Smallville: Absolute Justice

[Bruce Wayne]

It was pretty interesting. Although the commercial time was about equal with the show time.

I noticed that as well. It was rather annoying.

 

[jamespowers]

Okay, who saw it & what do you think? However, now I am going to have to watch it each week from here on out. I like how they brought Checkmate & Amanda Waller into the mix.

Thoughts? Comments?

Ok, what's the background behind Checkmate and Amanda. I have no idea what side they are on. Perhaps I missed something. Are they behind breaking out all the super villians? [huh]

 

[Leesensei]

I Agree that there were way too many commercials. I was trying to get my 8 year old daughter to settle down and watch the show with me but there was no way she could sit still for all those commercials.

Overall I loved the movie, and think that this is opened up a lot of new directions for the show. I am sure that we will be seeing much more of the Checkmate organization. When Amanda talked about the coming apocalypse, I wondered if she was talking about a war between the superheroes and the super villains she was gathering, or if it had more to do with the plans of the Kandorians. Either way should be an interesting story. And of course the door was left open for us to see some of the JSA members again.

I thought Dr. Fate was awesome and was disappointed to see him get killed off. And poor Sandman didn't even get to fire off a shot before he was taken out by Icicle. But the good news is that the Martian Manhunter is back!

All in all it was a fun story and I think that it will give the writers some great new directions to follow.

Lee

 

[xwray]

I enjoyed this but had a bit of difficulty figuring out what the relationships were...obviously a lot has changed since the last time I watched Smallville a couple years ago. This may get me watching again...is/was the Justice Society a part of the current episodes?

However, I did not like the sense I had of watching a commercial interrupted by bits of a program...that would completely turn me off if the regular Smallville is like that now.

 

[candy_noir]

I love Smallville and own every season on DVD. Does anyone know if this will end up on DVD as well?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Ok, what's the background behind Checkmate and Amanda.

Checkmate

Amanda Waller

They talked a little bit about this on the show, ******* Squad

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Checkmate is a covert government organization set up to perform operations worldwide considered vital to the security of American interests. Their hierarchy design is based after the various pieces of a chess game; one King, one Queen and several Bishops, Rooks and Pawns. The Bishops oversaw the Rooks behind the scenes while the Rooks planned missions and supervised the field agents, or Knights, and the Knight's support, Pawns. In the past there were two sets of Kings & Queens, black & white.


Amanda Waller came from Chicagos Cabrini-Green housing projects. She left because one of her sons, one of daughters, & her husband were murdered. She was, for a time the Secretary of Metahuman Affairs under President Lex Luthor, before being arrested in the wake of Luthor's public fall from grace (See Superman/Batman Volume 1).

The first ******* Squad is a semi-secret government-run group of former supervillains working in return for amnesty. They perform missions that are almost certainly ******* runs.

The second ******* Squad is a covert black ops government strike team. The squad is partially mostly up of imprisoned supervillains who agree to serve as expendable agents performing extremely dangerous missions, which are officially denied by the US Government using the prisoners' participation as rationale to claim that the incidents are merely attacks by criminals, in return for a full pardon for their actions. This also serves as an explanation for the revolving door justice in the DC Universe where a villain would be defeated and captured by a hero only to turn up free again a short time later.Also, there are a few non-prisoner members such as Nemesis and Nightshade who participate in the team as part of individual arrangements. The Squad operates out of Belle Reve prison in Louisiana.

To prevent escape in the field, the prisoners are shackled with an explosive bracelet that will detonate a certain distance from the field leader, who was usually this was Rick Flag, who wore a remote control that could detonate or disengage the bracelets as desired. The deadly martial artist called the Bronze Tiger acts as a back up disciplinary measure. After the death of Rick Flag, Bronze Tiger acts as field leader of the team.

The group is mainly run by Amanda Waller, although at times someone else acts as a cover for her, especially after the existence of the ******* Squad becomes public. Eventually, the ******* Squad leaves the government's control and becomes a freelance operation.

 

[Mahagonny Bill]

I don't watch Smallville much anymore, but I'm a big JSA fan so I caught this episode. I was pretty disappointed that they didn't specify a time period for the JSA. The hinted that they operated in the 1960's, but the actors were much too young to have been active vigilantes then. I was hoping for the good' ol Germany's WWII-era leadership stomping JSA, but instead we saw them fight..student riots? I was also disappointed that they took out Wesley Dodds so quick. We didn't even get to see the gasmask and fedora costume on anyone. And don't even get me started on the Starman, Star-Spangled Kid, Star-Girl mish mash.

About the only thing I did like about this episode was Pam Grier as Amanda Waller. As soon as she appeared on the screen I said "Oh! I hope she's Amanda Waller" and my wife said "Who?!?", which of course led to a 10 minute geek rant about ******* Squad (see Mr. Wayne's post above for a transcript).

 

[Leesensei]

Wesley Dodds did put on the Sandman costume before he was killed. Unfortunately he didn't have time to fire a shot. I thought that it was funny to see the shot of all of the coffee machines in Dodds kitchen!

Given that the show takes place in a current timeline, it would have been impossible for them to have shown the JSA operating in WWII. I think that they did a great job with the story given the limitations of time and the medium of tv. I do hope that we will see more of the JSA in some future episodes. Perhaps we will get to see the original Flash or The Green Lantern! It would be really cool if the current Flash (called Impulse on the show) got to meet the original Flash, Jay Garrick!

I liked the actor playing The Star Spangled Kid, I wish we had seen more of him before his demise! I thought Dr. fate was amazing. He really stole the show for me. Hawkman was pretty cool but I liked the actor as Carter Hall more than I did when he was in Costume. I wish that we had seen him fly by using his wings rather than flying like Superman. They pulled it off with Angel in the last X-men movie.

Some of the Banter with Hawkman and Green Arrow was pretty funny. I hope that we get to see the two of them together again sometime now that they have more respect for each other.

If only they could have used some of that time that was used up by all of the commercials, we might have really had a better story!

Lee

 

[The Wolf]

I really enjoyed it. Stargirl was very true to the comics but I'm more a fan of the original guys. I hope they do more with the JSAers that were in the portrait but not shown in the story.
I'll probably buy this season on DVD if just for this two-parter.

Sincerely,
The Wolf