I only watched the ep once, but will probably view again before next Friday. In the mean time, here's a few random thoughts in no particular order:
Music:
Nice. Awesome, in fact. They kept the Smallville/Superman motifs and added a few from Batman, and I absolutely loved the short though extremely effective use of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. I get "The Ring" connection, but I'm not sure why they chose to place it
within the fiction of the show, ie: playing it on the radio. Regardless, good to see they didn't ram the latest pop title off a Warner label down our throats again. I hope this is a new trend; classical orchestration will improve the epic feel of the story, IMHO.
Acting:
What the hell happened to Durance? Her acting was embarrassingly spotty this episode. She was excellent opposite Hartley and in the solo phone booth scene, but quite distracting in scenes with Mack. Seriously, it seemed like she forgot how to act at times. *sigh*
Choreography:
Wow! They've upped their game. Monorail scenes with Ninja Chick and Lois, and the barn scenes with Clark were fantastic. Kudos to the stunt people and trainers.
Editing:
During the fight club scene, Lois walked around with the round card for what seemed like an eternity. Couldn't they have cut that a little better? Same goes for the smash cut from Lois' phone conversation with the Blur to her getting ready for bed, complete with an ear to ear grin. It was unintentionally comical. Yeah Lois, he's
that good. LOL
Effects:
- Despite early hype to the contrary, I thought the effects were meh at best.
- The best visual in the whole ep wasn't much of an effect per se, but was very, very epic: Clark at the top of Statue of Liberty.
- When the monorail flew off its tracks, it was prevented from hitting the ground because Clark was there to catch it. But the thing still came to an abrupt stop. Oy! I hate knowing too much about the laws of physics. Shut up, Hulk!
