Two major adaptations landed at almost the same time, and together they make a perfect case study in how to condense beloved source material. On the latest episode of the Geek Freaks Podcast, Frank and Jonathan reviewed both the new Supergirl film and Season 2 of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the conversation kept circling back to one question. When you have to trim a story down, what can you afford to lose?
Supergirl: Fun, Punk, and Missing Its Best Ending
Supergirl adapts Tom King’s Woman of Tomorrow, one of the most acclaimed comic runs of the last decade. The premise survives the trip to the screen intact. Kara, grieving and adrift on the anniversary of Argo City’s destruction, gets pulled into a True Grit style revenge journey when a young girl named Ruthye asks for help hunting down Krem of the Yellow Hills, the man who killed her father.
The film has real strengths. Milly Alcock carries the sorrow of the character while selling a punk, “I don’t care what you think” energy that sets her apart from Superman’s earnest kindness. The needle drops and crunchy, steampunk-flavored tech give it a Guardians of the Galaxy looseness that still fits the tone of the new DCU. And Jason Momoa’s Lobo is a blast, channeling full Beetlejuice energy in his cell scenes, even if the character is never actually necessary to the plot. Momoa has said he wants a standalone Lobo project, but only if it can be rated R.
The problem is what got cut. The comic’s ending is one of the great gut punches in modern comics. Kara and Ruthye spare Krem, sentence him to years in the Phantom Zone, and decades later an old, remorseful Krem is brought to a dying Ruthye. Her written account says mercy redeemed him. What we see on the page is Ruthye cutting him down anyway. The story that gets passed down is not the story that happened. The movie throws all of that away and simply kills the villain, flattening both Kara and Ruthye in the process.
The hosts landed in different places. Frank gave it 7 Kryptonite arrows out of 10, calling it painfully mediocre in structure but a worthwhile piece of the larger DCU, the kind of mid-tier entry every shared universe needs. Jonathan came around the more they talked and went all the way to a 10, arguing the film succeeds at what it set out to do and that the loud online voices attacking the casting are not the audience that matters. Both agreed on the real takeaway: go read the comic.
Avatar Season 2: Condensed Without Being Gutted
Netflix’s Avatar faced the harder job. Season 2 of the animated series is widely considered close to perfect, and squeezing it into seven live action episodes meant entire episodes of the original sometimes became a single sentence. Somehow, it works.
Toph is the season’s biggest win. The casting is spot on, and every scene she is in lands. Uncle Iroh remains the heart of the show, with Paul Sun-Hyung Lee using limited screen time to add emotional beats the animated version never had, including a devastating moment at the memorial wall acknowledging the pain he caused as a Fire Nation general. Ba Sing Se delivers on its central idea that everything in the city is a lie, and the season’s fourth episode, a riff on Tales of Ba Sing Se, weaves the Painted Lady, the Blue Spirit, and Iroh’s mourning of his son into some of the strongest material Netflix’s version has produced.
The difference between the two adaptations came down to a single observation. Avatar moved pieces around but never cut anything essential to who these characters are. Supergirl did exactly that. Frank gave the season an 8 out of 10, and Jonathan went 9, admitting he had to hold himself back from a perfect score out of sheer relief that the show did not fall apart.
The episode also covered PlayStation deleting 551 movie titles from UK libraries with no refunds, a fresh wave of DC animation announcements including an Absolute Batman series, the Joker anime Laugh Riot, and a Krypto show from the SpongeBob team, plus a check-in on Dungeon Crawler Carl. You can hear the full conversation on the Geek Freaks Podcast.
gfpods.com 
Leave a comment