Superman (casting, rumors, pix till release)

[Christopher]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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How about poking him with a needle?

If she's so damn sure of herself that she'll jump off a building, to her death if she's wrong, which by the way ceases to leave her in control once she's entered free fall, then trying to puncture Clark with a sterilized needle is by comparison an infinitesimal risk.

First off, where's she going to get a sterilized needle on short notice? Second, if he's Superman, then he's going to sense her coming with the needle and will dodge, or will use a burst of heat vision to break his skin. He's had a lifetime of practice at hiding his invulnerability; a simple trick like that isn't going to be enough to get past his guard.

Third, Lois Lane has never been one to play it safe. If you don't want her to do things that are "against character," then you're contradicting yourself by proposing this.

Fourth, sometimes being in control of an overall situation entails choosing to surrender that control at certain moments, with the confidence that you've arranged things in such a way that it will turn out all right. Like when you jump out of a plane after carefully checking your parachute. In this case, Superman was Lois's parachute, and she was confident that she'd made the checks correctly. Which, let's remember, she had. This version of Lois Lane figured out that Clark was Superman just by looking beyond the glasses, and that alone makes her smarter and more in control than just about any other Lois Lane.

[CorporalCaptain]

Who said anything about short notice? I'm sure she could concoct an excuse to have a needle close at hand, say if she were doing a story about addicts. So what if it failed because Supes used his powers to cover it up; Supes used his powers to cover up what she did do in both versions of the film. In any case, I'll never buy that she would willingly jump out a window. It's ridiculous. Next.

With respect to the hand in the fire scene, I preferred the Lester version.

[DWF]

Christopher wrote:

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Fourth, sometimes being in control of an overall situation entails choosing to surrender that control at certain moments, with the confidence that you've arranged things in such a way that it will turn out all right. Like when you jump out of a plane after carefully checking your parachute. In this case, Superman was Lois's parachute, and she was confident that she'd made the checks correctly. Which, let's remember, she had. This version of Lois Lane figured out that Clark was Superman just by looking beyond the glasses, and that alone makes her smarter and more in control than just about any other Lois Lane.

She didn't look beyond his glasses if you remember she noticed at the end of the first movie that Clark was nowhere around whenever Superman was around, then thought better of it saying it was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. She wasn't that much smarter than Noel Neill or Phillis Thaxter's Lois Lane, they just weren't Superman/Clark Kent's romantic interest.

[Christopher]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Who said anything about short notice? I'm sure she could concoct an excuse to have a needle close at hand, say if she were doing a story about addicts.

Again, character. This is Lois Lane. She's a pit bull. An idea gets into her head, she doesn't wait and plan and bide her time; she acts, even if it entails doing something that most people would consider insanely reckless. That's who she is.

In any case, I'll never buy that she would willingly jump out a window. It's ridiculous.

Then your understanding of Lois Lane is profoundly different from mine. I've seen her unthinkingly put herself in danger many times in pursuit of the truth. The only time it didn't seem in character for me was in Superman Returns, because then she put her son in danger instead of just herself, and that is something she would never, ever do.

[davejames]

Christopher wrote:

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Fourth, sometimes being in control of an overall situation entails choosing to surrender that control at certain moments, with the confidence that you've arranged things in such a way that it will turn out all right. Like when you jump out of a plane after carefully checking your parachute. In this case, Superman was Lois's parachute, and she was confident that she'd made the checks correctly. Which, let's remember, she had. This version of Lois Lane figured out that Clark was Superman just by looking beyond the glasses, and that alone makes her smarter and more in control than just about any other Lois Lane.

Well if it truly IS as obvious to her as it is to us-- because duh, the Clark disguise isn't the most convincing one ever and it's obviously Superman under there-- then I have no problem with her jumping out the window and proving her point.

But if that's the case, they is should have been JUST as freakin obvious to her during the FIRST movie. The first time Superman made his appearance, she should have been like "Dude, you're that nerdy Clark guy we just hired and who I was talking shit to all day!!" Or at the very least the next time she saw Clark again she should have noticed it was clearly the same guy (and don't try to tell me she was too emotional or distracted at the time to notice; I'm not buying that for a second).

The fact she doesn't makes me think she really only has a strong suspicion it's him (even after drawing a suit and tie on his picture), in which case it really IS a stupid and idiotic thing to jump out the window.

It's still a fun scene of course, but ultimately I think I prefer the way Lester did it.

[Christopher]

davejames wrote:

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Well if it truly IS as obvious to her as it is to us-- because duh, the Clark disguise isn't the most convincing one ever and it's obviously Superman under there-- then I have no problem with her jumping out the window and proving her point.

But if that's the case, they is should have been JUST as freakin obvious to her during the FIRST movie. The first time Superman made his appearance, she should have been like "Dude, you're that nerdy Clark guy we just hired and who I was talking shit to all day!!" Or at the very least the next time she saw Clark again she should have noticed it was clearly the same guy (and don't try to tell me she was too emotional or distracted at the time to notice; I'm not buying that for a second).

I'm sure that if you think back, you'll remember cases in your own life when you didn't notice something for quite a while, because you couldn't see past your expectations or preconceptions, but once it finally occurred to you to look at it in a slightly different way, you suddenly recognized what had been staring you in the face the whole time. It would've seemed obvious once you noticed it, but not until you noticed it. That's how the human mind very often works. Everything we see is filtered through our preconceptions and expectations, and sometimes we can't recognize a thing until it occurs to us to look at it in just the right way.

Besides, I never said it was "obvious." That's giving both Lois and Clark too little credit. What I said was that Lois, who is a skilled investigative reporter and keen observer, was able to apply her skills and discover something that was hidden from most observers. She didn't see it right away because it wasn't obvious -- because Clark (by which I mean Reeve) did an amazingly good job at seeming like two entirely different people. And once she caught on, once she re-evaluated everything she knew about Clark and Superman and applied her formidable journalistic skills to that evidence, she became certain that they were one and the same person. The word "obvious" is miles away from what I'm talking about. Lois is supposed to be good enough to figure out things that aren't obvious. That's why they pay her the big bucks.

The fact she doesn't makes me think she really only has a strong suspicion it's him (even after drawing a suit and tie on his picture), in which case it really IS a stupid and idiotic thing to jump out the window.

An amateur observer would have a suspicion. A trained, professional journalist would derive a conclusion with a high degree of confidence. Part of being a successful professional is trusting your instincts, which are going to be much sharper and more reliable than those of an amateur. (Which is why I'm so sure of my assessment. Not to brag, more to offer it as an example, but assessing how characters would think and act is part of my profession. And I've had a lifetime to get to know the character of Lois Lane in her various forms. When it comes to assessing what is or isn't in character for her, I trust my instincts -- by which I really mean my experience and learned abilities, habits of thought that happen so automatically they feel like instinct.) You probably have the same level of confidence and assurance about the things that are part of your profession, your area of expertise. I see from your blog that you're a sculptor. I'm sure you know what it's like when you just feel that a character's pose or expression is right, that it fits, even if a non-artist wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and something that you knew was wrong. Someone else might think you were just guessing, that you couldn't possibly be sure, but you know, because that's your area of expertise and training. And Lois's expertise is in extracting truths that are hidden, in piecing together the right answers based on limited information.

It's still a fun scene of course, but ultimately I think I prefer the way Lester did it.

I think it weakens Lois way too much, as I explained. I'd rather she go to an unrealistic, life-threatening extreme in order to come off as a strong and perceptive character than be reduced to the passive, clueless, unempowered female she was in Lester's version.

[CorporalCaptain]

Christopher wrote:

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I've seen her unthinkingly put herself in danger many times in pursuit of the truth.

There's a big difference, between putting oneself in danger to aggressively go after a story, and going to the ultimate extreme of attempting suicide. davejames's point as to why the secret identity must be just a suspicion is spot on.

There's absolutely no verisimilitude in Lois's behavior here, unless part of her character is that she needs in-patient psychiatric treatment.

[Christopher]

But she wasn't "attempting suicide." By definition, attempting suicide means taking an action that you expect will result in your probable or certain death. Lois was so confident of her conclusion that Clark was Superman -- which, again, was absolutely correct -- that she did not consider herself to be in any significant danger. She considered the risk of death to be low enough that it was worth taking that risk to achieve her goal. Which, as a survey of Lois Lane's career on screen and page will demonstrate, is something she does as a matter of routine.

Sure, as I said, she miscalculated about Clark's ingenuity at hiding his identity -- but she did not miscalculate about the level of danger she was in by jumping out that window, namely, none.

[JarodRussell]

Christopher wrote:

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But she wasn't "attempting suicide." By definition, attempting suicide means taking an action that you expect will result in your probable or certain death. Lois was so confident of her conclusion that Clark was Superman -- which, again, was absolutely correct -- that she did not consider herself to be in any significant danger. She considered the risk of death to be low enough that it was worth taking that risk to achieve her goal. Which, as a survey of Lois Lane's career on screen and page will demonstrate, is something she does as a matter of routine.

Sure, as I said, she miscalculated about Clark's ingenuity at hiding his identity -- but she did not miscalculate about the level of danger she was in by jumping out that window, namely, none.

Seriously, no. Attempting to kill yourself to prove a theory is incredibly insane.

[davejames]

Christopher wrote:

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Besides, I never said it was "obvious." That's giving both Lois and Clark too little credit. What I said was that Lois, who is a skilled investigative reporter and keen observer, was able to apply her skills and discover something that was hidden from most observers.

Sounds fine, except that we don't really see her DO any investigating or use any skills (like digging into Clark's past, for example). All she does is notice that the picture of Superman in the paper looks an awful lot like Clark when you draw a suit on him.

I get that she's a smart reporter with good instincts, but I doubt she's the ONLY one in the office who could put 2 and 2 together like that.

Yeah it does make her seem a lot smarter and sharper than how the Lester version did it, but jumping out a window-- even with Superman around-- is just a completely wacky and bizarre thing to do.

If the scene had stopped before that, and just had her continue to eye Clark suspiciously for the rest of the movie, it would have been MUCH more appropriate and believable for the character, I think.

[The Lensman]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Seriously, no. Attempting to kill yourself to prove a theory is incredibly insane.

Except she wasn't "attempting to kill herself". She was in as much danger as a person jumping into a giant inflatable cushion, and she knew that.

[DWF]

The Lensman wrote:

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Except she wasn't "attempting to kill herself". She was in as much danger as a person jumping into a giant inflatable cushion, and she knew that.

Even if Clark turned into Superman and saved her, how does that prove that he's Superman if she didn't see him change into Superman? For a reproter who's supposed to report the facts there's no facts to prove that Clark is Superman. And this was the same woman who got stuck under a nuclear bomb at the start of the movie, she clearly has a streak of insanity in her.

[Christopher]

davejames wrote:

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Sounds fine, except that we don't really see her DO any investigating or use any skills (like digging into Clark's past, for example). All she does is notice that the picture of Superman in the paper looks an awful lot like Clark when you draw a suit on him.

I get that she's a smart reporter with good instincts, but I doubt she's the ONLY one in the office who could put 2 and 2 together like that.

Realistically, no. But I'm not comparing Donner's Lois to a real-life reporter; I'm comparing her to other interpretations of the same character, and particularly to Richard Lester's far more gullible and passive interpretation of her. What matters is that she's the only Lois Lane who was able to put 2 and 2 together like that.

(Well, maybe not the only Lois Lane; the Loises -- Loes? -- of the Silver Age comics and the George Reeves show were constantly trying to prove that Clark was Superman. So they noted the resemblance and suspected the truth. But Clark managed to fool them over and over again, so they weren't as determined and successful in their pursuit of proof as Donner's Lois was.)

Yeah it does make her seem a lot smarter and sharper than how the Lester version did it, but jumping out a window-- even with Superman around-- is just a completely wacky and bizarre thing to do.

This is what Lois Lane does. She takes crazy risks in pursuit of a story. Perhaps this was a more extreme risk than she'd usually be portrayed as taking, but it's simply a matter of degree -- and one expects a movie to take things to extremes like that, in contrast to an ongoing series that would keep things less extreme so as not to upset the status quo too much. Donner only had two hours to tell this part of the story, so Lois's actions to prove Clark was Superman had to be taken to a more extreme level than they would've been otherwise, in order to justify the fact that she brought things to a head so soon.

If the scene had stopped before that, and just had her continue to eye Clark suspiciously for the rest of the movie, it would have been MUCH more appropriate and believable for the character, I think.

See above. The movie was about bringing the relationship between Lois and Superman to consummation. Movie storytelling is different from series storytelling in that you can't just maintain the status quo -- you need to have big, important things happen. A story that can be dragged out for years or decades in series storytelling needs to be compacted into a single piece in movies. In the comics or the TV series, "Lois suspects Clark is Superman" was a status-quo situation, the basis for a series of repetitive plot beats that created a sense of tension but never actually altered the status quo. Movies don't work that way. In this movie, this duology of films as it was conceived, "Lois suspects Clark is Superman" needed instead to be the beginning of the arc of Lois proving that Clark was Superman, Lois and Superman entering into a relationship, Superman choosing to renounce his powers for love of Lois, etc.

Think about what the reviewers are saying about The Dark Knight Rises -- how, because Nolan was telling Batman's story as a finite cinematic trilogy instead of a monthly comic, he could give the story of Batman things it couldn't normally have, like permanent changes to the status quo and a decisive ending. Similarly, this epic 2-part Superman saga that Donner was supposed to be making was able to take the Lois-Superman relationship to a place it couldn't go in the comics -- even if it did cop out on the ending. It needed to be an actual relationship rather than a potential one in order to serve the needs of a movie duology.

[DWF]

Christopher wrote:

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Realistically, no. But I'm not comparing Donner's Lois to a real-life reporter; I'm comparing her to other interpretations of the same character, and particularly to Richard Lester's far more gullible and passive interpretation of her. What matters is that she's the only Lois Lane who was able to put 2 and 2 together like that.

(Well, maybe not the only Lois Lane; the Loises -- Loes? -- of the Silver Age comics and the George Reeves show were constantly trying to prove that Clark was Superman. So they noted the resemblance and suspected the truth. But Clark managed to fool them over and over again, so they weren't as determined and successful in their pursuit of proof as Donner's Lois was.)

I think you need t rewatch the Adventures Of Superman because Lois rarely gave the whole Clark Kent/Supeman thing a second thought, it simply wasn't that important to her.

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

DWF wrote:

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I think you need t rewatch the Adventures Of Superman because Lois rarely gave the whole Clark Kent/Supeman thing a second thought, it simply wasn't that important to her.

Of course, there's always this! LOL One of the best Superman scenes ever!