Kevin Smith, the ultimate comic book fanboy, director, and writer has his sights set on Arrow. After he successfully directed an episode of The Flash in season 2 and has confirmed that he is definitely returning to direct another episode in season 3, Smith is trying to jump headfirst into the world of superhero TV on The CW. Smith has plenty of experience behind the camera with cult classic films including Clerks and Mallrats, and his bizarre upcoming sequel to Tusk, Yoga Hosers. While the industry mostly knows him as a director first, Smith is also a talented writer.
In fact, Smith tried his hand at penning comic books back in 2001, most notably with 15 issues of Green Arrow in which he created and introduced a brand new villain – Onomatopoeia. Most fans praised this odd new supervillain; a masked serial killer with a taste for murdering powerless heroes. He got his name from his rare ability to imitate sounds around him. Basically, Onomatopoeia said his own sound effects, which showed up in a creepy little bubble above his head on the page. Smith previously had the chance to bring his unique villain to life in season 1 of Arrow, but determined that the translation from page to screen would be a daunting task.
Now that Kevin Smith has his heart set on writing an episode (or two) of Arrow, he wants to adapt Onomatopoeia into a live-action villain. This still brings up the basic question of how - a question that Smith recently addressed in an interview with Den of Geek:
“I’ve figured out a way to do it that is kinda bad-ass and also connects to comics more or less. So instead of just doing the actual sound – which to me, in the real world, would be like the dude from Police Academy making noises with his mouth – he’ll just have little cards. Business cards that have typewritten words of whatever the f---. So instead of him saying ‘blam’, you’d find this card on your desk and turn around and ‘blam’, he’d shoot you and stuff like that. Which I think is a little more chilly, you know, for doing it in live action.
“On a comic book page, those big word balloons with a tiny word in it were so f---ing sweet. It looks beautifully graphic, like, at the same time it creates an image of ‘this is weird’. But I don’t know if audibly making noises would ever work in the real world, so I think those cards would be bad-ass, man. So [you read] ‘slit’, and you’re like 'slit?', and then all of a sudden you turn around he cuts your f---ing throat and dude just cocks his head Michael Myers style and watches you go down."
Of course, there's still no guarantee that he'll actually get the opportunity, as the interest in a live-action Onomatopoeia is still pretty one-sided:
“Oh my god, I would love that so much. I’ve not heard from anybody over there, even though I’ve talked about it in the press quite a bit and stuff... I know I’m going back to The Flash, first week of September, to direct episode 7 of season 3. Still haven’t heard anything back from Arrow. You know, I wish, it would be amazing because I would love to write and direct Onomatopoeia in the show... At the moment, anyone over there raises a flag; I’m like ‘please, let me in!’”
It sounds like Smith finally has this all figured out – with the use of sound effects written on note cards (or a similar approach). This might cause some issue with how quickly an action sequence could take place, considering the villain would constantly be taking a few seconds to find a pen, write down a sound, and toss a note card into the fight. Either way, Smith is thinking about this in detail, and if the Arrow showrunners are down, we may end up seeing Onomatopoeia sometime soon.
Arrow season 5 is scheduled to premiere on Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 8PM ET; The Flash season 3 is slated to air on Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 8PM ET; DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will return on Thursday, October 13, 2016 at 8PM ET, Supergirl will make its season 2 debut on The CW on Monday, October 10, 2016 also at 8PM ET.
Source: Den of Geek