Spoilers "Superman & Lois" Season 1 spoiler discussion!
- Thread starter The Realist
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"discard data"? This isn't a scientific proof. To me Superman's character is friend, pure hearted hero and best of humanity, none of which changes because of 2 - 4 incidents over decades. The reasons I gave for discarding the "data" of Superman 2 and the CW shows are perfectly valid.
Hey I think it was deeply shitty and character-ruining that Spock forced a mind meld on Valeris, and they played it like a sexual violation, in front of the entire bridge crew, and everyone just watched. It made EVERY TOS CHARACTER look awful.
I wish they hadn't done it, it's forever tainted the characters.
But I acknowledge it happened and Spock and the crew are capable of disgusting things.
Superman killing Zod for perfectly legitimate reasons pales in comparison.
I wish they hadn't done it, it's forever tainted the characters.
But I acknowledge it happened and Spock and the crew are capable of disgusting things.
Superman killing Zod for perfectly legitimate reasons pales in comparison.
And to me, that is merely restating the problem. Too many comic-book superheroes have been compromised in their screen adaptations by being forced to conform to the expectations of American action movies, in which protagonists are frequently driven by revenge and self-interest rather than helping and protecting people as an end in itself.
Of course, TV superheroes aren't immune to this too -- look at how practically every season arc on The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow is about the heroes trying to clean up problems they caused in the first place. This is why I'm not crazy about the modern season-arc structure in general -- it tends to focus the heroes too much on their own selfish problems. The episodic shows of the past were more about the protagonists helping other people with their problems, so they were more selfless, more like true heroism and less like the endless self-absorption of today's soapy season arcs.
Film in and of itself has nothing to do with it. Superman is a character with 80 years of history. The character has been changed to fit the times over the decades. You've had the racist version of the '30s and '40s (No he didn't start out as a paragon of virtue), and at one point he evolved into a near boy scout, etc. There's never been one absolutely consistent version of the character.
{quote}In issue #239 [of the Superman title, published 33 years after the character's creation], a two-page map showed that Kryptonians Of Color had an island all to themselves, which is pretty embarrassing... I cringe to tell you this, but the Kryptonians of Color were all on ‘Vathlo Island, Home of a Highly Advanced Black Race.’[/quote]
Sleepy.
Sleepy.
Of course it does. You missed my point that I'm not just talking about Superman. I'm talking about the decades-long pattern of forcing superhero movies to fit the stock self-defense or revenge formulas of Hollywood action movies. That's why Batman '89 made the Joker the murderer of Bruce's parents, to make it fit the revenge-movie formula. That's why the climax of the 2005 Fantastic Four is all about the Four saving themselves from Doom instead of saving the world (in fact, they literally endanger the entire world to protect themselves, the diametric opposite of what superheroes are supposed to do). And that's why so many superhero movies end with the hero killing the villain or failing to save them (or choosing not to save them, e.g. Batman Begins) -- because of Hollywood's bloodthirsty insistence that the death of the villain is the only "satisfying" way to end an action movie.
It isn't even limited to superheroes. It's the industry as a whole. Motion picture executives are not interested in doing authentic adaptations of source material. They're interested in finding source material that they can turn into movies that fit standard formulas they consider successful, because they'd rather play it safe with a proven formula than take a chance with something different. That's why so many movie adaptations transform the source work into something that fits current trends rather than being faithful to the original, like turning the wholesome, good-natured (if you can look past the Confederate symbolism) The Dukes of Hazzard into a foulmouthed, raunchy comedy. Or turning Mission: Impossible, which on TV was fundamentally a heist/con game procedural, into an action-thriller franchise defined by huge set-piece stunts.
Indeed.
Wrong. Superman has not only killed Zod across different adaptations, but as noted time and again, he was killing villains from the earliest years of his published life. Mort Weisinger's era is not an original or some etched-in-stone standard of the character. The Super Friends and the Salkind's films are not, either. For anyone who knows the full history of the character, its undeniable that he's not, nor was he intended to be Santa Claus, or savior.
You obviously haven't read a lot of the Fantastic Four. They've always been presented as a family first group, and Reed Richards is often reckless with his experiments and yes while he will usually end up saving the day; If he wasn't so reckless the world wouldn't have been in danger in the first place. Most times saving the world isn't the first thought they have when they're in combat or when they're trying to correct the situation they may or may not have caused themselves.
And yes oftentimes movies do make what fans considered bad changes for the sake of the film; and that's unfortunate, but honestly overall, Kevin Feige and the people behind the MCU films do a lot less of that, and that's one reason the MCU franchise is so popular.
As for me missing your point, maybe you should have made your point a little clearer because it was fairly simple and straightforward in my view, and I responded to what you wrote.
That's pretty much my point. They do that because they're familiar with the comics and more committed to being true to them. I'm talking about the practice that was the norm in earlier decades, before comic-book movies ruled the industry, when studio execs were less familiar with how comics stories were told and more inclined to change them to fit stock action-movie conventions like revenge stories.
I was picked on a lot in school too, and I have to opposite reaction. For me there's nothing more satisfying than seeing the victim get back at the person who was tormenting them.
But not when it's Superman. Not when he has an unlimited power advantage and is punching way, way downward. That changes everything.
The whole reason superheroes have always appealed to me is because, as a perennially bullied child, I deeply valued the idea of people who had great power and only used it to help and protect, never to assert power over others as an end in itself. And Superman is, or should be, the ultimate embodiment of that.
I already said I reject that false equivalence. He wasn't saving a hostage or preventing a murder, he was getting revenge on someone who'd embarrassed him. The problem is that he was using his superior power for selfish motives instead of selfless ones. That's a fundamental difference, the difference between a bully and a protector.
He wasn't using his full strength. Superman could have really hurt him worst if he wasn't holding himself back.
Humour. It is a difficult concept.
Yet you apply false equivalencies of your own in this argument, so how seriously can we take that assertion?
Prepare yourself for the person you're responding to run right past the meaning of your statement.
As in the Superman II scene, where its clear Clark was merely teaching the bully a lesson / sending a message, if certain people were even vaguely familiar with comic book history, they would know undeniably heroic characters such as Peter Parker used his spider-power (holding back) to beat the crap out of three drug dealers in Amazing Spider-Man #98 (July, 1971) as a warning about selling to Harry Osborn and to others around the campus. This is far from the only example of a hero either sending a message or punishing someone who tormented the hero or another. That is not bullying, but a form of restorative justice.
Always weird to see people talking about what "the real Superman" is like or would do, as if this weren't a character written by hundreds of individuals across decades, across multiple continuities. The original S&S Superman was perfectly okay killing criminals. John Byrne's version killed once and was so shaken up by it that he developed a split personality. Joe Casey's version was a literal pacifist, who was against even punching his enemies, much less killing them. And they're all Superman.
People should just say *why* they prefer a certain interpretation instead of going into "if you really knew your comic book history" gatekeeping nonsense. It's more honest.
People should just say *why* they prefer a certain interpretation instead of going into "if you really knew your comic book history" gatekeeping nonsense. It's more honest.
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