Sci said:
I mean, no one wants a rehash. The trick is in finding a way to tell a story that maintains the spirit of Superman: The Movie while using a plot and versions of the characters that are fresh and original.
You see, I think that's the wrong attitude to have. Superman was created in 1938. Where he was based off of carnival strong men, Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter of Mars. Couching the character in 1978 skews people's perception of what he is and what his stories should represent.
I mean, you do you, but I don't agree. I view Superman as always having been an aspirational, static character whose dramatic power comes from inspiring positive change in others. There's a tendency to think of Superman as being a character who's "unrealistically" good because he's from the 30s, but he was "unrealistically" good
in the 30s. You talk about "couching the character in 1978" as "skewing" people's perception, but I think the experiences of 1978 and of today have some broad parallels: Post-Watergate, post-Vietnam 1978 America was one that was deeply disappointed in and distrusting of its institutions, and desirous of heroic inspirational, aspirational figures that re-affirmed the value of social solidarity and a belief in societal benevolence. I think people want that today, too -- which is why Captain America became one of the most popular Avengers even though people initially thought he might be seen as too corny before his 2011 movie came out.
DC advertises Superman as a mix of the 1982 Jose Garcia iteration and the Christopher Reeve version. A character who is hopeful, optimistic and inspires people. Would it shock you to learn that the Reeve and Routh versions don't inspire anyone in their respective films?
I'm not here to defend
Superman Returns (as I have previously argued, I think
Superman Returns apes the aesthetics of
Superman: The Movie but uses a very inappropriately dour tone), that's just not true of
Superman: The Movie.
Superman: The Movie has a very episodic structure that's not quite applicable to the standard three-act character arc, but he absolutely inspires Lois to abandon reflexive cynicism. The entire Superman/Lois date-interview-flying sequence lays out that evolution in her character very clearly. Superman also quite literally inspires Miss Teschmacher to change; she sees his decency and saves him because of it.
Superman: The Movie is also subtextually about the idea of reinspiring belief in America. This is framed through the "first night fighting crime" sequence (where he makes a mockery of cynical criminals, saves the President, and saves a cat from a tree) and then by the end, where he says to the prison warden, "Don't thank me, Warden -- we're all part of the same team!" before flying away and then winking at the camera.
What they write in the books, the games, animated properties is far away from Garcia and Reeve. A lot of go-get'em, in-your-face action. Where the solution is "might makes right", because who hits harder than Superman? I can't recall the last time I read a Superman comic where Supes uses his brain to beat his enemies. Character has been reduced to a bruiser in a cape.
Well, that's not what he struck me as when I was reading the comics back in the day, but there again I broadly don't approve of the more cynical, grimdark tone DC has taken since circa 2005.
All 3 of Snyder's DCEU films have his Superman inspiring change in people. Colonel Hardy (this man is not our enemy), General Swanwick (Martian Manhunter), Pete Ross (reformed bully), Batman (former antagonist turned ally) and Wonder Woman (motivated to create the JL along with Batman after Superman died). Not that Snyder gets credit for doing something a lot of big talk Superman creators neglected to do when they held the power of the pen.
Actually, I do think Snyder deserves credit for that. Hardy going "This man is not our enemy" is one of the best parts of
Man of Steel, and
Man of Steel is the best of his Superman films. The problem is that this text is at war with the nihilistic subtext and imagery that Snyder's films are imbued with. (In that way,
Batman v. Superman in particular shares a similar flaw with
Superman Returns -- a film that is textually about the idea of Superman as an inspirational figure but whose tone, imagery, and subtext are depressing and nihilistic.)
In all honesty, I think Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a really good example of a film that has a similar spirit to Superman: The Movie while featuring a much more modern plot.
I've always been baffled by the interpretation Cap TWS gets. It's literally Brubaker's comic brought to life. Brubaker who reimagined Captain America as a James Bond/Mission Impossible globetrotting, super spy. Instead of his normal career of being a crime fighting, social crusader. You could play the Bond or Mission Impossible themes over the music in TWS and it wouldn't feel out of place.
I mean, if you're focusing on the fact Cap starts out as a special SHIELD agent at the start of
The Winter Soldier, I would suggest that that's the wrong framing. The point of
The Winter Soldier is that when it starts, Cap is lost and listless, and he's letting himself drift into a dark place (that dark place being serving SHIELD). But he is such a fundamentally decent character that when he starts to realize there's a darkness within SHIELD, he acts to break down the mechanics of corruption -- he exposes the fascism secretly taking root in a nominal democracy (embodied both by SHIELD's overt embrace of
Obama's drone assassination program Fury's Hellicarrier assassination program and more literally by Hydra embedding itself within SHIELD), and then literally acts to tear down a corrupt institution by force. Cap working for SHIELD at the start of
The Winter Soldier is his Jesus-tempted-in-Gethsemane moment, and Cap tearing it down is his return to honor -- even as he embraces outright violent rebellion against the state.
Not saying there isn't a place for a story like that in Superman's gallery. You would just have to have a mystery Superman can't solve with his powers in 5 minutes and a credible threat for him to fight in the finale.
Sure. I do think that it's generally better to have a version of Superman who is not as hyper-powered for dramatic purposes. But even with
MoS-level powers, a good writer can find stories where the solution requires more than just brute force in order to maintain tension. That's part of what makes
The Winter Soldier work -- it wasn't enough to just destroy the Hellicarriers; Team Cap had to expose both Hydra and SHIELD's own dirty secrets to the public in order to win.
Easy enough to get a corrupt government official a la Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford's character from TWS) or Colonel William Stryker (the X-Men movies). My picks would be General Wade Eiling or General Hardcastle from the comics and animated series. Just anyone besides Lois' dad, General Sam Lane. For the love of god, NO!
I mean, it would certain heighten the dramatic stakes if Lois were placed in a situation where she had to chose between the decency that Superman is trying to inspire in her or her loyalty to her father. But I think the whole "General Lane is corrupt" angle is overplayed, and it gets to be a little bit cheap. I'd rather see General Lane be in some way complicit in the corrupt bad guy's scheme and then realize he has to rebel as a result of Superman's influence on him.
Supes' nemesis/foil my pick would be Captain Atom. Unlike Supes, Nathanial Adams and Steve Roger wear a uniform, are sworn to defend the US and take orders; like a good soldier. Best thing about Captain Atom, he doesn't need Kryptonite to fight. So, we can drop that trope for the movie as well.
I think that would make for an interesting story!
Marvel shies away from the word but DC has no trouble reminding the audience that its heroes are vigilantes. Even Superman is a vigilante. An outlaw, a renegade.
Riding the vigilante line, you have the corrupt government character with ulterior motives paint Superman and all other costumed heroes and villains as "clear and present dangers". That need to be subjugated and submit to government authority.
I think that would make for an interesting story! In particular, what I think might make for a good story is one where the question of democratic accountability comes into play. It's all well and good to rebel against a corrupt, authoritarian state...
but, to whom are
you accountable if
you become corrupt and authoritarian? You could have a more ideological battle between Superman and Captain Atom -- maybe one where Captain Atom is initially on the side of, "We must obey the state because we're too powerful not to be accountable to someone else, even if the state itself is abusive and unaccountable," and one where Superman perhaps starts off on the side of, "I'll use my own judgement" but then both moderate -- something along the lines of, "We will both hold ourselves accountable to the people, but we will both refuse to obey the state when it behaves in a way that is authoritarian."
Edited to add:
I think one of the fundamental challenges with any superhero film or story, but particularly with Superman, is the relationship between the superheroic genre and fascism. I would argue that the superheroic genre, as codified by the emergence of Superman, is a reaction to fascism and its worship of the Übermensch figure... BUT, it's important to understand that it is a reaction
against fascism. Superman, Batman, and most of the early Golden Age superheroes were created by a bunch of Jewish anti-fascists who were often first-generation or second-generation Americans -- a lot of them still had families in Europe who were being victimized by the Nazis. Superman and the characters who evolved from him represent an attempt to appropriate fascist imagery for anti-fascist storytelling purposes.
A fundamental issue I have with Snyder's films is that I don't think he fully understands the importance of using the anti-fascist text and subtext in conjunction with the pseudo-fascist imagery. I mean,
Batman v. Superman literally opens with text calling him "
the Superman," which is just incredibly creepy if you understand the subtext of the term and its relationship to fascism. He employs fascistic imagery and concepts without an anti-fascist subtext throughout the film -- the benevolent but aloof Superman worshipped by the public, his mother reassuring them that he owes them nothing but what pleases him.
I don't think Snyder is himself a fascist, but I think he falls into the trap of going for really impactful imagery without fully considering how imagery can subvert or support text, particularly since he got his start by uncritically adapting Frank Miller's
300 (which is straight-up fascist propaganda) and then by adapting
Watchmen without considering the ways in which his hyper-stylized violence and larger-than-life imagery actually subverted the anti-fascist text of the story itself. I don't think he's fully aware of how his imagery and tone interact with text to produce subtext, and I think he often gets sucked into pseudo-fascist imagery because of that.
I don't want some attempted re-hash of the Chris Reeve movies. "Superman Returns" was bad enough. And if I must be brutally frank, my feelings about the 1978 movie are not what it used to be.
