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Superman Continues to Return

Started by Bad Ambassador, October 05, 2010, 12:24:52 AM

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Bad Ambassador

Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, the brains behind the Batman reboot, had been tasked some time ago with doing the same for Superman. They have now picked their director.

http://www.boffo.com/2010/10/zack-snyder-in-negotiations-to-direct-superman.html

Honestly, does he have pictures of celebrity goat rape or something? How the FUKC did he get the job over candidates likes Duncan Jones, Darren Aronofsky and Matt Reeves.

El Unicornio, mang

He made Watchmen though, which was ace. Seems like a good choice to me.

Barberism

Zack "Hey at least I'm not McG" Snyder?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

This is going to be shit.

mobias

I thought Superman had been given a re-boot a few years back? It was dull, over long and completely lacking in cinematic charm just like pretty much every Christopher Nolan movie, I thought he would have approved of it? What the hell is going to add?

Johnny Textface

I agree it's a good choice. Even though I'm a massive fan of Aronofsky - he hasn't really got anything on his CV to prove he could handle a special fx-laden blockbuster like this is no doubt going to be.
Zack Snyder on the other hand delivered a very faithful and respectful adaptation of Watchmen which was everything you could have wanted really. Alan Moore should have a watch.

Mister Six

Oh god. How will Snyder deal with a protagonist who doesn't go around mutilating and killing people? Or will Superman be pulling off peoples' heads?

Quote from: Johnny Textface on October 05, 2010, 09:24:42 AM
Zack Snyder on the other hand delivered a very faithful and respectful adaptation of Watchmen which was everything you could have wanted really. Alan Moore should have a watch.

Resisting... urge... to comment.

boxofslice

Always found Superman a bit of a dead-end character so not sure what else they can add to what's already gone before, apart bigger effects and the like of course.

Mister Six

I dunno, you could really have fun with it - the screwball comedy tone of the Reeve movies was great (even if the plotting was an absolute shambles). And the idea of an immigrant in a big city becoming a champion of the people despite the machinations of The Man in his ivory tower could have some real resonance. You just don't want to go the single father/ponderous moping route of Bryan Fucking Singer.

thugler

What's all this stuff about watchmen not being a horrible insulting piece of shit? The comic was not about slo mo fight scenes every ten minutes, he didnt remotely understand the point of watchmen or anything that was good about it. 300 was appalling too. At least he can't fuck up superman worse than the last movie. In which superman was able to lift a planet sized chunk of kryptonite! Fuuuuucckkk.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: thugler on October 05, 2010, 10:46:49 AM
300 was appalling too.
Seriously, I will fight you.

300 is one of the funnest films ever. I love it.

But, Watchmen wasn't bad, as such, but it wasn't anywhere near the brilliance of the book (although I liked the ending better). Nite Owl, Ozymandias and Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre?) were three of the worst casting choices I've ever seen in a film of this size. It was so screamingly obvious that Ozymandias was the bad guy from his first seconds on screen that he may as well have been twirling a moustache and cackling.

It was just disappointing. But, he'll struggle to make a film worse than Superman Returns, so we've at least got that.

thugler

300 is mighty boring for a 'fun' film.

Ozymandius isn't supposed to be a simple 'bad guy' any how. Shows how snyder has no idea what he's doing.

CaledonianGonzo

I'll give you the Ozymandias casting, but for all its faults I thought the bloke playing Nite Owl was one of Watchmen's better features.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: mobias on October 05, 2010, 08:58:51 AM
I thought Superman had been given a re-boot a few years back?
Superman Returns wasn't a reboot, it was a continuation of the Christopher Reeve films and on that count at least, I think it was fairly successful. It was indeed too long, with a plot that was a blatant rehash of the first film, but it captured the spirit of the earlier ones, Kevin Spacey was fun and Brandon Routh managed the sort of mimicry that critics all fawn over when Michael Sheen does it.

Snyder may be better than McG, Len Wiseman, Brett Ratner etc. but I still wouldn't expect him to make anything half as good as Superman Returns. Although it will probably have more stuff getting smashed up.

Ginyard

I think Superman Returns is too violent. Its supposed to be for kids.

Mister Six

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on October 05, 2010, 01:39:54 PMIt was indeed too long, with a plot that was a blatant rehash of the first film, but it captured the spirit of the earlier ones

Did it fucking balls. Mopey absentee-father Superman? All those night-time shots? Lex Luthor and his moll providing the only humour? Whatever their other faults, the Donner films had a tremendous sense of vim and fun - which was almost completely absent from Bryan Singer's dirge.

Hmm, absentee father with an 'S' on his chest... was it part-funded by Fathers for Justice?

boxofslice

Superman Returns had some good individual scenes but as a whole it didn't hang together too well.  Spacey was fun and Routh gave a good show in the titular role but the woman playing Lois was miscast and the subplot around Supes Jr was ill advised.  I think a lot people at the time were hoping for another retelling of the origin story so were a little let down by the whole thing.

Johnny Textface

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on October 05, 2010, 01:39:54 PMit captured the spirit of the earlier ones,

I'd say the only place where it captured the spirit of the earlier films was in the opening credits - which were fantastic - but basically a CGI version of the original ones.

Pedro_Bear

Hasn't Kick Ass drawn a line under any more attempts to make a comicbook superhero-in-a-costume movie?

That was as close to a Top Ten[nb]I love Top Ten so much I fuck it.[/nb] adaptation as Hollywood is ever going to meet, in tone at least. As in "what if this situation was real?" and then making it entertaining.

It is going to take a straight interpretation of Top Ten to reboot this tired shit, and Moore won't be on board for very sensible reasons.

Issues with Superman Vol 1.




(1) He's Lawful Good. End of argument. He is a symbol of unwaveringly "doing the right thing, no matter what the provocation". If Superman can snap and kick off, what hope for mere mortals? And if roleplaying games have taught us anything, pre-4ffy Paladins have to be placed into situations where this outcome proves successful or they become unplayable. Sir Osric may be tricked on a Nat 20 into temporarily being distracted when the party has to do something underhand, but ultimately part of the comedy in Dorkness Rising is an admission that his role is inappropriate to actually moving the plot forwards.

And so what do all GMs ultimately do? We force a situation where the Paladin has to make an absurd moral choice; We Force The Paladin To Fail. Yet Superman cannot fail and still be Superman.




(2) He's Overpoweringly Lawful Boring. End of argument. He's boring. Tediously so. He can do damn nearly anything, and is immune to damn nearly everything... except plot-onium, so guess what? There's going to be plot-onium somewhere in the plot. Quelle surprise, eh? Didn't see that coming. Richard Pryor's wonderful screw-up at guessing the content of this substance is the only real "give" available, and in realising this, it has already been done.

Top Ten addressed invulnerability in one of it's central characters who simply could not be harmed, and then pitted him gloriously against an unstoppable force to demonstrate a point. As far as briefly skimming the regular Superman comic books is concerned, the plot has to invoke the most literal deux ex to challenge his power. Some floating gnome or other.

(3) He's American. Fuck. In 2010 this is not a proud boast. To be Superman in even a near-literal 2010 setting is to defend everything the USA symbolises and yet... still be a Paladin? Good luck with that. This was explored in the above mentioned Watchmen, with an alternate timeline Nixon exploiting a superhero for hegemony. But Superman? So, no near-literal plotting.






Bizzaro World? And the arc that spawned it, Emperor Joker. It's a sly meta-pisstake[nb]Yeah, yeah, I know...[/nb] of the whole comicbook set up. Could work. Peter Stormare as The Joker?

Or let's be done with the whole genre and make Superman At Earth's End, infamous as the very worst canon use of a comicbook character thus far. Spoiler On The Front Cover: Superman tools up with a fucking huge gun.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on October 05, 2010, 02:22:32 PM
Hasn't Kick Ass drawn a line under any more attempts to make a comicbook superhero-in-a-costume movie?....
Nope, although arguably Kick Ass didn't do the kind of business that was hoped for, it performed respectably. Once superhero films all start bombing, thhat's when Hollywood will stop making them... for a while.

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on October 05, 2010, 02:22:32 PM

Issues with Superman Vol 1.
....(1) He's Lawful Good. End of argument. He is a symbol of unwaveringly "doing the right thing, no matter what the provocation"
What I think people tend to forget that Superman's motto of "truth, justice, and the American way" was to begin with "truth, social justice, and the American way".

Initially, the people Superman was battling were industrialists and capitalists, who were exploiting the working-classes – this, of course, was most appropriate as the character was created during the Great Depression.

Superman fought the establishment – he was outside the law, but fighting for what he thought was right. He's now perceived, and has been portrayed, as the establishment – what he was and what he is, is a contrast that I think is rich in material.

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on October 05, 2010, 02:22:32 PM
(3) He's American. Fuck. In 2010 this is not a proud boast. To be Superman in even a near-literal 2010 setting is to defend everything the USA symbolises and yet... still be a Paladin?
Exactly – and that, to me, is why the character has so much potential.

Superman isn't just American, he's the embodiment of the middle-class American heartland.

Going even further, he's an alien – an immigrant – he doesn't really want to be Superman, he would prefer to be Clark Kent and assimilate into his new homeland. Over the years, would doubt creep in at whether he was right? What he was fighting for and what America is now are rather different.

I thought Kingdom Come was an interesting take on the character.

Mister Six

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on October 05, 2010, 02:22:32 PM(3) He's American. Fuck. In 2010 this is not a proud boast. To be Superman in even a near-literal 2010 setting is to defend everything the USA symbolises and yet... still be a Paladin? Good luck with that.

There are things you can do within that, though. There's a great Superman issue where he's faced with a pastiche of The Authority[nb]The Authority are an 'edgy' superhero team created by Warren Ellis in the late-90s. Their schtick was that because they were so ludicrously powerful they had to face stupendously dangerous enemies. In one issue they go to an alternate Earth where the entire of Italy has been turned into a rape camp by an invading alien empire. The Doctor, who has reality-warping powers, alters the Earth's rotation so that the entire country is swallowed by a tidal wave - as a warning to the aliens not to fuck around.[/nb] that have universe-warping powers, mind-reading and the like, who go around murdering baddies and get the public's support because they're 'edgy' and cool. They make a particular point of egging on Superman with their brutality, and when they threaten to pour acid on the families of some criminals, Supes steps in and socks one of them in the face. That's the chance they've been waiting for - they challenge him to duel to the death on the moon, which he accepts.

And what does Superman do, with the whole world watching through video screens? He kills them. Suffocates them, throws them into the sun, crushes them - save for the psychic, whom he lobotomises with his laser eyes. And naturally, of course, everyone on Earth is absolutely fucking terrified to see what the big blue boy scout has been capable of all these years.

But... surprise! He didn't kill them after all. He just took them down non-lethally and made it look like they were dead - and the lobotomised psychic has just been dosed with a tranquilliser that saps his abilities. Then Superman turns to the cameras and pointedly explains that he could brutalise and murder every criminal he comes across. He could burn off their flesh and pulp their heads without even breaking a sweat. But just because he can doesn't mean that he should. Sometimes you have to take the harder road, he says. The one that leaves your enemies alive.

That story was mostly about the rash of anti-heroes coming out of comics since the mid-90s, and in particular the Authority-inspired ultra-powerful badasses that kill without a second thought. But it would work just fine - even spectacularly - as a film with a bit of tweaking and some subplots[nb] Maybe make Lex Luthor the leader of the anti-heroes, for example - can't you see him wanting to crush Superman's spirit by turning the crowds into anti-hero-loving mobs? Or getting a kick from making them worship brutality and destruction, having them turn their backs on Superman and everything he stands for, to the point that they'll watch Superman going to his almost-certain doom as though it were a sports game? [/nb].

Superman doesn't have to represent America as it is - he can represent America as it ought to be. The interesting thing is seeing him fight for that ideal, and confronting him with the possibility that it does not exist at all.

Johnny Textface

I wouldn't mind seeing Supes up against Batman on screen one day - a la 'The Dark Knight Returns'. They seem to be mixing all the Marvel characters together on film now - maybe DC should try it?

Dead kate moss

Quote from: Johnny Textface on October 05, 2010, 03:18:21 PM
I wouldn't mind seeing Supes up against Batman on screen one day - a la 'The Dark Knight Returns'. They seem to be mixing all the Marvel characters together on film now - maybe DC should try it?

This was mooted as being nearly in production for a few years, but little mention of the idea lately.

I like Singer's work, and figured as both he and Superman are adopted, he would incorporate some of this in his shot at a Superman film. I guess he did, but in the the worst ways.

The new movie needs to be a reboot, ignoring the super-child that Singer was crazy to introduce in Returns. I liked Watchmen for some things, it failed at others, but there was definitely indications that Snyder could be right for Superman, especially with Nolan's input. If the villain is going to be Zod then that's a step in the right direction, though the character wasn't handled very interestingly in Smallville lately (new series has Darkseid as the villain Kirby fans). Basically Superman needs to punch stuff a bit more and stalk exes a bit less.

Superman doesn't need to be dark and gritty. Cast a likable, convincing Superman as Reeves was, and the 'boy scout' thing doesn't hold much water. Routh did a great job impersonating Reeves' Clark Kent, but his Superman was charmless and had a scrawny neck.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Yeah, there's plenty of interesting directions for them to take Superman. I always dislike the way that Batman is seen as the 'cool' superhero, while Superman is the one everyone takes the piss out of. Bats is just as much of an unbelievable ubermensch, but he skulks around in the shadows, so no one bats (arf) an eyelid.

Invulnerability and kryptonite weren't originally part of the Superman stories, so there's no reason this new version has to be boringly invincible.

Pedro_Bear

Actually, yeah, I'd watch something like Kingdom Come. It'd be a bitch to film. That Authority arc sounds awesome, thanks for the heads up. That reads like a considered "fuck you" to the typical Push Button Paladin Fails situation.

I guess the issue is as much one of Hollywood being point-man in the USA propaganda effort as much as anything else. Are the present day likes of "Chase" Brandon going to permit Superman to be anything other than on-message?

As for the whole Batman > Superman, my main hesitance with Superman is that he's overpowerd. This provokes an immediate admiration for Lex Luthor, more so than even The Joker, in that he challenges this God with... nothing. Nothing at all. And he damn nearly wins on occasion. Given a free plot, he could win.

For example, the arc where Superman was forced to endorse Luthor's presidency was spiked so that Luthor failed. Very obviously so. Yet, as we're suggesting, the moral conflict at the heart of such a set piece makes for a compelling story.

So... what he could be, rather than what he's become? Sure, why not? Oh. Yeah. Hollywood...

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on October 05, 2010, 02:22:32 PM
That was as close to a Top Ten adaptation as Hollywood is ever going to meet, in tone at least. As in "what if this situation was real?" and then making it entertaining.
But the guys in Top Ten had superpowers, didn't they? And no-one in Kick-Ass does? I'm not sure I see how one has any links to the other. Or have I really not been paying attention to my Top Ten comics?

Or are you on about Superman Returns? And what did the picture of Peter Stormare have to do with anything? ANSWER ME NOW

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: thugler on October 05, 2010, 10:46:49 AM
What's all this stuff about watchmen not being a horrible insulting piece of shit? The comic was not about slo mo fight scenes every ten minutes, he didnt remotely understand the point of watchmen or anything that was good about it. 300 was appalling too. At least he can't fuck up superman worse than the last movie. In which superman was able to lift a planet sized chunk of kryptonite! Fuuuuucckkk.

It's not the comic though, it's a movie. If you want the comic, read the comic. I personally thought the film was very well done, and clearly he tried to put as much as he could from the comic into it without just copying it. (at least in the 4 hour version)

Also, I don't get all the talk of Aronofsky. What has he done which makes him at all suitable to make a superhero film? Requiem for a Dream? Pi? The Wrestler??

Pedro_Bear

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on October 05, 2010, 04:16:45 PM
But the guys in Top Ten had superpowers, didn't they? And no-one in Kick-Ass does? I'm not sure I see how one has any links to the other. Or have I really not been paying attention to my Top Ten comics?

Or are you on about Superman Returns? And what did the picture of Peter Stormare have to do with anything? ANSWER ME NOW

I meant the interpretaion of the costumed superhero set-up. What if this was real? Kick Ass[nb]mai waifu[/nb] went along the route of no powers; Top Ten explores the idea with all-powered (or all augmented, at least).

Stormare as The Joker in Superman: Emperor Joker? C'mon, who wouldn't go to the cinema to see that? In 3D, most likely...

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on October 05, 2010, 04:21:37 PM
I don't get all the talk of Aronofsky. What has he done which makes him at all suitable to make a superhero film? Requiem for a Dream? Pi? The Wrestler??
The fountain maybe. I remember Aronofsky had plans for a Dark Knight Returns adaptation before Nolan Began, which might partially explain it. Also, what had Singer or Nolan done before X-Men and Batman Begins? About the only director I would have thought perfectly suited to superhero movies is Sam Raimi, and the Spidey films contained as much guff as they did greatness.

Mister Six

Quote from: Dead kate moss on October 05, 2010, 03:33:19 PM
This was mooted as being nearly in production for a few years, but little mention of the idea lately.

It was dependent on Superman Returns being a massive hit. They would have followed it with an appropriately named sequel (Batman Begins/Superman Returns, The Dark Knight/The Man of Steel) and then the third outing by both characters would be a team-up. But Returns bombed badly, Nolan took the Batman movies in a far more realistic direction and it all fell apart. Shame.

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on October 05, 2010, 04:21:37 PM
It's not the comic though, it's a movie. If you want the comic, read the comic. I personally thought the film was very well done, and clearly he tried to put as much as he could from the comic into it without just copying it. (at least in the 4 hour version)

The changes he made to the characters showed that he completely misunderstood what Moore was doing, though. The murders in the alley fight, Ozymandias being all sinister and evil rather than aloof and faintly regretful, Dan being less fat and impotent... There's more but I'll leave it to the AV Club.

Pedro_Bear

Aaaand maybe I should make it clear I wan't refering to Hit Girl necessarily with the mai waifu footnote... although this would be a lie. I'm totally saving myself for her. Yes... which shouldn't be that hard etc etc It was meta-dialogue[nb]YES I KNOW. I AM OBSESSED.[/nb] stuff like that which elevated it for me. Along with everything else. Tra la la lalala lah.