Thoughts on ‘Superman’ in film
Apparently, Warner Bros./DC Films don’t know what to do with Superman. Mainly because they think that he can’t bring in billions the way other heroes can. A lot of responses I saw from fans were all saying the same thing. “Make him nice.” That really pissed me off because Superman is nice. It’s his character to be kind and gentle even when the people he’s dealing with don’t deserve it. I understand “nice” and “kind” can’t be interchangeable all the time but when it comes to Supes, both apply to him anyway. He’s the light to Batman’s darkness. And yet somehow, despite being created before him, Supes gets put on the back burner for everyone’s favorite edgelord.
Another component of this problem is that DC feels the need to compete with Marvel when both of them are trash. Neither publishing house truly respects their Black and brown creators or characters. Whatever representation we have now is because people have to fight tooth and nail for it. So for them to waste an opportunity to use their white-passing alien as a commentary on immigration or working class people’s struggles... Well, that’s because they aren’t looking hard enough or at all.
A lot of people who don’t like Superman (past me included) don’t like him because he’s kind of basic but also overpowered. With that as the baseline, there are so many possibilities for DC Films to explore his character and make things fresh and interesting. The storyline that the DCEU was trying to go along with the introduction of Doomsday and the Death of Superman could have easily been teased out to include the Reign of the Supermen storyline. But because of unfortunate circumstances, bad writing, and cishet white male mediocrity being put on a pedestal constantly... we got whatever the hell we have now and there’s no longer room for Superboy (Kon El or Jonathan Kent, though I prefer the former.) or John Henry Irons, or whatever bootleg Fantastic Four, tragic Mr. Fantastic aka Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman. Just that one story arc could provide a rich cinematic experience if they wanted to continue with their live action Superman films.
I seriously want to understand what people mean when they ask for Superman to be nice? Do they want something that is true to the comics? Which comics? Because originally he wasn’t a pawn for such melodrama. From what I’ve seen at least, his stories weren’t so deep. Do people want to dial it back to the late 70s/early 80s films with Christopher Reeve? Those movies are ...absolutely ridiculous. Though I did like parts of them, I don’t think something in the same vein could fly in this decade.
I’ve seen people say that they didn’t like Clark being someone who was horny, for lack of a better word, and that baffled me as well. Superman’s image is very straight edge but he is not as perfect as people want others to believe. If perfection means that you don’t have any sexual urges. It’s interesting that people would think that a man who is one of the last of his kind would be opposed to being swayed by his own urges. So many comic runs and storylines give him at least one child, the man is having sex, I’m sorry. On a more serious note regarding that, there is a time and a place for that sort of exploration of the humanity of Superman. I can understand how his thought process and behavior in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) could be off putting to people who know Superman better than the average person. I definitely hated that scene with the bathtub but it was mainly because of Clark putting his dirty shoes in Lois’ bath.
There is so much wrong with the way that superhero films are done. There’s definitely fatigue from the 10 year span of MCU films and now the trend might be dropping off again. I could probably expand on that but this is about Superman. I wanted to write this because it’s unfair to me that he’s being shafted and put into a box when there is so much potential for him. Anyone who likes him even a little bit deserves at least one good movie with him as the main character. It doesn’t even have to be live action, a theatrical release for an animated film would be a better choice in all honesty.
