I have to admit that I don’t really get the appeal of Superman. From what little I’ve seen of him, he appears to be capable of doing just about anything and therefore, he’s always struck me as being a little bit boring.
Let’s put it like this — if you’re going to spend all of your time wearing a costume, then you better have some pretty big and sexy issues to deal with. Just being super isn’t going to cut it.
That said, Zack Snyder’s upcoming Man Of Steel will apparently attempt to do for Superman what the Dark Knight did for Batman.
Personally, I would rather that Snyder devoted his time to making a sequel to his underrated masterpiece, Sucker Punch.
“Fezzik, do you hear that? That is the sound of ultimate suffering.” – Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride.
Granted, this is one of the most strangest ways to resolve an issue (rewind everything back so it didn’t happen to begin with, without any paradoxes whatsoever), but it’s the reaction to Lois’ death that I like about this. As a kid, that scream made me jump, because it sounded like Superman lost just about everything. I honestly would have liked to know what Reeve thought of to get that scream out. I recently showed this to my cousin who liked it too. The spinning around the planet was cool (though a little much), and is something I come back to once in a while.
DC has always had the Batman franchise as it’s standard bearer when it came to its many properties adapted to the big-screen. In the past one could add the Superman franchise as well, but a return (no pun intended) to that franchise a couple years ago didn’t pan out too well.
Marvel Studios (film division of Marvel Comics) has had a better track record in the past decade in adapting its own franchise characters, both top tier and supporting, to the big-screen. Some of these adaptation have been through other studios like Sony, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal who licensed the characters for film. In the last 3-4 year Marvel has made the decision to adapt their characters themselves to better rake in the profits. This has led to successes and a subsequent purchase of the company as a whole by giant entertainment conglomerate Disney. With Disney’s Scrooge McDuck money bin to help finance further Marvel properties to the big-screen DC and it’s parent company Time-Warner had to respond with something other than Nolan’s Batman franchise.
What DC has decided to answer with first is the live-action adaptation of the iconic DC character Hal Jordan and his Green Lantern persona. The film has veteran action filmmaker Martin Campbell behind the director’s chair with Ryan Reynolds in the title role. The film has finally released it’s first official trailer and the film is set for a Summer 2011 release. A summer that’s becoming more and more crowded with superhero tentpole films not to mention the 800-lb gorilla waiting in the wings to beat everyone senseless: Warner Brother’s final Harry Potter film.
The trailer for Green Lantern just gives enough of a taste about what the film is about but despite some intergalactic scenes was still quite bare in terms of what the story will be about beyond it being an origin tale. Here’s to hoping the next trailer gives a bit more with a much more refined and polished fx work.