I dunno if anyone mentioned it but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that WB is fast tracking Man of Steel 2 for next year and Justice League for 2015.
Avengers 2, Justice League and Star Wars 7 all in one summer.
Um...
Aren't they forgetting something?
Or are they not gonna do a Batman movie before Justice League?
I thought you were going to mention Fantastic Four, but then I smacked myself in the head because nobody cares about Fox's Fantastic Four ;D
I think there is a good point to be made about this as a learning experience for Superman rather than just a failure. Having a flawless Superman takes away from that, since the "everyone can be a Superman" line is false if Superman never makes mistakes. The important thing, and I hope they continue with this, is that he can learn from his mistakes, and is a better person for it.
In contrast, the Injustice Superman or any other "fallen" Supermen are just the opposite. Rather than becoming better despite their mistakes, they refuse to face them as mistakes, compounding them and spiralling downwards.
If this Superman can see that his actions were a mistake, and is inspired to rise above, rather than the opposite, they can still present a good Superman character.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Superman Returns is on TV right now, and I just caught the sequence where he makes his first reappearance and saves the plane
And whatever the other problems with that movie, I thought that was a really great scene and felt very "Superman," because he saved people and showed concern for their well-being and there's that great moment where everyone's reaction to him coming back is to flip out and start cheering like fucking crazy because they're so thrilled that he's here and everything seems a little brighter now that Superman is back, it's a really wonderful few minutes
And Brandon Routh was so delightfully cheesy with the way he delivered the "safest way to travel" line from the first Reeve movie
Problems with that movie aside, at least it was a continuation of the idea that Superman is a good thing to have in the world and people should always be happy to see him
That is because it's the only good scene in the movie and they literally stole it from the original movie.
Wait that's not true. The other only good scene is when superman stops the car with no brakes.
Seriously even if Zod's plan in MoS didn't make a ton of sense, it doesn't hold a candle to Luthor's in SR thinking that destroying the United States would somehow make him rich.
Lex has a pretty good argument to make against Superman in Man of Steel Two
it really throws lex luthor under the bus, actually
man of steel spoilers
like lex luthor is a character whose tragedy is that he is a brilliant person who simply cannot believe that such goodness as superman can exist, and that he is choking humanity's potential, and that at any moment superman can snap and prove himself just as corruptible as anyone else and in that moment he becomes something not to be aspired to but to be feared
and lex and superman could be friends and do great works but luthor makes himself superman's enemy due to mistrust and jealousy
then you throw lex luthor into the man of steel universe, and lex says "superman is a giant menace, he is strangling humanity's potential and he could never sustain being the force of good that he claims to be" and then everyone else says "whoa lex luthor is fucking right the only reason anything bad at all happened was because superman was here and thousands if not millions of people were killed in his battles and then in the end superman chose to kill someone else which shows he can in fact cross that line and what's to stop him doing it again"
and then the movie contrives a way to have lex luthor lose, even though this time he is completely right, just because he is the villain
Letting Luthor have a point about Superman would be an inspired take on the character. It'd give him nuance and a good reason to hate Superman, rather then the usual "Superman destroying humanity potential" angle for the 5352342 time.
no.
no, it most certainly is not inspired. it is moronic.
superman represents a lot of things, but at the core I believe the key component of superman being superman is compassion. the flight and durability and super-strength are incidental, and compassion makes superman what he is. he seeks to help people, to protect them and keep them safe and even comfort them when need be, because they are people, and because helping people is just the right thing to do.
lex luthor is cynicism. lex luthor sees superman and thinks "it won't last." "he's faking it." "he's up to something." lex luthor thinks "why should I be compassionate when I cannot guarantee that others will be compassionate to me in return? Why should I be compassionate when I do not need compassion myself? What's in it for me?" as superman is the ideal of interest focused outwards towards others, lex luthor is the epitome of interest being focused on the self- and he cannot comprehend that there is actually someone selfless out there, and in so doing girds himself against them, because one day their foolish compassion will dry up and on that day luthor will be ready.
that's why the john byrne(?) reimagining of luthor as a ruthless businessman instead of a mad scientist is genius. that is an inspired take on the character, because it works with who luthor is and who we know ruthless businesspeople to be in a way that deepens him and binds him more tightly into a role that we recognize and that makes sense for him to occupy. of course luthor is a fiendish capitalist at the head of a business empire in his own name, because getting and staying in that position works perfectly with his own self-interest and cynicism and focus on ending up "ahead".
writing luthor, practically a personification of cynicism, to have legitimate grievances against and points against superman, a personification of compassion, is not inspired. it is shortsighted and stupid and childish in the same way as cloaking a work of fiction with drab colors, violence, and brutal cynicism to give it the impression of being mature. if someone in a position writing superman fiction says "hey, what if lex luthor was right?" they not only shouldn't be writing superman stories, they should probably also take a look at why they're writing fiction at all.
They can also write Luthor as having a legitimate point without messing with Superman.
Luthor recognizes the things that can drive humanity to greatness are not always great. People can be inspired to create great things through hatred, jealousy, arrogance, or by hurting themselves and others through drug abuse or other kinds of risky behaviors. And he is right in that regard. Luthor's own hatred and jealousy towards Superman have driven him to make some pretty impressive scientific breakthroughs and build technological marvels.
The struggle between Superman and Luthor would be more about whether humanity should exploit that side of itself.
Luthor's hatred for Superman could come from him thinking that Superman is arrogant to impose his values on humanity because he doesn't truly know what it means to be human because Superman never needs to use that darker side of himself like humanity does.
lex luthor is only wrong about superman because he can't believe that superman is actually as good as he appears to be
i mean, if superman suddenly appeared in reality i'd be pretty skeptical about the matter myself
we as comics readers know that luthor is wrong, that superman is exactly the moral paragon he seems, but we can sympathise with luthor regardless because we understand that lex luthor, much like ayn rand, thinks genuine altruism doens't exist and the best we're going to get is a sort of dog-eat-dog equilibrium
we can empathize with cynicism and the message we take from luthor's failures is that we should rise above it
of course, if superman starts killing people luthor becomes correct then the whole enterprise becomes pointless
i was thinking about this in the shower this morning
we live in a world where a group of reasonable, intelligent people who genuinely have everyone's best interests at heart can lock themselves in a room overnight, calmly discuss every aspect of the situation, then come out and decide to create a pile of corpses
superman is important because he posits a world where we are free from that sort of moral ambiguity
if he can be forced to kill that whole function of the character goes down the plughole
and frankly i have moral ambiguity in just about every other piece of entertainment i consume, i don't also need it in my superman
If you begin a story by setting up the hero as a figure of hope, you can't end it with him screaming in despair. It's a contradiction of what you set out to do.
If you begin a story by setting up the hero as a figure of hope, you can't end it with him screaming in despair. It's a contradiction of what you set out to do.
SPOILERS
It actually ended with him saying that he's "here to help" and getting a job at the Daily Planet to keep an ear out for things
It's like literally the final moments of the film
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Binary SquidWe all make choicesRegistered Userregular
But why is Superman the way he is? It's not his species, as we've seen Kryptonians with dubious moral character in other adaptations.
I guess you can want a flawless character, but it leaves nothing to aspire to. You can't be Superman because Superman, like God, just is.
A character who acknowleges that they've made a mistake, and is constantly striving to be better than that is someone that you can hope to become: it's someone you can aspire to be like. It's also the best human quality there is.
And Luthor distrusts Superman because Superman exhibits more positive human qualities than he does; to the point where Luthor fully believes that making a mistake can show how flawed Superman is. When it's actually the act of realizing a mistake was made and constantly striving to better himself that makes Superman represent the best humanity can offer. Luthor can't understand Superman because he, himself, doesn't have that quality, and he can't comprehend someone who does.
If you begin a story by setting up the hero as a figure of hope, you can't end it with him screaming in despair. It's a contradiction of what you set out to do.
I think it depends on whether you consider this to be the entire story, or a portion of something bigger.
Kal kills what's left of the Kryptonians, and personally executes Zod. It's very remeniscent to the "Unstoppable Force meets Immoveable Object" speech the Joker gives towards the end of The Dark Knight. Bizarre, I think, that they chose to have Superman compromise where Batman did not.
That said, that scene is really weak because they didn't show us any real interesting conflict of the two world views Kal is trying to dovetail play out in any of the action up to that point. It's just face-punches the whole time, with out any real sense of internal struggle for Kal until he's got Zod where he wants him. Why would he even have any difficulty deciding whether to kill Zod? He hasn't spent any time trying to save every individual person at the expense of losing the larger battle, nor did he have any qualms about the plan to black-hole the Kryptonian vessel using his old space rocket. Why is killing Zod any different? Because it's up close and personal? That kind of rings hollow to me.
While on the one hand I think UnbreakableVow's right that the film ends on a hopeful note, the lack of consistent or well-handled themes in the second half of the movie really hurts it in some pretty specific, significant ways. I feel like some interesting set pieces were on the table but they lost focus after the beginning.
If you begin a story by setting up the hero as a figure of hope, you can't end it with him screaming in despair. It's a contradiction of what you set out to do.
SPOILERS
It actually ended with him saying that he's "here to help" and getting a job at the Daily Planet to keep an ear out for things
It's like literally the final moments of the film
well that's a great time to decide to help, supes
thanks for that, don't know what we'd do without you
probably bunches more people would be alive and there would be considerably less rubble in metropolis actually
But why is Superman the way he is? It's not his species, as we've seen Kryptonians with dubious moral character in other adaptations.
I guess you can want a flawless character, but it leaves nothing to aspire to. You can't be Superman because Superman, like God, just is.
A character who acknowleges that they've made a mistake, and is constantly striving to be better than that is someone that you can hope to become: it's someone you can aspire to be like. It's also the best human quality there is.
And Luthor distrusts Superman because Superman exhibits more positive human qualities than he does; to the point where Luthor fully believes that making a mistake can show how flawed Superman is. When it's actually the act of realizing a mistake was made and constantly striving to better himself that makes Superman represent the best humanity can offer. Luthor can't understand Superman because he, himself, doesn't have that quality, and he can't comprehend someone who does.
If you begin a story by setting up the hero as a figure of hope, you can't end it with him screaming in despair. It's a contradiction of what you set out to do.
I think it depends on whether you consider this to be the entire story, or a portion of something bigger.
I feel like this is still dealing in the false dichotomy we were dealing with earlier. I don't think anybody is saying Superman should be perfect. The gripe is with the specific mistake and how it is handled.
If you begin a story by setting up the hero as a figure of hope, you can't end it with him screaming in despair. It's a contradiction of what you set out to do.
SPOILERS
It actually ended with him saying that he's "here to help" and getting a job at the Daily Planet to keep an ear out for things
It's like literally the final moments of the film
ending
I loved the final scene but I thought there was a weird tonal whiplash.
There was an enormous massacre, Metropolis was decimated, Superman was forced to compromise his values...It's a hard won victory but it's also an incredible low point. It was depressing. And then things are back to normal five minutes later? They glossed over how everyone's going to rebuild the city or cope with the horror they just survived? Like compare to the ending of Empire Strikes Back. It ends with a measure of hope and positivity, but doesn't immediately return to cheeriness.
An example. The first part of the Morrison Action Comics features Superman making a ton of mistakes. The whole thing is about him trying to figure out what being Superman should mean(something I feel the movie was light on) and a lot of it is making mistakes at howto handle himself and interact with people.
This mistake just feels like a cynical force. Like some jackass acting pointing out that "haha Superman is so unrealistic, man" like its supposed to be a clever revelation.
Its not about the character of SUperman. Its about the idea of SUperman.
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Binary SquidWe all make choicesRegistered Userregular
I feel like this is still dealing in the false dichotomy we were dealing with earlier. I don't think anybody is saying Superman should be perfect. The gripe is with the specific mistake and how it is handled.
While that was a mistake too, I think they have the possibility to show how Superman grows from the events in the first movie; how he evolves into the Superman that's wanted and needed by realizing when he is wrong, instead of never being wrong at all.
I feel like this is still dealing in the false dichotomy we were dealing with earlier. I don't think anybody is saying Superman should be perfect. The gripe is with the specific mistake and how it is handled.
While that was a mistake too, I think they have the possibility to show how Superman grows from the events in the first movie; how he evolves into the Superman that's wanted and needed by realizing when he is wrong, instead of never being wrong at all.
See I don't see why you keep bringing up this idea.
Its not true of the comics and its not what anybody is talking about.
Posts
Right around the end of the first hour I was more like "Oh, yeah, okay, I see what they're talking about."
I thought you were going to mention Fantastic Four, but then I smacked myself in the head because nobody cares about Fox's Fantastic Four ;D
Director of Chronicle, hell yeah
The only burn a healing factor doesn't heal.
In contrast, the Injustice Superman or any other "fallen" Supermen are just the opposite. Rather than becoming better despite their mistakes, they refuse to face them as mistakes, compounding them and spiralling downwards.
If this Superman can see that his actions were a mistake, and is inspired to rise above, rather than the opposite, they can still present a good Superman character.
That is because it's the only good scene in the movie and they literally stole it from the original movie.
Wait that's not true. The other only good scene is when superman stops the car with no brakes.
Which is a ripoff of action comics #1.
Satans..... hints.....
when did krypton's schtick change from crystals to liquid metal
Around Terminator 2
can't just have a nice conversation about anything
They can also write Luthor as having a legitimate point without messing with Superman.
Luthor recognizes the things that can drive humanity to greatness are not always great. People can be inspired to create great things through hatred, jealousy, arrogance, or by hurting themselves and others through drug abuse or other kinds of risky behaviors. And he is right in that regard. Luthor's own hatred and jealousy towards Superman have driven him to make some pretty impressive scientific breakthroughs and build technological marvels.
The struggle between Superman and Luthor would be more about whether humanity should exploit that side of itself.
Luthor's hatred for Superman could come from him thinking that Superman is arrogant to impose his values on humanity because he doesn't truly know what it means to be human because Superman never needs to use that darker side of himself like humanity does.
I feel like if he did his opinion of Superman should drastically change
well yeah
there were bad parts too though
Steam
I imagine he would rationalize the shit out of it and turn it into something that would suit his world view.
Lex Luthor doesn't seem like the type of guy to "learn lessons".
You've lost me
She is a great actress.
I have liked her in literally nothing I have seen her in.
I have not seen all of Pulp Fiction so I dunno if she nailed it in that or what.
I didn't like watching her in Kill Bill very much at all.
Steam
i mean, if superman suddenly appeared in reality i'd be pretty skeptical about the matter myself
we as comics readers know that luthor is wrong, that superman is exactly the moral paragon he seems, but we can sympathise with luthor regardless because we understand that lex luthor, much like ayn rand, thinks genuine altruism doens't exist and the best we're going to get is a sort of dog-eat-dog equilibrium
we can empathize with cynicism and the message we take from luthor's failures is that we should rise above it
i was thinking about this in the shower this morning
we live in a world where a group of reasonable, intelligent people who genuinely have everyone's best interests at heart can lock themselves in a room overnight, calmly discuss every aspect of the situation, then come out and decide to create a pile of corpses
superman is important because he posits a world where we are free from that sort of moral ambiguity
if he can be forced to kill that whole function of the character goes down the plughole
and frankly i have moral ambiguity in just about every other piece of entertainment i consume, i don't also need it in my superman
Steam Switch FC: 2799-7909-4852
SPOILERS
It's like literally the final moments of the film
I guess you can want a flawless character, but it leaves nothing to aspire to. You can't be Superman because Superman, like God, just is.
A character who acknowleges that they've made a mistake, and is constantly striving to be better than that is someone that you can hope to become: it's someone you can aspire to be like. It's also the best human quality there is.
And Luthor distrusts Superman because Superman exhibits more positive human qualities than he does; to the point where Luthor fully believes that making a mistake can show how flawed Superman is. When it's actually the act of realizing a mistake was made and constantly striving to better himself that makes Superman represent the best humanity can offer. Luthor can't understand Superman because he, himself, doesn't have that quality, and he can't comprehend someone who does.
I think it depends on whether you consider this to be the entire story, or a portion of something bigger.
That said, that scene is really weak because they didn't show us any real interesting conflict of the two world views Kal is trying to dovetail play out in any of the action up to that point. It's just face-punches the whole time, with out any real sense of internal struggle for Kal until he's got Zod where he wants him. Why would he even have any difficulty deciding whether to kill Zod? He hasn't spent any time trying to save every individual person at the expense of losing the larger battle, nor did he have any qualms about the plan to black-hole the Kryptonian vessel using his old space rocket. Why is killing Zod any different? Because it's up close and personal? That kind of rings hollow to me.
While on the one hand I think UnbreakableVow's right that the film ends on a hopeful note, the lack of consistent or well-handled themes in the second half of the movie really hurts it in some pretty specific, significant ways. I feel like some interesting set pieces were on the table but they lost focus after the beginning.
Yes this is exactly correct
thanks for that, don't know what we'd do without you
probably bunches more people would be alive and there would be considerably less rubble in metropolis actually
I feel like this is still dealing in the false dichotomy we were dealing with earlier. I don't think anybody is saying Superman should be perfect. The gripe is with the specific mistake and how it is handled.
and hence superman diminishes human achievement just by existing
this is exactly how luthor thinks
ending
There was an enormous massacre, Metropolis was decimated, Superman was forced to compromise his values...It's a hard won victory but it's also an incredible low point. It was depressing. And then things are back to normal five minutes later? They glossed over how everyone's going to rebuild the city or cope with the horror they just survived? Like compare to the ending of Empire Strikes Back. It ends with a measure of hope and positivity, but doesn't immediately return to cheeriness.
This mistake just feels like a cynical force. Like some jackass acting pointing out that "haha Superman is so unrealistic, man" like its supposed to be a clever revelation.
Its not about the character of SUperman. Its about the idea of SUperman.
While that was a mistake too, I think they have the possibility to show how Superman grows from the events in the first movie; how he evolves into the Superman that's wanted and needed by realizing when he is wrong, instead of never being wrong at all.
But that would make Luthor
Right
See I don't see why you keep bringing up this idea.
Its not true of the comics and its not what anybody is talking about.