SubJeff on 23/7/2012 at 20:07
Quote:
he's got an entire damn adopted planet that he looks after.
Jigga please, he ain't saved no African chil'ren or no ol' Japnesee people running from some o dem biiiiiig-ass waves.
june gloom on 23/7/2012 at 20:20
Inline Image:
http://images.wikia.com/marvel_dc/images/0/01/Heroes_Against_Hunger_Vol_1_1.jpg(And of course Lex doesn't do anything about it either.)
Don't think the tsunami was ever in the comics -- DC makes a point of leaving out the really big disasters. They didn't even have 9/11, whereas Marvel had a whole Spiderman issue dedicated to it. Which is no surprise, if you want to complain about blatant Americanism, Spiderman's who you should be complaining about. Then again, that makes sense considering Spidey hasn't been written well in, uh... decades. DC's reasoning is that worse stuff happens all the time, everything from alien invasions to outright complete destruction of cities; to dedicate focus on real-life disasters would cheapen them and lessen their impact, and feel like pandering (which the Spiderman issue, uh, did. Fuck Spiderman. And fuck Marvel.) It also brings up the side issue of how to deal with these real-world issues -- does Aquaman or Superman show up to stop the tsunami? But that would make it feel fake and kind of disrespectful, wishful thinking, because the tsunami still hit the real-world Japan.
One thing you have to remember too is that while Supes does indeed tend to focus a lot on threats to America -- he's an adopted American, after all -- that's because it's where he's most needed. He's not the only superhero, you know; Grant Morrison introduced the idea that in the southern hemisphere, Martian Manhunter is more well-known because he's the guy most likely to show up. And Geoff Johns introduced the fact that some nations
want American/Western super heroes to stay out of their countries, which Green Lantern of course totally ignores because all of Earth is in his jurisdiction.
SubJeff on 23/7/2012 at 21:30
Superman.
Serious business.
In all seriousness though - very interesting. Spiderman is a great character in the comics though. It was one of the few that I read a fair bit as a kid. I always liked the wisecracks throughout fights.
Nicker on 23/7/2012 at 21:36
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
Although I did just finish reading Red Son, A take on what would happen if he landed 12 hours later in the Ukraine and Superman was a soviet. Very good read. I recommend it.
I couldn`t find the video but here`s the (
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78jwhatif.phtml) transcript of the SNL skit on a similar twist.
SubJeff on 23/7/2012 at 22:19
Where does he get those wonderful gifs?
Muzman on 24/7/2012 at 00:10
Jesus. It's on the money but, talk about showing off your Rolodex.
froghawk on 24/7/2012 at 00:28
I'll watch this just because Nolan is producing it (and the teaser didn't look bad, kid running around in a cape aside), but Goyer is awful on his own and Snyder is a terrible director... i can't imagine anything worthwhile will come out of their teaming up.
DDL on 24/7/2012 at 12:21
The problem with superman is he's fucking superman.
Put supes in the same situation as batman in TDKR and he'd probably just round up all the bad guys using superspeed, throw them into the negative zone or some other bullshit and then fly the giant bomb into the sun. Again. At no point would he ever seem in danger, or even break a sweat. About the most threatening thing you can do when you're up against superman is make fucking sure superman never finds this fact out, because after that it's game over.
Batman, we can empathise with: he's a guy in a suit. It's a high tech suit, and he's very well trained and massively rich, but he's still just some dude. We can put ourselves in his shoes, thinking "would I be prepared to do that?" and so on. Nolan's batman spends a fair amount of time out of the suit, too, which makes empathy even easier.
Supes?
"Hey, why am I even dodging these bullets lol"
"O noes I'm in a pit" *flies out*
The only people they can really put him up against are giant, planet destroying doom-monster types, or they find some handy macguffin that depowers him, then put him up against basically anything. But without powers he's not superman anyway, he's just an idealistic batman in a far more flamboyant outfit.
He's dull. He's crushingly, crushingly dull. About the only interesting superman stories I've ever read are either
A)the ones where he's filled with massive psychological angst about being just so fucking OP (and also an alien) -tellingly, those are the ones that make the most effort to engender empathy in the reader, since we've probably all felt like a bit of an outsider at some point.
B)the ones where he "goes bad", because then at least it hits home how incredibly fucking stupidly dangerous he really is. I mean, if you look at the level of power he's supposed to have, vs the incidences of him "going bad", you pretty much have to agree with Luthor: the dude's just too fucking dangerous to be on this planet.
So yeah, I'm not...optimistic about the movie.
(Also, I saw the trailer at TDKR, and all I could think was "he's got contrails coming out of his feet! WHY DOES HE HAVE CONTRAILS COMING OUT OF HIS FEEET")
Thirith on 24/7/2012 at 13:15
I like the Donner Superman movie for its sense of fun; other than that I really just know the Superman stereotype - and Mark Millar's Red Son. I've almost only heard bad things about Millar, but Red Son is a great read: clever, intriguing, intelligent.
Based on everything I know (which admittedly isn't much), I don't think Superman could be given the Nolan-style Batman treatment. I don't think you can put him into a realistic(ish) world without changing him so much he isn't Superman any more - and while you can deconstruct him as an icon, it still has to contend with the fact that he is an icon. I'm sure there are interesting Superman stories to be told (if Red Son is anything to go by), but I think they'd be very different from Nolan's Batman films.
Which isn't saying that Nolan couldn't do an interesting Superman movie, if he put his mind to it. They'd just be in a different fictional universe IMO.
