Crisis On Infinite Earths..Has NOT Lived Up To The Hype..

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

So 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' is the 5-part television event that is SUPPOSED to be a huge event in not only the Arrowverse, but ALL of the DC universe. Unfortunately it has not lived up to those expectations.

I would like to say that the problems surrounding Crisis were simply budget related, but after 3-hours of TV, I can say that budget is not where the CW dropped this particular ball.

Right off the bat in part 1 Supergirl's known lack of quality is blatantly obvious. Effectively ruining scenes, or shots for no other reason but laziness. With simple practical effects or costume choices looking horrible, at times pulling you out of the episode entirely. I mean look at this guys head...

I know, it's a small nit-pick but come on!? This is CRISIS! A huge event! I can let stuff slide due to budget concerns, I mean this is the CW. But fixing his head costs nothing as its just a matter of the make-up artist straightening it up. Now lets dive-in to the tone & pacing of part 1.

It was all over the place, with some scenes feeling like it should; dark skies, ambient dark tones, dramatic, impactful performances. With others, just not...

With our heroes needing to defend the tower to prevent the anti-matter wave, I'm sure that I'm not alone in the fact that I expected a stressful moment, & one that fits with the tone of Crisis. A scene that made us fear for our characters. But we didn't get that.

Instead we got a battle scene that didn't even look like it was taking place during an apocalyptic event. In fact up until this particular battle, the skies were red with anti-matter, & that red tone added to the feeling of dread for our heroes. The final battle in part-one just felt cheaply done. And yeah, I understand its the CW but it took me a couple hours with After Effects to make the scene LOOK better, so it's really hard for me to believe Warner Bros couldn't spend a little bit more time & money to make it look at least a little better.

Now this next gripe has nothing to do with special effects or budget but more poor writing.

Why is Tyler Hoechlin's Superman ALWAYS useless!?!?

They have nerfed this version of Superman so much I'm shocked Earth-38 wasn't eliminated during the time he was Earths defender. He has been bested by pretty much everything both before & during the crossover. So CW if you are reading this STOP MAKING THIS SUPERMAN A JOKE!

Next up come's the writing & honestly the biggest misstep during this event;

Killing Oliver Queen(Green Arrow) in the first part of the cross-over & doing it this way.

Now I know what some of you are going to say;

"But they are turning him into the Spectre so they had to do it this way!"

No, no they didn't. In fact doing it this way doesn't fit the character of Oliver Queen we have known for 8 seasons. He wouldn't have sacrificed himself without knowing his sacrifice would save the people he loved. They weren't on his earth, they had no plan to stop the anti-matter wave, they knew they were losing the planet & that they would have to find some way to stop the Anti-Monitor & the Anti-Matter wave before it hit Earth-1. In fact it's one of his key lines in the season 8 promo, as well as his goodbye episode with Thea;

"The only way this is bearable for me... Is if I am CERTAIN, my sacrifice...My death... Will protect the people I love."

So why do it this way? Not only that but Diggle was nowhere to be seen, directly following the episode where he promised to be with Oliver until the very end. Which made the following 'death-scene' feel forced, out of character, & just not impactful when comparing it to other scenes in the Arrowverse; Martin Steins death, Ronnies Death, Henry & Nora Allen, Barry when we THOUGHT he was going to die, etc...

This scene just fell flat & did not feel like we were saying goodbye to a character, which lets not forget we are! Oliver Queen IS DEAD, the Green Arrow IS DEAD, just because his soul is becoming The Spectre does NOT mean this shouldn't be an impactful scene/death.

"Well how would you have wrote it!?"

I can hear some of you ask.

Well....

For starters I wouldn't have killed him off in Part 1, that whole goodbye wouldn't have happened. I would have waited until the end of part 3, had Oliver sacrifice himself to buy Pariah time to send off the Paragons, let Oliver & Diggle fight together until the end, gave the OG Arrowverse duo a proper goodbye. Then I would have had Oliver show up at the end of part 4 as The Spectre as a surprise, I wouldn't have done the scene where they went to another earth to find a Lazarus pit to fail at bringing him back. The only real downside to cutting it this way would be the Lucifer cameo would be cut, or at the very least restructured.

Now, Crisis as flawed as it has been, hasn't been ALL bad. There are some things about it that actually work. For instance I enjoyed part 3 quite a bit, in fact I think the only bad things about part 3 are the story threads that were carried over from that ridiculous part 1, and what I consider the 'fan-service' focused part 2, because lets face it part 2 was essentially filler that provided us with more of our guest appearances. You could almost eliminate all of part 2 & still have no questions as far as the direction the story was going.

But part 3 was the better of the episodes we have seen thus far. With the tone matching the more serious episodes of Arrow & The Flash this season. It's clear with the hiatus that they wanted to end part 3 with a sort of 'Infinity War'-esque cliffhanger & they achieved that with Harbinger showing up to show how powerful the Anti-Monitor is, easily dispatching our heroes as the Anti-Matter wave destroys the last remaining Earth & MOST of our heroes in the final moments.

We witness Pariah use his abilities to send the 7 paragons to 'The Vanishing Point', a place that should be familiar to long time 'Legends' viewers; a place outside space & time safe from the Anti-Monitor. Before we get time to digest that turn of events though we get a 2nd cliffhanger... Well sort of.

After the 7 paragons are safely sent away to 'The Vanishing Point' we witness Superman(Kingdom Come/Brandon Routh) fall with light emitting from his body. He asks Supergirl to "fix it" before he is transformed into none other than Lex Luthor, who had used a missing page from the 'Book of Destiny' to swap him out for Brandon Routh's Superman.

Now normally I would think this is a clever plot twist, BUT there has been too many things that don't make this that shocking. For instance the Monitor brought Lex to them with a plan in mind.

"Everyone has a part to play.."

But we have only seen Lex try to ruin the heroes chances of defeating the Anti-Monitor by trying to kill all the different versions of Superman. So it seems THIS could be the "Part" that Lex was always intended to play according to the Monitors plan. So as far as this being a huge cliff-hanger, while an interesting turn in the plot, it wasn't as shocking as I think the writers hoped for.

At the end of the day parts 1-3 of 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' was a pacing disaster, that suffers from too many writers, & poor cohesive direction. I will hold off reservations on the whole thing until parts 4-5 release in a few weeks. But if it continues to go the route of part 3 it could be a great event that's only slightly marred by the weak first act.

But as I stated earlier in the article, I've been cutting together a new cut of Crisis, that will turn all 5 parts into a 2-3 hour feature with certain scenes moved around, cut out entirely, & using After Effects to try to at least improve upon some of the scenes or effects. Look for the cut to be released exclusively on our website some time in 2020(date will be announced closer to being finished).

As of right now I'm gonna score Crisis on Infinite Earths Parts 1-3 - 4/10

We shall see if Parts 4-5 improve its overall score.