A Superman truly fit for modern movies

[james_davis_nicoll]

As mass murdery as the new Superman is, I don't think he is dark enough. I think it would have been edgier if it turned out Kryptonian visitors inspired Aztec myths thanks to their need to eat the hearts of photogenic children to power their abilities; Kal could feel very badly about having to zoom back to the Metropololis Orphanarium to get another power-up; it wouldn't just be pointless gore but characterization.

I don't see things working out well for young Jimmy Olsen in this version.

Comments

[ice-hesitant.livejournal.com]

Supervampyr.

The 'S' stands for 'Sucking your blood to give you hope'.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

It's interesting how the Superman mythos became almost Pollyanna-ish at the same time the crime rate started ticking up, and how it's become dark and brooding as the crime rate has fallen back down.

No, I don't think they're directly related.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Can you work "comics are the cause of juvenile delinquency" into this observation somehow?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Nah. By the time this happened, I'm pretty sure there were more viewers of Superman than there were readers.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

My problem with the new movie isn't that Superman isn't moral enough to be Superman, it's that he's not as moral as the average human being. Even a bar brawler will say "let's take this outside." It's just idiot storytelling.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

His best attempt to "take it outside" resulted in Zod punitively bombarding Metropolis from orbit with pieces of a Wayne Enterprises satellite.

Third major fight in less than 24 hours, and this after living with the "hold yourself back" lesson his whole life. I'm surprised that it wasn't worse.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

The problem doesn't even seem to register though. He never makes the attempt in Smallville, and there's that scene towards the end where he rescues Lois, and then they kiss while standing in the ashes of a thousand dead Metropolitans.

And the Daily Planet's just open right back up for business at the end of the movie, and everybody's quite cheery. The very last exchange is clever and cute, but being clever and cute on the mass graves of the recently dead is weird.

ETA: When I say it doesn't register as a problem, I mean it doesn't register with the filmmakers. Superman's only as dumb as they are.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Smallville was his first major fight. And he was additionally constrained by the fact that NorthCom wanted the fight contained to Smallville.

As for that closing scene at the Planet, I wonder. Might be "soldiering on" humour at work from the POV of the characters.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

There's a wide shot of the Smallville fight that makes it clear the fight is devastating a street that's literally a block over from an empty cornfield. Did NorthCom insist that the action be contained to city limits?

Anyway my problem isn't that he couldn't take the fight away, it's that he doesn't show any particular awareness or concern about the devastation. Not even a half-second shot of him going, "No, not Main Street!" or "My God, Mr. Billings!" Or later, in the makeout scene I mentioned, he and Lois could instead look around and think, "Jesus, look at all this." He never shows much impact unless it's Lois or his mom being threatened. And again, this isn't a criticism of Superman's inner character, but of the filmmakers' thought processes and how they think character motivation works. It's of a piece with the Snyder interview I linked to in the previous thread, in which he explains that he didn't think Superman's aversion to murder would be adequately explained unless he tried it first.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

*face-palm*

Wanna bet those scenes got dropped at some point between script and final edit lockdown?

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

My feeling is, if Snyder's the kind of filmmaker who thinks, "we don't have room for this concerned reaction shot, we need twenty more minutes of punching each other through buildings!" he's the kind of filmmaker to whom those scenes never occurred in the first place. Of course he didn't write the script, but still I'd be surprised.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Having watched several Snyder movies now—Dawn of the Dead, Watchmen, and (to my shame) Sucker Punch—exposing the inner lives of the characters seems to come across less than "this is an interesting visual." That needn't be awful; from what I read, that was one of Kubrick's main concerns because he'd come out of lighting.

Snyder might, as a person, be concerned with the characters—I don't know him. Any concern doesn't really come through in the films, and is less evident with each film: I have no idea about 300, one could argue it was scripted into pieces like Watchmen and Dawn (it is rather the heart of horror), and I don't remember a thing about Sucker Punch except an abiding rage that attractive visuals had been wasted in service of nothing.

I had hopes for Snyder, but he has not fulfilled them.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Does this mean you've seen Man of Steel?

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Don't be silly. That's far too interesting. Mindless rampaging and just generally not caring about anyone but yourself is fine - anything more structured than that would require effort, and we can't have that.

Though would you believe, there is actually a fantasy series that goes something like that? The hero can turn into a dragon and be pretty much unstoppable - but once the God Mode wears off, he's left almost too weak to move and has to trick some soft-hearted soul to come close to him by playing on their compassion for his pitiful state, and then tear open their throat and drink their blood. It wasn't the best series in the world, but it certainly didn't wuss out on the whole "magic is dark and scary and comes at a cost" thing.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Why wouldn't someone with that power set round up the snacks while still in godmode?

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Heh, good question. From what I can remember of the character - who's got more than a touch of Sensitive Romantic Hero about him - it might just be that rounding up a bunch of bad people for later snackage is just too cold and pragmatic for it to even occur to him.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Moorcock did it earlier, but Elric's supposed to be morally ambiguous, at least in the early books.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Elric theoretically has it pretty easy, though - he is never short of idiot mooks attacking him, so he shouldn't have any trouble keeping himself fed without being more evil than any other sword & sorcery hero. It's just that in practice, Stormbringer has its own ideas about which souls it wants to drain.