Of course, Sky Captain owes a certain debt to Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons - especially The Mechanical Monsters.
I think Rose Mcgowans’ face got screwed up in some car crash or something is why her face does look weird now.
Superman has successfully been made the subject of two pretty good recent television series – Lois and Clark and Smallville. Maybe the motion picture format just isn’t good for the character.
I like the idea of dialed-down superpowers and a 30’s setting. I like having a competent, tough woman in reporter Lois Lane.
I don’t like using Rose McGowan as LL, as she’s too young. I’d like to see a Superman movie with both Supes and LL over 30 years old, and throw in some “why haven’t you gotten married yet?” from friends/relatives to both of them, because it’s the 30’s, when you were expected to get married and start a family by your mid 20’s.
In the 30’s you had a lot of social changes going on with the depression. You had a buttload of midwest bank robbers like John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, etc. You could set the tone and do a lot of exposition with a quick action sequence of Superman catching bank robbers before you get into the main villain preparing his world-threatening plot.
I’m just curious where you checked?
That’s the twist ending - it’s ALL Bizarros.
OK, but Rose McGowan can’t be considered too young for your scenario. She’s almost 40 years old.
That’s a hilarious clip that proably says a lot. Unless the right person gets the project it’s gonna suck.
Spiderman worked because Sam Rami was a Spiderman fan as a kid and understood the character.
I didn’t think the basic story of Superman Returns was that bad.
My main problem was the two main characters looking as if they were in thier early 20s. Superman’s been around for a long time. Make him a man looking 30ish at least. In fact a movie of a mature Superman would be good. A Kingdom Come type of Superman. Lois is dead. There’s a huge crisis Darkside maybe, Doomsday, whatever and he comes back to save the world.
I’m also okay with the Smallvilee interpretation of the legend and the appearence of other DC Universe characters.
Superman traveling to the future to help the Legion would be cool.
Don’t forget Beppo.
Between the legs, of course.
That’s a pretty good clip. I also like this one, which was linked to on that YouTube page and which offers a spot-on explanation of why Superman Returns sucked: it was boring, had a script riddled with plot holes and featured cardboard performers.
Anyway, as other people here have said, the first two Christopher Reeve films were wonderful. In fact up until about Spider-Man 2, one could argue that those movies collectively stood as the Citizen Kane of the comic book genre.
And in many ways the Donner film was the first of its kind. Up to that point you didn’t see comic books movies with big budgets and all star casts. Instead they were mostly campy fair starring b-actors and aimed at kids (think the 1960s Adam West “Batman” flick).
But here now in 1978 was a film that had Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty, Glenn Ford, Marlon Freakin’ Brando, with weighty themes, a soaring musical score and great special effects (for that era anyway) - it was really first superhero film that took itself seriously, the first that could really be appreciated by adults. Yeah, looking back on it, it is a little campy and the villains pretty cartoonish, but it also has the feel of a classic Hollywood epic. And most importantly it’s still beloved today.
Whoever said God had no sense of humor?
Superman: The movie
Superman II
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Superman III
Superman IV: The quest for peace
Superman Returns
Superman Forever
Superman & Friends
Superman: Brainiac Attacks
Superman Saves the Day
Max Fleischer’s Superman
Abar: The First Black Superman
The Batman Superman Movie
Superman vs. Nature & War
Superman vs. the Monsters and Villains
Superman: The Last Son of Krypton
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Batman vs. Dracula/The Batman Superman Movie
Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman
Now, granted, this list contains a good deal of cartoon movies as opposed to live action, but considering Superman is a cartoon, I don’t think that objection should be too relevant. Oh, and this list ignores Lois & Clark and Smallville and the George Reeves TV version and the Justice League and Supergirl (Helen Slater FTW) and, and, and…
Soooo…if we haven’t had a decent Superman movie yet, maybe it’s time to start mining other wells?
The thing I liked about the book is the idea that Hugo’s abilities wound up alienating him from people. He had all this strength but longed for just being close to someone. It was his struggle to find any meaning in his unique abilities.
The WWI section in which he goes crazy and runs through the trenches killing everyone in sight was surprising. It showed the potential of a Superman to become a monster. That contrast to the traditional Superman , truth justice and the American way, would be more interesting in a movie. IMHO.
Yeah, Bring back Dean Cain as mature Superman. Opening scene is Clark reading Daily PLanet headlines about the death of Lois Lane. He abandons his Superman personna and wanders the globe, hair grows out, scruffy beard, but inevitably encounters situations where he has to intervene.
meh, sounds more like a TV special.
No, I think that would have potential, actually.
For a long essay setting out the current state of play in the Siegel family’s case to win more of Superman’s rights - plus the Kirby family’s case against Marvel - click the link above. There’s a bunch of stuff there on other recent comic book lawsuits too, plus a look at how the Siegels’ progress is already affecting Superman’s comic book stories.
Quoth ascenray:
The reason those worked is that the conflict wasn’t physical. The main problems Clark faced weren’t the sort of thing you could fix by punching them really hard, but instead people problems, like the relationship with Lois. But that relies on in-depth characterization, which in turn takes a lot of time. There’s enough time to do that in a weekly hour-long TV show, but not in a two-hour movie.
Have you read the script? He did a good job. I didn’t even notice the restrictions (as I didn’t know about them when I first read it).
As long as this thread is proving zombification-worthy (I blame Grey Kryptonite), I’ll point out that I was just thinking yesterday that it’s tough to get enough conflict going when you’ve got a Man of Steel. We’ve seen that it’s more than finding a bigger enemy, a better Lex Luthor.
And, thought I, quite unaware of this thread, why did my friends and I love the old black-and-white Superman TV show? Because the conflicts we cared about weren’t the two-bit hoodlums he fought. It was Lois, and Jimmy, and Perry. It was the characters, and the cleverness that ensued from their situations: Clark’s double life, Lois and Clark’s single life, new reporter vs seasoned reporter vs cub reporter.
Hmmm, if only George Reeves had gotten to portray some alien-living-on-earth angst, or reconciling his absent father/last of a species feelings…