You Want Superman Revamp? [Also the Man of Steel (2013) thread]

to think if they'd sold to Golan Globus a few years earlier we coulda had a Supes-Delta Force crossover

i honestly don't think they blew it with Man Of Steel, in that now that his character is established, the sequel could restore his "saves everyone, even the puppy" boy scout qualities, introduce an interesting bete noire in Luthor, and be The Dark Knight to Steel's Batman Begins. Unfortunately they've decided they have to introduce not only a new batman but an entire justice league in the same movie they try to make people like Superman again. Good luck, guys!

why is superman's character interesting? he's basically all-powerful, and a complete do-gooder.

it's an immigrant story - he's a literal alien who's bought the american dream more than most born in american. put him up against luthor - a corruptor of that dream who doesn't think superman has any right to it, and uses techniques that superman can't shoot a heat ray at - and you can get some drama there.

not that zack snyder can conceive of any of this beyond the level of a levi's ad

it's an immigrant story with an all-powerful immigrant who is quickly loved and relied-upon by the entire country he repeatedly saves. there's a fascinating immigrant-story to tell involving a fictitious superhero, but this doesn't sound like it.

they really need to get away from Superman as Jesus IMO

U mad superman is the ultimate immigrant story

Xp

he's all-powerful, sure, but as croupier pointed out above, only to an extent. he's an alien hiding in plain sight by pretending to be a civilian (blah blah monologue from Kill Bill 2), estranged from his people due to a mild case of planet explosion.

Superman's being all-powerful increases the scope of how far Luthor/the other baddies can push him. Batman's mostly confined to Gotham cos well he's human, can't fly, and his gadgets frequently get blown up, plus he gets injured pretty frequently. Supes is based in Metropolis but he's essentially protecting the entire US and Luthor enjoys tormenting him by doing things like sending him back and forth across the country to prevent multiple disasters at the same time.

if anything, being all powerful just increases the scope of his torment because when he fails, it points out that even being essentially invincible isn't enough to defeat the forces of 'evil'.

doesn't add up. he isn't shunned and hunted for all his life, or forced to work in deplorable conditions just to get by; he's superman, who found a way to integrate seamlessly into open society (by putting on a pair of glasses), and beloved by everyone for his heroics.

(xxpostonite)

it's an immigrant story with an all-powerful immigrant who is quickly loved and relied-upon by the entire country he repeatedly saves.

well see you're asking what's interesting about him and then shoving in details that aren't inherent in the story. he CAN be interesting - the fact that he's become this icon when really he's this awkward dude with dad issues - but yeah, he's easily made less so.

xpost he does have to deal with things like fear of his mega Superdick accidentally disemboweling his lovers too

i mean yeah it's a kids story. if you want to say "no, no, it's bullshit, i mean wtf he puts on glasses and no one recognizes him" congrats you've outthunk a comic book

Supes is based in Metropolis but he's essentially protecting the entire US and Luthor enjoys tormenting him by doing things like sending him back and forth across the country to prevent multiple disasters at the same time.

if anything, being all powerful just increases the scope of his torment because when he fails, it points out that even being essentially invincible isn't enough to defeat the forces of 'evil'.

― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Sunday, April 27, 2014

my last post was to shakey. this notion, above, could form the basis of an interesting character, but i rarely see it played out. they did this in the dark knight, too, when the joker ran batman ragged, with decoys and head-fakes.

i mean yeah it's a kids story. if you want to say "no, no, it's bullshit, i mean wtf he puts on glasses and no one recognizes him" congrats you've outthunk a comic book

― da croupier, Sunday, April 27, 2014

don't deny me my greatest achievements.

yes, if it's a kid's story, you're right; don't look deeply into it. that type of story just wouldn't appeal to me. YMMV.

xxpost Luthor essentially did this in Superman 1! after crippling him w/ Kryptonite, he sets off multiple warheads on opposite sides of the US and dares Supes to stop them both! and in fact, Superman arrives too late to save Lois, which woulda been an awesome conclusion if not immediately followed by the biggest motherfucking plot hole in the history of movies.

Cant save his adopted dad from dying, ultimately always alone, cant bring back his home planet or people, has to hide his true nature all the time

plenty o pathos to be mined here if thats what u need. If yr primary concern is "its too easy for him to beat bad guys", I dunno thats kind of minor, and there are plenty of canonical bad guys that confound Supes' supposed innate superiority. Metalli, Brainiac, the Tyrant Sun, the sillier ones like bizarro and mxyzpltlk...

Many xps

(now I will fully admit I am speaking solely from the movies and the 30s-40s era comics of Supes I read, so I more than welcome someone with more of a vested interest to step in)

XPOST BEFORE ZOD

comic book stories feature absurd, inexplicable things (like a guy who can stop power locomotives) and (ideally) resonant dramatic allegories. if one negates the other for you, tough shit your movie theaters gonna puke 'em at for you the next decade

Metallo

i do wish snyder would find the gritty, more "realistic" way for superman to re-employ his "spin the world backwards and turn back time" power.

anyway w/ his 'abilities', Superman ultimately isn't supposed to be merely an 'action hero' guy, which is where the latest film I think got it wrong by basically turning the 45 minutes into Kryptonians turning a city into mush. I mean, yeah, when you make a Supes movie, you gotta have montages of him showing off his powers, that's a given. Supes I and II managed to keep the balance between that and his Kent persona nicely, so that by the time you arrive at the Kryptonian Royal Rumble at the end of Supes II it's been built up to and is riveting, and yet the climax is basically Superman being smart enough to protect his city by moving the fight away from the civilians!

Luthor essentially did this in Superman 1! after crippling him w/ Kryptonite, he sets off multiple warheads on opposite sides of the US and dares Supes to stop them both! and in fact, Superman arrives too late to save Lois, which woulda been an awesome conclusion if not immediately followed by the biggest motherfucking plot hole in the history of movies.

― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Sunday, April 27, 2014

was this the christpher reeves movie? been so long since i saw that, i can't even remember it (except that reeves and the lois character had real chemistry).

plenty o pathos to be mined here if thats what u need. If yr primary concern is "its too easy for him to beat bad guys", I dunno thats kind of minor, and there are plenty of canonical bad guys that confound Supes' supposed innate superiority. Metalli, Brainiac, the Tyrant Sun, the sillier ones like bizarro and mxyzpltlk...

― How dare you tarnish the reputation of Turturro's yodel (Shakey Mo Collier), Sunday, April 27, 2014

you're right; the he let-his-dad-die thing was interesting.

comic book stories feature absurd, inexplicable things (like a guy who can stop power locomotives) and (ideally) resonant dramatic allegories. if one negates the other for you, tough shit your movie theaters gonna puke 'em at for you the next decade

― da croupier, Sunday, April 27, 2014

like i said, fair enough. but the batman movie was interesting, especially the michael keaton ones, to me, because of the tortured and unwell mental state of the character. the iron man movie was interesting to me because of how the character's arrogance potentially got in the way of his heroics. so there's a lot to be done with superhero films, i think. but yes, i think the world would be a better place if we had a 10-year moratorium on superhero films.

though man even supes II has that "haha pulled a switcheroo on ya somehow, now to throw you into the random death oits i've got at my house"

death PITS, i meant

xxpost c'mon even by comic standards the time turning thing was ridic - I mean if he had that power why not keep doing it til like he arrives in 1930s Germany and kills Hitler or something. basically any time he fails he can just spin that world backwards and go 'oops do over'.

not to mention, how many other people died the first time around in that lil disaster that he didn't go back and save after time was 'restarted' simply cos they didn't look good in a nightgown.

man it's embarrassing how much more poignant dad's stroke in Superman was than Kevin Costner being a dick in a tornado was in Man Of Steel

Supes II has holes too, yeah. and namely how he got his powers back, which was of course explained in the cut footage. I will say though I wasn't a big fan of the Richard Donner cut of the film, although it did some things better. actually the first half hour it did better I think.

tough shit your movie theaters gonna puke 'em at for you the next decade

― da croupier, Sunday, April 27, 2014

ew.

yeah the entire first suite in Supes 1 is genuinely affecting as hell, to the point where he first takes flight as Superman it's almost a spontaneous applause moment. Costner's tornado moment was one of those 'look around at other audience members to see if you're in on a practical joke and they're gonna show the real scene next' moments.

like, did they mean to set up a situation where clark has these issues thanks to a paranoid red state dude but then he meets his real dad who turns out to be a real dragon-riding, eco-conscious badass?

maybe he heard Shoeless Joe's voice in the tornado or something idk

Snyder got a few moments right, like his mother talking to him when he's locked in the closet and stuff, but then we have moments like Superman dealing w/ a dick bar patron by flinging his semitruck on top of a telephone poll.

*pole

maybe i'm underestimating snyder - superman is america, jor-el is blue states, pa kent is red, and supes likes to beat the shit out of people from outside america (which he is!), even if it means wrecking his own cities.

WOAH.

sometimes I think Snyder makes films without thinking about how each piece fits into the greater narrative, but rather by saying "give me 7 scenes where <character> does <action>, and we'll sprinkle them throughout". like one or two moments of little Clark having an existential crisis or being ostracized weren't enough, let's basically turn it into an Afterschool special for alien superheroes.

xpost LOL

all this time Snyder was making his own Fahrenheit 9/11 and we never knew

in the sequel america will deal with the influence of bloomsberg types (Batman) and koch brothers types (Luthor)

Superman is also not necessarily all-powerful! Even the original movies dialed him substantially down from how out of control he'd gotten in the Silver Age, and John Byrne's Man of Steel series rebooting the character in the 80s followed up on that - more 'super duper tough' than 'invulnerable,' etc. Recall that he originally couldn't even fly - he leaps tall buildings in a single bound. So there are lots of ways to take the character that aren't necessarily God On Earth. I think the immigrant story is very rich with possibilities, and if taken seriously could be a great way to make the character relevant: America has a lot of immigrants these days after all. Do him as an immigrant who does struggle, play up the ways people might misunderstand him or find him threatening. You don't want to turn him into Spider-Man or the X-Men in the "hated and feared" sense... but certainly there'd be something to the idea of a guy who comes here as a child, is equally not-at-home in American culture as in his Kryptonian fortress, who is trying really hard to do the things he's been told are right and yet still gets misunderstanding and shade thrown his way.

I do agree that this could be tough to square with the messianic quality which certainly is part of the character's appeal: it's nice to think we have a guardian and a savior, but neither of those seem to make for flawed, complex, relatable characters. Potentially a better movie could be about ordinary people in a world where there is a Superman, but alternately you could say that the pathos of Superman is in his effort and his faith. If he's Jesus, it's Jesus at the moment of questioning what God is setting him up for. This is why the Flaming Lips go for the moment when something is too heavy for Superman to lift - we know without a doubt that he absolutely is trying his best and it is breaking his heart that he is failing. Oddly enough this is his closest connection to humble Spider-Man, whose most famous scenes revolve around the very same thing: trying to save Gwen, lifting up that pile of machinery with all the water streaming down, or in the movies, trying to save everybody on the train when Doc Ock is attacking. This is the kind of stuff that should slot into a Superman movie very easily, with Pa Kent standing in for Uncle Ben and some slight shifts in motive.

A totally different hook might be to do what the Fantastic Four films should have done and failed to do, and make it a brain-melting Grant Morrison sci-fi thing; Superman is one of the superheroes who can go on impossible quests to the centers of stars or between molecules and not have it seem like a weird graft. This would require actual imagination in the film-making though, to call upon CGI for something other than smashing up skyscrapers and alien robot guys or w/e.

lots of interesting possibilities in dr. c's post.

Even tho it made no sense and was a redundant device to sell toys, I always liked the design of Superman's punching rocket jet thing. How do you take three of the most superficial and easily graspable qualities of Superman and put those into a vehicle? You make it blue, fly really fast, and(this is the best part) give it really big fists for punching.

I have no problem with more Marvel Studios superhero films, as long as they focus on character and/or do the genre-within-genre thing that IM3 and Winter Soldier pulled off

I like the part of this movie where superman is trying to fly up to the spaceship and it's really hard and he can't do it for like 2 minutes but then he goes "rawrrr" and does it

Totally agree w dr c supes scifi angle, kal el as neil degrasse tyson

dr casino otm re superman = jesus, but jesus questioning his purpose. that for me is the appeal of superman. it's not what he can do with his powers so much as his powers giving him a false sense of self

Would love a film about Supes retiring from crimefighting and becoming host of The Late Show