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Smallville--Superman
as a teenager--portrays young Clark Kent (Tom Welling) not as the noble
Superman-in-waiting, but as an average teen with some not-so-ordinary
supernatural powers, including incredible strength and heat vision (Clark hasn't
lifted up, up, and away as of yet). Clark's desire to fit in with his peers and
make sense of his extraordinary abilities ground him in very realistic and
identifiable terms for the series' primarily under-25 audience, as does his
appealing and tentative romance with Kristen Kreuk as Clark's dreamgirl Lana
Lang. But Smallville also strikes gold when it takes a turn towards more
comic book territory, as evidenced by the parade of shape-shifting
killers and other outlandish antagonists (many generated, in one of
the series' most ingenious notions, by the same devastating meteor
shower that brought the infant Clark to Earth) that Clark must harness
his powers to face and defeat. |
