The Name Of The Game (The Boys)

"The Name of the Game" is the first episode of the first season and series premiere of the American superhero television series ''The Boys'', based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis. It is set in a universe where most of the superpowered individuals are portrayed as corrupt individuals instead of being the heroes that the general public believe they are. The episode was written by the series showrunner Eric Kripke and directed by Dan Trachtenberg.

Originally Cinemax announced that an adaptation of the comic book series ''The Boys'' was in development with Kripke set to develop it in April 2016. However, the rights for the adaptation were passed to Amazon who greenlighted the series in November 2017. The episode follows Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) being recruited by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) to the titular Boys, after her girlfriend Robin Ward (Jess Salgueiro) is accidentally killed by A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). Meanwhile Annie January is forced to realize the truth about the heroes she admired after joining the supehero group The Seven.

"The Name of the Game" was released on the streaming service Amazon Prime Video on July 26, 2019. The episode received positive reviews from critics with praise for the visual style, direction, performances, black humor, and its faithfulness to the comics. It received a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One-Hour).

Plot

The episode starts with Queen Maeve stopping a kidnapped bank van from killing two kids who were discussing who would win in a fight between the Deep and Translucent. The bank robbers are overpowered by Homelander, revealing that the series takes place in a universe where the superpowered individuals are called Supes and are very common and recognized as heroes by the general public.

Hughie Campbell is a salesman working for the Bryman Audio, struggling to convince his boss to get him a raise. While discussing his uncertain future with his girlfriend Robin Ward, the latter is accidentally torn apart by A-Train with his speed and runs away, while Hughie starts to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder due to the events. Hughie attempts to file a lawsuit against Vought International, but his father Hughie Campbell Sr., attempts to convince him to accept the company's offer, a $45,000 settlement, fearing that the corporation is too powerful to defeat, much to the former's dismay.

Meanwhile, an aspiring superhero Annie January is accepted to join the superhero group the Seven, as a replacement to Lamplighter's, following the latter's retirement. At the Seven's headquarters, after leaning Annie tells the Deep that she had a crush on him as a kid, the latter masturbates in front to her much to the former's horror. The Deep proceeds to blackmail Annie into performing oral sex on him or he will tell Homelander that she attacked him, which would lead her to be thrown out of the Seven.

Hughie is approached by Billy Butcher, apparently a FBI agent who is aware of the truth behind Robin's death. He proceeds to show Hughie that the Supes are really corrupt and selfish when they are outside their heroic personas and that they lose hundreds of people a year, but Vought keep this as a secret to hide the truth from the people and ensure that the Seven continue to be loved by the public. Butcher takes Hughie to a secret "Supes Club" to show him security footage of A-Train laughing about Robin's death and offers Hughie the chance to expose the Supes by accepting Vought's settlement so he can enter the tower of the Seven and hide a microphone, but Hughie initially refuses. The next day he meets Annie at Central Park where both have a conversation and reflect over how their lives have changed over the course of the previous day. The two of them motivate each other with Hughie changing his mind and deciding to accept Butcher's deal, while Annie decides to remain in the Seven and stand up against his colleagues.

Hughie calls a lawyer from Vought to accept the deal in exchange of receiving an apology from A-Train in person. Hughie arrives at the Seven Tower where he reluctantly accepts the apology from A-Train. Billy successfully hides the microphone though he is unaware that Translucent watched him. After Butcher drops Hughie back at his work, the latter is attacked by Translucent who followed him and removed the bug, though Butcher arrives to fight him. Though initially Translucent has the advantage, Hughie proceeds to electrocute him and apparently kill him where Butcher confesses that he is not in the FBI.

Elsewhere, Vought International vice president Madelyn Stillwell, offers the Mayor of Baltimore one of Vought's Supes the Nubian Prince for a $300 million/year deal, but the Mayor refuses and proceeds to blackmail Stilwell by exposing the truth of the existence of something known as the "Compound V". In response, Homelander destroys the Mayor of Baltimore's plane while in flight, killing every passenger including the Mayor and his son, much to Homelander's joy.

Production

Development

An adaptation of the comic book series ''The Boys'' was initially developed as a feature-length film in 2008. However, after several failed attempts to produce the film causing it to be in development hell for several years, the plans for a film were scrapped in favor of a television series. In 2016, it was announced that the show would be developed by Cinemax, with Erick Kripke being hired to serve as the series showrunner and writer, alongside Evan Goldberg, and Seth Rogen who would direct the pilot episode. In November 2017, Amazon acquired the rights to develop the show, announcing that they would be producing over eight episodes for the first season, while confirming that the previously announced creative team would still be attached to the series. On 2018, Dan Trachtenberg was hired to direct the pilot episode for the series replacing Goldberg and Rogen due to scheduling conflicts, though the duo would remain as the series executive producers. The episode which was written by Kripke and directed by Trachtenberg, is titled "The Name of the Game" which takes the same title of the Vol. 1 of the comic book series of the same name that covers the issues #1–6, while using its cover to reassemble the series teaser poster.

Writing

Kripke made major changes from the comics for the series, intending to achieve more realism to the series. To achieve that, Kripke decided to make what would be one of the major changes of the show which would be replace Jack from Jupiter with a more human character known as Translucent. This is because he considered Jack's alien form to be too fantastical for the world he wanted to create, though he kept the same powers which similarly to the comics is the indestructible skin. One of the biggest changes from the comics made to the television series is Starlight's being sexually assaulted, as unlike in the comics where she is assaulted by Black Noir, Homelander and A-Train, for the series she is only assaulted by The Deep. Kripke deemed this very hard to adapt due to the Me Too movement, leading to several discussions of how to adapt it.

Also a major change that was done from the comics, was the way they adapted the character of Hughie Campbell. Originally the character is interpreted as a Scottish man with little to no hair which reassembles the appearance of English actor Simon Pegg. Originally it was planned to have Pegg to portray Hughie when the comic was being adapted as a film, but as the films suffered several delays until the project was abandoned, he grew too old to portray the character. Instead, Pegg was given a recurring role to portray Hughie's father in the show for a few episodes, while American actor Jack Quaid took over the role of Hughie, being the reason why the character was portrayed as an American in the show instead of Scottish, though the same story elements from the character's in the comics remain intact in the show. Another of the major characters that went through a change was the character of James Stillwell who for the series is gender-swapped and named Madelyn. Unlike her counterpart of the comics, she it is not interpreted as a sociopath like her comic counterpart but instead making her a more human and sympathetic character.

Casting

The episode main cast includes Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie Campell, Anthony Starr as Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Annie January, Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve, Jessie T. Usher as A-Train, Chance Crawford as The Deep, Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir, and Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell. Also starring are Simon Pegg as Hugh Campbell Sr., Alex Hasell as Transucent, Shaun Benson as Ezekiel, Ann Cusack as Donna January, Colby Minifie as Ahsley Barrett, Jaden Martin as Jamie, Jess Salguiero as Robin Ward, Bruce Novakowski as Doug Friedman, and Paulino Nunes as the Mayor of Baltimore. Laz Alonso, Tomer Capon and Karen Fukuhara are credited for their respective characters as Mother's Milk, Frenchie and Kimiko, though none of them make an appearance at the episode. End credits begin at 58:09. Jimmy Fallon makes a cameo appearance as an alternate version of himself for the episode.

Filming

It was revealed that the filming of the first season would be taking place in the city of Toronto, though the series took place at New York City. Filming began in May 2018, with the crew choosing several locations across the city of Toronto, to recreate the New York City where the series took place. One of the filming locations took place at the Roy Thomson Hall, in order to recreate the exterior of the Vought International company headquarters better known as the Seven Tower. While the show was mostly filmed in Toronto, it was confirmed that the series was also filmed partially in other two cities which are Mississauga and Hamilton. Jeff Cutter was the director of photography for the first episode of the season, having already previously worked with long-time collaborator Dan Trechtenberg in the film ''10 Cloverfield Lane''.

Visual effects

Visual effects for the episode were created by DNEG TV, Framestore, Folks VFX, Mavericks VFX, Method Studios, Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies VFX, Mr. X, Pixomondo, Rocket Science VFX, Rodeo FX, and Soho VFX. It was announced that visual effects supervisor Stephan Fleet would be in charge of overseeing the development for the visual effects. The scene where A-Train accidentally kills Robin was originally intended to use practical effects, but eventually it was decided that it would be made of CGI instead due to the complexity of the shooting and the time it would have taken to film the scene if they used practical blood, while the canvas for Robins' dead body floating in the air took several months to finish. Due to its complexity to shoot and achieve it, the visual effects team took over eight months to complete the scene with Fleet stating "It took us the better part of eight months to nail down the look and tone and storytelling of that shot," he says. "It was just an incredibly challenging piece and big, big props to DNEG for pulling that off." The scene was filmed with a Phantom camera at around 500 frames per second, while using a Bolt High-Speed Cinebot rig in a robotic positioned arm in order to get the camera fast moved as possible. The scene wasn't entirely made by CGI, as it is revealed that the blood splattered in Jack Quaid was practical.

It was revealed that the last scene of the season of the series to be filmed would be the pilot episode's opening scene, where Homelander and Queen Maeve foil a truck robbery. The motive of doing this was because Kripke considered that it was important to keep most of the effects grounded and considered that the scene would be teasing the kind of world that would be eventually presented in the series. The crew revealed that for the scene they decided to crash a real truck in the street, while the scene of Queen Maeve's appearance was filmed apart and then added through CGI. The VFX company behind the scene, Framestore created a CGI double for McElligott's for the part where she leaps over a car crash of several digitally-replaced police vehicles and stops a hi-jacked bank truck with her body, while the VFX team had to add detailed debris from the crash in slow motion. Mr. X was in charge for creating the visual effects for the fight between Butcher and Translucent, where the latter's double actor used a gray tracking suit to be erased in order to capture the animation reference track a digi-double of the Translucent character and simulate blood on him and add effects of him turning on and off, for which Urban was forced to practice regularly the fight sequence. For the ending scene where Homelander destroyed a plane, Starr was attached to a wire in order to capture the essence of his character flying, while his cap was created through CGI by visual effects company DNEG. For Homelander's heat vision, the visual effects team managed to get refined the right kind of anamorphic lens flare intending to make them unique for to play into the character.

Music

The episode features the following songs which are "Barracuda" by Heart, "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" by Chris Isaak, "London Calling" by The Clash, and " The Passenger" by Iggy Pop. The episode also featured a track from '' The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' soundtrack which was "Take You Down" by Daniel Pemberton.

Release

"The Name of the Game" premiered on Prime Video in the United States on July 26, 2019. It was released alongside all the episodes from the season which were released the same date the episode was released.

Reception

"The Name of the Game" received positive reviews from critics. Brian Tallerico from ''Vulture'' rated the episode with 3 stars out of 5, praising it for introducing the grim world for the series and the themes it seeks to portray like breaking the typical old superhero myth "It's a tough balance for a comic book to maintain, but the source material had the freedom of time between trips into this grimy world, whereas Amazon is asking us to wallow in the muck for eight episodes in a row. Keeping a world in which superheroes sexually assault and murder with a twinkle in their eye from becoming too brutal to take is going to be this show's greatest challenge." While writing a review for the episode at '' TVLine'', Kimberly Roots had a positive reaction to the episode for the series by stating that "Superheroes are preening sacks of something-or-other in Amazon's ''The Boys'', the comic-book adaptation helmed by ''Supernaturals Eric Kripke. Though seemingly upright and good-hearted, the "superabled" men and women of a league known as The Seven actually are degenerates who overindulge in every vice and even kill the innocent." Samantha Nelson from '' The Escapist'' praised the performances and its faithfulness to the source material to which he commented "As a nice nod to the comics, Simon Pegg makes an appearance as Hughie's father, urging him to move on with his life and accept the things he can't control. Instead it looks like Hughie's willing to burn his old life to the ground and have fun doing it."

Randy Dankievitch from ''Tilt Magazine'' considered that the episode manage to breaks the old myths from other superheroes projects "If this is just another story of men fighting other men over who is ''right'' until the end of time, ''The Boys'' is never going to be able to entrench itself as a fundamentally different take on the superhero ethos, no matter how effective this first hour is at stripping away the inherent emotional, sexual, and moral sterility of the iconic stories it's satirizing." Greg Wheeler from ''The Review Geek'' rated the episode with 4 stars out of 5 by stating that "As an opening episode, The Boys does well to set the tone and mood for the series to follow. Butcher is certainly an endearing character and Starlight's talk with Hughie on the bench near the end of the episode is a nice inclusion, doing well to foreshadow future events for them both to undertake in the future." Darryl Jasper from ''ScienceFiction.com'' praised the episode for the departure of the particular themes and the frequent portrayal of superheroes and commenting that the show is wildly entertaining and somewhat cynical representation of the superhero genre that embraces this and the often quoted aphorism of how power corrupts.

Accolades

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Name of the Game, The
2019 American television episodes
American television series premieres
Television episodes directed by Dan Trachtenberg
Television episodes written by Eric Kripke
Television episodes set in New York City
The Boys (TV series) episodes