DARNA 2022 and the Futility of Reviewing a Teleserye

 Here’s what I think about the new Darna TV series.

  

For her brief time in the role, Iza Calzado (as the "original" Darna) was the best Darna we never had.  As for the show’s actual star, newcome Jane De Leon is a fairly good actress and is very impressive in her action scenes—as Narda.   

 

 

Her Darna on the other hand is a bit rough and unsure of herself, but she’s supposed to be.  At this point in the story, she’s portrayed as the newbie superhero still feeling her way through things, so I reckon she’ll grow into the role as the series progresses.

They just really can't help but do the damn bracelet thing.

One problem, though, is that except for the scene above, the rest of Darna's action scenes end way too quickly.  Most of the time, when dealing with ordinary criminals and emergencies, she just whizzes by at super speed to mop everything up.  And when she deals with other super-powered beings--well, we'll get to that later.

 

 

They made some drastic changes to Darna’s origin, but I didn’t think it was a dealbreaker.  They didn’t so much change the story as remixed it, with some callbacks to the Mars Ravelo original, plus elements from later stories by other writers.

I liked the character of Mang Rolando, the kakanin vendor who turns out to be something of a scientist himself.  I though it was an interesting twist on the “mysterious old man” archetype.

 

We haven’t seen much of Janella Salvador’s Valentina, just one full episode and some brief flashes here and there.  But the show chooses to plays up the mystery, portraying her less as a sensuous serpentine supervillainess and more of a scary slithering nightmare.

  

For the most part, Salvador portrays Regina, a passionate crusading lawyer who is tortured by her snake-haired alter ego.  At this point she is Narda’s best friend, so we have yet to see the normally sweet-natured actress make a full villainous turn.

With the exception of Valentina, the series ignores most of the traditional Darna villains in favor of newly-created foes, which keeps things fresh, I guess.  At the moment, the actual big bad is General Borgo, an evil alien from the planet Marte who is manipulating things from the sidelines.  I like that his helmet resembles Darna's headgear, both being from the same world and all.  Otherwise, his overall design is pretty boring.  And then there's his female assistant, who starts out scantily-clad, then gradually acquires more clothing with each appearance.

 

Probably the most annoying antagonist in the show is the corrupt mayor.  If there's one thing I hate, it's a smug, sleazy, sneering villain, and in that regard the actor playing the character does a good job in making him as unlikable as possible.  He's so sincere about how bad he is and so insincere about everything else that you just want to punch him, and the dude does have a very punchable presence.

The main threat of the show are the so-called "Extras," humans who gained extraordinary (get it?) powers after being exposed to irradiated fragments from an alien cyborg (why did everyone immediately assume it was a cyborg rather than just an alien or a robot?  Are cyborgs so common that they know exactly what one looks like?).  Of the three Extras (not counting Valentina) that have appeared on the show, only two of them were actually evil, the first of which Narda encountered before she got her powers.  The third one, the Killer Ghost, is the first actual villainous Extra that Darna faces in her official capacity as a superheroine.

And that's when it got stupid.

#DarnaVsGhost - The most accurate episode title ever.

 

This broke me so bad that it killed any interest I had in the show, as well as my motivation in even continuing this review that I'm questioning why I even keep doing this.

I mean, it’s hard to review an ongoing local television series.  You can’t really judge them fairly from just the first episode.  With their soap opera format, you really have to watch several weeks’ worth of episodes in order to get a proper consensus.  Like, you may be singing its praises at first, but then you get to week 5 and you see that one episode that just changes your entire opinion on it.  It puts into perspective all of the episodes you’ve previously seen and you start to ask yourself: This is the show we’ve been waiting all these years for?

And you can rant and rave about how dumb it all is and voice out the same old complaints, but no one really listens.  The same mistakes keep getting made time and again.  Nothing ever changes.  Then someone will get on your case because how dare you criticize the thing that they like?

If you don't see what the problem is, I don't know what to tell you that hasn't already been said over and over again.  Heck, you may like it for the exact same reason that I don’t.  Why bother?

So, I'll just say this; if you happen to like the show, cool.  Just watch it because you actually like it.  Not because everybody else is, not because it’s trending, not out of blind devotion to whatever network is producing it.  Watch it either because you genuinely find something of value in it or simply because it entertains you on some level.  Even if you like it for some inexplicable, undefinable reason, that’s all right, too.  As long as you continue to find it enjoyable, then by all means, support it.

But if you start to notice the cracks, don’t watch in denial.  Recognize the flaws for what they are, and if you find that you’re not enjoying yourself anymore, you can either keep watching to see if it’ll get any better or decide not to waste any more time with it.

It’s up to you.