Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Man of Steel: Still Looking Good

While there are still to many shots "taken" from Richard Donner's two excellent Superman movies in this trailer, there is enough here for me to think that MAN OF STEEL looks promising. Any Superman film has the difficult task of choosing which version of Superman to use -- Gold/Silver/Bronze/Tin/Byrne -- and Snyder seems to have leaned a little in the Byrne direction.  This can be a good thing, but it can also backfire. Too many directors -- I'm looking at you Andrew Stanton -- think that "modern audiences" can't handle white knight characters unless they have a shade of grey. Thing is, authors have been making that mistake for generations. It isn't having "troubled" or "grey" heroes that audiences find compelling. It's having heroes who experience conflict and for whom there are stakes. Donner got that with his Superman, and Burroughs understood that with his John Carter. I hope that Snyder gets it.



1 comment:

Doc Savage said...

Unfortunately after reading about this in Entertainment weekly, I have lost hope for a good Superman comeback. They have decided to "fix" a character who has worked for 75 years by making him "gritty" and "realistic." The costume "improvement" was bad enough on its own.