Superman (casting, rumors, pix till release)

[Nowhere Man]

While I would like to see her hair a little darker, I think Amy Adams is going to be great for the part. I think Fishbourne will be great as Perry White too, but I still would prefer the new version in the New 52.

[A beaker full of death]

Zombie Cheerleader wrote:

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Because someone posted this:
and this
and this

And this, though you chose to ignore it:

but that's another issue...

Zombie Cheerleader wrote:

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So what about Alba is "obviously Hispanic"? Nose? Eyes? Mouth? Skull? Jaw? Lips? Ears?

Since you persist, I've googled pictures of her, and the answer is, in fact, most of the above. Her eyes, her skin tones, her hair color and texture, her mouth, her bone structure.
Now I'm not going to argue the point any further. You want to point out that other ethnicities, including Caucasians, might have her features, I'm tired of arguing. Maybe I just made a really lucky guess.
I'm guessing Sam Jackson is black, too.
Lynda Carter is Hispanic. She doesn't definitively look like it, and even if she did, that can work for Wonder Woman. Alba looks definitely Hispanic. Sorry if that annoys you for some reason.

[Samurai8472]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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I was for Zooey as well...and first had the thought after seeing "500 Days of Summer" for the first time. She would have been great. Still happy with Amy though. She'll do a good job. We really need some news...

Sandra Bullock.

She can definitely pull off the persistent nagging a live action Lois needs.

Lois- What do you have to say about Lex Corp funding terrorists? Hmm? Or arming rebels in the congo?

I can totally see her with that kind of reporter persistents.

[Admiral_Young]

Wasn't Sandra in the running for "Superman: Flyby"? I remember she was rumoured at least.

[Cicero]

My Name Is Legion wrote:

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Some people like macaroni and cheese. Most people get tired of it, if it's all they're fed. The mac-and-cheese crowd, however, always object to any change at all in the recipe or presentation. That's tiresome to the rest of us.

A more apt comparison might be to say that there are four kinds of people who like macaroni and cheese: Those who eat it frequently and want the recipe to stay the same, those who eat it frequently and want the recipe to vary, those who eat it infrequently and want the recipe to be stable, and those who eat it infrequently and want the recipe to change.

I would expect that the the first group is by far the largest when it comes to familiar superheroes like Superman. The average moviegoer is looking for a Superman story that has all the elements familiar to them, and fills in the blanks with a good story; they would probably look for the same in macaroni in cheese: the basics made well without any novel substitutions.

I don't think that Lois Lane's hair color is likely to bother any of them (I could be wrong), but losing the trunks was probably a mistake, and one I don't really understand. The seeming mistakes that tend to surround attempts at Superman films remind me of the key mistake of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy: the filmmakers sought to ground a well-known legend with realism when they only needed to deliver the legend that the audience knew.

[sojourner]

StarTrek1701 wrote:

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FTFY.

you uh, you don't know how bolding works in grammar do you? I get what you were trying to do, but all you really did was emphasis what I said.

So, Thanks!

[CorporalCaptain]

Eviscero wrote:

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A more apt comparison might be to say that there are four kinds of people who like macaroni and cheese: Those who eat it frequently and want the recipe to stay the same, those who eat it frequently and want the recipe to vary, those who eat it infrequently and want the recipe to be stable, and those who eat it infrequently and want the recipe to change.

Why would people who eat mac-and-cheese infrequently necessarily even have an opinion about whether its recipe should be stable? You make it sound like everybody must have an opinion about everything, even things that don't show up on their radar.

I would expect that the the first group is by far the largest when it comes to familiar superheroes like Superman. The average moviegoer is looking for a Superman story that has all the elements familiar to them, and fills in the blanks with a good story; they would probably look for the same in macaroni in cheese: the basics made well without any novel substitutions.

Data to back this up? To connect this up with my question above, how do you even know that the audience who'll pay the lion's share of the box office for Man of Steel will care one way or the other about about the nature of these elements? Maybe they'll just be looking for a great Friday night out with the gang or with that special someone, and the issues that long time fans fret over will just blow right past them.

remind me of the key mistake of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy: the filmmakers sought to ground a well-known legend with realism when they only needed to deliver the legend that the audience knew

The "legend that the audience knew" of the Battle of Thermopylae was not Miller's reimagining of it that was presented in 300, but that didn't hurt that movie's success. Must have been something else about Troy that caused it to fail. Wait, hang on.... Petersen's Troy made just shy of half a billion dollars worldwide at the box office, with budget and marketing totaling less than half of that, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_(film) (cited according to Box Office Mojo). Yeah, I guess they're crying all the way to the bank.

[Cicero]

CarbonCopy wrote:

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Why would people who eat mac-and-cheese infrequently necessarily even have an opinion about whether its recipe should be stable? You make it sound like everybody must have an opinion about everything, even things that don't show up on their radar.

I did specify that these were the four kinds of people who like macaroni and cheese.

The point is that they like it, but don't eat it all the time. If you order pizza a few times a year, aren't you likely to have an opinion about whether you want to eat essentially the same pizza or an inventively different one?

I would expect that the the first group is by far the largest when it comes to familiar superheroes like Superman. The average moviegoer is looking for a Superman story that has all the elements familiar to them, and fills in the blanks with a good story; they would probably look for the same in macaroni in cheese: the basics made well without any novel substitutions.

Data to back this up? To connect this up with my question above, how do you even know that the audience who'll pay the lion's share of the box office for Man of Steel will care one way or the other about about the nature of these elements? Maybe they'll just be looking for a great Friday night out with the gang or with that special someone, and the issues that long time fans fret over will just blow right past them.[/quote]

Superman movies draw large audiences; only Batman and Spider-Man are in the same league in superhero movie attendance. (Of the top ten superhero releases at the box office, the first nine star one of those three characters, even though movies seven through nine are maligned from all corners.) The reason for that is plainly that they star Superman - he's perhaps the American icon of superheroes.

Remember, modern comic book audiences are tiny; the third and fourth groups are almost insignificant when compared to the first group. I suspect that the second group is fairly small also; persons who are casually interested in Superman but are tired of the basics that they encounter only infrequently can't be many in number. I don't have numbers for that, though, only my own sense of common sense.

The "legend that the audience knew" of the Battle of Thermopylae was not Miller's reimagining of it that was presented in 300, but that didn't hurt that movie's success.

Wasn't it? First, the Battle of Thermopylae is rather less well known than The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships, Superman, or macaroni and cheese. And second, the known facts of the battle in the popular mind are that 300 Spartans died bravely in the pass, held off a much larger army, and saved Greece. That sounds like the movie we saw.

(I would argue that a better movie would have made at least as much money as a Gladiator or an Apollo 13, but 300's adjusted worldwide box office was in line with failures like Superman Returns and The Living Daylights. It was regarded as a great success only because its budget was so small.)

Must have been something else about Troy that caused it to fail. Wait, hang on.... Petersen's Troy made just shy of half a billion dollars worldwide at the box office, with budget and marketing totaling less than half of that, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_(film) (cited according to Box Office Mojo). Yeah, I guess they're crying all the way to the bank.

Troy was a decent (but not huge) success at the box office, with an adjusted gross roughly in line with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Octopussy. The problem for the studio is that it had no legs; Troy has very little value today, and will continue to have little value for decades to come. For a movie that cost $220 million to make in today's dollars, it was a poor investment (but not an outright bad one).

AllBusiness, a paper concerned primarily with the financial aspects of the matter, reported the mediocre result of the film's debut:

"Troy," which also stars Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana, scored a moderate 82% favorable grade from moviegoers, according to CinemaScore. The lukewarm score doesn't imply that overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth will follow.
. . . The subject matter was the prime reason for attending, followed by the lead actors.

Troy wasn't a terrible movie. I might actually say that I liked it. But it was a disappointment to the audience, and that hurt both its upfront box office and its long-term prospects. Successful movies with budgets that large usually perform at least 2-3 times better upfront. They include Avatar, Superman, Superman II, Spider-Man 2, Toy Story 3, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Troy's box office was much closer to Iron Man 2 or Terminator 3, both of which were regarded as moderate disappointments - but not near-disasters like the similarly-budgeted Green Lantern, which barely made back its budget in release.

[Skywalker]

My only issue with Troy taking the myth and grounding it in reality is that it would have been difficult to do an Odyssey sequel in the same manner. I liked Sean Bean as Odysseus, and would have liked to have seen him continue the role, but I'm just not sure that The Odyssey would work very well without the mythological trappings.

[Nerys Myk]

A beaker full of death wrote:

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Since you persist, I've googled pictures of her, and the answer is, in fact, most of the above. Her eyes, her skin tones, her hair color and texture, her mouth, her bone structure.
Now I'm not going to argue the point any further. You want to point out that other ethnicities, including Caucasians, might have her features, I'm tired of arguing. Maybe I just made a really lucky guess.
I'm guessing Sam Jackson is black, too.
Lynda Carter is Hispanic. She doesn't definitively look like it, and even if she did, that can work for Wonder Woman. Alba looks definitely Hispanic. Sorry if that annoys you for some reason.

What annoys meis ignorance and stubborn persistent ignorance annoys me even more. Here's my last clue for you: Many hispanics are Caucasians. So the "Hispanic" features you've spotted in Alba are Caucasian features. Hispanic means from or related to Spain. Hispanics ( as you pointed out) can be 100% European in ancestry, 100% Indian, 100% African or mix of any of those. All that is need to make them Hispanic is a cultural or linguistic tie to the Iberian Penninsula.

There are no anatomical or physiological factors in being Hispanic.

[Broccoli]

Jessica Alba is Hispanic? When did that happen?

[Samurai8472]

Her father's ethnic background is Mexican, her mother's is French and Danish.

[CorporalCaptain]

Eviscero wrote:

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I don't have numbers for that, though, only my own sense of common sense.

Got it, Eviscero. Thanks.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Eviscero wrote:

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A more apt comparison might be to say that there are four kinds of people who like macaroni and cheese: Those who eat it frequently and want the recipe to stay the same, those who eat it frequently and want the recipe to vary, those who eat it infrequently and want the recipe to be stable, and those who eat it infrequently and want the recipe to change.

Way to stretch a metaphor way past the snapping point.

Look, most people who go to a Superman movie, or a Batman movie, or a Spider-Man movie or whatever are infrequent or non-readers of comics.

This is easily determined by the fact that so few people read superhero comics, period.

No one who's not deeply invested in the comics cares for an instant whether the characters in the movies look exactly like the licensed drawings that they see occasionally on TV shirts and children's underwear. Superman's got a big red cape, an "S" on his chest and he flies.

The differences between Supes' costume or Lois's look in this movie and the comic drawings is not a risk of any kind. They will have exactly zero effect on the film's box office. People will either find the story, action and effects exciting and satisfying or they won't.

[Alidar Jarok]

Team Broccoli wrote:

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Jessica Alba is Hispanic? When did that happen?

Yeah, I was seriously confused at the beginning.

I've heard the complaint that it didn't make sense to cast Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman, but that was because of the invisible aspect.

ETA: And I wouldn't mind some Mac n' Cheese right now. I'm not sure the drunk person with the munchies fits in those four categories.