The Best Movie Critic   +  sport

The Superman Reboot

Justin here! Today I’m going to break with TMA’s unwritten rule that we don’t write about internet speculation and offer my thoughts on the impending Superman reboot.

I am extremely disappointed with the decision to go with Zach Snyder for director. Aside from my personal feelings about him, this says a lot about what kind of Superman movie Warner Brothers wants. Snyder's previous movies, 300 and Watchmen have in my opinion exemplified the major issues with superhero movies and comics: they are too dark. The last thing any Superman movie should be is “grim and gritty.” That may work for Batman, but Superman is wholly different. Admittedly I don't know what's happening behind the scenes at Warner Brothers, but I would be really upset if the best analysis being done on how to bring Superman back is to make it dark and scary like the Batman movies.

Striking the right tone with Superman movies is extremely tricky. Superman II and III were terrible because director Richard Lester took the series in a comical slapstick direction. Conversely, among other problems, Superman IV took itself way too seriously with its story about nuclear weapons culminating in Superman visiting the UN. Superman Returns was schizophrenic in tone. In turns, it had way too much reverence for Superman or else looked like The Passion of The Superman. Also, Superman never really got to let loose in it – this was a problem the comics had to contend with as well. By the 1970’s, writer Eliot S! Magin had Superman as a character with supreme intelligence and humanity who would never use violence to solve problems unless absolutely necessary. It may have worked OK for the comics, and I have tremendous respect for Magin’s work, but a movie audience needs big action scenes – and they need to be of something other than Superman lifting heavy things. Superman needs to have someone he can beat up on without knocking their head clean off.

(Not like this)

If I were in charge of the Superman movie, here’s how I would do it…

Director: From the short list that was circling round the internet, and probably even in ignorance of it, my pick would have been Duncan Jones, director of last year’s stellar Moon. Jones has a few great qualities that would work well here. He gets science fiction. Superman is first and foremost an S/F story. Good science fiction doesn’t focus on crazy far out ideas, but how those ideas affect man - how does it change how we look at the world, and what does it say about our humanity. Moon nailed this better than any movie since 2001: A Space Odyssey. The best Superman stories are about how Superman views man and how the common man sees Superman.

Jones is also a great visual story teller. Many scenes from Moon are as clear to me now as when I was watching them. He made a movie that basically just takes place in the same room the whole time and its more compelling than many movies that are filmed at exotic locales or with the aid of overblown blue screen and computer effects. A Superman movie should be about iconic images and strong story telling. Richard Donner got this, and he made the best Superman movie so far.

Villain: Word is the villain in Snyder’s movie will be General Zod. I think Zod’s an OK bad guy, but he has a lot of baggage. To tell the story of Zod you have to tell the story of Krypton and Jor-El. These will invariably weigh down the movie way too much. Superman I does this and it takes 20 some minutes just to get to Superman landing in Kansas.

If I was writing this script, there would be two villains, Lex Luthor and Bizarro. I know that Luthor gets dusted off for every movie, but that speaks to his power as a character. I love Gene Hackman, but I hate how he did Luthor. Luthor needs to be serious and relentless and so intelligent that he has a hard time relating to regular people. Luthor is even more important as a character now than when Siegel and Schuster created him. He’s driven by an irrational hatred of the other. He genuinely thinks that he can and should be the one to save humanity. He tries to do this though through relentless capitalism and other morally dubious actions. Something the other movies neglected to do was to put Luthor in his power-suit so he can physically fight Superman. Seems like a no-brainer to me. In my movie, Luthor would create Bizarro, the imperfect clone of Superman. Bizarro has been in the American subconscious since the awesome Bizarro Seinfeld episode, I doubt it would even need much explaining. This way, you split the two things about Superman that make him compelling: brains and brawn. Luthor is possibly smarter than Superman, but not by much. Superman is much smarter than Bizarro. Bizarro is the physical equal of Superman.

Origin: The origin is almost totally unnecessary. I can’t imagine that anyone watching the movie wouldn’t already at least be somewhat familiar. In All-Star Superman, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely knock out the origin in 4 panels on the first page. I would imagine that it could be done in the movie during the opening credits, if not quicker.

The plot: The rumor is that the plot for the new Superman movie is going to be based on Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright which is about Superman before he is Superman walking the earth and trying to decide if he'll do it. I haven't read this story, so I can't really testify to its quality, but this strikes me as being a little too emo. Superman needs to be the pinnacle of self-confidence. As soon as Superman leaves Smallville, he should know exactly why he needs to be Superman. This relates back to the points I made about the origin story. Superman's journey of self-discovery is completely unnecessary. The reasons for becoming Superman do not need to be spelled out. If this is the story that the studio is bent on telling, then it would make much more sense if the story starts several years down the road and something causes Superman to think that maybe the world doesn't need him... of course this was done to some extent in Superman Returns. The bottom line is that this isn't the Superman movie that people want to see. Of course I could be wrong about this, who would have thought that Bruce Wayne training to be a ninja with a second tier villain was going to be as compelling as it turned out to be.

In my script, the first act establishes Metropolis, the Daily Planet, and Superman’s world, the second act is Superman vs. Bizarro, and the third act is Superman confronting Luthor. Meanwhile, the internal drama is about Superman struggling to be Clark Kent and having to be helpless. Lois tries to understand the Superman/Clark thing. Half way through, she would accidentally find out the secret identity and have to deal with it. She also spends the movie investigating Lex Corp and get to the bottom of the Bizarro cloning fiasco. Lois needs to be strong and well defined independently of Superman.

The Suit: Superman Returns messed around with the suit. It was made of sports-wear fabric and the colors were so muted that what should have been primary red was a burgundy. Simply put, you don’t mess with perfection. Superman’s costume has been changed so minimally since 1938 for a reason – it’s damn near perfect as is. There’s nothing that can be done to make it look less silly. The best thing to do is to accept it and move on. Every time the outfit has been changed in the comic, it’s been for the worse. It was tried three times in the 90’s with terrible results: a mullet, an all black get up, and some dumb electric blue lightning thing.

Wow, I’ve gone on about this for way too long and now you all know how nerdy I am. But that’s how much I care about being able to watch a good new Superman movie. If you count Richard Donner's cut of Superman II, there's only been 2 good Superman movies out of the 6 that have been made. I’m going to try to be cautiously optimistic about this though. No matter how much Ben may tease me for thinking so, I believe that Zach Snyder does have some real talent and I hope that being the man behind Superman will help to push himself to be bigger and better. I just hope he leaves the muted post-production color tricks, the slow-fast-slow fight scenes, the embarrassingly bad musical selections, and the lack of subtlety at home. This isn’t some over-important 80’s comic he’s working on, this is the most important and most recognizable American cultural icon of all time – SUPERMAN!