Man of Steel’s Performance to Determine Justice League’s Fate?

Warner Bros. Entertainment CEO Kevin Tsujihara and the president of Warner Bros. Pictures, Jeff Robinov, recently had some interesting quotes in Variety about the fate of the Justice League film.

“Further out, the studio’s planning a “Justice League” tentpole — encompassing DC Comics mainstays Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and the Green Lantern — on the order of Marvel’s “The Avengers.” Will Beall is scripting but no director has been attached yet.
Stakes are high for “Man of Steel.” Other than Nolan’s Batpics, Warners has not been able to effectively exploit the DC library. Its 2011 “Green Lantern” underperformed, and a “Justice League” film wouldn’t likely be in theaters before 2015, as Warner’s top brass has indicated that they are awaiting the results of “Man of Steel,” which opens June 14, before moving further ahead.”

I think they should develop several successful characters like Marvel did before even thinking about moving forward with a Justice League movie.  What made the Avengers so big was that each of the individual characters in the film had had at least moderately successful movies of their own already.  DC hasn’t had any success yet, with the exception of Batman.  Without putting the work in, I can’t see Justice League being as big as The Avengers.

David S. Goyer on Man of Steel

“I’m really proud of it.  I never thought I would be doing a Superman film, but I think the only possible way to top myself or ourselves on Batman is to tackle Superman whose kind of the Granddaddy of all the superheroes. He’s trickier, it’s kind of easier doing a dark character who doesn’t have any super powers but I’m really proud of what we’ve done and I can’t wait for people to see it. I think the movie is going to be the right movie for the times. I’m happy that movie is coming out in the summer, because I think it’s the kind of movie that the world needs right now.”

Don’t Ruin Superman! (Why Superman Returns Sucked) – Part 2

If you have not read the first part to this article, you may do so here: Don’t Ruin Superman! (Why Superman Returns Sucked)

In the last article I covered some of the problems with Superman Returns, like weird plot points, reusing plot lines from previous movies and a running time that is just too long.  While all of those things can bring a Superman movie down, the real issue I have with it is Bryan Singer decided to make Superman a total piece of crap! Even in our culture, if someone acted he Superman does in this movie, he would be hated by everyone.

This isn’t just any superhero, this is Superman.  He fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”.  He has also stood as a moral leader.  Seriously, they even use the line from the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie about him being the light that shows the way (for mankind to follow his example).  Okay, so what is Superman’s example in this movie?  For starters, he abandons the woman he loves for five years while he is off searching for a planet he already knows has been destroyed.  He doesn’t even say “bye” to her, he just leaves!

Okay, Superman is kind of a jerk there but that isn’t the worst thing someone could do.  Well, don’t worry, it’s not the worst thing Superman does.  Not only did he leave Lois for five years to check out some broken pieces of rock, he had knocked her up before he left.  He didn’t know this somehow, even though he has superhearing to the point where he can float out in space and hear everything that is going on on earth, but he can’t hear his own child’s heartbeat apparently.

Superman doesn’t stop there, when he returns to earth he finds out that Lois is now engaged and has a son (he doesn’t know this kid is his at this point).  So what does he do, stay out of the way and realize he lost her?  Nope!  Superman spends half the movie flying around outside of Lois’ house, spying on her conversations with her fiance using his super-hearing and x-ray vision.  He also repeatedly attempts to seduce Lois away from her fiance, even though he knows Richard (her fiance) is a nice guy and they (Richard and Lois) have a child together (what Superman thinks at the time).

What kind of example is this guy supposed to be to humanity again?  It’s okay to break up families because you decided after five years that you want your ex-girlfriend back?  Superman is a total scum bag in this movie when you think about!  He does eventually find out that Jason (Lois’ son) is his kid and the movie ends with Superman giving a smirk because he knows he is back in with Lois and Richard will be kicked to the curb at some point.

Actually, Lois is a dirtbag as well, she knew Jason was Superman’s kid, but allowed Richard to raise him as his own son.  It also means Lois didn’t wait very long to start sleeping with another guy after Superman left earth.  For all she knew, he was out there fighting some supervillain and saving the planet for a month.  The only person who didn’t do anything morally bankrupt in the movie was Richard, and he is the only one being totally screwed over the whole time.  In the end, this version of Superman and Lois really do deserve each other because they are both pieces of crap.

Here is hoping that in Man of Steel, Superman is back to being a stand up guy just trying to save the day.  No one goes to a Superman movie to see him be a wife stealing peeping tom.

Don’t Ruin Superman! (Why Superman Returns Sucked)

With Man of Steel only a few short months away, I thought it might be a good time to review the last reboot of Superman… Superman Returns.

Superman Returns is a movie I was really looking forward to seeing when I first heard it was going to be made.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Superman fan.  Then the trailer for the movie came out and I was blown away!  It had the classic John Williams score, Marlon Brando as Jor-El; it was the Superman 3 we had all been waiting for (pretending the other Superman 3.. and 4 for that matter, didn’t exist).  What we actually got was, um, really weird actually.

From the first really out of place scene where Lex Luthor was apparently having an affair with a 90 year old woman to swindle her out of her money to when we later find out that woman’s dog ate it’s brother (or sister).  We also got several running jokes about Lex Luthor’s wigs (maybe one would have been okay but we got it, he wears a wig).  All of this would seem out of place in just about any movie, but especially a Superman movie.  It was just unneeded, weird and added to an already super long running time.

What Bryan Singer was thinking I really have no idea.  There is also the scene where young Clark is learning about his powers, and for some reason he is wearing glasses even though he didn’t need those for his disguise until years later.  It makes no sense and is never explained.  The movie has a huge running time but nothing is really even happening during a lot of it.  Just cutting out the pointless scenes dealing with seducing 90 year old women and cannibal dogs would have helped a lot.

One of the most exciting prospects about a new Superman film was that one hadn’t been made since the mid-80s.  Special effects had come along way since Superman 4.  We could finally see Superman face off against a major super villain, someone like Darkseid, Brainiac, Metallo, etc.  What we got was Lex Luthor in a plot to gain real-estate.  Hm, seems like I already saw this in Superman 1, 2 and 4.  Now I am not against references to the older movies, it’s kind of cool actually, but we waited 19 years for a new Superman movie and all we received was the same thing we had already seen before.

Not only had we seen the basic plot before (done much better), but Superman didn’t even fight anyone in the entire movie!  It was mostly him spying on Lois (I’ll get to that more in part 2 of this review) and flying around dealing with disasters caused by Lex Luthor stealing some Kryptonian technology.  Again, if we wanted to see Superman dealing with natural disasters caused by a villain, we could have rewatched Superman 1, 2, or 4.  All of the things mentioned so far are bad but none of them are as bad as the real reason Superman Returns sucked.

In part 2 of this review I am going to cover how Bryan Singer turned Superman into a total scum bag.

Christopher Nolan on Man of Steel and Justice League

Christopher Nolan recently talked about the if there are similarities between his Batman films and the Superman reboot.

“Well, somewhat, but I wouldn’t want people to think we’re doing for Superman what we did for Batman.
“It’s very much Zack’s film and I think people are going to love what he’s done. I think it’s really remarkable to take on that character. Superman is a completely different character than Batman. So you can’t in anyway use the same template. But David Goyer had this, I thought, brilliant way to make Superman relatable and relevant for his audience. Zack has built on that and I think it’s incredible what he’s putting together. He’s got a lot of finishing to do on that. Superman is the biggest comic book character of them all and he needs the biggest possible movie version which is what Zack’s doing. It’s really something.”

When asked about a Justice League film and if he could take on a Joss Whedon like role: 

“Well, as I’ve said, and I’ll say definitively again, I am done with the Batman films, the trilogy is completed. It ended in the manner we had envisioned.”