itt: consternation and wailing about Zach Snyder's upcoming SUPERMAN/BATMAN film/sequel to MAN OF STEEL -- official title: BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

those cartoons are magical. some of the coolest art deco design i have ever seen.

yeah the fleischer shorts are essential. not as much 'heart' as I and II and for that i'll give the edge to reeve. also hackman fucking around is kinda fun in a real old-school dumb villain way. the cartoons do kinda crush the movies in terms of visual effects and even just beauty in any given frame or minute of screen time. but that's only one aspect of what one goes to superheroes for.

i actually rewatched IV maybe a year ago. it's sooooooooooo bad. like the nuclear man stuff is mayyyybe okayish, if really one-dimensional. just very slightly better than your usual golan/globus schlock cause some of the effects look passably okay. (some by the way are UNBELIEVABLY bad, especially the flying scenes.) but i'd forgotten how much of that film is awwwwwful unfunny love-triangle hijinks with mariel hemingway (!) as a really badly-written lois rival, amidst a plot by her rich dad to take over the daily planet. none of those scenes work at all despite some stuff that's very classically superman and which we'd be gobsmacked and thrilled in 2016 to see in a superman film... clark and superman on overlapping dates, clark pretending to struggle on a first date at the gym. and then of course you have the nuclear disarmament story which really was not worked out very carefully at all but i do kinda love that they went there, same spirit as him turning back time in the first movie, like, okay, i guess in this world superman actually does succeed in eliminating the world's nuclear arsenal! cool!

i love how golan and globus were simulatenously making

- a film about a peacenik superman disarming the superpowers

- a bunch of movies about former US covert ops going into southeast asian jungles and nearly committing genocide

they would have made a movie with a pedophile superhero if they thought it'd make 3x its budget back

Like, if you’re just taking a cat out of a tree, you can’t touch anything or the arborists will say, ‘He damaged the tree branch when he got the cat down.’ Or, ‘The cat wasn’t neutered, so now there’s thousands of cats.’ There’s no winning any more for Superman.

this is reads so much like something from clickhole's 'they said what?!' section

Ohhhhhh God, I'm just now flashing back to some early 80s tv advert for either fish sticks or hashbrowns or some other prepared oven-baked breaded good that was completely ripping from the "Superman flies to Lois Lane's balcony" blue-nightgown and all, but any Google search comes up empty. Does anybody remember these? I think it was for some Obriens or Gordon's item?

The Superman III ep of How Did This Get Made brought this bit up that I'd completely forgotten: how Reeve pulls off drunk, date-rapey Evil Superman with Annette oToole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYj-L8n75IU

Other fun acting bit, which I think we've talked about before: the bodywork required to make the Clark Kent disguise work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIaF0QKtY0c

Which Frank Quitely deconstructed so well here:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly3p0cB91H1qc63ooo1_r1_1280.jpg

Supes IV just proved the Cold War was infecting every damn franchise.

I was waiting for "It's 2 Minutes to Midnight, Charlie Brown"

Is this close enough?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5171H6W9NJL.jpg

Let's Tear Down That Wall, Charlie Brown

i have a vague memory of snoopy doing some bit on jfk's ich bin eine berliner in the strips somewhere

i forgot what bookmark i'd clicked on, read that as "snoop" and was really confused for a second

Supes Upside Ya Head

All I remember about nuclear man is that he looks like a pro wrestler.

just like Superman!

lol the guy who played him is named Mark Pillow

For years I kept thinking he was Dolph Lundgren, or the ex-Chippendales guy from "Bachelor Party"

The doc "Electric Boogaloo" has an entertaining bit about Superman IV. Reeve didn't want to do it so they offered to do a plot he'd be interested in. His idea: Superman creates world peace. Which is an idea way above what Cannon was capable of.

coming out this november: it's going to be a beautiful wall, charlie brown

lol the guy who played him is named Mark Pillow

And to pile on the indignities (text via Cracked.com)

Bizarrely, the movie premiered in London as a charity event, with special guests Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Cannon inexplicably requested that the film's superheroes attend in costume, which may have been fun treat for the newly-wedded royal couple, were it not for one thing: Christopher Reeve did not come to the premiere in his Superman costume. In point of fact, he didn't come at all. Probably because even he thought that the movie was an "absolute mess."

This wouldn't have been a huge deal (Reeve's family attended in his absence), except for the fact that the poor schmuck who played Nuclear Man was now the only person at a highly-publicized event featuring the royal family dressed like a stupid asshole.

Nuclear Man isn't a recognizable character from the comics. Without someone else standing directly next to you in a Superman costume, no one is going to know who the hell you're supposed to be. So actor Mark Pillow was stuck explaining to every guest that he was Superman's nemesis, and that his bosses had requested he attend in costume, and that's why a thin layer of polyester was the only thing standing between the future King of England and his spandexed scrotum.

http://www.supermaniv.com/Superman_IV_BTS/41_Superman_IV_The_Quest_For_Peace_1987_Christopher_Reeve_Margot_Kidder_Lois_Lane_Marc_McClure_Jimmy_Olsen_Elstree_Studios_1986_Cannon_Pictures_Films_Milton_Keynes_1986.jpg

HahahahahHHhHAHAHAHh

nice.

Meantime

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-zack-snyder-defending-the-end-of-man-1763888746

i'm not really on board the Snyder hate train, but yeesh

the wonderful thing about superman is that over the last 78 years a lot of creative people have left their stamp on the character and the world he lives in, but (in mainstream continuity at least) throughout his many weird adventures he's remained more or less the same morally upright character who devotes his life to doing good works (obvious examples of superdickery aside, too).

it's impossible to square that with snyder's Now, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t now have a code ... but you’ll always have in the back of your mind this little of like, “Well, like how far can you push him?” Right? Like, if he sees Lois get hurt or he sees his mother get killed or something, you just made a really mad Superman that we know is capable of some really horrible stuff.

well, no. superman isn't capable of some really horrible stuff. that's the fucking bedrock of his character. if you can't think of a way to make that vital character trait interesteing then you have no right being involved in telling stories which involve him.

both superman returns and man of steel have some cringingly heavy-handed jesus imagery (as does the reeve original in places), yet they can't extend those clunky metaphors to the actual character. if you want to draw parallels with jesus you don't then get to go 'BUT WHAT IF JESUS WAS IN DANGER OF BECOMING AN ENRAGED MURDERER' too, because (in mainstream continuity at least) jesus is a pretty chill dude. ffs snyder is such a cretin.

Thank you. Very well put, and pretty much exactly why I have no interest in these movies. Go make a movie about an Ubermensch of your own creation if your only real interest is showing how destructive a potential force of destruction can be, you schmuck.

bizarro so otm

although having said all that i'm totally on board with a snyderised version of the life of jesus where some rippling-chested beefchrist trembles undertainly on the precipice of committing acts of genocide

AFAIC, this pretty much defines the core of Superman's appeal: “Of all the manifestations of power, restraint in the use of that power impresses people most.” When you stray from that, you're no longer writing Superman.

yeah, for sure.

in a just world, any future superman screenwriter should be handed this page and, every time thereafter when they write a line of superdialogue which conflicts with the character on this page, they will receive a painful and debilitating electric shock:

https://braveblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/pic013.jpg?w=538

Maybe Snyder should've directed a Maximortal movie instead. That seems much more well-suited to his sensibilities re: superheroes.

maybe Snyder should have done an Apollo/Midnighter movie instead

i'm sure he'd have a nuanced take on their romantic relationship

as long as he stays away from Icon, he can do whatever he wants

time for that long-awaited milestone universe / owls of gahoole crossover fans have been crying out for

Breaking: Zach Snyder and Jeph Loeb to reboot DC's Milestone imprint

bizarro otm

How much of the confused idiocy coupled with hyper-defensiveness over their chosen fondness for certain genre entertainment is Snyder's, and how much is Goyer's? And when paired together, does the idiocy add or multiply?

As I mentioned upthread, the lion's share of the blame lies at the feet of DC/WB. There will always be people out there who don't give a shit and would fuck up your property if given the opportunity. DC/WC has shown time and again that they neither know nor care about what gives their IP staying power, so they have no misgivings whatsoever about handing the keys over to creative types who share their lack of ethos.

tbh i think there's definitely room for a scary terrifying vengeful God-sort of Superman take. but this is not going to be it

(For which, again, see Veitch's Maximortal. Everyone should if they haven't already.)

if only there was a modern context for people to understand the plight of alien refugees maybe you could write a movie around that

I was trying to think of what it was that was bothering me about bizarro's take and then I realized it was the existence of Injustice: Gods Among Us (which really doesn't invalidate the point being made)

you could argue though that the movies are clearly an alternate what-if universe as compared to the comic book continuity and that the same leeway re: character interpretation should be granted but I didn't enjoy Man of Steel enough to champion that position

xp Superman sympathizing with immigrants? As a True American nobody's gonna buy that!

I am OK with Superman getting rid of his pussy no-killing code. I'm not OK with him Michael Baying an entire city.

technically that was Michael Shannon's fault

I love Michael Shannon but dear God was he a horrible Zod

i am gonna see this opening night but I'm afraid I might accidentally like it.

still tho the entire trailer = a city getting pancaked over stilted dialogue so i'm prolly ok

All these dark takes on a Superman character(e.g. Irredeemable/Uncorruptable/the dad in Invincible) only work because you have Superman to bounce off of. You can't do this take with Superman himself being the only God-level character in your universe. Even Superman III had two versions which could fight.