Babillygunn
New Age Outlaw
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2014
- Messages
- 7,065
- Reaction score
- 10,958
- Points
- 118
I do get what you are saying. But I donât know that I 100% agree. Superman 2 was a hit in its day, or at least that is my memory. I remember when it came out, it was a staple on the early days of cable tv. It may be just the memory of a childâs perception but I just remember that movie always being on. And he was wildly popular in the â80s. Then Frank Miller wrote DKR and Burton came out with Batman â89 and Batman, a character that was way on the decline, saw a renewed popularity.Itâs more than the board I am just giving a simple example because the last few pages have been talking about Donnerâs movies. Letâs not sugar coat it Superman 2 was just ok for the general audience. Superman for the most part has had a long struggle sense the 80s remember they killed him off, changed his power set, and even gave Supes a mullet. Superman has been saved over the years by the live action television shows, the Justice League Cartoon, ect. For some reason mainstream has not excepted Big Blue. I have a feeling something is different with Gunnâs Superman. I donât think this is fake hype.
The times were different then. You didnât necessarily see situations where a big hit comes out and then studios would churn out other hits in the same genre. Because that hadnât really been a successful model. After Star Wars, some studios tried their hand at space operas and it didnât hit. Disney sunk a bunch of money into The Black Hole and it failed. A lot of this was because the hit had set the bar too high. So the success of Batman â89 didnât usher in a ton of other big budget superhero films. At best, it ushered in low budget Cannon films like Dolph Lungrenâs Punisher, or television shows like the 1990 Flash. So it wasnât all that surprising that Superman didnât get a film after the success of â89.
After the success of Batman Returns, we did get Superman return on television with Lois and Clark, which was very successful and aired for a number of seasons. Iâd argue that after Batman Forever, Superman may have been rivaling Batman in popularity at that time despite not being on the big screen for a couple of decades. Thatâs why, when DC decided to have an enormous event comic with a âdeath ofâ angle, they went with Superman as opposed to Batman. The result was the highest selling comic of all time. That wouldnât be the case for a character that the public did not care about.
As far as the mullet is concerned, weird as it sounds, mullets were considered cool for a hot minute during that time period. Young people did mullets in late â80s and early â90s. And giving that hairstyle to characters like Superman and Nightwing was actually a show of respect by middle-aged white guy creators who thought that was the general audienceâs definition of looking cool. It hasnât aged well, but a lot of stuff from the Bronze Age hasnât aged well.
Throughout it all, I think people have been itching for good Superman content. We just havenât gotten it on the big screen. But it is telling that the Superman films that werenât made are considered the stuff of legend. People still talk about Superman Lives, or Superman:Flyby in ways that Arnofskyâs Batman Year One could only dream of.
Again, I donât see that happening for a character that nobody cares about.
In the end, Iâm pretty sure that if you give people a good Superman film, they will go see it. Give them something that is bad, and they wonât. Itâs just that simple.