Use Parasite, then. Someone who can steal Superman’s powers just by touching him? Or Metallo-who wouldn’t want to see Superman fight a bunch of robots?
Wow. Although I’ve got a way to go on the script, I really like his take on the characters. Too bad it died.
I like this idea - though you can have a fistfight after the villains prove that the people and powers that be are wrong. But the people can cast doubts on his motives, laugh at him for helping the poor, and say things like “if you are so super, why is there still crime?”
As Superman he can’t confess doubt to anyone. As Clark he is living a lie.
We need a villain, but it could be more of a Madoff villain, not some guy in a funny costume wanting to blow up Metropolis.
Frankly, a lot of these suggestions just amount to “Make a movie about someone other than Superman.” Superman isn’t Silver Surfer. He isn’t Wolverine or Conan the Barbarian or Iron Man. The way to make a good Superman movie isn’t to make him grim 'n gritty, pointlessly make him less-Super, or insert some bogus moral ambiguity into his character.
The absolute best Superman stories, and they are difficult to write, are the ones that embrace the aspects of the character that people think are problematic because they’re old fashioned or boring. Superman is super-powerful. That means he’s super-strong, super-fast, super-smart, indestructible, and can fly. Superman has an unerring moral compass. Superman fights for truth and justice. The best Silver, Bronze, and modern age Superman stories - the original “Death of Superman”; “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”; All-Star Superman; Alan Moore’s Supreme - get these things and run with them.
Superman is a more difficult character to write than Batman, but that doesn’t mean the character needs to be altered.
I do have to quibble with something -
I agree that the “portray him as an out-of-touch alien!” idea is stupid, but Superman’s loneliness is well-established and one of his most humanizing traits. He lives in his Fortress of Solitude, after all. Indeed, one of the reasons that the post-Crisis Superman is a lesser character than his predecessor is that they wiped away the deep loneliness of the character in favor of turning him into a high school jock and a man about town.
This is a recent invention. In the Silver Age (and in some modern incarnations), Superman thinks of himself as Superman, to a greater extent than any incarnation of Batman has ever identified with his costumed identity. For the vast majority of Superman’s existence, Clark Kent was a blatantly false creation who Superman frequently spoke of in the 3rd person. This was illustrated really well in All-Star Superman.
In regard to the villain “problem,” I really don’t know why this seems so insurmountable. Comic book writers have been coming up with plausible challenges for Superman on a monthly basis for decades upon decades. The silver screen still hasn’t seen a halfway-decent Lex Luthor and the rest of Superman’s rogue’s gallery is utterly untapped. Other posters have mentioned Brainiac and Metallo, both good ideas. For a film-worthy take on Brainiac, check out Geoff Johns’ and Gary Frank’s recent Brainiac story. Cosmic enemies like Mongul and Darkseid are fertile ground. Doomsday and Hank Henshaw are both options.
Hollywood doesn’t just make movies for Americans anymore though. Between 45-60% of the revenue for a film like this typically comes from international audiences.
True. Although the actor they got to play Supes was very good. OTOH, the actress playing LL was so totally wrong it was scary.
I have to say that this is one of my favorite modern changes to the mythos. It does a few things I like:
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Makes impossible absurd Superboy/Superbaby stories (especially when his own parents call him “Superbaby” on covers!).
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Removes the implied insult to his parents and their raising of him.
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Removes the distance between him and humanity that would be key to any “corruption” of him, including him becoming a “benevolent” dictator (this point has been recognized by many a modern writer for the character).
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Removes the absurdity of the secret identity itself; if he is “really” Superman, why does he need the ID? Or rather, why would he want to retain it?
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Allows some semblance of a personality and personal life.
Anyway. Carry on.
You am all missing the trick:
A Superman movie set almost entirely on Bizarro World!
Having a place to go to attain solitude doesn’t really suggest a lonely person.
The idea of Superman making the Clark Kent identity a mask that’s completely different from himself, leaving him unconnected and lonely, is an artifact of Silver Age stories featuring Earth-1 Superman, alone.
It’s not present in the Golden Age. It’s not present in Superboy stories. It’s not present in stories that focus on his working with other heroes (Batman, the JLA and JSA, the Legion) - those frequently feature him using Clark Kent as a completely unreal mask, but he forms deep connections with the other heroes because he doesn’t need to wear it around them. It’s not present in stories that focus on his supporting cast. It’s not present in stories featuring the Earth-2 version. They even abandoned it in the and Bronze Age - not coincidentally at the same time they were lowering his power level, and ‘modernizing’ the identity by having him move to a TV station.
In those, he has real connections with people like his adoptive parents, Pete Ross, Lana Lang, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Batman, the Legion, even Lex Luthor, before the accident. And, of course, there are Supergirl and Power Girl to give both Earth-1 and Earth-2 Superman actual blood relatives.
It’s also completely incoherent - it requires him to actively drive away anyone he could get close to with no good reason, angst about how lonely he is, because he can’t get close to anybody, and still expecting the readers to like him, not think he’s nothing but a drama queen.
He lives in an apartment at 344 Clinton Street in the Metropolis borough of New Troy. In the 1950s TV series, he lived in an apartment at the Standish Arms hotel. He just spends a bunch of time at the Fortress of Solitude.
I really like the trilogy idea. It would be ridiculously easy to even map the whole thing out ahead of time for maximum story potential.
Superman: The Last Son of Krypton
Base it pretty heavily on the Superman: The Animated Series episode of the same name.
- Opens with a few minutes of Kal-El’s crash and finding by the Kents.
- Fast forwards to Clark leaving for Metropolis.
- After getting a job at the Daily Planet he saves a bunch of people from some giant disaster.
- Gives Lois Lane the interview where he lays it all out. Ma Kent: “Still, it wouldn’t be bad if people knew a little more about Superman. I don’t want anyone thinking you’re like that nut in Gotham City.”
- Luthor sees Superman as a menace to humanity and goes about creating Metallo or Parasite to combat him.
- Massive fistfight between two superpowered beings
Superman: Truth and Justice
- Opens with the US’s first trip to the moon in decades.
- The astronauts discover a hidden complex on the moon that is actually an automated Krptonian jail.
- Some accident causes the structure to tear away from the moon and crash land on Earth
- Out steps General Zod and the other two
- Massive fistfight between four superpowered beings
- “KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!”
- Somehow, Superman wins
The Death of Superman
- Superman vs Doomsday, you know the deal
Basically, it’s impossible to make a compelling story about a guy who can punch anything really hard solving punchable problems by punching them. The bet Superman comics deal with things like:
- problems that are only made worse by violence—a Golden Age story and a late-80s retelling both dealt with Clark Kent trying to help a victim of domestic abuse in his apartment building
- the consequences of an alien god among men, and what happens when he is manipulated by smarter forces, as in Red Son or Dark Knight Returns
- the true psychological toll of being the last of your planet and unable to even touch another person without crushing them into powder or concentrating on not doing so; the first few seasons of Smallville did pretty well with showing the profound loneliness that someone like Superman would really experience. It’s not so that this necessarily leads to whiny, unattractive stories associated with 1990s comic books; it just depends on the skill of the writer.
The last thing I would want to see is any attempt to do a superpowered Superman enemy on screen. Something like the above would be far more interesting, and honestly, DKR would fit so well in the existing Batman Begins universe as it is…
This am terrible, terrible idea. Me am not subscribing to you newsletter about it.
Just let him fight Batman. End of story. I’d watch that.
You am brilliant. Me am wanting to read you newsletter.
I don’t know as much about the history of the character as some, but I think he works so much better as being “really” Clark Kent, with the Superman identity being the “mask”. You can then get a lot of drama out of things like his relationship with Lois Lane: Sure, Lois adores Superman-- Who wouldn’t? Ladies go gaga over mere royalty in our world, think of how much more so they would be for a god among men. But Clark doesn’t want Lois to love Superman, he wants her to love him, the real him, Clark Kent. He’s his own romantic rival. How much more dramatic can it get?
Me am NOT going to see this.
I would LOVE to see an adaptation of Red Son on the big screen, but it just isn’t going to happen. It’s too far outside the box for Hollywood. (Seeing it as a direct to DVD animated project however could be a very real possibility, and very interesting.)
I actually liked Superman Returns, the biggest mistake they made was the whole “absentee father” thing, but that was so far out of left field that i’m not even going to address it. The second biggest mistake they made was cribbing from the Hackman portrayal as Lex with him as comic relief. If they’re going to do another Superman film, especially if they’re going with a trilogy, is to have Lex as the conniving business man/scientist who bank rolls some heavy hitters against the “god amongst men.” Parasite, Metallo, even Doomsday could work extremely well in this vein. Treat Lex as a serious threat and everything falls into place. Supplement that with some human interaction between Clark and Lois and the movie basically writes itself.
“Superman”, as a character, is both Clark and Superman. They’re two sides of the same personality. Neither is any more real than the other. I see someone brought up the “Kill Bill” speech, but Tarantino was completely off base there concerning modern interpretations of the character. (Though he probably grew up with the silver age version, so it’s forgivable.) Superman is a hero, he protects humanity because he sees himself as a part of it, he doesn’t look down on it. Anything less is a contradiction of the characters purpose. Not to put to fine a point on it because this isn’t a Tarantino thread, but Bill was probably projecting his own motivations onto Superman as Bill was the villain of the film, and a “super being” in his own right. He saw himself above normal people and couldn’t grasp the concept of someone with extraordinary abilities seeing any sort of objective worth in normal human potential. Ironically it’s the same fallacy that Lex himself commits. There was a comic I remember from years ago where someone tells Lex that Superman is Clark Kent outright and Lex simply can’t buy it because he can’t accept someone with the power of Superman deigning to live the life of a normal human being. It’s incredible arrogance to a fault.
Put that scene into a film and people will be talking about the new Superman movie in philosophical tones, much like they did the “order vs. chaos/Sanity vs. Insanity” themes in The Dark Knight. Superman is a god who sees himself as an ordinary man, Lex Luthor is an ordinary man who sees himself as a god. that’s the hook.