Obvious spoiler warning: I'm not going to get into every plot detail of last night's Smallville finale. The big climactic moments were disappointing for two reasons. First, as usual with television superhero shows, the big action climax was painfully puny, especially for the payoff of ten years of mythology. Basically, Clark flies through a possessed Lionel Luther (does that count as murder?) and then a CGI blue thing that is supposed to be Superman quickly flies into Apokolips and quickly moves it about three inches to the left, saving Earth. The most emotionally potent moment of the finale was its opening and closing bookends, which had Allison Mack reading a comic book to her young child seven years into the future, a four-color tale of how Clark Kent became Superman and saved the world. It's a weird breaking the fourth wall moment, but it served as a reminder of just how potent, primal, and powerful the Superman mythology really is.
The climactic Lex Luthor monologue (dear god was there a ton of 'monologuing' last night, the episode seemed pitched to those who had never watched an episode of the show and/or had no understanding of the Superman mythos at all) hit all of the expected notes, but it felt like an inferior and less emotionally powerful version of the finale of Unbreakable ('Now that we know who you are, I know what I am!"). But the bigger problem is that Clark has basically been acting as Superman for at least the last few years of the show, if not the entire series run, so his 'transformation' into Superman is merely a case of getting a new set of duds and a new nickname. So here's the million dollar question: Why didn't we get to actually see him wear those duds? Sure we get a few CGI far-away shots of Superman. And we get a few closeups of Tom Welling's face with a cape billowing behind him. But we did not get a single full-body shot of Tom Welling dressed as Superman. Any guesses as to why this was? Was Warner Bros so worried that fans would be 'confused' with the new Superman: Man of Steel movie coming out next year that they forbade the show from showing Welling in costume? Please share your guesses below, because I'm at a loss as to why the show's producers would cheat the fans out of the very iconic moment that they have been waiting for over the last ten years. Screen grabs from Comic Book Movie of just what I'm talking about are below (obvious spoilers).
Scott Mendelson
