‘Superman & Batman’ movie will follow ‘Man of Steel’

Mark Hughes, a film blogger for Forbes with good connections to the Batman vs. Superman production, has said there's no truth to the rumors of any connection to the Nolan films.

 

No, we were saying it probably wouldn't be like that, but more like how The Incredible Hulk was deliberately vague about whether it was connected to Ang Lee's Hulk even though it clearly wasn't if you looked closely.

And of course OOMVM's post has now confirmed that there's no connection at all.

 

I was thinking the other day it would be nice to bring back Nolan's Two-Face since he was underused in Nolan's trilogy

Same actor and same makeup but slightly different circumstances.

 

I have a feeling the only carryover from the Nolan films will be the more grounded and realistic tone-- if only because that's the same tone they already established with MOS.

As much as I was kind of looking forward to a more operatic, BTAS-style Batman, I'm just not sure that would really meld well with what we've already seen.

 

That's the way the films were always meant to be taken. Especially after they stopped using titles by Ian Fleming.

 

See, this is part of the reason that Superman Returns failed. There was market confusion as to whether it was a new thing, or a sequel to the Reeve films. Audiences didn't get it, they just didn't get that SR was using the Reeve films as a general 'tone' for proceedings while still setting forth on their own thing. I truely believe this was probably the original intention of the film-makers, but it got lost somewhere during production, when somebody said "Wouldn't it be cool if we used footage of Marlon Brando as Jor-El?", or "Why don't we use an arrangement of John Williams' theme music for the credits? And do the same zoom effect on the titles?".

It didn't help that publicity materials muddied the waters even further by stating things like how it supposedly was set after Superman II and discarded III and IV, when in reality it just isn't consistent enough with the first two movies for that to be the case. Is Lois Lane really supposed to be the same one played by Margot Kidder? Is Kevin Spacey's bonkers Lex Luthor really supposed to be the same as Hackman's cool, calculating original? For as many nods to the Donner films as we get, there's about twenty things that they get wrong.

The fact that the perception still exists that SR is a follow-up to the Reeve films, even now nearly ten whole years after its release, is testament to what was a complete screw up in publicity terms.

 

But the point is that it's not as simple as "exactly consistent" or "totally separate." It's fiction, not reality, and thus it can easily be between those extremes. Many, many, many works of fiction are loosely consistent with earlier works while still taking liberties with them and reinterpreting their details. Even a supposedly consistent canon is full of reinterpretations -- like Spock going from Vulcanian to Vulcan and from having a human "ancestor" to having a human mother, or like Superman going from just jumping really far to actually flying. And a lot of sequels or revivals do take liberties with the source; modern Doctor Who, for example, has contradicted or reinvented a lot from the original series (which had already contradicted and reinvented itself many times over nearly three decades), codifying the conceit of the Time War changing history as its excuse. The Stargate SG-1 TV series deliberately reworked or ignored a number of details from the movie while assuming that the events of the movie nonetheless happened in the show's universe -- and virtually every other TV spinoff of a movie that's ever been made has done much the same thing (e.g. the Starman TV series acknowledged the events of the movie as real but retconned them to have happened 10-12 years earlier).

So just because it wasn't absolutely consistent, that doesn't mean it wasn't intended to be a followup. On the contrary, it's rare for a revival of an old continuity not to reinterpret its details in some ways.

After all, these are stories, not documentaries. And any ongoing story is a work in progress. The creative process fundamentally incorporates revision -- that's how we turn our rough ideas into more refined ideas, correct our mistakes, etc. So to a writer or artist, there is no inconsistency between wanting to continue a story and wanting to change things about it. The changes are part of the process of refining the creation, polishing it, adapting it to a new medium or new audience.

 

What was the TSWLM reference? Was the scene where Bond throws Blofeld (who is never named but it's clear who he's meant to be?) down a chimney not from FYEO? Or have I forgotten another reference?

 

From Wiki:

 

Oh, I don't dispute that. It only becomes a problem when the publicity machine seems to be confused as to whether it's a sequel, a remake, or "something else entirely" (in this case SR is "something else entirely"). That the audience at large failed to take to Superman Returns has been largely attributed to confusion over what it was supposed to be. Some people just assumed it was 'Superman 5' (it isn't), something which IMO is compounded by it being bundled with the Reeve movies in boxsets and the like. When it really shouldn't be.

 

What "rules" did he change that aren't explained by the fact that they are in an alternate timeline?

 

And that assumption on your part is what I disagree with. It's clearly meant to be an approximate continuation of the first two Reeve films, with a few elements reworked and modernized in the same way that modern Marvel comics modernize events from '60s comics while still pretending to be continuations of them. I mean, really, the similarities enormously outweigh the differences -- the Williams theme, the crystalline Kryptonian technology, the backstory of Superman and Lois having been lovers, Luthor's obsession with real estate and preference in female associates, Superman's quote of his own line about flying being the safest way to travel, the use of Marlon Brando as Jor-El... I mean, really, that is obviously a hell of a lot more than just an homage. It's meant as a sequel, but like many, many sequels and revivals, it updates and reworks elements of its source.

 

^ Fair point. My angle is that it "simply isn't" a part of the Reeve Superman continuity, but I can see the reality (as you say) is that it possibly is very much that.

That there was/is audience confusion over the matter remains true in either case. Nobody seems to have formed a consensus on what it is. Even now, nearly a decade later. Some people are fine with it just being a late, belated, slightly-rebooted fifth movie in the Reeve series. Others feel that it stands too much apart for it to ever 'be' that, and that they would've been much better cutting ties completely with what had went before. Maybe it would have been adopted by audiences better, as Man Of Steel appears to have been. We shall never know, as it remains in the realms of speculation.

 

Whatever happened to suspension of disbelief?

 

I've said all along that Singer's mistake in Superman Returns was making it a gajillion-dollar Richard Donner fanfic rather than reinventing Superman according to his own fresh vision as he did with the X-Men. Sure, he tried to bring some new angles to it, but it was still too mired in a decades-old continuity. It wasn't plausible as a direct continuation and it wasn't fresh enough to work as something new.

But what I'm trying to get across is that it's very common for a revival of an old property, or a series based on a movie, or any continuation by new creators in a new context, to be an inexact continuation and partial reinvention, cherrypicking some elements while ignoring or changing others, even while pretending to be, at least roughly, a direct continuation. It's not even remotely unique to SR. Indeed, historically, I'd say inexact continuations are far more common than perfectly faithful ones. Audiences have become more picky about continuity in the age of home video and online episode guides, allowing exact story details to be more easily recalled.

 

Oh yes, definitely. I remember Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks claiming that his method for continuity was "Whatever the audience might plausibly be expected to remember", or words to that effect - his point being that nobody in the age before home video could reasonably be expected to recall every little detail anyway. And Doctor Who wasn't prone to being rerun back in those days, at least not in the UK.

I strongly suspect it's why for example the continuity issues between The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock were immaterial, until home video made it possible to pore over every little detail.

 

Thanks guys, I'd forgotten that exchange.

 

Or between "Space Seed"/TOS in general and TWOK. How come Khan's multiethnic followers are now all white and blond? How come they're in their early 20s when they were stranded as adults 15 years earlier? How does Khan know Chekov? Why is the Starfleet equipment and apparel among the refugees' supplies movie-era instead of TV-era? How can Kirk say he's "never faced death" after losing Gary Mitchell, Edith Keeler, his own brother and sister-in-law, his wife Miramanee, and his unborn child, not to mention dozens of people under his command? Back then, the movies' concern for continuity with TOS was fairly relaxed; it was seen more as a starting template than a strict gospel.