And 2006.
As… not good… as Superman Returns was, that scene was pure awesome.
Superman Returns wasn’t an origin story.
I’m just thankful Luthor isn’t the villain again in this one. Oh, and it appears they’ve taken another direction in casting Perry White, which I like. But not too sure how I feel about the casting of Lois Lane. We shall see…
Dunno. I bought it on DVD a while back after having only seen it once, when I was young - they always seemed to show Superman II on the TV, never the original. For the first three-quarters it is note-perfect; Krypton is stunning to look at, the whole sequence with Kent growing up amidst an endless golden cornfield is epic, the helicopter rescue is just super enough to be spectacular but not so overpowering that you can’t relate to it. Christopher Reeve is the part. He’s basically the Magical Positive Gay Stereotype - keeps himself fit, polite, doesn’t fart in bed, good taste in interior decor- without actually being gay (that we can tell (not that there’s anything wrong with that)).
But the film turns to shit when Lex Luthor and Otis appear. People deride Superman II for being camp and silly, but Superman is the film where Miss Teschmacher (a) dresses up as Marilyn Monroe in order to stop a nuclear missile convoy, by fainting in the road (b) twice (c) and there’s a comedy bit where Larry Hagman, as a stuffy military man, orders his men to get out of the way so that he can give her CPR. That bit’s in the first film.
Superman II doesn’t continually have Lex Luthor fiddle with his hairpiece. It doesn’t have effing Otis and “Otisberg”, and Superman turning back time in order to save one woman. Instead it has three genuinely nasty villains and a seemingly hopeless predicament for our hero. The ending feels arbritrary - Superman gets his powers back just like that - but no more arbitrary than reversing the flow of time).
Superman is basically great until the actual plot kicks in. Awesome start, weak ending, a bit like Batman Begins. I realise they needed Gene Hackman on board in order to get funding, but the writers really needed to come up with a genuine challenge for Superman, or something for him to do. Perhaps he could have confronted the ghosts of his past; disapproval from his parents, for example, something that would show him finally becoming an Earthman and deciding to spend the rest of his days with us. And not Gene Hackman blowing up California. I don’t care if Gene Hackman blows up California, I’ve never been there.
Seriously, Gene, if you want to blow up California, be my guest. You’ve retired from acting, what are you working on, eh? Up to something, I’ll bet.
Does he actually fight something? Something big and strong? Or is he just playing fireman again? Not that I don’t like it when Supes rescues the odd crashing plane or derailed train, but I want him punching things, too. I hate to say it, but the 2006 film actually would have been better if he had fought a giant mechanical spider.
He fights. Someone like him but bigger. Zod most likely. They only show flashes of it, but you get the sense of how massive a battle it is. Buildings collapsing and such.
Is it filmed in Instagram?
Are they going to use the same title in Russia?
Every human on earth is born with the ancestral knowledge of Superman’s origin.
Yes, but they’ll have to use CGI to add the mustache.
Confusing, yes! I watched the trailer on YouTube, and I had to check to make sure I wasn’t watching an advertisement for the next season of Deadliest Catch.
Zod’s overdone. Doomsday! Or better - Darkseid…
I’m not sure, but I think Clark does some crab boat work on his way to the Fortress of Solitude.
Ah, didn’t catch that they were only talking about origins.
I had no problem with any of that. The only questionable scene, IMHO, is “Can you read my mind?”
Where things go completely off the rails is the 100% Lester film Superman III, where slapstick abounds and nothing is taken seriously (except for the nightmare fuel of the cyborg transformation scene). I haven’t seen Lester’s Superman II in about 30 years, but the reconstructed Donner cut leads me to believe it would have been fine, had Donner completed it.
I rewatched Superman (1978) yesterday as a result of this thread and while I think the portrayal of Lex kind of dates it for modern audiences who are used to the Corporate Shark version of the character, I found it just as good as I remembered (I decided the “Can you Read my Mind” part was a good time to go for a snack :))
I don’t like the scene where Luthor figures out kryptonite. He makes huge leaps of logic to end up at an absolute fact that Supes himself didn’t even know.
Oh yeah, that’s a bit iffy, but I see kryptonite as being kind of nonsensical anyway. It’s basically a cheat to make Superman have a weakness (invented for the radio serial, no less) so I’m forgiving of that.
These are movie trailers, we’re talking about, though. Things that are supposed to build excitement so that people want to go see the movie. Relying on someone bored by these trailers to hear from someone else that an entirely other trailer (shown to limited audiences moreover) make the movie look entirely different is not a winning marketing strategy.
In fact, that’s pretty much what the John Carter marketing strategy was.