HEROES vs. ALIENS (The CW 4-Night Crossover Super Hero Event)

Part 1: Supergirl

* So, right off the bat, I’ll just say what everyone else is saying: Supergirl’s crossover was, like, less than a minute long and right at the end. That was lame. It was a good episode of Supergirl, but four night cross-over my eye! I mean, this is like having a cake that only has 75.999% frosting on it. And the rest is just bare cake. Part 2: The Flash

* Wait, so, Oliver couldn’t just tell Barry to go back and knock-out Vigilanté, disarm him, tie him up and run him over to the police station in 5 seconds flat, so that he's no longer running the streets killing people??? Hm. Ok. If you say so, The CW. Would’ve made more sense if they’d been battling common street thugs and The Flash showed up, beat them all up and then told Green Arrow and Spartan about the aliens, but oh well…

*Uh, Barry, do you have to say flashpoint, each and every time you’re talking about it? I swear, each time it’s like, “I screwed up the timeline, by the way we’re calling it flashpoint, anyways things changed...” It doesn’t make him sound very sorry or humbled, by the experience; it sounds more like he’s more concerned with the copyright and branding of a pun. Like, “yeah, I did something bad, but we gave it a cool, clever name with my own codename in it, so I hope that my charming wit of the event softens the blow a little bit.” * When they are surrounded by those men in black at the hangar, why does The Flash aim the bullet at the one guy’s chest? (and possibly more guys too)? The guy most likely had a bulletproof vest on, but that was uncharacteristic of Barry to aim a bullet back at a guy’s heart.

* *Fanfare* It’s Wally West to the rescue! Annnnd now he just got 1 punch K.O’d by Supergirl. Speaking of the youngster crime-fighters, if you’re going up against alien dominators, why would you not have all men on deck? If the experienced heroes fail, it’s only a matter of time before the inexperienced ones get killed anyway. No need benching them. How are they going to have experience, if they can’t get experience?

Part 3: Arrow

* Does the geek culture have a word for that kind of episode yet? You know, where the heroes are put into a fake, pre-programmed world in their minds? I’ve seen that on other shows throughout the years. I’ve seen it years ago on Batman the Animated Series, Falling Skies and more recently on K.C. Undercover, just to name a few. Anyways, that type of episode is quickly becoming a cliché, along with “psych-out dream sequence” episodes, “body switch” episodes and “we need to get the antidote in time or everyone will die of this epidemic.” episodes. Anyways, this was kind of a cheap way to have a part 3 to a cross-over event. Talk about phoning it in. This episode could have occurred outside of the cross-over as another villain using magic or something instead of aliens. Oh, and Diggle gets virtual-shot during the alien’s virtual mind-world fight, but Ray doesn’t? Yeah, sure. That makes total sense… Quite convenient that their way out was a glowing portal that they just had to walk though. The aliens couldn’t have programmed a wall in front of it? Or put it super high in the air or super deep underground or something? Part 4: DC’S Legends of Tomorrow

* How Ironic. This is the one show I don’t watch, and it had the strongest showing of them all.

* Wow. Did Felicity Smoak really just say “funky fresh”? * I have mixed feelings on The Green Arrow not wanting Supergirl to join the fight. On the one hand, I didn’t think the writers had the guts to make a main super hero character be racist because they are supposed to be an example of what humans should be. I commend the writers on having a main guy be this way instead of a the typical, cliché 2nd or 3rd stringer characters feeling that way to aliens or metas or whomever. However, on the other hand, shouldn’t he have the strength of character to put those feelings asides for the greater good; shouldn’t he be more worried about saving the world than being a bigot? She said it herself, she’s the biggest weapon they have. She’s good enough to train against, but not to have at your side in battle, all because you’re rattled by The Dominator’s fake world they created for you in your mind? First you want everyone to train against her, and then you want her out of the fight? Make up your mind, Ollie. Pttf! As if you can’t trust her. She’s the most trustworthy and wholesome one out of the whole lot. Like Barry said, if they’re going to fight aliens, they might as well have one of their own. Also, this was one of the weaker mini plot-lines. It was so unnecessary and ate up time. I feel like the time taken away from this at the beginning of the episode, could’ve been used as more time fighting near the end of the episode. I won’t complain about the plotline of the Professor’s changing the timeline by creating his daughter eating up time because that was actually interesting, but I will surely complain about this Ollie/Kara conversation. Sheesh. It didn’t even go anywhere anyway. He asks her to stay out of battle -- she comes and saves him when he gets pimp smacked off the roof by an alien -- end of plotline (and so very forced). * Someone online mentioned how Cisco sure was excited to hear about The Legends time traveling, and to do it himself, even after knowing that time travel is the reason his brother is dead.

* Someone help me to understand this: When The Legends get tranquilized, captured, and wake-up in that holding room, why can’t Vixen use her powers? Citizen Steel said that the stuff in the tranquilizers is messing with their powers. I thought Vixen’s powers were magical and came from the totem necklace -- and she was still wearing her totem necklace while captured. The men in black didn’t take it away from her. They didn’t even know it was a weapon to be harnessed. Shouldn’t she be able to use her powers? Am I wrong about this? If I’m right, then dang, just what the heck is in those tranquilizers darts, to stop her from using her magical artifact to escape?! (!O . o) I wanted to see Vixen cracking skulls to get out of there. Also, if Cisco (not even as Vibe) and Felicity (with high heels on) can pick up guns and rescue The Legends, again, why couldn’t the other newer characters, have joined the final fight against aliens? I would have loved to see Ragman there.

* Ok, they established that The Dominators communicate with the humans through telepathy. When Cisco got that holographic message from the the Dominator, that he helped saved in the 1950’s, everyone could understand what The Dominator was saying, through the communicator, telepathically into their minds? The Dominator’s hologram communicator can actually communicate with you telepathically? Uhh, ok. If you say so. I can understand telepathy when someone is in your vicinity, I can also understand telepathy while Cisco was vibing, but telepathy though a communicator? Well, it is a communicator, so it communicates… I guess. It’s alien technology in a world filled with people that can fly and shoot fire out of their hands, so I won’t question it too harshly, but a machine that can convey a telepathic message is still kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around. The X-Men’s Cerebro isn’t like a phone that you have to actually press a button on and answer it answer like a phone though. When Professor X wants to contact you, he just does, you don’t have to hit power and turn on a hologram.

* Since Heroes vs. Aliens was first announced, I wanted to see Vixen do a Street Fighter 2 flash kick on a Dominator’s chin sooo badly (preferably in slow-motion). It never happened, but I was quite pleased with the other kicks that I did see her do, anyway. Vixen’s fighting versus The Dominators was my favorite part for sure. Thumbs up on that.

* I also wanted to see Supergirl dive bomb herself into a cluster of Dominators and bowl them over. (Hehe)

* While everyone’s still reeling from the coolness of the final battle, I just want to point out that, without Supergirl’s episode being just a Supergirl episode, and other pointless plotline conversations in the other episodes, we could have had much more action in the final battle. We see these dialogue scenes so often as it is. But how often do we get to see all of these heroes fighting alongside eachother? At the risk of knit-picking, it would’ve been nice to have seen more camera shots of each individual hero’s fighting showcased, instead of having to scan the backgrounds to see your favorite hero’s fighting moves. Like the part, were The Atom picks a Dominator up and drops him; why couldn’t each character get a showcased spot like that? Instead you have to really keep rewinding it to see everyone showcased. Don’t get me wrong, having them all fighting at once on the screen was awesome, I just wished that they had divide the time adequately so that we could see more fighting close-ups of every hero. Maybe next time, though.

* About Felicity saying “It’s like looking into a mirror.”: It’s weird, I never even noticed that she and Kara had a similar vibe. Maybe because I hadn’t seen them right next to each other, I guess.

* About Ray Palmer saying that Kara looks like his cousin: That joke sooo made me cringe, but of course, when I go to the Facebook page, the fans LOVVVED it. So many of them were commenting on that one joke alone. Ugh, why am I not surprised. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any lamer, people started to explain the joke too. * This is actually a fair assessment… Part 1 = Hey! That was just supergirl with less than a minute of cross-over! Part 2 = Training/planning/heroes vs. eachother. (Feels like the writers are biding their time.) Part 3 = That fake mind world. (Feels like the writers are biding their time.) Part 4 = Thank you! Finally they fight the aliens!

* So, in review, all in all, it was pretty good. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I’m glad to see super hero television being pioneered and evolving throughout the years. Some 15 year old kid probably watched the 4 night event and is now so inspired to become the next great comic creator/writer -- and she or he will do just that, I’m sure! The 13 year old me would give it a 5 out of 5, but the adult in me is giving it a 2 out of 5 because I know they could’ve done so much more to make it better than it was. After all the cross-over excitement of the big named super heroes fighting wears off, you kinda see it for what it is. It almost felt like a squandered opportunity, but not quite. This assemblage of heroes is still one for the books, but it could have been better.