give me some difficulty.

One of the things I really enjoyed about "The Cape" is that it really touches back to that old school comic style in a way which is reminiscent of the original Batman movie while the new Batman movies bring a darker, edgier gritty realism, there will always be a special place in my heart for the original.

But with this high point for "The Cape" also comes one of its downfalls, which is the fact that at moments I feel as if it indeed is too much of a rip off of Batman, while there are some acute differences between the two, there are also for me some inescapable similarities. In some ways "The Cape" feels like when you buy a generic brand of something, for example stores which try to sell their own version of Barbie, and because they are not the official Barbi brand they are not exactly like Barbi thus they are not quite as well made, there heads are a little too big, or the hair is not as good of quality, the features are not as realistic, you get the gist. So in some ways "The Cape" is like a generic Batman, it is a slightly cheaper and more generic version.

On the other hand though I know that sounds harsh, there are some rather clever things about the show which I quite enjoy. I love the Carnival of Criminal's and I highly enjoyed that illusionist, touch of magic, escapism idea which is brought into the character, the idea of Magician as super hero highly appeals to me and the cape itself is a rather nifty device. Another thing of which I quite enjoy is the clever use of Orwell within the show, Orwell being a blog run by an anonymous source which seems to know everything that is going on in the city and exposuses corruption. I also like the fact that the show does not actually make a big deal about the whole hidden identity thing, because that is a bit of originality.

Another concept which I find highly intriguing that was introduced into the show is the existence of an underground organization of Assassins known as the Arcana (or something close to that) which are in fact based of the 24 cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot.

8:55 PM - 1/21/2011 - post comment

For though All are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. ~The Monk

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