Exactly.
And I never really liked Welling.
EDIT: I'd like to see Adam Baldwin do a "grownup" Superman. That might be fun.
Why The Hate For Superman Returns?
- Thread starter Trek4Ever
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And I never really liked Welling.
EDIT: I'd like to see Adam Baldwin do a "grownup" Superman. That might be fun.
^Baldwin did a decent job as the voice of Superman in Superman: Doomsday. He didn't really stand out for me, though. But I liked the job done by Matt Bomer, another popular live-action Superman candidate, in the recent Superman: Unbound movie.
Actually, my problems with Man of Steel are strictly with the story. I think Henry Cavill is the best screen Superman since Christopher Reeve, and I'd love to see him in a better Superman movie.
Actually, my problems with Man of Steel are strictly with the story. I think Henry Cavill is the best screen Superman since Christopher Reeve, and I'd love to see him in a better Superman movie.
You're right that it doesn't need to be a part of every hero's origin...and I am not saying he needs to bean orphan.
But having Superman not able to save a "weaker" human who has protected him his whole life, and who has an especially strong hold on his heart (his 3rd weakness) -- that's powerful.
Also, knowing that a big part of his life is gone..again, makes the "god" a real human.
Other Superheroes can have their parents intact....but losing just one (and it could be Martha; mothers rarely die, and even rarer, a widower survives), would be enough for Superman.
If they'd rebooted the series or recast the role after Superman IV, he would have been a great replacement for Reeve. I was sure at the time that the success of Batman would have led to a new Superman movie in the early 1990s.
I agree. And if Jonathon is to die it should "mean something" not be over saving a dog. The use of Jonathon Kent is one of my biggest problems with MoS.
While true, people have sought shelter in under/overpassses from tornadoes (and there's two notable examples of it in common tornado "home footage) and survived, usually in cases where the tornado didn't hit the overpass directly. So while a bad idea it's something that HAS been done by people.
That was the point. Clark should not reveal himself by saving just a dog. They already saved everyone from the tornado, Jonathan then saved the dog, and then Jonathan made it clear that he didn't want Clark to reveal himself in front of all these people just to save him. Had it been a child or a whole group of people, Jonathan wouldn't have stopped Clark from saving them.
Being shown as part of a close family relationship where he can be himself can also help make him more human. Indeed, that was part of the point of the Byrne reboot. Pre-Crisis, with his parents dead, Clark/Superman was a detached outsider who never really let his guard down and showed his true self to any of the human beings in his life. He was always hiding and tricking them, putting on an act, whether it was the act of Clark or the act of Superman. The only times he was himself were in the Fortress of Solitude with his robots, a very Kryptonian environment -- or when he was with fellow Justice Leaguers who were themselves larger than life.
But in the post-Byrne comics, and in Lois and Clark, having regular contact with both his parents made him feel a lot more human. Byrne's innovation was in abandoning the idea that Clark Kent was just a facade the alien wore, and instead making Clark Kent the real person and Superman the facade. That made him much more human and relatable. And that continuing tie to his living parents was the linchpin of the whole thing, the reason why he saw himself as a Kent first and a superhero second. He didn't need to lose Jonathan to be humanized. He was plenty human with both parents alive, more human than he'd ever been before. Because it's not just our grief and loss that makes us human, it's our relationships. The reason loss makes us grieve is because it takes those relationships away from us.
And Superman can also have his parents intact. This is not some abstract, untested suggestion. It was done in the comics and almost every adaptation thereof for over 20 years, and it was done successfully.
People have survived doing lots of dangerous things. That doesn't make them good ideas, and it doesn't make it any less irresponsible for the filmmakers to put such horrible advice in their movie.
Oh come on. Nobody is going to take shelter from a tornado under an overpass because he saw it in a movie. They take shelter because there is nothing else there and time is extremely short.
Totally agree with this. Lois & Clark's Superman was the most human of all on-screen incarnations I've seen. I always loved the scenes where he'd go talk to his parents about something that was really bothering him.
Did Jo-El ever show up on L&C? I don't remember ever seeing him at all. I think the episodes where he meets up with Kryptonians were some of the weakest of the series.
Yeah I don't think people are reading that scene entirely correctly myself. It appeared to me Jonathan was more concerned with Clark staying and protecting his mom and the other civilians, and didn't want to risk their lives by having Clark rush over and save one guy who went back for a dog.
It was less about protecting Clark's secret than Jonathan giving up his life to safe everyone else under the underpass, at least as I saw it.
And yeah I know we later saw Clark moving at superspeed, but we hadn't seen that ability yet in the flashbacks, so it's very likely Jonathan (and maybe even Clark himself) didn't know it was possible-- just like Clark didn't discover he could fly until much later when he got the supersuit. And even then, Jonathan probably STILL wouldn't want to take the chance of his wife and the others getting hurt.
Yes, in one first season episode, played by Star Trek's David Warner. He appeared in both flashback and as a recording to Clark.
But Jonathan believed (wrongly) that they were safe under the overpass. That's why the misguided fool gave them that horribly wrong advice in the first place.
What Jonathan was telling Clark throughout the movie was "Don't help anyone if it risks exposing your specialness in any way. Put your own fear of exposure above helping others, always." Why would he have changed his tune now? The whole reason he sacrificed himself was to drive home his message that hiding was more important than helping, no matter whose life was at stake. He thought he was sacrificing himself for his son's safety, which was noble and all, but still very stupid because it didn't have to be that way.
I'm sorry but if someone is taking tornado safety tips from a summer blockbuster movie, they deserve whatever happens to them.
It's still a freakin tornado. Even if he thought it was a reasonably safe place to hide, he'd still want Clark to stay and protect his mother and the others just in case.
And this notion that Jonathan was trying to "instill fear" or wanted Clark to just hide in a dark corner his whole life and not ever help anyone is just ridiculous. Yeah he thought it best that Clark keep that side of himself secret for the time being (he was still only a kid after all), and that he be aware how the world might react once it learned the truth about him. But he also made it pretty clear he thought Clark WOULD go on to do great things, and that he was "sent here for a reason" and "would change the world."
Hard to do any of those things if you're just hiding in a corner your whole life and not using your powers.
No, that's not what Jonathan is telling him.
And in the end Superman made his choice by destroying the genesis chamber.
Which is exactly why Jonathan was so tragically misguided. He thought he was teaching his son that he could do great things, but that was just his words; his actions conveyed a far more timid and selfish message. And as I've remarked before, if a child hears his parents saying one thing and sees them doing the exact opposite, then he'll be more influenced by their actions than their words.
Jonathan meant well, I'm not denying that. But he totally fumbled the execution.
Agreed.
If they'd given some of Costner's lines to Diane Lane it might have played better. But the tornado scene just wasn't at all believable to me.
I just didn't think Jonathan was written as a good father figure. I get the "I don't know--maybe" line. He's admitting that he doesn't know how he would react in the same situation. But when you have an adolescent asking the hard questions, you have to have some kind of answer. Especially with one as unique as Clark. "I don't know" doesn't cut it.
Maybe something like, "I don't know, son. You have to use your own judgment, but be careful."
If they'd given some of Costner's lines to Diane Lane it might have played better. But the tornado scene just wasn't at all believable to me.
I just didn't think Jonathan was written as a good father figure. I get the "I don't know--maybe" line. He's admitting that he doesn't know how he would react in the same situation. But when you have an adolescent asking the hard questions, you have to have some kind of answer. Especially with one as unique as Clark. "I don't know" doesn't cut it.
Maybe something like, "I don't know, son. You have to use your own judgment, but be careful."
The problem is I think people are presupposing that Jonathan has some concept of what a "superhero" is, and that Clark was just always destined to become that.
If you discovered your son could see through walls, was super strong, and could shoot laser beams out of his eyes, I don't think your first thought would be "Wow, I can't wait to see him become a superhero someday and save the world!!"
No, in the real world you'd probably be thinking "Whoa, this is some really crazy shit he can do! I have to make sure he learns how to control it, doesn't accidentally hurt anybody, and doesn't get locked away and become a lab rat for the CIA to experiment on the rest of his life."
If you discovered your son could see through walls, was super strong, and could shoot laser beams out of his eyes, I don't think your first thought would be "Wow, I can't wait to see him become a superhero someday and save the world!!"
No, in the real world you'd probably be thinking "Whoa, this is some really crazy shit he can do! I have to make sure he learns how to control it, doesn't accidentally hurt anybody, and doesn't get locked away and become a lab rat for the CIA to experiment on the rest of his life."
And even non-Krytonian kids don't come with an instruction manual.
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