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myurbandreamcopied without permission from here: http://gyzym.tumblr.com/post/53262244321/dear-people-who-keep-making-bad-superman-movies (because i don't do tumblr - gyzym, a thousand apologies to your lovely self!! - and because i agree with everything said here a thousand percent.)
dear people who keep making bad superman movies:
(by gyzym)
look, i get it: superman as a character can be pretty hard to make an audience relate to because he’s, you know, a super man! he has the powers, we know not of them, and while the interesting angle on superman is definitely his humanity y’all keep getting that really wrong, like shamefully wrong, but it’s okay, i understand, it’s hard to write, the shadow of the great christopher reeve movies, shhh, shhh. it’s gonna be okay, let me explain you a thing, there’s an easy solution, you just make this movie:
we open on a twelve year old lois lane in the aftermath of a FUCKSHIT CATASTROPHE. something disastrous has gone down — maybe it’s a massive oil spill, maybe it’s a situation reminiscent of the erin brockovich scandal, this is just a vague concept sketch, fill in what you want. the important part is: it’s a big bad corporate fuckup of the sort that we’re all too familiar with these days, and it’s got lexcorp written all over it. our first introduction to lois is watching her get approached by a patronizing, downtalking reporter and, all of twelve years old, step up to the fucking plate and take him and the company to task in the public eye. she’s the most poised and professional and pissed as fuck twelve year old you’ve ever seen, and she knows her facts, too. the reporter is impressed, but not as impressed as we, the audience, are as we watch her reign back her fear and do whatever she can to help her family, friends, and community.
sharpcut to a guy in a dead run down a back alley; he’s sweating and looking over his shoulder, clearly being chased. the camera pans out to reveal a daily planet logo — because, hey guys, the year is 2013, so the planet’s a 24 hour news network* now. you can argue new york times parallels all you want but the truth is that if superman’s looking for a job where he can a) be apprised of what’s going down with maximum speed and b) have an excuse to be on the scene immediately? then in this day and age he sure as shit ain’t working for print media; fight me. and you know what else, maybe clark’s a fucking camera man because he’s not actually great at reading or writing news because YOU KNOW WHAT MAKES CHARACTERS RELATABLE AND INTERESTING TO HUMAN BEINGS IS FLAWS, F L A W S, THAT IS THE THING YOU KEEP FORGETTING AND IT’S WHY SUPERMAN MOVIES KEEP BEING PAINFULLY BORING, ugh, whatever, moving forward.
so, look, dude, running, alley, camera pans out so the audience realizes we’re not seeing this dude running live, we’re seeing footage of him running on the planet’s 24 news station as a hard-hitting female reporter describes what’s going on. she’s sharp and decisive and well-dressed in stiletto heels and perfect makeup as she explains what we’re seeing, a perp fleeing the scene from the robbery of, idk, a bank or something, anyway this reporter is right on it, top shit, clearly a big deal. and lois lane....
...is the 20-something cub reporter with 3-day circles under her eyes and no makeup and at least one pencil stuck in her hair, sitting on top of a paper-covered desk and eating chinese food out of the box with a plastic fork as she watches this broadcast on one of the many tvs mounted around the newsroom.
“look at that,” she says. “that bank robber looks happier than i am right now. what do you think, clark, should i quit this job and start robbing banks for a living?”
“can’t say you wouldn’t be happier, but you’d probably get caught,” says CLARK FUCKING KENT, the guy with the dark hair and glasses who the audience INSTANTLY KNOWS IS SUPERMAN BECAUSE HEY, PEOPLE MAKING SUPERMAN MOVIES, WHEN PLAYING ON A CHARACTER THAT’S BEEN AROUND AND PART OF THE CULTURAL VERNACULAR FOR THREE QUARTERS OF A CENTURY YOU CAN TRUST THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW SOME SHIT OKAY!? ps please let clark have a sense of humor because i’ll tell you what, if i grew up a superhuman alien being raised by ill-prepared but well-meaning farmers in a place called “smallville,” you know what i would develop? a sense of fucking humor, that’s what. i mean, it’d literally be that or weep about the futility of existence to every passing cow. also? AUDIENCES ENJOY HUMOR. THANKS.
okay so anyway lois, right, she is exhausted and more than a little bitter and kind of hates her job because all the higher ups shit on her and behave in assorted gross ways, and she says something like, “i would run off and rob banks if i wasn’t so determined to make my career by exposing those people at lexcorp as terrible inhuman scum who ruin everything they touch,” only she says it less clunkily because it’s a movie and in real movies that people actually pay money to see dialogue should sound at least vaguely like shit people might actually say, i don’t know, just a thought.
but the point is, right, lois is 100000% determined to bring down lexcorp, and clark is this like, sweet camera dude who is just starting out and seems not to give a shit about his career advancement at all? he and lois are bros and maybe roommates, and sometimes they get drunk and make out a little, but mostly lois is kind of like “i have a vibrator and a job that doesn’t currently fulfill me but that does make me want to fight it until it does what i say, also you’re a little wide-eyed corn-fed ingenue for my tastes although you are a very good roomie,” and clark is kind of like, “i have a secret and it is that i CAN FUCKING FLY also as an alien my libido probably isn’t exactly what you might call human because i’M NOT HUMAN i mean who said that what not me, i said corn.”
and on the other side of the equation we’ve got lex luthor, and i think lex luthor’s deal is that he’s completely disillusioned with everything ever because ~subtext~ and whatever. like i think his parents were loving to him but doing really bad things with the company for the sake of making the extra buck? but then they died in a way that was somehow related to the disaster 12-year-old lois dealt with? anyway, lex was a happy and largely harmless genius until he lost his family and took over the company at like 23, 24, and he honestly was planning to run it responsibly until he realized how irresponsibly his parents had been running it, this whole history of terrible corruption and like, murdering anyone who got close and buying off politicians and shit. and the more lex discovers, the more dishonored his memories of his family become, the more and more detached he becomes from his personality until he’s just the totally amoral evil genius center of this massive web of lies and scandal and murder and destruction.
and we find all this out because THE MOVIE IS LOIS INVESTIGATING LEXCORP AND TRYING TO UNCOVER THESE SCANDALS WHILE IN THE BACKGROUND LEX LUTHOR KEEPS SPIRALING FURTHER AND FURTHER INTO DESTRUCTIVENESS AND SUPERMAN KEEPS HAVING TO SAVE THE DAY, but it’s all lois’s point of view, so we see her covering this, right, and trying to put it all together. and after the third or fourth time clark “goes to the bathroom” for three and a half hours that coincide with a lexcorp r&d building explosion in albany that superman rescues a dozen people from, lois is like, “so you’re the superhero, great, how about you bust me into this building also this one also this one awesome thank.” and it’s all paced like a political thriller and then obviously at the end they expose everything and lois’s career takes off as the world speculates wildly about ~the superman~ and lex goes to jail, woooo.
and look the truth is: i don’t keep going to superman movies because i’m interested in watching someone bigger and stronger than us mere mortals will ever be kick the living shit out of someone else bigger and stronger than us mere mortals will ever be. i go because the thing that makes superman interesting to me is the idea that there is this incredibly powerful superhuman being and what he wants to do is help people; that he’s swept off his feet, whether romantically or otherwise, by someone who is physically nowhere near his equal but in terms of intellect and bravery kind of knocks him out of the park**; that there could be an individual that defies the concept of absolute power corrupting absolutely, and that even a character that in a lot of ways represents the peak of perfection seeks companionship, friendship, love; that A HUMAN BEING is AN IMPORTANT if not THE MOST IMPORTANT part of this story because I AM ONE OF THOSE AND SO IS EVERYONE IN YOUR AUDIENCE, WE ARE HUMAN PEOPLE AND NOT FLYING ADONIS GODS, TELL US A SUPERMAN STORY ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS PLEASE OH MY GOD PLEASE I BEG OF YOU PLEASE. and i get that maybe you’re going for a wish-fulfillment thing or whatever but stop, it’s over, it’s been done, it’s not working anymore, try something else.
and if i can’t have any of that, then know this: i laughed all the way through man of steel, and so did my brother, and there wasn’t a single joke (unless russell crowe appearing from behind corners was supposed to be hysterical). so if you’re not going to do anything new or interesting, at least try some fucking jokes next time so we feel at least a little like we have an excuse for the laughter? because this was just sad.
xoxo,
a fan
—
*say the planet started as a newspaper if you want. say they still own and operate a thriving print media branch if you feel like it! whatever superman concept outline lets you sleep at night is cool by me.
**on my first day of fifth grade my teacher wrote “superman is not brave” on his chalkboard and made us talk about what it meant until we came to the conclusion he was looking for which was: that standing up for what you believe in when you know you have more power than anyone else isn’t as brave as doing it without that power. maybe that’s why these new superman movies feel so soulless to me, that day in fifth grade, but to be honest i wouldn’t trade it, so.
~~
~~
nuff said.
dear people who keep making bad superman movies:
(by gyzym)
look, i get it: superman as a character can be pretty hard to make an audience relate to because he’s, you know, a super man! he has the powers, we know not of them, and while the interesting angle on superman is definitely his humanity y’all keep getting that really wrong, like shamefully wrong, but it’s okay, i understand, it’s hard to write, the shadow of the great christopher reeve movies, shhh, shhh. it’s gonna be okay, let me explain you a thing, there’s an easy solution, you just make this movie:
we open on a twelve year old lois lane in the aftermath of a FUCKSHIT CATASTROPHE. something disastrous has gone down — maybe it’s a massive oil spill, maybe it’s a situation reminiscent of the erin brockovich scandal, this is just a vague concept sketch, fill in what you want. the important part is: it’s a big bad corporate fuckup of the sort that we’re all too familiar with these days, and it’s got lexcorp written all over it. our first introduction to lois is watching her get approached by a patronizing, downtalking reporter and, all of twelve years old, step up to the fucking plate and take him and the company to task in the public eye. she’s the most poised and professional and pissed as fuck twelve year old you’ve ever seen, and she knows her facts, too. the reporter is impressed, but not as impressed as we, the audience, are as we watch her reign back her fear and do whatever she can to help her family, friends, and community.
sharpcut to a guy in a dead run down a back alley; he’s sweating and looking over his shoulder, clearly being chased. the camera pans out to reveal a daily planet logo — because, hey guys, the year is 2013, so the planet’s a 24 hour news network* now. you can argue new york times parallels all you want but the truth is that if superman’s looking for a job where he can a) be apprised of what’s going down with maximum speed and b) have an excuse to be on the scene immediately? then in this day and age he sure as shit ain’t working for print media; fight me. and you know what else, maybe clark’s a fucking camera man because he’s not actually great at reading or writing news because YOU KNOW WHAT MAKES CHARACTERS RELATABLE AND INTERESTING TO HUMAN BEINGS IS FLAWS, F L A W S, THAT IS THE THING YOU KEEP FORGETTING AND IT’S WHY SUPERMAN MOVIES KEEP BEING PAINFULLY BORING, ugh, whatever, moving forward.
so, look, dude, running, alley, camera pans out so the audience realizes we’re not seeing this dude running live, we’re seeing footage of him running on the planet’s 24 news station as a hard-hitting female reporter describes what’s going on. she’s sharp and decisive and well-dressed in stiletto heels and perfect makeup as she explains what we’re seeing, a perp fleeing the scene from the robbery of, idk, a bank or something, anyway this reporter is right on it, top shit, clearly a big deal. and lois lane....
...is the 20-something cub reporter with 3-day circles under her eyes and no makeup and at least one pencil stuck in her hair, sitting on top of a paper-covered desk and eating chinese food out of the box with a plastic fork as she watches this broadcast on one of the many tvs mounted around the newsroom.
“look at that,” she says. “that bank robber looks happier than i am right now. what do you think, clark, should i quit this job and start robbing banks for a living?”
“can’t say you wouldn’t be happier, but you’d probably get caught,” says CLARK FUCKING KENT, the guy with the dark hair and glasses who the audience INSTANTLY KNOWS IS SUPERMAN BECAUSE HEY, PEOPLE MAKING SUPERMAN MOVIES, WHEN PLAYING ON A CHARACTER THAT’S BEEN AROUND AND PART OF THE CULTURAL VERNACULAR FOR THREE QUARTERS OF A CENTURY YOU CAN TRUST THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW SOME SHIT OKAY!? ps please let clark have a sense of humor because i’ll tell you what, if i grew up a superhuman alien being raised by ill-prepared but well-meaning farmers in a place called “smallville,” you know what i would develop? a sense of fucking humor, that’s what. i mean, it’d literally be that or weep about the futility of existence to every passing cow. also? AUDIENCES ENJOY HUMOR. THANKS.
okay so anyway lois, right, she is exhausted and more than a little bitter and kind of hates her job because all the higher ups shit on her and behave in assorted gross ways, and she says something like, “i would run off and rob banks if i wasn’t so determined to make my career by exposing those people at lexcorp as terrible inhuman scum who ruin everything they touch,” only she says it less clunkily because it’s a movie and in real movies that people actually pay money to see dialogue should sound at least vaguely like shit people might actually say, i don’t know, just a thought.
but the point is, right, lois is 100000% determined to bring down lexcorp, and clark is this like, sweet camera dude who is just starting out and seems not to give a shit about his career advancement at all? he and lois are bros and maybe roommates, and sometimes they get drunk and make out a little, but mostly lois is kind of like “i have a vibrator and a job that doesn’t currently fulfill me but that does make me want to fight it until it does what i say, also you’re a little wide-eyed corn-fed ingenue for my tastes although you are a very good roomie,” and clark is kind of like, “i have a secret and it is that i CAN FUCKING FLY also as an alien my libido probably isn’t exactly what you might call human because i’M NOT HUMAN i mean who said that what not me, i said corn.”
and on the other side of the equation we’ve got lex luthor, and i think lex luthor’s deal is that he’s completely disillusioned with everything ever because ~subtext~ and whatever. like i think his parents were loving to him but doing really bad things with the company for the sake of making the extra buck? but then they died in a way that was somehow related to the disaster 12-year-old lois dealt with? anyway, lex was a happy and largely harmless genius until he lost his family and took over the company at like 23, 24, and he honestly was planning to run it responsibly until he realized how irresponsibly his parents had been running it, this whole history of terrible corruption and like, murdering anyone who got close and buying off politicians and shit. and the more lex discovers, the more dishonored his memories of his family become, the more and more detached he becomes from his personality until he’s just the totally amoral evil genius center of this massive web of lies and scandal and murder and destruction.
and we find all this out because THE MOVIE IS LOIS INVESTIGATING LEXCORP AND TRYING TO UNCOVER THESE SCANDALS WHILE IN THE BACKGROUND LEX LUTHOR KEEPS SPIRALING FURTHER AND FURTHER INTO DESTRUCTIVENESS AND SUPERMAN KEEPS HAVING TO SAVE THE DAY, but it’s all lois’s point of view, so we see her covering this, right, and trying to put it all together. and after the third or fourth time clark “goes to the bathroom” for three and a half hours that coincide with a lexcorp r&d building explosion in albany that superman rescues a dozen people from, lois is like, “so you’re the superhero, great, how about you bust me into this building also this one also this one awesome thank.” and it’s all paced like a political thriller and then obviously at the end they expose everything and lois’s career takes off as the world speculates wildly about ~the superman~ and lex goes to jail, woooo.
and look the truth is: i don’t keep going to superman movies because i’m interested in watching someone bigger and stronger than us mere mortals will ever be kick the living shit out of someone else bigger and stronger than us mere mortals will ever be. i go because the thing that makes superman interesting to me is the idea that there is this incredibly powerful superhuman being and what he wants to do is help people; that he’s swept off his feet, whether romantically or otherwise, by someone who is physically nowhere near his equal but in terms of intellect and bravery kind of knocks him out of the park**; that there could be an individual that defies the concept of absolute power corrupting absolutely, and that even a character that in a lot of ways represents the peak of perfection seeks companionship, friendship, love; that A HUMAN BEING is AN IMPORTANT if not THE MOST IMPORTANT part of this story because I AM ONE OF THOSE AND SO IS EVERYONE IN YOUR AUDIENCE, WE ARE HUMAN PEOPLE AND NOT FLYING ADONIS GODS, TELL US A SUPERMAN STORY ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS PLEASE OH MY GOD PLEASE I BEG OF YOU PLEASE. and i get that maybe you’re going for a wish-fulfillment thing or whatever but stop, it’s over, it’s been done, it’s not working anymore, try something else.
and if i can’t have any of that, then know this: i laughed all the way through man of steel, and so did my brother, and there wasn’t a single joke (unless russell crowe appearing from behind corners was supposed to be hysterical). so if you’re not going to do anything new or interesting, at least try some fucking jokes next time so we feel at least a little like we have an excuse for the laughter? because this was just sad.
xoxo,
a fan
—
*say the planet started as a newspaper if you want. say they still own and operate a thriving print media branch if you feel like it! whatever superman concept outline lets you sleep at night is cool by me.
**on my first day of fifth grade my teacher wrote “superman is not brave” on his chalkboard and made us talk about what it meant until we came to the conclusion he was looking for which was: that standing up for what you believe in when you know you have more power than anyone else isn’t as brave as doing it without that power. maybe that’s why these new superman movies feel so soulless to me, that day in fifth grade, but to be honest i wouldn’t trade it, so.
~~
~~
nuff said.
