Usually when there is an unexpected father-son reunion after… tumultuous past, there are two ways of representing it: either it is a riot of instant forgiveness, moved tears and filial love; or it is the fair of bombastic phrases “ill-omened! scoundrel! swindler! I will not forgive you until the end of the universe! you will now pay for what you have done to me!!!”
Instead, the dialogue between Mark and Nolan was so realistic that it could be written in screenwriting manuals! Mark was so angry and confused and scared that he didn’t even know what to say or how to act. There was also happiness in seeing his father again, but buried by the mass of negative feelings. And Nolan was also worried and confused by his son’s reaction, knew he was wrong but didn’t really want to apologize, feeling anger at the impasse and trying to suppress it so as not to ruin everything.
Am I the only one who really liked their dialogue?
Comparing this to the comic, I loved the show’s version of it more.
The original had Mark begging Nolan to come back because his mom was heartbroken (this was after he told Mark the truth and killed the Guardians) but the show had him rightfully angry that he spent six days of travel to supposedly save a planet from meteor showers only to be shown he had another kid (which puts the line “What’s 17 more years?” in a new perspective)
But Mark was still nice enough to at least hear him out a bit and fight off the Viltrumites. I really want to see how the show does Oliver.
It was a really nice good combination of what I wanted for the show and what the comic did.
I loved it. It felt natural, and complicated. Mark is young, impressionable, but loved his dad. Looked up to his dad. It’s only naturally for him to feel so conflicted and it felt very well written during that dialogue. He wasn’t even angry at Nolan’s wife or his new Half-brother, but rather at Nolan. Ugh so good