I'm actually getting a little excited for this. Trailer: One thing I'm curious about is how he shaves. It's weird seeing a bearded Supes.
In the comics, he's used either a shard of metal from the capsule that brought him to Earth, or focused applications of his heat vision. As many barbs as can be thrown at Zak Snyder for his shortcomings as a director, this looks like it's going to be a visually gorgeous movie.
Looks too heavy on the origin stuff for my Superman needs. I just watched like 30 seasons of Smallville last year.
It looks like The Sweet Hereafter except Clark Kent is one of the kids on the bus. Which, I suppose, makes for a much shorter movie, so you have room for aliens to arrive and have a big fight with Superman.
I like the fact that Power Girl uses shaving cream. When you're going to sear your super-strong skin with lasers, a little aloe helps.
"Trimming the hedges" must be very awkward for Kryptonians on Earth. I'm not excited about this movie now. I'm still a bit hopeful that it'll do well, and it looks like it'll be a visual tour de force, like doing the plane rescue from Returns over and over again, but... -I don't want another origin story. Superman is the most recognizable character in the world. Everyone knows who he is. If they spend more than 5 minutes on his origin, or it isn't spaced out in flashbacks, I'm turned off. -Superman should never look grim and gritty. This looks full of angst and hand-wringing about his identity, when Superman should be a bright, shining symbol of everything that is good in the world. Instead of him worrying about if people found out he was an alien and getting arrested or something, it should be nothing but the scene from Spider-Man where people throw bricks at the Green Goblin over and over because people are good at heart and Superman inspires them to be that way. I haven't seen the whole movie or know the plot, obviously, so I'm not writing this off yet. But this trailer makes me nervous that some execs saw the success of the Nolan Batmans and decided that what made them successful is applying grim and gritty to a comic movie, instead of how that was just an application of the truth of the character that people respected. See: Avengers for something of how you should do a Superman movie, especially the ending montage of civilian reactions to superheroes.
Plus we haven't seen a Superman origin story on screen for 35 years - I think the statute of limitations has passed. `
There was a great episode of the animated Justice League involving super-man, in which he ends up being rugged and growing a beard. Gotta be one of my all-time favorite episodes. EDIT: To stay slightly on topic, the only reason to do an origin story for Supes now, would be to show it from a different angle, or to put a different slant on it. Cuz I'm a fan of the animated series, they did a great job of tying Braniac's creation with Super-man's escape. But if it's just there to explain how Supes came to be, then blah, we've seen that like a zillion times.
I mean, this is where Superman should end up, but if he is that way AT ALL TIMES there's no character development, thus no movie or plot. See: Qui Gon Jin in The Phantom Menace. Also, there's plenty for Superman to be angsty about. He should never display that angst in public, but being a weird alien that could kill all of humanity within the span of a week if he wanted to has to lead to SOME psychological drama right?
I quite liked the second trailer and am encouraged that this movie will be good. I too am tired of Origin stories. Spiderman, Batman, Superman, etcman... I'll give it 10-15mins tops, and thats for a 2hr+ movie. I'm quite the fan of Henry Cavill from the The Tudor's series and have high hopes for him as Superman. Just don't make it campy and I think many of us will be happy.
I know the jury's still out, and I agree with what you said. Where this trailer loses me is that it doesn't have any moments where he's being... well, Superman. It's all "They won't like me when they get to know me," Kevin Costner telling him to maybe let people die, and lamenting how he doesn't fit in. I'd like to think that he has his big moments, but this trailer doesnt tell me that at all. For how you get Clark growing up done right, you watch the early seasons of Smallville that John Schneider are in, telling him how to be a good person. For Superman standing up for what's right, being an inspiration and caring for the little guy, you watch the battle in Superman II. I really hope they kept those in mind more than the moodiness of Nolan's films, but we'll have to wait and see.
Also, man, his dad choices are Russell Crowe or Kevin Costner? We're lucky he's not leaving a trail of bodies behind him who didn't properly kiss his ass and tell him how great he is.
I had a totally different reaction to that trailer than you guys did, apparently -- I went from "meh, another superman movie" before watching it to "Damn, I really wanna go see that!"
I bet they just cut the trailer like that. The "maybe" was spliced in from a different part of the conversation to provide suspense for the trailer. Of course I'll probably be wrong, this post will be quoted later and everyone will laugh at me.
Did you forget Superman's origin story during that time? Are you excited to see it again? It has nothing to do with how recently it's been depicted and everything to do with how boring it is to sit through exposition that everyone in the audience knows about already. And doing it with Superman is even dumber than doing it with other superheroes, because a) his origin story is even more familiar, b) his origin story is incredibly simple since it happens when he's an infant, to the point that every relevant detail of it fits into two short sentences, and c) he's a character who can do almost literally anything, so the range of story possibilities is virtually limitless. You could have him fighting Martians or Hitler or the devil, you could have him overthrowing third world dictators, you could have him use his super-vision to invent a cure for a pandemic, you could have him travel through time and hang out with dinosaurs, or you could just have him walk around being a dick to people, and any of those or a million more things would be a new and interesting starting point for a new Superman movie. To take this wide world of possibilities and not be able to come up with anything more inventive than retelling the origin story is nothing short of a pathetic failure of imagination.
Well I'm glad you're pleased. Me, I'm kind of pissed off that it's an origin story because it puts me in the awkward position of having to honor my "no more origin story movies" rule and not see it as a result, when I was planning on not seeing it because of my "no more Zack Snyder movies" rule. But nobody cares about my feelings, obviously.
He did say of imagination and I 100% agree with him, although I'll still be seeing it regardless if it's imaginative or not. I'm hoping they don't waste too many precious minutes going over what everyone already knows.
PS bad news for anyone hoping for at least a short origin story: fourteen-year-old girl cast as Lana Lang = first act of the movie takes place in Smallville.
There are also castings for baby Clark, 9 year old Clark, 13 year old Clark, and then, of course, older Clark/Superman. It is not going to be a short story.
Not necessarily. They used a couple of young kids as Bruce and Rachel in Batman begins, but they only had maybe 5-10 minutes of screentime.
True, but there's no adult actress cast as Lana Lang in this. It seems unlikely that they'd bother introducing that character if they weren't going to be spending a significant amount of time following Clark's teenage years.
Unless they were only introducing the character with the expectation of revisiting her in a sequel. Sort of like General Nod in the first Donner Superman. I mean, if it wasn't supposed to be all one movie originally.
If this movie gives us anything, it needs to be a statement from Superman's human dad guy that will supplant all future use of "With great power comes great responsibility" in pop culture.
I like the emphasis on Clark struggling to figure out who he is and what meaning his life should have. The main issue that I have with Superman is that he's always so perfect. In a sense he lacks humanity, because part of being human is struggling with ones' flaws, and this lacking at least for me makes Superman's character uninteresting. So it's nice to see that this movie is actually working to make him seem more human. [Disclaimer: while I have watched most of the movies, I haven't spent any time with Superman comic books, so maybe my view of him being "perfect" doesn't match the comic canon.]
