Really the only comic story I read all the way through.
Most of my Superman experience is film and TV. My familiarity with any comics mythos is quite limited.
Thank you for sharing.
DC Movies - To Infinity and Beyond
- Thread starter dahj
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Most of my Superman experience is film and TV. My familiarity with any comics mythos is quite limited.
Thank you for sharing.
Sorry, but I agree with Chipman's conclusion -- I don't think it was a mistake. I might conclude it was a mistake if it were one or two lines, but this is just fundamental math -- everyone working on this film knew full well that a man reaching 30 years of age in the late '70s would have been born in the late '40s, would have been a child in the mid-50s, and would have been in high school in the mid-60s. They knew what people looked like and were listening to in the 1960s and 1950s. So this is just too foundational to the story being told -- childhood, adolescence, manhood. And this was coming in the middle of the 1950s nostalgia fad that swept U.S. pop culture in the '70s. So I think they knew what they were doing and it it was a deliberate anachronism.
If that sounds implausible to you, I would say that breaks from reality and or even internal continuity can be a deliberate choice. When he was making Jurassic Park, for instance, Steven Spielberg knew full well that it made no sense that there could be a sheer concrete drop-off where moments before there had been dense trees and vegetation for the T-Rex to emerge from and attack the stalled SUVs -- he knew it because the script supervisor brought it to his attention. Spielberg deliberately chose to break his own internal continuity, because he felt it made for a more compelling movie.
That might make sense, but that's not what's going to happen. Clooney was a one-off "joke," replacing versions of that concluding scene already filmed that would have brought back Calle's Kara and Keaton's Bruce (one version of which also featured Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot). Apparently Gunn/Safran ordered the scene replaced because Calle/Keaton/Cavill/Gadot weren't going to be going forward in their new DCU, but as you point out, that makes zero sense, because Clooney isn't going to continue, either. So instead of the much better and more appropriate alternate endings already shot, we're left with Calle and Keaton defeated and dead in the dirt.
More details here:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/m...side-george-clooney-return-batman-1235517975/
And things are getting even weirder with Gadot now claiming she tallked with Gunn/Safran and will be involved in a Wonder Woman 3. WB claims it's not true.... It's all very odd at the moment.
Someone mentioned Nightwing a few posts back.... With all the projects already announced, I'm surprised there's nothing with Nightwing. I could be very wrong, but I was under the impression he's a populair character, right? I know Titans has him right now, but we're getting two different Batmans at the moment, and there's both a Peter Parker Spider-Man and a Miles Moralis Spider-Man at the same time, so there shouldn't be a problem right? Or do the Titans/Nightwing rights lie with a different studio?
And Titans is over, just as a btw.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a Nightwing movie has not been announced. It's actually surprising that they've already announced as much as has been announced. They obviously don't want to flood the market, and allow for Elseworld projects, as well. The whole DCU won't start until 2025.
Also, rather than a solo-Nightwing movie, I could see them going for a Titans movie, considering the kids that grew up with the 00s cartoon would be at the right age for nostalgia to kick in when that movie would come around at the end of the decade.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a Nightwing movie has not been announced. It's actually surprising that they've already announced as much as has been announced. They obviously don't want to flood the market, and allow for Elseworld projects, as well. The whole DCU won't start until 2025.
Also, rather than a solo-Nightwing movie, I could see them going for a Titans movie, considering the kids that grew up with the 00s cartoon would be at the right age for nostalgia to kick in when that movie would come around at the end of the decade.
Nope, it's all DC/Warner Bros. Marvel's movie rights only got split up because Marvel sold them off during its bankruptcy several decades back. DC never did that. As evidenced by the fact that Teen Titans Go! and Titans were both produced by DC/WB.
The Newmans made a conscious decision, apparently not caring about screwing the established timeline by moving Clark's high school years into the 1960s in Superman III, when the original film so clearly established the clothing, cars and general behavior of the teenaged Smallville characters as typed to the world of the mid-late 1950s. There's no way to handwave the Newmans' glaring and conscious shift of Clark's high school years--possibly to make him appear somewhat "younger" in by having his reunion set in the early 80s.
Nightwing is a popular character--one of the most out-of-the-gates successes DC had over the past 30+ years. As noted upthread, a Nightwing would have appeared in the Affleck-helmed Batman film, but that ship has sailed, so Nightwing is a character with great potential, just waiting to be brought to the big screen. We do know Gunn will have a Robin appear in a DCU Bat-movie, and if this Robin is Grayson's successor, Nightwing could appear for the purpose of exploring the "broken home" tension (and warning the new Robin about his mentor) subplot between Wayne and Grayson which has occupied endless pages of comics for decades.
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I'm not too worried about an offbeat choice, especially since I don't know the traditional version anyway.
Though in all honesty, its at least partly because I've never heard any such glowing reviews about any other Supergirl book so if anyone has any high recommendations for a more traditional take I'd certainly be interested.
Which reminds me, on the subject of comics recommendations, is anybody here a knowledgeable Doom Patrol fan? I fell in love with the show and from there both the Gerard Way and Grant Morrison runs on the book. I'd like to keep going but I'm hesitant since the Rachel Pollack run is only available in a full omnibus which is over 65 euros. I'd hate to pay that much only to find out the run doesn't have the same feel or isn't as fun as the ones I like. So I wonder if there's anyone here who can tell me how similar or different that is from the two runs I've read?
There was something else that confused me in the original film. When Teen Clark is running we see a little girl see him and tell her dad who laughs it off. Apparently that girl was supposed to be...Lois?
That suggests Clark is older than her by several years, but Margot Kidder was older than Chris Reeves and she sure doesn't seem younger than he's supposed to be. If anything, Lois would be older.
So that girl wasn't Lois?
That suggests Clark is older than her by several years, but Margot Kidder was older than Chris Reeves and she sure doesn't seem younger than he's supposed to be. If anything, Lois would be older.
So that girl wasn't Lois?
In deleted scenes we see that is indeed Lois, with her parents portrayed by Kirk Alyn and Noel Niell—the first Superman and Lois from the serials.
Sean Connery is 12 years older than Harrison Ford and played his father. Real world ages don't matter in make believe land.
In the early 80s, DC seemed to have realized that the Lana/Clark romance had potential--although probably to tie into the movie, they had Lana and Clark dating as adults for awhile. Lois was really too self-absorbed during this era to be a proper partner for Superman. One of Byrne's greatest triumphs in retooling Superman post-crisis was to update the character of Lois for the modern age and to more fully develop Clark as a competent reporter and charming guy in his own right, making it believable for Lois to fall in love with him rather than Superman.
SUPERMAN II: Here is an interesting link that discusses the fate of Zod and the other villains in the movie--
https://www.thegeektwins.com/2022/06/did-superman-kill-general-zod-in.html
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It's Superman 3.
Beyond the junkyard scene, nobody puts more thought into this and the 4th movie than "Yup, they exist".
Woman of Tomorrow is in a league of its own among Supergirl books. Of other takes, none is as highly recommendable, IMO, but I did like the "New 52" version under its original creative team.
Even this, however, is not a wholly "traditional" take; it's the second comics reboot of the Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl, and it had its own detractors among the character's fans.
The Peter David run is very good, but it's very far removed from the original -- not Kara Zor-El, not even Kryptonian.
It's definitely a tip of the hat.
Not just in deleted scenes -- that dialogue is incorporated in the 2001 "Special Edition" cut of the film, which was apparently Donner's preferred version.
Lana certainly has her place in the mythos, and has sometimes been well-utilized (e.g., Superman III, the Superboy TV series, Smallville). But her only "potential," in the end, is to eat Lois Lane's dust.
She's Lois in a deleted scene; in the theatrical cut, they didn't include that part. The idea that she's Lois absolutely does not make sense chronologically; I suspect they shot it with the same spirit of disregard for chronological continuity but then chose to delete that part because it required too much suspension of disbelief even in the context of the other anachronisms.
Why? I mean, think about it. Donner was an extremely intelligent, accomplished director. He made multiple classic movies and hits. And he clearly used an entirely different artistic style for the Smallville scenes that was grounded in the filmmaking aesthetics of the 1950s for the 18-year-old Clark scenes, and of the 1940s for the Baby Clark scenes. And again, this was the late '70s -- it's not like they didn't know that someone turning 30 in 1978 was a child in the 1950s. Reeve was right there to tell them (in fact he didn't turn 30 until 1982). And the math lines up with Superman's line about Krypton exploding in 1948 if we take that to refer to when both his ship and the light from the explosion arrived on Earth.
ETA: Also, bear in mind that nothing about the writing of the Smallville scenes requires it to be the 1950s. The things that mark it as the 1950s are all matters that would be under the director's control -- the costumes, the cars used, the hairstyles, the music played on the car radio. It's the aesthetic choices of the director, not the writing, that evokes the 1950s, nothing in the actual script. End edit.
This wasn't just a careless line. This was deliberate anachronism to create a particular artistic effect.
Superman III was made half a decade later by a different director and by screenwriters who had not written the Smallville segments of Superman: The Movie. The choices made during its production tell us nothing about the artistic intentions of Richard Donner half a decade earlier.
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The Lana/Clark scenes were and remain the only part of Superman III I can watch without cringing. Their sequence is almost another (far better) film that happened to be grafted to the senseless end of the S3 production.