I can see how multiple superheroes can devalue any one superhero. However, what’s cool if done right is that each superhero can be used to expand the horizons of what would otherwise be a limited superhero.
Superman is a boy scout, much like Captain America, the epitome of a white knight. Batman is a dark knight, angsty and a little bit mental. If done right this movie could be a lot of fun. We could see Batman operating outside his comfort zone in a movie for the first time. We could see Superman dealing with a good guy who is almost as crazy as the villains Superman faces.
On a side note, since Superman is already cast, I’d look for an actot who works well with Henry Cavill. In fact, though he’s not Robert Downey Jr, I’d assemble the entire cast as much as possible around who works best with Cavill. I think a cast with chemistry beats a hand picked cast of favorites who may or may not jell together well. Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be an awesome Batman if they were simply going to continue Nolan’s Batman universe, but I’m not convinced he’d compliment Cavill’s Superman.
Don’t worry, they always can use that “Batman is no. 1 world detective” crap, where he can always outsmart his enemies, he had super deduction powers, he always have a planned scheme even if we didn’t see it before for every type of eventuality we can imagine, etc.
The quote they played during the announcement seems to indicate Superman-Batman friction. I’m not a comic guy so I don’t know the story being quoted but AngryJoe (a huge superman fan) talks about it here.
The “big blue schoolboy” presented in Dark Knight Returns draws upon so much assumed knowledge and accrued history, then cranks it up via his association with the continuing Reagan regime that Miller depicts. You can’t just paste that kind of dynamic on to Snyder’s Superman as it currently stands (though I could see Snyder trying, stupidly). This Superman spent the first film working through his sense of alienness and then capped it off by killing his adversary, so we’re definitely not set up for the traditional Clark/Bruce dichotomy. Although I suspect it’s enough for Snyder to have a guy with powers against a guy without powers. That really might be as deep as it goes for dear Zack.
They spent a great deal of Man of Steel creating a Superman who is altruistic to a fault. They even created a trauma point for Supes with Zod’s death that helps the audience to realize how much so. It would be a natural character progression to introduce someone like the kind of Bats from The Dark Knight Returns. A superhero who, while not willing to kill, is willing to cause pain (and a great deal of it) in the pursuit of justice. Someone who believes that (in most cases) the ends justifies the means. That kind of person would be unpredictable and unstable in the eyes of Superman, and they could play that up.
To my eyes, there’s no denouement or decompression to illustrate just what killing Zod meant to him… just an anguished scream that’s a litmus test for how willing the viewer is to fill in the blanks for a film full of them.
As for altruism, if I were Snyderian Luthor I’d ask the public why a being with such great gifts waited until the age of 33 to share them with the world. How many lives could have been saved, catastrophes prevented? What was the man who can’t be harmed so afraid of?
Pretty much this, exactly. Also, no offense to the people thinking this might be a good idea, but The Dark Knight Returns is a story where Batman and Superman face off because Supes blindly follows orders from on high because Batman is making the rest of the US look bad. Y’know, in the wake of a Cold War-era nuclear war. There’s that dichotomy between vigilantes and taking orders that always separates Supes and Bats, but it’s taken to an extreme and paints Superman as an incredibly short-sighted enemy. No offense but, if they are using that as a basis for their movie, they’re gonna need to alter the source material fairly substantially to make the conflict legitimately favour Superman. Unless they make it so that Batman reveals that Superman has been used by a corrupt government but, again, more changes to the source material. They’re not going to win this one, I’m thinking.
Also: I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who thinks Snyder is a bit of a buffoon who managed to get lucky. The man is an amazing cinematographer, I’ll give him that – all of his movies are stylistically gorgeous and have some great framing – but he simply cannot direct a story from beginning to end. 300 was an entertaining movie but it was all style and no substance. Sucker Punch was, again, all style and no substance, and also somewhat disturbing when you actually sit down and think about it (“Hey kids! Hyper-sexualizing rape is awesome!”) At least Watchmen was a legitimately good movie but Snyder was working with an established source that he very nearly screwed up anyway. Add that all of the CGI in his movies looks identical and I just don’t understand what goes on in this man’s head.
Thus, I simply can’t get excited about anything else this man does. I loved Watchmen, deeply and truly, and 300 was entertaining, but he is simply bland, boring and generally too ambitious for how much talent he really has.
Frankly, if they aren’t planning on having this in the same continuity (which I think is a smart decision), this movie is going to be a waste of time because the Batman Nolan created was so much more interesting than the Superman present in Man of Steel.
Snyder is definitely no genius, but with the exception of Sucker Punch and that Owl thing, I’ve enjoyed his films a lot. Dawn of the Dead remake was far better than it had a right to be, given the small budget pre-zombie renaissance; 300 was one of the most enjoyable action movies I’ve ever seen and a better adaptation of the graphic novel; Watchmen largely worked, despite the challenges of the material and a network TV caliber cast - and the stuff that did work was fantastic (Dr Manhattan, Rorschach); and I really liked Man of Steel - easily my favorite superman movie, although I would have liked to have seen what Donner could have done without being limited by the requirement for comic material to always be treated somewhat goofy.
The guy’s movies always have some great visuals (Man of Steel looked like an Alex Ross painting, often); and his action scenes are always coherent and often spectacular - he overused slow-mo in his movies prior to Man of Steel (where I kinda missed it) but being able to actually see the action is a hell of a lot more interesting than the “quick cut/shaky cam” crap that otherwise dominates film.
Bit hyperbolic for my tastes. However, I agree it should be the same continuity - but the reason it interests me more is becauase of it being a universe exactly like ours, in which first there were no superheroes, and then there was one, and now there would be two. That’s actually quite an interesting idea to play with, I think.
I feel like a lot of this could be done by a Lex Luthor character. Ends justify the means to a fault, unpredictable and unstable, ruthless, brilliant and calculating. I think the problem is that WB or whatever studio wants Superman to stand on its own and audiences are letting them know that’s not necessarily the case for what gets spent making the movie, so they’re doing this to chase after Avenger money. Again I don’t blame them, but I still feel team ups are fan service and these movie universes are separate from their comic books to a degree, since I would bet the Marvel movie cash dump trucks are getting a lot of help from people who never cracked a single comic.
You know, I actually completely forgot that he did the Dawn of the Dead remake; he did a great job with it, for sure. I think the success he garnered from the movies since has gone to his head, though; Dawn of the Dead was great (and a truly amazing debut), 300 was awesome, Watchmen was sublime, but Sucker Punch was self-indulgent to the point of disgust and then Man of Steel… Well. (Also, I didn’t even realize he directed that owl movie, Legend of the Guardians. Weird.)
Also, I really found the action in Man of Steel to be too much of the “quick cut/shaky cam” thing. There were so many moments were characters would jump off-screen and the camera would hurry to catch up to them. It worked to help instill that feeling of superhuman-ness inherent in the Kryptonians, but it really detracted from how the movie was paced. It seemed like you spent more time looking at where the characters were a few minutes ago than where they were in present tense.
Maybe I’m speaking a bit too broadly – it’s not fair to say that something will be worthless without having evidence to point to. But I am extremely disappointed that they are ignoring a great opportunity. And, as a follow-up to Man of Steel, I have a feeling the movie will have a main focus on Supes as the protagonist acting against Batman (as the antagonist), as opposed to them working together. This is especially true if they are inspired by The Dark Knight Returns. And that bothers me more than the rest of it.
Well, sort of. On the other hand, I bet there are very few people who have never cracked open a single comic. There are just people who are too ashamed, embarrassed or snobbish to admit they like comics, or are under the illusion that they’re just for kids so they’re not supposed to like them.
In fact, superheroes in particular always were, and (as their continued success is showing) are increasingly, a boundaryless genre which bypasses the intellect and touches a mythic individualistic nerve that’s poorly served by the po-faced, pseudo-socialist products of the intelligentsia. Superheroes are “bootleg romanticism” (Ayn Rand’s apt phrase, not that I’m a great fan of hers).
The freedom (of the individual and of concept) and sense of fun developed by several decades of young (and originally mostly liberal Jewish, as it happens) writers and artists letting their imaginations take flight in the graphic medium are now hitting the big screen successfully because CGI now makes it possible to visually realize them in a way that special fx in the past couldn’t, that’s all.
IOW, what’s happening in the cinemas is simply recapitulating the original mass popularity of superheroes when they first appeared in cheap graphic format in the 30s and 40s, now that computer magic can depict anything pen and ink could depict in the past.
I just have to quote and reply to the fact that you think there’s a small number of people who’ve never cracked open a volume from an industry where hitting a million copies sold–in a country with 300million residents–is considered a Herculean feat? I mean, okay?
Depends what you mean. Comics basically vanished from the American mass market in the mid-to-late 80s, when mainstream retailers found it unprofitable to continue carrying them. After that they were almost purely the domain of hyperspecialist hobby shops. As a consequence many 20-somethings (even fairly geeky 20-somethings) know superheroes purely from TV/movies/games. Just like most people know who Sherlock Holmes is, but have never read a word of Conan Doyle.
And among the older crowd who did grow up buying comics at the neighborhood drugstore, not all of them grew up reading superhero comics. Archie consistently outsold the output of Marvel and DC during the 50s-70s, after all. You’re not going to find a lot of 50-something women who grew up avidly following Iron Man or the Flash.
Come to think of it, way back in the 40s and 50s, lots more people knew Superman and Batman from their radio shows/newspaper comics/movie serials/TV shows than from their newsstand comics. Those two were always boundaryless phenomena.
a) In my experience, comics were always a thing to share. I guess if “cracked open” means “bought a new copy oneself and read it”, then yeah, but I thought the phrase just meant “read”.
b) Comics have been around a long time. In the 30s and 40s the figures for Superman were in the million per issue region IIRC, for years. Again, in the Silver Age, it was a relatively popular pastime.
I understand that they’re not a big thing now, and I’m not saying everyone’s a comic fan. But I don’t think the majority of people have never read a single comic in their lives.
I don’t disagree strongly with what you are saying, but bear in mind that the other media formats produced superhero stuff because it was already popular through the comics (i.e. they were jumping on a bandwagon).
I think it’s more a cultural thing with who has read comics. Growing up and on through adulthood I can honestly say that I don’t know ANYONE who has read a comic. By ‘read a comic’ I don’t mean ‘idly picked one up, flipped through it, and said “meh” when they put it back down’. For the sake of comparison, I have seen, with my own two eyes, people read porn. Comics? Never even seen one laying around in someone’s house.
I may have read one or two as a kid if someone gave me one, I don’t remember. I have read comics as an adult, as part of the internet information overload thing, where you find out about stuff online then look into them later. For instance I read Walking Dead for a while because of online discussions.
So I’m in the camp that says the vast majority of people who saw the first Iron Man movie, and by extension ALL these Marvel films, never even read a comic, much less knew who Iron Man was. Certain characters are part of pop culture, so everyone knows the name even if they have no idea of the origin of the character(no pun intended). You don’t have to have seen a Star Wars movie to recognize Darth Vader. You don’t even ever need to have seen a movie in general to recognize Darth Vader. I think the audiences for these movies is like that, they know such things as comics exist, but that’s about as far as it goes.
