Why all the hate for Man of Steel?

[Foeofthelance]

Again, you can summarize DC's problem with their movies with three words: "Howard The Duck".
Marvel can at this point pull him out in the open without batting an eye, while DC STILL have problems making their MAINSTREAM heroes work.

Heh, now I'm picturing some exec at Warner Brothers getting yelled at and sputtering, "Wait, what do you mean DC doesn't stand for depressing cinema?!"

[Gettles]

Again, you can summarize DC's problem with their movies with three words: "Howard The Duck".
Marvel can at this point pull him out in the open without batting an eye, while DC STILL have problems making their MAINSTREAM heroes work.

I feel like this is a pretty apt metaphor for how the Marvel and DC movies are going.

[Fan]

Again, you can summarize DC's problem with their movies with three words: "Howard The Duck".
Marvel can at this point pull him out in the open without batting an eye, while DC STILL have problems making their MAINSTREAM heroes work.

Exactly, but also to be fair.

Before Marvel got picked up by Disney their movies were only slightly better at best, when it comes down to it at the end of the day you're looking at a company that just doesn't have the teams of quality writers that major film and animation does. I love Grant Morrison but they only bring him on for like, 1 out of 10 stories and even he doesn't always hit, hell, even Gail Simone doesn't always hit with the one thing she's famous for.

DC doesn't have the money to fund better writers and animators, hell, they couldn't even manage to keep Young Justice going when their main issue was time slot, and animation has been their one thing where they've stood head and shoulders above Disney's Marvel Studios. (And yes, I did watch and enjoy Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.).

[Foeofthelance]

DC is owned by Warner Brothers, and as far as I know all their properties are as well. By contrast, while Disney now owns Marvel, a lot of their key properties, such as Spiderman and X-Men, are owned by outside studios.

I honestly don't think its a matter of money, but one of quality control. Fox, Sony, and Warner Brothers can throw just as much money at their movies. X-Men: Days of Future Past cost $200 million, Man of Steel cost $225, and Amazing Spiderman 2 cost another $200. Guardians, by contrast, was the least expensive of the projects at $170 million. The major difference has been that while the first three studios have been very top heavy in what they want from their directors and screen writers, Disney's attitude has been more along the lines of turning to the guys and girls already working at Marvel and asking, "Okay, what do you guys want to do and how much do you think it will cost?"

Man of Steel was not a Superman movie, it was a Zack Snyder film that had Superman in it, just as the recent Batman trilogy was banked on Christopher Nolan's name rather than its titular character. Read the commentaries on Amazing Spiderman and you keep tripping over the lines, "Well, the producers wanted this..." "We got this call from the guys at Sony..." And then on top of it you get something like David Goyer opening his mouth and proudly demonstrating how little he understands about the franchises he works with, or the litany of "No, no, we couldn't possibly do a Movie X because of reason Y, so we're just going to rehash the two same characters we've been rehashing for nearly forty years. Oh, but hey! We can definitely put them in as cameos!"

Meanwhile Disney is letting the inmates run the asylum, and just so long as they don't burn it down is more than happy with the results.

[Jayngfet]

Considering Guardians is one of the reasons I have lost almost all interest in seeing Batman v Superman...



You know what I want to see a Superman movie try to pull off? That scene in one of the comics where he stops a girl from committing suicide by just talking to her. Where he just sits down and proves how human he really is by saving a life without hitting something with super-strength or burno-vision, but just by conveying the strength of his convictions.

That requires that you establish Clark Kent as being the ultimate good guy who always does what's right.

What we've established is Superman, a man capable of knocking down whatever buildings the villains didn't get around to. If he could do anything, it's intimidate her with his destructive force before growing a beard and smashing another eighteen wheeler to feel better about himself.

[Scowling Dragon]

What we've established is Superman, a man capable of knocking down whatever buildings the villains didn't get around to. If he could do anything, it's intimidate her with his destructive force before growing a beard and smashing another eighteen wheeler to feel better about himself.

WHOA WHOA WHOA! Why so linear? This is an ADULT movie. Linearity is for babies.

First he starts intimidating her, then flashback to him seeing her on the news, then he gets a cup of coffee, flashback to when he was the king of the roller disco, he comes up to her, flashback to his Dad saying "Goodnight son. Also I just wanted to remind you you'r an alien and not my real son. OK?", flashback to him growing a beard, flashback to shaving the beard, then he destroys another 18 wheeler.

[Fan]

Honestly a non animated adaptation of All Star Superman would probably be the best thing they could do.

The only issue is that it's success would lead to Allstar Batman and Robin getting a movie and I would never wish that on anyone.

No one living needs to read that book. It's that bad. Don't buy it. Don't even pirate it. You will be wasting your time and your faith in humanity.

[GloatingSwine]

Honestly an animated adaptation of All Star Superman would probably be the best thing they could do.

There already is an animated adaptation of All Star Superman (it's a bit rushed due to time constraints but captures the theme of the work well enough).



The core difference between Marvel's movies and DC's is that Marvel distils their characters down to iconic elements, and uses those as the basis for a movie character*. Tony Stark is brilliant but self destructive, Steve Rogers is heroic but slightly naive, I am Groot, etc. Whereas DC distils their characters down to iconic elements, throws those away and makes The Dark Knight again instead.


* Not that all of Marvel's characters have had a good on-screen representation, Hawkeye is a robot that shoots arrows, Hulk is a dull brute, though that's partly because Joss Whedon can't write the one liner soundbite version of their characters.

[Kris Strife]

Hulk is a dull brute

That's actually a fairly iconic version of Hulk, recent animated versions to the contrary. There's a reason that 'HULK SMASH' is a thing.

[Avilan the Grey]

That's actually a fairly iconic version of Hulk, recent animated versions to the contrary. There's a reason that 'HULK SMASH' is a thing.

Not only that, but Hulk is hillarious in Avengers.

[GloatingSwine]

That's actually a fairly iconic version of Hulk, recent animated versions to the contrary. There's a reason that 'HULK SMASH' is a thing.

Not usually to that extent though, and certainly not in anything resembling a modern Marvel comic book. This is not the Hulk of stories like Planet Hulk, for instance.

Y'see, one thing that hasn't been well adapted really is that Hulk is actually a seperate character in his own right, he's not Bruce Banner, they're different people with usually some level of conflict between them.

[Zrak]

Some of the shots were blatant references to footage of the attacks though. Most of it was original but towards the end of the sequence Snyder obviously got kind of lazy with his imagery.

I just don't see it. The main scene people point to as "evidence" of this are the shots of people in the streets running away from collapsing buildings, which was a ubiquitous shot well before 9/11 ever happened. I don't really see any justification for calling every scene where people run away from buildings "9/11 imagery" just because that's the first time, you, personally, saw something like that happen in real life. Somebody else could find footage from another conflict or terrorist attack or natural disaster and claim, with the exact same textual citations and equal merit, that the scene is evocative of that conflict/attack/disaster.

The audience is supposed to think so. Because we're supposed to remember waaaaay at the beginning that the half dozen non-villain kryptonians we met were kind of jerks. Which we know exclusively because Jor-El said so.

This movie sucks! I have to remember things that happened to me like an hour and a half ago, and some of the lines aren't extremely literal exposition? Is this a Superman movie from France or something? I mean, where's his turtleneck, am I right guys?

Of course, Clark doesn't know any of that. He's never met anyone besides like three of Zod's crew and this makes him totally qualified to pre-emptivley kill off a bunch of babies.

I feel like regardless of the point at which one personally feels life begins, unfertilized eggs in a clone machine are before that point.

[ImperiousLeader]

* Not that all of Marvel's characters have had a good on-screen representation, Hawkeye is a robot that shoots arrows, Hulk is a dull brute, though that's partly because Joss Whedon can't write the one liner soundbite version of their characters.

As stated, Hulk in the Avengers was hilarious. I think he got more laughs then Tony Snark, I mean, Stark. And Hawkeye ... spent most of the movie as Loki's mindslave. His cameo in Thor had more personality, and I think it worked.

[Math_Mage]

This movie sucks! I have to remember things that happened to me like an hour and a half ago, and some of the lines aren't extremely literal exposition? Is this a Superman movie from France or something? I mean, where's his turtleneck, am I right guys?

Right, because if you do remember that half a dozen Kryptonians were kind of jerkish, that totally justifies declaring the species beyond redemption! (Never mind that it's Clark's knowledge that matters to this discussion.)

I feel like regardless of the point at which one personally feels life begins, unfertilized eggs in a clone machine are before that point.

I agree, but see above re: "declaring the species beyond redemption."

[Mystic Muse]

This movie sucks! I have to remember things that happened to me like an hour and a half ago, and some of the lines aren't extremely literal exposition? Is this a Superman movie from France or something? I mean, where's his turtleneck, am I right guys?


I feel like regardless of the point at which one personally feels life begins, unfertilized eggs in a clone machine are before that point.

I'm not saying I don't remember the start of the movie. I'm saying nothing we OR Superman are shown justifies what he did.

He

Spoiler: Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers

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They pretty much explicitly say that Khan and his crew want to kill off everyone they deem lesser than them, and they STILL don't kill them at any point in the movie.

I know the two movies are unrelated, but I have to ask: How are we supposed to believe the above was the right thing to do, and yet believe every possible Kryptonian other than Superman deserves to die?

[Calemyr]

As stated, Hulk in the Avengers was hilarious. I think he got more laughs then Tony Snark, I mean, Stark. And Hawkeye ... spent most of the movie as Loki's mindslave. His cameo in Thor had more personality, and I think it worked.

Hulk won that movie with the "Puny God" scene. Iron Man is always good, but it was so satisfying to see that smug, manipulative twerp put in his place. (Much as I like to watch Loki, he had it coming.)

[Metahuman1]

I'm not saying I don't remember the start of the movie. I'm saying nothing we OR Superman are shown justifies what he did.

He

Spoiler: Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers

Show

They pretty much explicitly say that Khan and his crew want to kill off everyone they deem lesser than them, and they STILL don't kill them at any point in the movie.

I know the two movies are unrelated, but I have to ask: How are we supposed to believe the above was the right thing to do, and yet believe every possible Kryptonian other than Superman deserves to die?

It's just one of the many, many problems with the movie. Superman is literally genocidal.


Incidentally, they've announced apparently that there gonna do 10 more DC movies and one of them will be a Stand Alone Wonder Woman Movie, and that apparently Aquaman is getting his few minutes of screen time. Hopefully he'll just come in, take out a bunch of Robots with super strength and control of the elemental force of water itself, letting gun fire be totally useless in the process against him and tanking some artillery fire with no much trouble while illustrating some serious martial arts prowess, and then goes out of the movie again after showing that he's a serious badass and washing the super-friends image of the character out of the collective memory of pop culture in one fell swoop in the process.



Which is good cause the only hope I have for DC movies now is doing this with Aquaman.





Oh, and apparently, Superman is gonna be the villain to Batman vs. Superman cause Batman sells better. Of course.

[Xondoure]

Hulk won that movie with the "Puny God" scene. Iron Man is always good, but it was so satisfying to see that smug, manipulative twerp put in his place. (Much as I like to watch Loki, he had it coming.)

I'm still annoyed that wasn't a Loki hologram. It's so entirely out of character for Loki to stall like that without being elsewhere. Just have Hulk reach out to the side and grab invisible Loki and the scene would work twice as well.

[Calemyr]

I'm still annoyed that wasn't a Loki hologram. It's so entirely out of character for Loki to stall like that without being elsewhere. Just have Hulk reach out to the side and grab invisible Loki and the scene would work twice as well.

Actually, it looked to me like it was a hologram. I may be wrong, but it always looks to me like Hulk reaches out in a totally different direction for Loki. Loki is used to dealing with human-like intelligences, prone to believing their eyes first and trying to talk before resorting to action. Hulk's intelligence isn't human-like, and "saw" the illusion instantly, grabbing the real one and pounding the crap out a stunned psuedogod.

Oh, and apparently, Superman is gonna be the villain to Batman vs. Superman cause Batman sells better. Of course.

Either that or it's the payoff of Man of Steel: we already know that this Clark's starting point is so drastically different from the traditional one that he frankly can't evolve into a classic Superman, right? So instead change the rules on him - Clark doesn't become Superman due to a wholesome upbringing, but rather due to actually having peers that traditional Supermen never have. Superman has always been the boy scout who didn't need the Justice League for much, but this one needs his peers to become that kind of hero.

I mean, honestly - if you were creating Superman to be a standalone hero, the whole "happy farmboy" background works very well. If you were building an incarnation explicitly to be a member of a team (without dominating it with ultimate power and incorruptible purity), the traditional background doesn't work. He never fits because he's just too perfect. Make him flawed, make him conflicted, make it so that his loving parents didn't give him all the right advice and the world doesn't let him just save the day because he looks good in tights.

[Xondoure]

Actually, it looked to me like it was a hologram. I may be wrong, but it always looks to me like Hulk reaches out in a totally different direction for Loki. Loki is used to dealing with human-like intelligences, prone to believing their eyes first and trying to talk before resorting to action. Hulk's intelligence isn't human-like, and "saw" the illusion instantly, grabbing the real one and pounding the crap out a stunned psuedogod.



Either that or it's the payoff of Man of Steel: we already know that this Clark's starting point is so drastically different from the traditional one that he frankly can't evolve into a classic Superman, right? So instead change the rules on him - Clark doesn't become Superman due to a wholesome upbringing, but rather due to actually having peers that traditional Supermen never have. Superman has always been the boy scout who didn't need the Justice League for much, but this one needs his peers to become that kind of hero.

I mean, honestly - if you were creating Superman to be a standalone hero, the whole "happy farmboy" background works very well. If you were building an incarnation explicitly to be a member of a team (without dominating it with ultimate power and incorruptible purity), the traditional background doesn't work. He never fits because he's just too perfect. Make him flawed, make him conflicted, make it so that his loving parents didn't give him all the right advice and the world doesn't let him just save the day because he looks good in tights.

I have rewatched the scene looking for this exact thing and from what I can tell that's not what happened. It remains what happened in my heart though.

[Jayngfet]

I mean, honestly - if you were creating Superman to be a standalone hero, the whole "happy farmboy" background works very well. If you were building an incarnation explicitly to be a member of a team (without dominating it with ultimate power and incorruptible purity), the traditional background doesn't work. He never fits because he's just too perfect. Make him flawed, make him conflicted, make it so that his loving parents didn't give him all the right advice and the world doesn't let him just save the day because he looks good in tights.

Two issues with that.

One, his peers don't look that great either. Batman looks like he's just a bitter old man with no friends, and Wonder Woman is just a grittybrown warrior princess with a sword. There is no moral center to the team. They're just a bunch of bitter, angry people who don't seem to have much common direction aside from punching this weeks bad guy.

Two, if you wanted to start up a Justice League, Superman is inevitably the last guy I'd pick for it. He's a member of every incarnation, yeah, but the best arcs are never about him and he was never that great a fit because he was never particularly good friends with anyone outside Batman. Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Hawkman are all bro's who are friends even out of costume and actually hang out. They all have their unique chemistry that plays well as a team and relations with each other on and off the league. They matter. Hell, Superman is leaving the league in a few issues and nobody is crying out "oh gosh, Superman can't leave, he's integral to the team dynamic!" because he's just there to be there. Flash being gone I've seen a bit of but not Superman.

Superman as the core of the Justice League was always going to be a square peg in a round hole. Even DC knows this, hence why they tried working with Green Lantern, the guy who's actually a better team member, first. It's just that when an A Listers movie sucks as bad as the B-Lister's, it can still turn a profit on an overbloated budget.

[Fan]

There already is an animated adaptation of All Star Superman (it's a bit rushed due to time constraints but captures the theme of the work well enough).



The core difference between Marvel's movies and DC's is that Marvel distils their characters down to iconic elements, and uses those as the basis for a movie character*. Tony Stark is brilliant but self destructive, Steve Rogers is heroic but slightly naive, I am Groot, etc. Whereas DC distils their characters down to iconic elements, throws those away and makes The Dark Knight again instead.


* Not that all of Marvel's characters have had a good on-screen representation, Hawkeye is a robot that shoots arrows, Hulk is a dull brute, though that's partly because Joss Whedon can't write the one liner soundbite version of their characters.

I know I own it, I ****ed up at 5 AM in the morning.

I meant a live action version.

[Kris Strife]

Incidentally, they've announced apparently that there gonna do 10 more DC movies and one of them will be a Stand Alone Wonder Woman Movie, and that apparently Aquaman is getting his few minutes of screen time. Hopefully he'll just come in, take out a bunch of Robots with super strength and control of the elemental force of water itself, letting gun fire be totally useless in the process against him and tanking some artillery fire with no much trouble while illustrating some serious martial arts prowess, and then goes out of the movie again after showing that he's a serious badass and washing the super-friends image of the character out of the collective memory of pop culture in one fell swoop in the process.



Which is good cause the only hope I have for DC movies now is doing this with Aquaman.

Can he be Outrageous and sing rousing songs of heroism instead of yet another drab brown, gritty 'hero?'

[Avilan the Grey]

Y'see, one thing that hasn't been well adapted really is that Hulk is actually a seperate character in his own right, he's not Bruce Banner, they're different people with usually some level of conflict between them.

Which is something the Avengers movie did perfectly.

[Kitten Champion]

I've been thinking about this, but what exactly was Man of Steel saying with regards to Free Will versus Determinism?

I've criticized this movie a few times here for its basic lack of thematic coherence - that it makes loud pretentious claim to deeper meaning which isn't grounded in the narrative - and that the thinly developed characters' symbolic significance is either insultingly blatant or deeply confused. Even accepting the weak execution you can usually surmise what was probably intended even if it's buried beneath terrible writing, but here I genuinely don't know what this film's overarching philosophy was. This being the most prominent and central question of movie -- and I have no idea what its thesis ultimately was supposed to be.

It bothers me, I don't know why, but it does.

[Metahuman1]

Can he be Outrageous and sing rousing songs of heroism instead of yet another drab brown, gritty 'hero?'

Yes, he can, as long as he get's a big action scene were he he's to show off impressive super powers like total control of water and superhuman strength, durability and agility that can't be denied being super human, and awesome prowess as a combatant, he can do that. He can be the funny smart ass of the group who's got an actual sense of humor. He can be a snarker. He can be running a freaking stand up style monolog while he fights for all I care.


Just please for the love of humanity get people to let the stupid super friends "All the powers of Spongebob" image go!

[Jayngfet]

I've been thinking about this, but what exactly was Man of Steel saying with regards to Free Will versus Determinism?

It says that people who are born in a different or weird way are inherently wrong and that soldiers are all evil, provided they don't serve the good ol US of A. In which case they're saints who are unwaveringly brave and loyal in all circumstances, because they're the ones who spent a bunch of money and lent a bunch of toys and showed up in a bunch of the ads.

...and that they're also incredibly bad at fighting, judging by Zod's total inability to fight a middle aged Russel Crowe because he pulled a shiv and the fact that they were all instantly captured by regular joes and strapped to a bunch of flying marital aids.

[TheThan]

Yes, he can, as long as he get's a big action scene were he he's to show off impressive super powers like total control of water and superhuman strength, durability and agility that can't be denied being super human, and awesome prowess as a combatant, he can do that. He can be the funny smart ass of the group who's got an actual sense of humor. He can be a snarker. He can be running a freaking stand up style monolog while he fights for all I care.


Just please for the love of humanity get people to let the stupid super friends "All the powers of Spongebob" image go!

I would watch that movie.

You know Aquaman is not that hard to do. The writers just have to make sure he's not the version we saw in Super friends.

[Metahuman1]

The thing is though they've got to really sell it.

A good starting point is to have him wreck bad guys on land were he has access to water but he's not in Water. Or arguably even better, have him do it with no water and rub super human strength/agility/durability + Mastery of more then one form of Martial Arts in for a bit first.

Then when he get's to the ocean have him raise up a massive wall of water that towers over the city with precious little effort.


And what ever you do, don't let him talk to sea life. Don't even acknowledge that that's a thing he can do unless your literally gonna make him Summon Cthulhu to eat the bad guys soul.



And yes, he can be funny and he can be loud and confident and hell, he can even be good natured. He doesn't have to be dark and brooding. Just sell us that when it's time to fight this guy can and will wreck anyone who forces it to be time to fight, that he is a seriously powerful dude and writing him off as a joke would be a very poor mistake to make.

[Aotrs Commander]

And yes, he can be funny and he can be loud and confident and hell, he can even be good natured. He doesn't have to be dark and brooding. Just sell us that when it's time to fight this guy can and will wreck anyone who forces it to be time to fight, that he is a seriously powerful dude and writing him off as a joke would be a very poor mistake to make.

I dunno, there would be something to be said for playing up the ham of tBatB Aquaman to the max and leaning a bit on the old standing jokes for most of the movie - the audience into a false sense of comic-reliefery... And then when it all looks darkest in the climax, and the maybe second-to-last or even the top villain (with plenty of minions) is about to kill the comic relief as the others, momentarily trapped, helpless... Aquaman Gets Serious and completely pwns all the bad guys in a truly spectacular scene (that did NOT get shown in the trailers) leaving all the others slack-jawed for a moment before the recover and have Aquaman, "like what? What were you expecting! Outrageous!"

Bonus points if they can get him to do a rousing song of heroism while doing it.