You and I must come from very different backgrounds. When I was a senior in high school, our teacher asked us to write about our heroes. Almost every kid in class named his/her parents as their heroes. The teacher said he was really touched by that.
And dreaming that our parents are billionaires is somehow more relatable than dreaming we have the perfect family...wut.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm talking about abandonment and perfection, not heroes and billionaires. Our experiences are quite similar, you're just talking about something different than I am.
The Stories for characters don't have to keep going you sideline them and put them on support duty, or kill them or retire them.
Superman has conflict. The problem is no one wants to watch a movie where the conflict makes Superman struggle to be Superman as evidenced by the vitriol spewed at MoS and BvS and the continued ******ing of Reeves Superman.
I disagree. Stories about Superman struggling to be Superman where he succeeds or fails spectacularly are quite popular. It's the Snyder take where the idea of Superman itself is framed as irrelevant that doesn't work, and doesn't ring true, by very nature of the popularity of the brand.
That's funny. My mom is pretty much one of the best people anyone would meet, and my dad is dependable and honest. The idea of a raccoon-like alien being more relatable than Superman is pretty funny (I like the GotG series more than a lot of Marvels, so this isn't a diss)
Why is it funny that your parents are awesome? I don't get it.
Superman's origin is essentially that his parents successfully taught him to always do the right thing because it's the right thing. Is there anyone here who does that at all, much less based largely on their parents' parenting skillz?
The thing that kills me about referencing Rocket Raccoon is that he is a supporting character, and so GotG is not a signal of his relatability, but Star Lord's. What's funny in this discussion
I can't speak for anyone else but these are my problems with buying into a live action Superman
1. Lack of stakes.
The guy is indestructible. You have to come out with outlandish elements to hurt him. Way less in engaging than say Batman who can be taken out by a stray bullet.
2. His Power level is too high.
It's easier to list what Superman CAN'T do than list all the things he can. Which brings us back to point 1, lack of stakes.
3. His supporting cast isn't that interesting.
I'll use Spider-Man: Homecoming as an example. You have Aunt May, Ned, MJ.
Fun, interesting characters. Who does Superman have to bounce off of?
(This is just my opinion) really dull one-dimensional characters. Caricatures rather than real people.
4. His motivation.
You know what's driving Batman, you definitely know what's driving Spider-Man. What's driving Superman? He is doing what he's doing because, reasons.
Very hard to get behind a character when I don't know what is getting him up in morning to do what he is doing. Iron Man in IM1 does a brilliant job of establishing who is Tony Stark. Who is Clark Kent? I don't even think Clark Kent knows in the movies.
I've pretty much always had these problems with Superman until I read All-Star Superman. But I haven't come close to seeing this on the big screen which means you aren't engaged and when you aren't engaged you check out.
I know you're not intending to speak for others, but honestly, this is a great breakdown of the negative perception of the character.
To me, all of these questions have answers. Well worn explored answers in comics, as your own readings attest to. But because these are not in the films, even the old ones, it's assumed that Superman doesn't have them. As a Superman fan, this is incredibly frustrating.
One thing I think Superman fans have to grok is that action adventure is a bigger and more popular genre than Science Fiction. That is to say, fantasies about terrestrial things draw more people than fantasies about extra terrestrial things. Certainly there are popular films and franchises about fighting extraterrestrial things, but not so much about being those things.
So when someone not 'into' superman says no stakes, they're not really saying that Superman is invulnerable, this is, in every way, not true. But it feels true because he is invulnerable to terrestrial things. His physical problems are huge in scale or, as someone with no bent towards otherworldly concepts might say: outlandish. It's not from our land, so it is inherently less interesting. There is no way around that, it does no matter if Superman bleeds, because the concepts involved are too removed from mundane every day experience. Sometimes Batman is more popular just because we can go buy bullets but we can't go buy Kryptonite. It makes Batman
feel more 'touchable' for someone who is tactile in that way.
This doesn't necessarily account for whether a Superman movie is 'good' or not, but it does help explain what perceptions people bring to Superman films, I think.
3 and 4, are about the character's emotional development, something that, if done well, resolves 1 and 2, but we rarely see it done well, and so the perception is that it simply isn't there. Certainly a person's relationships are not all plot devices, but if we look at, say Superman Returns or Man of Steel... the death stakes for the supporting cast are not weighted in the depth of a relationship, but on the pretense of one. Many of the previous Superman films work as a marketing campaign against any future ones in that way. Incidentally, Superman 78 developed the Lois relationship and so her peril in the end has more weight than Lois' peril from Superman Returns or Man of Steel, imho.
I think Man of Steel was on the right course, in terms of making a Superman movie about exploring a big idea with visceral DBZ-ish combat to back it up. Certainly that's not someone's cup of tea, but... neither is Batman, we just don't obsess over it. I think Man of Steel's challenge was that the ideas it explored were so counter to the premise it can't ever gain momentum, it can only question it's own value. Superman Returns gave us a mature Superman, but it had so little interest in the modern day and it's audience that it was a relic as soon as it was released.
No problem.
