Can you believe it’s been more than 21 years since Smallville first premiered on the CW, way back when it was still called The WB? The small-screen Superman prequel was considered comfort TV from the start, with its premiere airing around a month after the 9/11 attacks. While now may seem to be a great time to develop a Smallville reboot, its creators don’t believe the concept would work as well if it were made today.
Smallville was a coming-of-age series about Kryptonian Clark Kent growing up in Smallville, Kansas after arriving in the small town via a meteor shower that had devastating effects on the residents. Would this oft-reshashed origin story work in the 2020s? While speaking to THR, Smallville creator Alfred Gough shared why he doesn’t believe a reboot would work as well with audiences today as the O.G. series did back in the early 2000s, saying:
To be honest, no. I think we told that story, and they’re always refreshing Superman. I just read last night that James Gunn’s writing a new younger Superman movie, and I’m like, ‘OK.’ I feel like we were very, very fortunate to do the show when we did it because we got to make the show we wanted to make, and frankly, there was no committee sitting over us telling us what we could or couldn’t do. I mean, we had Warner’s features, who wouldn’t give us certain characters that we wanted, but we got to make the show we wanted to make which we wouldn’t be allowed to make that show today. There were so many deviations from the canon. One generation’s heresy is the next generation’s gospel.
It’s true that Alfred Gough’s Superman prequel series took on many deviations from comic book canon. For example, Clark’s best friend Chloe was written into the series for a love triangle story with Clark and Lana, with the latter pairing's love story being expanded across seven seasons as opposed to being a short-lived first love. Clark and to-be-archnemesis Lex Luthor also grew up together as friends, rather than them hashing their issues out as adults. Not to mention, Clark was not without flaws in Smallville, as he entered fights that he couldn’t win and made terrible decisions along the way. James Gunn will probably also make some unique choices for his Superman prequel movie, perhaps by making it more like Matt Reeves’ The Batman, which could mean we'll be watching a moody, if optimistic, teenager lurking around in dark settings.
Creators today aren't quite as free to play around with DC characters as they were back in the early 2000s, though Smallville's entire hook rests on the fact that they couldn't make a straightforward Superman show. Now, especially after the Warner Bros. Paramount merger, show creators have even more fine print to wade through in order to bring such beloved characters to the screen. Smallville creator Miles Miller continued to share more on what would be considered controversial in the WB’s Superman origin story.
The whole premise of the show was not canon. The idea that Clark arrived in the meteor shower that killed people, and that Lex was there. All those things were completely new, added to the mythology of Superman, but we categorically would not be allowed to make that show and make those changes today, which is a real tragedy because I think what’s amazing if you look at the history of comics and these characters, is they’re always evolving. They never stand still, and the idea that there’s a certain canon you have to [follow], it’s actually leading to stagnation in terms of the ideas. Some of it’s, there’s obviously the cat calls from fandom, which people probably listen to too much that really, really has led to self-censoring, and we were still very privileged to have had that moment where we were actually free to do whatever we wanted, and it was it was amazing and very liberating.
These two creators have also shared what they would change about their series if they were able to do it all over again. One alteration would be that the Clark-Lana love story would not have gone on as long as it did. I stand by that being a winning suggestion, as well their idea that Clark and Lana's subplot should have taken place a few seasons in, to represent Clark’s first love with more emphasis on the legendary love story he would later have with Lois Lane. Plus, the Lana-Clark-Chloe love triangle was pretty cringeworthy to watch, but still fairly typical in any teen series.
Millar also pointed out that the character of Lana Lane would have been a much stronger one instead of constantly being put in damsel-in-distress situations. I second that one as well. If we're voicing ideas for changes, how about flipping that one Smallville death we wish didn’t happen when Chloe’s husband Jimmy Olsen was murdered. And one would assume if the show was made today, it would likely embrace a more diverse group of cast and crew members.
So, there’s a good chance that Smallville would not work today, least of all as a CW series, given the network's content culling following the Nexstar Media buyout. The pilot episode of Smallville will always stay true in our hearts, though, as it gave audiences an origin story of Superman they have never seen before, and it can be streamed now with a Hulu subscription.
