Krypton S01E01 Review: Back To The Future

Krypton, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Well, the TV series Krypton was announced as a prequel to the DC Extended Universe, or specifically, Man of Steel, since... shit, since 2014 or something. It felt like forever, and I didn't even realize that it's been released, what with the huge, huge abundance of other superhero material out there both in televized and movie forms. Krypton is a TV series that takes place prior to Krypton's explosion, an origin story of an aspect of Superman's origin story.  There's an inherent danger about telling an origin story so detached from everything that's going on about the character you're selling. Gotham works only because the main character is Commissioner Gordon, a character that Batman fans are familiar with. The Star Wars prequels only work as a story because it focuses on younger versions of our main characters. Prequels are a dangerous sort, especially if it doesn't really have anything in common other than the setting, but extra especially if the ending is sort of said-and-done. Whatever happens in the Krypton series, it will end with the planet erupting in a ball of death and radioactive green rocks, with a sole survivor being jettisoned towards Earth to become the future Man of Steel. (Also Supergirl, also General Zod, also Krypto...)

And... and, well, Krypton's first episode is certainly written with a neat visual flair in mind. There's enough to go on about the backstory of our main character, Seyg-El (parsed as Seg-El in this series, apparently), Kal-El's grandfather, and his role in this rigid society of castes and guilds. We're quickly introduced to the fact that the El family was stripped of its rank and house due to Seyg-El's grandfather trying to prove that other life in space exists, and we also get to see two other houses -- Vex and Zod. There's a love triangle thrown in for extra drama, and then we've got a more familiar face to DC fans, C-lister superhero Adam Strange (disappointingly, he wears a silly hoodie-and-cap ensemble instead of an adaptation of his comic book costume), apparently having traveled back in time to stop some catastrophic disaster, the Collector of Worlds Brainiac, from ending Krypton prematurely before baby Superman is sent to Earth. As rushed as the random revelation that Brainiac is the Big Bad of the series, and this adaptation of Brainiac's robot-skull-ship is pretty damn awesome.

I admit that the time travel aspect was something that caught me by surprise, but ultimately it's a somewhat smart move to keep this somewhat anchored in a deeper DC universe story that the audience would care a bit more about. It still doesn't instill me with that much confidence, though, because the characters feel more like pieces being moved around a board rather than actual characters. Seyg-El is just someone trying to figure out what's going on -- namely, the mysterious Fortress of Solitude that his grandfather (and his parents, at the end of the pilot) died to protect. He's 'bound' to the house of Vex, and the Vex patriarch was responsible for Seyg-El's grandfather's death, whereas the daughter, Nyssa-Vex, is 'bound' to him, some sort of loveless arranged marriage just to produce a child via the sterile Kryptonian birthing matrix (which is actually a cool scene).

Adam Strange (comics)

Meanwhile, the house of Zod are warriors and protectors of Krypton, and Lyta Zod is secretly fucking Seyg-El, being the 'true' love interest, a fact complicated when Lyta's mom is responsible for killing Seyg-El's parents. Albeit it's a decision that's implied to be more merciful than malicious, but still. None of these characters really feel fleshed out, and I understand that it's just the first episode, but it really feels more like pieces of a puzzle. Instead of a pilot episode introducing to us these characters and who they are, it feels more like a proof-of-concept about how the characters would interact.

Overall, other than the rather lifeless and limp excuse of an emotional core, there's really not that much to talk about this pilot episode. It does great in world-building exposition, of course, and the addition of a time-travelling Back to the Future/Terminator aspect is certainly more than welcome (and probably the only reason I'll even continue watching Krypton) but ultimately it feels very dry. There are a lot of plotlines set up here, like the terrorist organization Black Zero, the whole time travel, Brainiac, the enigmatic and silent many-faced Voice of Rao... but Krypton really has an uphill battle to really prove itself as being any more interesting than 'it's tangentially connected to a superhero I care about'.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

Brainiac (comics)

• While initially billed as a prequel to Man of Steel and the DCEU movies as a whole, other than featuring some of the same producers, Krypton has been confirmed to be its own continuity. 
• Seyg-El (not Seg-El, as he is spelled in this show) is Superman's paternal grandfather in the comics, and while he's got a fair bit of backstory detailed in the 80's series World of Krypton, this series is really the biggest role he's ever going to get. Seyg-El's named after one of Superman's real-life creators, Jerry Siegel. 
• Old Seyg-El's narration that opens the pilot seems to be a homage to Marlon Brando's Jor-El in the original Christopher Reeve Superman movie. 
• The entire aesthetic of the Fortress of Solitude, as well as the 'Sunstone' key emblazoned with an S-symbol,  is all taken mainly from the Christopher Reeve movie. 
• Val-El, identified here as Seyg-El's grandfather, is a very, very minor ancestor of Superman's who appeared in a grand total of one issue of the 80's Krypton Chronicles series.
• Val-El's cape has a black Superman symbol, which brings to mind the black S symbol on Superman's cape in the New 52 rebooted continuity. 
• The events of this series takes place in Kandor, most famously known as the Bottled City of Kandor in the comics, where the entire city was reduced into microscopic size enough to fit inside a bottle, and the location of many, many adventures for Superman and Supergirl. As a possible homage to this fate, Kandor in Krypton is covered with a glass dome. 
• Black Zero, in addition to serving as the supervillain names of several minor Superman enemies, is also shared with a group of Kryptonian terrorists -- which is what the Black Zero here seems to represent. The three Black Zero criminals that are sentenced to death are framed similarly to Zod, Ursa and Non in Superman and Superman II. 
• While the members of the House of Vex are original to the show, one of Zod's minions in Man of Steel was called Car-Vex. While Seyg-El and Nyssa-Vex's child is also called Car-Vex, the Car-Vex of Man of Steel is a woman whereas their child here is explicitly a boy. 
• While there isn't a specific entity called the Voice of Rao in the comics, Rao is the Kryptonian Sun God (as well as the name of the star Krypton orbits) and often used as an epithet by both Superman and Supergirl. 
• Dev-Em, the man bethroted to Nyssa-Vex, is the name of a time-travelling Kryptonian who battled Superboy briefly in the comics before becoming an ally of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Some retcons in the comics ended up turning his race into Daxamite instead of Kryptonian. 
• Seen in various signs and parchment are Kryptonian alphabet as codified in Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman series which finally give A-Z equivalent symbols in Kryptonian. 
• Val-El's Fortress of Solitude prominently features a Kryptonian man and woman holding a globe within them, which is the centerpiece of Superman's Fortress of Solitude in the comics, albeit the man and woman in Superman's Fortress are his Kryptonian parents. 
• Adam Strange, while perhaps not a familiar name to DC fans, is one of DC's longest-running characters, an Earthman who was trapped and sent into space, into the planet Rann through a phenomenon called a Zeta Beam that linked Earth and Rann together. Adam became a staunch protector of Rann with his jetpack and space guns, defending Rann from various extra-terrestrial threats, although the Zeta Beam radiation would run out and send him back to Earth at various intervals.
• Brainiac, a.k.a. Vril Dox, is one of Superman's most iconic and long-running enemies. Hailing from the technological race of the Coluans. Through his many, many appearances, Brainiac's most iconic modus operandi is to 'collect' intelligence and information about races, usually by shrinking and kidnapping entire cities or planets depending on the continuity. Brainiac's metallic skull-shaped ship was made iconic during the Silver Age, and his green-skinned form briefly seen here is based on his original appearance where he was a lot fleshier -- some modern interpretations turn Brainiac into wholly mechanical.