Again, that's not a fully-developed theme. Are you saying that Man of Steel is about running away from responsibility? Are you saying it's about the symbolic act of "killing your father" via Clark needing to overcome Jonathan's false teachings? Are you saying it's about acknowledging that we have moral responsibilities to other people whether or not we want to?
The reason you continue to fail in understanding the story is due to what appears to be a rejection of Snyder acknowledging how the world generally works and in turn, how mankind would react to a super-powered alien, and why Clark's adoptive father would warn him against exposing his true self. It is all successfully laid out from beginning to end in MoS, and fully justifies the story presented in BvS, with many on the streets and in government having a very realistic reaction to the presence of a destructive alien who cannot be controlled. This is a realistic journey of the early Superman of the DCEU.
It is about humanity needing to let go of fear of the Other? Is it about the need to take responsibility for the unintentional consequences of our actions? Is it about how pain can drive us to inflict suffering on people who do not deserve it? What conclusion is the film coming to?
I believe you're looking for some "The End" as a plot point to Superman's early years; this was never intended to have some neatly wrapped-up, triumphant ending, for the clear as day reason that violence, paranoia, fear and anger have
no conclusion. No easy answer. They are natural threads that run throughout every generation, based on whatever circumstances they are forced to deal with. To that point, in MoS and BvS, Snyder made the only rational story choice possible to sell a superhero story set in a world patterned after the real one: have many among humankind fear the sudden and destructive appearance of an alien. Some seem to have a difficult time understanding that the way Snyder had congress, Batman, and others react is exactly how real people would to an event of that magnitude.
The silly way Superman has been depicted in older adaptations transformed him into hat aforementioned camp counselor / Daddy figure to the point that he might as well be some random human in long-johns, because his true nature is completely ignored. Snyder was one of the few filmmakers to ever have people see a super-powered alien in relatable, real world terms, which is
not treating him like Mickey Mouse come alive.
They were still stories intended primarily for children. There is no contradiction between the two.
Again, your view stands on the opposite side of history, as Superman--and nearly every superhero born during the Depression were created knowing teens and adults actively read comic books as well--a cultural habit carried over from the pulp novel era. From his start, Superman was not deliberately aimed at children like
Little Lulu or
Herman and Catnip; his stories, with his hard, brutal stand against criminals was written to appeal to those who--in real life--supported the idea of vigilante justice. Adults.
Siiiiiiiiiigh. I've already had one person complain that I was supposedly insulting his intelligence, yet the only person I've noticed here who
actually insulted the other people in the debate is
@TREK_GOD_1 .
Obviously not, but in your case, you have acknowledged--for the second time--that someone accused you of insulting them. Perhaps you need to consider why that member believed that, beyond a
"I did not..." kind of response.
You keep going back to that extreme version of the character, but I never said anything about going that far back
Its interesting how some are so willing to reject the very foundation and early period of a character they claim to like. As posted time and again, that Superman--the one you're actively
rejecting--was a breakout success instantly revolutionizing an industry. It did not need to "find an audience" / "find its creative legs", so he was the one millions of readers loved to read, and could not get enough of. It did not need the Weisinger/Plastino/Swan era to make the character an icon, because he already reached that level of cultural importance not long after his first year of publication.
This was back in the 1930s, tastes and styles have changed a lot in the past 80 years, so I would say it's much better idea to look to highly regarded modern stories featuring the character to see how to create a story for a modern audience.
If--as you say--styles and tastes have changed, then you should have no trouble understanding why DC changed Superman from the infantile Weisinger/Plastino/Swan version in print, or why the Donner tribute AKA
Superman Returns was
not the Superman audiences wanted to see, WB did not seek to bring back for a sequel, or why no one is trying to bring back anything even remotely similar to the George Reeves or
Super Friends versions of the character. Think about it.
.
Actually, I have seen a lot of praise for Routh's performance, it was the rest of the movie around him that people had a problem with.
Routh was part of the problem; he was trying to channel Reeve, as much as film was trying to copy+paste Donner's style to the story. Audiences did not want to return to that idea of Superman.
I think this is one point where I do owe you an apology, I admit, that I forgot about the stuff you listed when I made my last post. I absolutely loved everything you listed there.
But I think a lot of this goes down to the characters, the characters in those productions have always been some of the more grounded characters coming out of Marvel, and are pretty much built for stories like those.
That's the point: characters dealing with serious issues that--despite fantasy elements--reflect the real world, which audiences relate to, hence the kind of praise those Marvel TV series and movie received.
Superman is not that kind of character, he's always been a larger than life fantasy, and if you try and get to realistic and grounded with him, you start to lose what makes him Superman.
...the original, tough, judge and jury version
is what made him, and what the reading public instantly accepted, which was not the watered down, infantilized version of Weisinger/Plastino/Swan, George Reeves, and Hanna-Barbera. Snyder's version is a natural bookend to the original, as he too is a character existing in a world that is familiar and/or addressing real world reactions or emotions of this era, just as the original version did for its period of history.
