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Boogaleeboo posted:the entire point of Superman is that's not who he is, not because of some cliche journey of discovery but because it's insanely obvious to any halfway decent person. If you can help someone, you help someone. If you get in trouble for that, other people have a problem. Maybe you should help them with that. Commonsense positions are often very dumb. For example, it's commonsense that, if a jewel thief steals some diamonds, someone should capture him and jail him because theft is bad. So you end up with countless stories where Superman is foiling bank robberies. The 'justice' in "Truth, Justice, and the American way" is defined in these stories as defense of private property. Another word for this unexamined commonsense is 'ideology.'
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Nov 7, 2014 10:00
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teagone posted:Fixed. You've gone down a dark road throwing Stuart Little under a bus to insult me. SuperMechagodzilla posted:Commonsense positions are often very dumb. Most positions are often very dumb, because most people are very dumb. At least the unexamined thought that comes from most folks has the advantage of brevity.
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Nov 7, 2014 10:10
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Boogaleeboo posted:You've gone down a dark road throwing Stuart Little under a bus to insult me. The fucker deserved it.
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Nov 7, 2014 10:17
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Superman often seems to be the most divisive superhero I've ever seen. I consider myself a hardcore Superman fan. I owned a copy of every comic he appeared in from the 1986 reboot up until the Birthright reboot when I just grew out of comic collecting. And every time they even so much as hinted at tweaking the formula fans went apeshit. For some reason people want the same Superman story repeated over and over without fail. You don't gently caress with the status quo of Superman. You can get away with giving Spider-man a radically new suit. You can completely change Aquaman's powerset and no one will really mind. But if you touch Superman, fans lose their goddamn minds. So the MoS debate is, to me, a repeat of things I've seen several times already over the years. Someone, somewhere, tried to tell a different story and because of that everyone starts bitching. I was on the edge of my seat the entire run of Death and Return of Superman. But everyone bitched about it because it changed things. The electric costume was a very welcome, and supremely badass, change of pace. But everyone bitched because it changed things. Superman Returns showed us the subdued and melancholic side of a man with the powers of a God and the burden of absent fatherhood, and people bitched because it changed things. And all your internet memories must be faulty because back in the day the Elseworlds stories like Red Son where derided by major Superman fans upon first release and only gained acceptance later due to its popularity with non-comic book fans who didn't give a poo poo about things being changed. Of course, no one remembers that because they all want to be the one who "discovered" this great story. MoS had it's weak moments. Pa Kent's obvious mental illness being chief among them. But the idea of making a movie about a snotty kid from Kansas running around in a suit he's not fit to wear loving up everything he touches until in the last scene he suddenly realizes the gravity of his fuckups and becomes Superman in response is a fresh take on an old character and I for one applaud its effort. Now, cue the vitriol and thinly veiled "Not My Superman!" responses.
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Nov 7, 2014 10:26
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Captain America was a better Superman movie than Man of Steel. The two things you need with Superman are an essential goodness and lots of power and I've listed those in order of importance. You can have Superman Blue and give him electro powers or make him black or give him a job as a janitor or whatever and it would be a better representation of Superman than having him be willing to sit back and let someone die to protect his identity. Although even then his job as a janitor should still show him trying to help others, because the essential goodness is just as applicable to Clark Kent as it is Superman. There have been a lot of Superman origin comics which have handled the issue differently and have managed to introduce a theme of Superman struggling to find his place in the world without having him let people die. Because, you know, Superman does not let people die and it would be stupid if he did. Take the most recent reboot, where he's a protector of the poor and weak and is rightly viewed as a legitimately scary person because he's going around assaulting businessmen and making a mockery of the police. He's not quite the fully developed Superman yet, but the sense of justice and desire to help others is still there. Although (and you will rarely see me criticise Morrison) I do think they went to far and the way Superman treated the businessmen in Issue 1 (Glenmorgan?) was basically torture because it put him in huge fear of his life even if he wasn't physically hurt. His overwhelming and constant goodness is the defining quality of the character. Sure, people might complain about aspects of Superman changing which don't really matter, but that doesn't mean that automatically applies here. Captain America: First Avenger is the perfect example of how Superman should act. Even as weakling Steve Rogers he stands up for what is right and risks dying to save others. Even when he has his powers he still struggles to find his place in the world and at first finds himself in a joyless role selling war bonds and only indirectly helping fight the war even if he is presumably quite a big help. That is what we should getting from Clark, even before he gets the cape and the name. Some confusion about where he should be in the world, but an all-pervading goodness and willingness to lay down his life for others to live. You can have a superhero origin story where someone develops without bastardising the most important thing about them. If I wanted a movie about a gently caress-up with godlike powers who has a long stage of not caring about others then later redeems himself, I would just go watch Hancock.
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Nov 7, 2014 11:43
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Clark does all that. Ignoring the weird focus on Pa Kents sacrifice Clark does spend his time going from natural disaster to "dangerous" situations helping people out along the way while at the same time trying to figure out his lineage and how that effects his future. That's why he's out on the tanker, that's why Lois is searching for the mysterious stranger who helps people. Clark can't grasp his fathers sacrifice or his place in the world but helps others until he can.
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Nov 7, 2014 11:52
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I like the bit where Mark Waid said that the film was cold and that it broke his heart. Then I liked the bit where nerds argued with the man that wrote Birthright in comments telling him he didn't get superman.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:22
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I liked the bit where he threw a hilarious tantrum in the cinema going "Not MY Superman" at the screen.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:25
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Man of Steel was a bad film. Seriously, load the dvd of it into your computer and go into explorer and have a look for the video file of it. It's literally called bad_film.avi
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Nov 7, 2014 12:27
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Sion posted:I like the bit where Mark Waid said that the film was cold and that it broke his heart. Then I liked the bit where nerds argued with the man that wrote Birthright in comments telling him he didn't get superman. He acted like Superman has never killed before ever and to do so would be a total betrayal of the character, then when people pointed out that Superman has killed plenty of times, some of which are well regarded stories that nail the character he started bawling like a giant manbaby and censoring comments and whatnot. I like the part where you think that's actually admirable or worth highlighting. You can write a good story and still be a loving moron.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:29
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AFoolAndHisMoney posted:He acted like Superman has never killed before ever and to do so would be a total betrayal of the character, then when people pointed out that Superman has killed plenty of times, some of which are well regarded stories that nail the character he started bawling like a giant manbaby and censoring comments and whatnot. Well, when Garth Ennis has a stronger grip on what Superman is than David Goyer and Zak Snyder then... son, you got a problem.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:31
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team overhead smash posted:It's not that anyone doesn't get that point as far as I can see, it's that people don't think that justifies the presentation of Superman we see in the movie because it is so different from the ideals Superman is meant to embody. Fair enough but you have to admit that boy did I ever start some poo poo by professing my love this film. I thought that what was so interesting and engaging about it was exactly what I bolded and the way it showed him evolving into a god like superhero as opposed to the automatic "I am Superman" approach that Donner took.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:37
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The thing that's most jarring to the traditional view of Superman isn't that he kills Zod, it's that the movie doesn't care about it being a big deal. There's no attempt to set up that Superman has a problem with killing in life-or-death situations, and the film dwells on it for all of a minute before he is suddenly the most cheerful he's ever been, punching drones and making quips.
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Nov 7, 2014 13:40
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The Stan Lee cameo in Big Hero 6 was pretty hilarious, and I noticed some other random things too (Hiro's cat has a picture of him wearing a stitch costume on the wall). The movie was great, it hit all the notes, and I had a fun time watching it. Did anyone else get the cool mini poster for the movie?
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Nov 7, 2014 14:54
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All this stuff about 'Snyder and Goyer' getting Superman 'wrong' is such nonsense. Superman in the seventies wasn't the leftist, progressive, socialist, capitalist-smasher he was at his origins, so those Donner movies were loving garbage. Superman Returns wasn't the absurd, cartoonish antics of a power-inventing Stardust-esque uber-mensch so it sucked. In more interesting news, anyone who isn't sure why David Ayer is directing Suicide Squad should go see 'Fury'. I don't think DC's smart, or ballsy, enough to let him really cut loose, but if he can bring even a measure of that to Suicide Squad, he's set.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:16
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Chaos Hippy posted:Superman is not, and never was, detached and alienated from humanity. He's the whole world's best friend, he loves us not just for what we are, but for what he knows we can be. He's the guy who will stop a volcano from wiping out a village or stop to rescue a cat from a tree because nothing is beneath him. And he'd be the exact same person - on a much smaller scale of course - if he never had powers, because that's just who he is. That's who he was raised to be, by parents who would never say "maybe" to the question of whether he should let innocent people die. Our universe's version of superman didn't have any powers so his heroism went in a different direction. They called him Fred Rogers.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:25
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Kingtheninja posted:The Stan Lee cameo in Big Hero 6 was pretty hilarious, and I noticed some other random things too (Hiro's cat has a picture of him wearing a stitch costume on the wall). The movie was great, it hit all the notes, and I had a fun time watching it. Did anyone else get the cool mini poster for the movie? Best Stan cameo so far, and I missed out on the mini-poster sadly. It was a fun entertaining movie. Living in the East Bay (Berkeley), the theater went nuts every time there was an establishing shot and we realized how things had been Tokyo-ized.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:35
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Dan Didio posted:All this stuff about 'Snyder and Goyer' getting Superman 'wrong' is such nonsense. Jesus Christ this is a bad arguement. Do you really think that every possible change that could be made to Superman is equivalent in terms of how it deviates from what he represents? That making a change to his costume, for example, would be the same as turning him into a genocidal maniac? Obviously not. So maybe apply some critical analysis for a second and realise that the type of crime Superman tackles or what have you isn't as important as important to the character as changing the core ethos of doing-good that Superman is built around. Superman could tackle corruption or he could punch super-villains. He could have just his core powers or he could have super-ventriloquism, Torquasm-Vo and and other kind of crazy power. But he would under no circumstances let someone die in front of him to protect his own identity.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:23
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I am still completely blown the gently caress away by how some people walked away from the first 2/3 of Man of Steel, which goes out of its way to show Clark saving people, literally, in groups and on an individual basis and think the character doesn't care about humanity. The destruction caused by the fight with Zod is clearly an outlier re: the entire rest of his life. Because the planet had not been invaded by superpowered aliens up to that point. Cannot believe this is considered the better comic book movie thread than the one in CD. This thread is truly proof that comic book fans are idiots who cannot grasp neither subtlety nor the obvious, and so we are stuck with cape books that are generally 90% terrible. Truly the medium we deserve.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:24
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He would if it was his dad and he told him to.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:26
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team overhead smash posted:Jesus Christ this is a bad arguement. Do you really think that every possible change that could be made to Superman is equivalent in terms of how it deviates from what he represents? I think 'what Superman represents' is something you should argue based on the given interpretation of him and not assume that there's an Ur-Superman who is the purest form and judge every interpretation against that, because it's insipid and backwards. You're accusing me of not using critical analysis while espousing a viewpoint that completely rejects any meaningful application of it.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:27
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Dan Didio posted:I think 'what Superman represents' is something you should argue based on the given interpretation of him and not assume that there's an Ur-Superman who is the purest form and judge every interpretation against that, because it's insipid and backwards. Although this version of Superman probably does exist in one of the DC multiverses.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:31
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Also, and this is delving into exactly what I despise about these discussions, but Superman totally put a dude in the electric chair who could have ID'd him in the animated series.Aphrodite posted:Although this version of Superman probably does exist in one of the DC multiverses. Find out in the hit new comic book 'Convergence' from DC Comics.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:31
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I'm just wondering how many people watched Man of Steel and were Superman fans to begin with versus those that were just comic fans with knowledge of the character. I have no interest or desire to see MoS because it's Superman, a character I respect for being important but not exactly one that I like or find compelling in any way, and these back and forth arguments even among those who like the movie don't sell the experience very well.
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Nov 7, 2014 16:45
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Dan Didio posted:I think 'what Superman represents' is something you should argue based on the given interpretation of him and not assume that there's an Ur-Superman who is the purest form and judge every interpretation against that, because it's insipid and backwards. Except that isn't what I said and you're just trying to knock down a strawman. When I specifically point out that there are lots of things you can change about Superman and still have him be Superman, how does that buy into the ideal of some immutable Ur-Superman? I argued that there are certain concepts that are core to Superman, but honestly unless you're willing to argue that any movie or character could be presented as Superman regardless of any similarities to Superman as we know him then you are buying into that argument too. You tried to make an analogy about how he's been presented as a fighter against corruption in early comics, cartoonish in the silver-age, etc to make the point that people shouldn't get annoyed when things change. The thing is in each comic age he might have differed in tone, but Superman was always willing to save the innocent and wouldn't stand around out of worry to himself while someone else was in danger. You're confusing the style of his presentation with the fundamental concepts he embodies and has always embodied. Whatever the interpretation, Superman doesn't act like he is presented in Man of Steel. If there is an interpretation of Superman who doesn't fit this then it is a bad interpretation regardless of whether it is internally consistent.
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Nov 7, 2014 17:19
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Saw a bunch of posts, got excited figuring there was some new info about a superhero movie, and here we are discussing the last superman film. At least it's not green lantern I guess.
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Nov 7, 2014 17:23
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team overhead smash posted:Whatever the interpretation, Superman doesn't act like he is presented in Man of Steel. Actually he does, in Man of Steel, the Superman film. There are stories where Superman is arrogant, over-bearing, a poor leader, a poor superhero, a dictator, inefficient, a killer, stories where Superman kills Zod. My point is that the things you think are fundamental to Superman are just as arguable as the things you think are immaterial aspects of presentation, and vice versa, it's solely dependent on the viewer interpreting and the creator creating and how they interact. 'This isn't how Superman acts!' isn't critical analysis, it's an avoidance of it, or at the very least, it's critical analysis of something that isn't Man of Steel. The point isn't that I care wether they're annoyed when things change; the point is that things change. Engage with the film or don't. Either's fine, but pretending to do one while actually doing the other is really boring and pointless. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 7, 2014 17:25
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Dan Didio posted:Actually he does, in Man of Steel, the Superman film. And how many of those stories represented THE Superman rather than some Elseworld knock-off that the reader knows doesn't represent the real-Superman? Come on, if you're finally going to admit that it does matter if MoS Superman shares fundamental similarities with the Superman from the comic books, don't then be disingenuous and try and make it seem as if every alternate-universe Superman is directly equivalent to the Superman that has existed for several decades. If Superman has ever willingly stood by and let some innocent die prior to Man of Steel or if there is anything that shows that it would be consistent with the ideals he embodies then let me know. Otherwise, it is completely inconsistent.
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Nov 7, 2014 17:39
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My point is that there is no THE Superman. Even with what you call 'THE Superman' there's been stories where he's killed or done questionable things, stories written by hundreds of different people with hundreds of different interpretations. Even if you discredit alternate universe stories, which I think is missing the point, you still have very fundamentally different characters operating within that role and Man of Steel's Superman is not some fundamental change in how those interpretations deal with the character. What people mean when they say 'this isn't Superman' and why people laugh at them and mock them for it is because what they actually mean is 'this is not the Superman I like'. In 1988, there was straight up a story where Superman not only killed, but assumed the role of Judge, Jury and Executioner and reluctantly executed a powerless Zod and two accomplices, that's as much THE Superman, by every rigid metric you've given, as one who reluctantly kills Zod in order to directly save lives and one who only threatens greedy capitalists and uses his powers to enforce social change or the one who won't kill any animals and is a vegan. The only difference is that some of these fall within your subjective leanings. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 7, 2014 17:40
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I think there are obviously things that, once changed, would make the character pretty clearly not Superman - however, there's been so many interpretations of the character over the years that it's almost impossible to do any of these things based on his beliefs or attitudes. You'd have to change his core powers or identity. I think if he was, like, a wife-beater or something? Given that The Samaritan from Astro City clearly IS Superman, despite having a different power set and origin story, I think it would be hard to stray far enough to not be Superman and still get the movie made. Tornado scene still dumb tho
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Nov 7, 2014 17:45
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Rhymenoserous posted:Saw a bunch of posts, got excited figuring there was some new info about a superhero movie, and here we are discussing the last superman film. At least it's not green lantern I guess. Some of us are talking about Big Hero 6. 
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Nov 7, 2014 18:06
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Tell me more about Big Hero 6.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:09
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I wish Lars Von Trier would direct a superhero movie.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:11
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Dan Didio posted:My point is that there is no THE Superman. Even with what you call 'THE Superman' there's been stories where he's killed or done questionable things, stories written by hundreds of different people with hundreds of different interpretations. So I'm guessing as I asked for an example of Superman acting as shown in MoS where he lets innocents die and you haven't given me one, that you don't actually have an example? I can only guess that is why trying to speak in generalities and you bring up your example of him killing a super0villain, which isn't the same as him deciding not to bother saving an innocent. As for alternate reality versions and what is considered canon, go into pretty much any thread on these forums where someone is discussing a comic character. Notice how when a character is discussed it is generally be "Superman" or "Spider-man" but somehow they are talking about one specific iteration of the character? And that if they aren't they'll call them by a specific name like "Old man Logan" or "All-Star Batman". As an example, go into an X-thread thread where people have been talking about how Wolverine died. For some reason even though they only say "Wolverine" and don't specify which of the hundreds or thousands of Wolverines we've seen over the years they are talking about, they all seem to be talking about how the Wolverine in universe 616 died? and not any of the other Wolverine deaths we've seen over the years from Wolverines? This is because there is a basic understanding among people who read comics that there is a main version of characters and there are alternate reality and other duplicate versions. It doesn't matter if in some alternate universe Peter Parker is an overweight racist idiot because it is implicit that it is not THE Peter Parker. This is commonly understood and I'm sorry that you don't have the basic ability to understand comics but it might be handy in this type of discussion.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:17
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theflyingorc posted:I think there are obviously things that, once changed, would make the character pretty clearly not Superman - however, there's been so many interpretations of the character over the years that it's almost impossible to do any of these things based on his beliefs or attitudes. You'd have to change his core powers or identity. I think if he was, like, a wife-beater or something? No no, you see as long as it makes sense within that iteration it is 100% okay even if it doesn't match other iterations. You could remake Saw and change the name Jigsaw to Superman with no other changes and it would be a completely acceptable version of Superman because people's attachments to Superman are ultimately subjective and we all know subjective opinions don't matter.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:20
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Peter Porker is an overweight racist idiot.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:21
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Lurdiak posted:I wish Lars Von Trier would direct a superhero movie. Lars Von Trier directs Identity Crisis where Dr Light is the focal character. edit - hi team overhead smash you are a good poster
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Nov 7, 2014 18:26
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team overhead smash posted:No no, you see as long as it makes sense within that iteration it is 100% okay even if it doesn't match other iterations. At first when you accused me of attacking a strawman, I wasn't sure if you knew what that meant, but now you've convinced me you do. Thanks. I'll just reiterate that what I said was that what Superman represents is subjective and what aspects of him are fundamental and define him as the Superman to any given person are subjective and that in a given interpretation by someone with a perspective on Superman, it's pointless to compare him against you're preferred vision as a way of engaging with the piece. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 7, 2014 18:26
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Dan Didio posted:At first when you accused me of attacking a strawman, I wasn't sure if you knew what that meant, but now you've convinced me you do. Thanks. Every opinion about everything is subjective. If your defence is to retreat into Solipsism there is no point posting about anything.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:38
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You've convinced me of that too.
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Nov 7, 2014 18:43
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