It's been hyped for years now and as
Duke Nukem and others have shown too much hype just means the end product can never meet the audience's expectations.
Superman Returns was good because it was Superman dealing with mostly normal stuff, which has been one of the better selling points about an unstoppable alien that can exceed anything humanly possible. Yes the crescendo of the film is tearing an island off the seabed, lifting it into orbit, and throwing it into space, but that's just a reflection of the character. The human story there is the self sacrifice required. Lex told Superman the island was laced with Kryptonite so Superman knows the attempt may very well kill him.
As Batman put it:
It is a remarkable dichotomy. In many ways, Clark is the most human of us all. Then… he shoots fire from the skies and it its difficult not to think of him as a god. And how fortunate we all are that it does not occur to him.
Not crossing that line where Superman could so easily do whatever he wanted, including take over the world, is part of the reason Homelander, The Plutonian, Hyperion, and other pastiches have been enjoyed because they go down that unleashed path.
What you say about the superhero movie zeitgeist changing towards 'dark and gritty' being a reason Superman Returns failed is likely, but as shown with the DCCU a character that's meant to inspire hope doesn't work at all when things are too dark and gritty.
Damnit, I wish Amazon hadn't cancelled The Tick. I was enjoying that, as a humourous deconstruction of capeshit. I only saw a bit of the cartoon in the 90s (I was in my 20s and busy for that golden era of television cartoons.) But, no one's got any sense of humour any more, so now we have The Boys instead. Oh, wait, it is supposed to be a comedy. I forgot. It's not that I don't like it, I just don't find it ... funny. It's like poking at a sore, and wondering how much worse it could get. My memories of it mostly involve the freakish stuff, and Homelander having that fantasy of laser-eyeballing pretty much everyone. Ha, ha. I got more of a laugh when Resident Alien had his dream, and the dog just stood there.
Yeah, Superman is definitely from an older, less apparently-cynical generation that actually believed in Hope, rather than in wallowing in self-pity. They looked for light in darkness, rather than ... embracing the darkness.
I would hate to imagine if Superman hadn't already been invented, and someone was just coming up with the concept of the superhero now. Ugh. And when I was a kid, it was the "dork age", and he was basically just a collection of whatever bullshit superpower the writers pulled out of their asses that month (seriously, superhero comics were bad in the 70s, which is why I preferred the war and horror comics. And Uncle Scrooge.)
Any movie with superman in it will inherently fail/be bad unless it is 1. A children's movie 2. Is only a superman movie and no other super heroes, or 3. Self aware and absurdist about superman and his powers and make it a comedy.
Superman is a god. There is no way getting around that. His powers are like nothing else in the justice league. The only real threat to superman are god like villains, but they make the other heroes basically useless since they're not competing on the same level and can't do anything superman couldn't do. The other heroes are just there to get their asses kicked until superman arrives.
Conversely if you don't use a god tier villain then there is no drama. Sure, the justice league might have a problem fighting batman's rogue gallery, but superman can just sweep in and deal with everyone in seconds thus again making everyone else useless.
This means the only way to make a team superman movie is to basically come up with a way to keep superman out of the picture or neutralized through 90% of the movie and then he swoops in right before the climax and saves the day because he is the only one capable of saving the day. This story telling can really only work once. But they have to keep doing it over and over to the point where if you're going to watch a DC team movie you're going to go "well how are they getting rid of superman today."
It's not the unpopular opinion. Early reviews are that it adds 2 hours but still adds nothing of any real substance. The Darkseid cameo might be cool but it's not enough to float a movie.
Superman returns failed because it was a boring movie. After the plane rescue it's a bunch of bad drama until Lois and the krypton kid get captured by Luthor. And there's something to be said for how Luthor's master plan for getting rid of superman is yet another land con.
And if you think camp is the reason the superman movies were successful, then you don't understand the impact those movies had on pop culture, nor understand their place in film history.
Literally all he did in the moviecwas lift things. He lifted the plane to stop it from falling. He lifted the boat that split in half. He then lifted the island.
Returns was fun, but it lacked any serious threat. It doesn't need to be gritty or anything, but I just couldn't take Lex Luthor, Land Baron seriously. Routh was wonderful as Superman though, and I was more than a little upset when Cavill was announced, though he did fine as well I suppose.
Also, I'll just say it, Superman Returns (2006) was the last good movie with Superman in it.
I always liked that movie. I still enjoy the Christopher Reeve ones, so that probably explains it. I never understood the hate people had for it. I reached the same conclusion, that people only wanted dark and gritty at the time. Well, they got it, and it hasn’t aged well, in my opinion.
...people eagerly anticipating it are going to have a 'well...I guess this is cool' moment and it'll quickly get shuffled out of their minds within a week.
Yes, but that’s generally all of pop culture for several years now. The popular stuff may stay popular for 3-6 months, but after that it’s old news, too, and people are on to the next thing. Look at stuff like Tiger King. You couldn’t access any kind of media without hearing about that crap for like three months. Now? Nobody cares.
I’m hopeful it is a hit but you are right about Superman. Him and Spider-Man are my favorites precisely because they are idealistic and look for the good. I think an upbeat Superman movie could work wonders right now. Dark and gritty is more suited for Batman or Punisher.
the current cultural phase of wanting everything to be gritty and cynical and dreary with morally bankrupt characters and no aspirational values
You say that, but yet the most popular characters of the times are Deadpool and the Guardians. There's nothing dreary about them, and their morals and values are staunchly liberal-libertarian.
They're only cynical and gritty in the sense that they accept revenge as a moral imperative, which frankly was the norm for most of human civilization until Doc Spock and the french intellectuals started us down the SJW path.
Which was incidentally right around the time the western died as a genre. The western hero is ALWAYS an anti-hero, always believes that killing for justice is good, and is exceptional because they are an anti-hero in a world where villains take advantage of the genuinely good.
Grimdark and Boy Scout do not go well together, but grimderp is all that uneducated uncultured hollywood hacks can write.
They also are completely without imagination, unable to empathize with something that hasn't directly happened to themselves.
They've all got aphantasia.
Superman is a demigod, at minimum. His problems will not be on the same scale or tier as ours. But he is not omni-potent. He is not omni-scient. His problems may not be the same as ours, but they will still have parallels. We all know the stress of a time crunch. We all dread the idea of loss. We all seek happiness. It doesn't take good writing to make a character who is utterly alien, into something we can empathize with, but it does take a minimally baseline non-psychopathic writer. I am not European. I am not African. I am not Martian. I am not Kryptonian. But if the writer isn't a complete racist sociopath, they can write emotions and problems, feelings and ideals, that still resonate with the readers.
But that seems to be lost in the modern era of writing.
There are hexapedal psychic lizards with metal skin that I empathize with more than modern stories, because modern stories have writers who don't know what "empathy" is.
Superman returns was really dumb. The guy is supposed to have 1 weakness and that's kryptonite. So on a literal island of kryptonite he gets stabbed by kryptonite and still just brushes it off within the hour. But that's superman for you, just a basic power fantasy.
I just don't think you can do a good Superman today and stay true to enough of what is Superman. It's honestly a pretty gay character anymore and Caville filled that perfectly.
That said, if they tried I'd like to see them try to stick to what he is actually capable of. His flying is a jump. Start with that instead of magical flotation dude like this scene from Superman Returns. And don't make him super polished like Caville but also don't go into alcoholic bloodshot eyes dark superman either. And get rid of the fricken' hair curlyque. And make the suit less-gay.
It's been hyped for years now and as Duke Nukem and others have shown too much hype just means the end product can never meet the audience's expectations.
Superman Returns was good because it was Superman dealing with mostly normal stuff, which has been one of the better selling points about an unstoppable alien that can exceed anything humanly possible. Yes the crescendo of the film is tearing an island off the seabed, lifting it into orbit, and throwing it into space, but that's just a reflection of the character. The human story there is the self sacrifice required. Lex told Superman the island was laced with Kryptonite so Superman knows the attempt may very well kill him.
As Batman put it:
Not crossing that line where Superman could so easily do whatever he wanted, including take over the world, is part of the reason Homelander, The Plutonian, Hyperion, and other pastiches have been enjoyed because they go down that unleashed path.
What you say about the superhero movie zeitgeist changing towards 'dark and gritty' being a reason Superman Returns failed is likely, but as shown with the DCCU a character that's meant to inspire hope doesn't work at all when things are too dark and gritty.
Damnit, I wish Amazon hadn't cancelled The Tick. I was enjoying that, as a humourous deconstruction of capeshit. I only saw a bit of the cartoon in the 90s (I was in my 20s and busy for that golden era of television cartoons.) But, no one's got any sense of humour any more, so now we have The Boys instead. Oh, wait, it is supposed to be a comedy. I forgot. It's not that I don't like it, I just don't find it ... funny. It's like poking at a sore, and wondering how much worse it could get. My memories of it mostly involve the freakish stuff, and Homelander having that fantasy of laser-eyeballing pretty much everyone. Ha, ha. I got more of a laugh when Resident Alien had his dream, and the dog just stood there.
Yeah, Superman is definitely from an older, less apparently-cynical generation that actually believed in Hope, rather than in wallowing in self-pity. They looked for light in darkness, rather than ... embracing the darkness.
I would hate to imagine if Superman hadn't already been invented, and someone was just coming up with the concept of the superhero now. Ugh. And when I was a kid, it was the "dork age", and he was basically just a collection of whatever bullshit superpower the writers pulled out of their asses that month (seriously, superhero comics were bad in the 70s, which is why I preferred the war and horror comics. And Uncle Scrooge.)
Any movie with superman in it will inherently fail/be bad unless it is 1. A children's movie 2. Is only a superman movie and no other super heroes, or 3. Self aware and absurdist about superman and his powers and make it a comedy.
Superman is a god. There is no way getting around that. His powers are like nothing else in the justice league. The only real threat to superman are god like villains, but they make the other heroes basically useless since they're not competing on the same level and can't do anything superman couldn't do. The other heroes are just there to get their asses kicked until superman arrives.
Conversely if you don't use a god tier villain then there is no drama. Sure, the justice league might have a problem fighting batman's rogue gallery, but superman can just sweep in and deal with everyone in seconds thus again making everyone else useless.
This means the only way to make a team superman movie is to basically come up with a way to keep superman out of the picture or neutralized through 90% of the movie and then he swoops in right before the climax and saves the day because he is the only one capable of saving the day. This story telling can really only work once. But they have to keep doing it over and over to the point where if you're going to watch a DC team movie you're going to go "well how are they getting rid of superman today."
What movie was that for again?
It's not the unpopular opinion. Early reviews are that it adds 2 hours but still adds nothing of any real substance. The Darkseid cameo might be cool but it's not enough to float a movie.
Superman returns failed because it was a boring movie. After the plane rescue it's a bunch of bad drama until Lois and the krypton kid get captured by Luthor. And there's something to be said for how Luthor's master plan for getting rid of superman is yet another land con.
And if you think camp is the reason the superman movies were successful, then you don't understand the impact those movies had on pop culture, nor understand their place in film history.
Literally all he did in the moviecwas lift things. He lifted the plane to stop it from falling. He lifted the boat that split in half. He then lifted the island.
The people hyping it up have drastically underestimated the degree to which the rest of us actually give a shit.
Returns was fun, but it lacked any serious threat. It doesn't need to be gritty or anything, but I just couldn't take Lex Luthor, Land Baron seriously. Routh was wonderful as Superman though, and I was more than a little upset when Cavill was announced, though he did fine as well I suppose.
I always liked that movie. I still enjoy the Christopher Reeve ones, so that probably explains it. I never understood the hate people had for it. I reached the same conclusion, that people only wanted dark and gritty at the time. Well, they got it, and it hasn’t aged well, in my opinion.
Yes, but that’s generally all of pop culture for several years now. The popular stuff may stay popular for 3-6 months, but after that it’s old news, too, and people are on to the next thing. Look at stuff like Tiger King. You couldn’t access any kind of media without hearing about that crap for like three months. Now? Nobody cares.
I’m hopeful it is a hit but you are right about Superman. Him and Spider-Man are my favorites precisely because they are idealistic and look for the good. I think an upbeat Superman movie could work wonders right now. Dark and gritty is more suited for Batman or Punisher.
You say that, but yet the most popular characters of the times are Deadpool and the Guardians. There's nothing dreary about them, and their morals and values are staunchly liberal-libertarian.
They're only cynical and gritty in the sense that they accept revenge as a moral imperative, which frankly was the norm for most of human civilization until Doc Spock and the french intellectuals started us down the SJW path.
Which was incidentally right around the time the western died as a genre. The western hero is ALWAYS an anti-hero, always believes that killing for justice is good, and is exceptional because they are an anti-hero in a world where villains take advantage of the genuinely good.
Superman is the Boy Scout.
Grimdark and Boy Scout do not go well together, but grimderp is all that uneducated uncultured hollywood hacks can write.
They also are completely without imagination, unable to empathize with something that hasn't directly happened to themselves.
They've all got aphantasia.
Superman is a demigod, at minimum. His problems will not be on the same scale or tier as ours. But he is not omni-potent. He is not omni-scient. His problems may not be the same as ours, but they will still have parallels. We all know the stress of a time crunch. We all dread the idea of loss. We all seek happiness. It doesn't take good writing to make a character who is utterly alien, into something we can empathize with, but it does take a minimally baseline non-psychopathic writer. I am not European. I am not African. I am not Martian. I am not Kryptonian. But if the writer isn't a complete racist sociopath, they can write emotions and problems, feelings and ideals, that still resonate with the readers.
But that seems to be lost in the modern era of writing.
There are hexapedal psychic lizards with metal skin that I empathize with more than modern stories, because modern stories have writers who don't know what "empathy" is.
Superman returns was really dumb. The guy is supposed to have 1 weakness and that's kryptonite. So on a literal island of kryptonite he gets stabbed by kryptonite and still just brushes it off within the hour. But that's superman for you, just a basic power fantasy.
I just don't think you can do a good Superman today and stay true to enough of what is Superman. It's honestly a pretty gay character anymore and Caville filled that perfectly.
That said, if they tried I'd like to see them try to stick to what he is actually capable of. His flying is a jump. Start with that instead of magical flotation dude like this scene from Superman Returns. And don't make him super polished like Caville but also don't go into alcoholic bloodshot eyes dark superman either. And get rid of the fricken' hair curlyque. And make the suit less-gay.
https://youtu.be/9tU0vG9UJ2I?t=32
LOL, you don't ask for much from your movies, do you?