Re: Constantine Goes To NBC
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 2:37 pmGoyer onboard for this? *thumbs up*
I wouldn't be a comic book nerd and Hellblazer fan if I didn't gripe about a couple of things...
1) John doesn't get to smoke. No cigarettes is no surprise, but it's still disappointing.
2) John doesn't sound like a Scouser (someone from Liverpool). I don't know if anyone has watched an interview with Boardwalk Empire's Stephen Graham (Graham has a very heavy Scouse accent), but I assume that producers didn't think that a man talking like that for an hour of tv every week on North American television would work very well. Again...disappointing. Funny thing is he still says he's from Liverpool, but I assume most Americans wouldn't hear a man speak in a Welsh accent while saying he's from Liverpool and think anything was amiss; unfortunately for me, I do.
3) John doesn't pronounce his own last name correctly. I'm actually surprised that happened considering Matt Ryan is from Wales and the director of the pilot, the great Neil Marshall is from Newcastle. Honestly if you were to show one-thousand people in Great Britain the name "Constantine" written on a piece of paper and asked them to say it, not one of them would say "Teen" at the end. I can only assume that Goyer, Cerone, or NBC execs asked for this, as they knew most people in this country would be saying the name of the character and the show one way and not the other.
These may seem like small gripes, but they are details that have added to the richness of the character over the years; there have been several panels in several books where John has corrected people who said "ConstanTEEN" instead of "ConstanTINE;" hell the man smoked so much that one of the most critically acclaimed and most popular story arks featuring John Constantine was about his having terminal lung cancer.
This is definitely a Constantine for American television, and some omissions and genericizing and Americanizing may be disappointing to some, the good news is that the pilot is still pretty creepy and weird and intense (and good) for American television, and John's attitude is still very much intact; he talks a little funny and needs something to do with his hands, but this John Constantine is still very much John Constantine, and much more John Constantine than that other John Constantine from nine years ago.
If you want to know what easter egg is in Constantine click below....
