From the book of Lens Flares, 22:37

I still don’t think anyone has made an amazing Superman movie, but at least Man of Steel made me believe that it’s possible. 

After The Avengers and now Man of Steel, I think there needs to be a name for the phenomenon where a comic book movie attracts incredible production talent, who proceed to write some of the most inspired, creative, entertaining popcorn movie content ever created, only to be hamstrung in the end by their own nerdish worship of the weak source material. Back in writing workshop, there was a frequently repeated phrase you’d hear in critiques where people would point to the top of your piece and say “this feels like throat clearing.”

Basically, it means you had these germs of an idea or ideas at the beginning that sparked some connection in your brain that eventually lead to something so much better, and now you just need to go back and delete those half-formed origin thoughts. Man of Steel feels like Christopher Nolan and David Goyer and company were inspired by the idea of a showdown between Superman and General Zod, to create an even better story about what it means to be Superman. But in the end they just couldn’t bring themselves to cut those cables of homage to the initial inspiration. Thus we’re left with an inspiring, beautiful origin story grafted onto an anti-climactic hero/villain showdown, and all the the hackneyed tropes that go along with it.

Seriously, is there some rule I don’t know about where every superhero movie has to have a scene of the hero flying into the mouth of a giant laser pointed at Earth? Look, Drunk Randy Quaid in Independence Day is the best that scene’s ever going to get, so stop trying.

Man of Steel‘s most impressive accomplishment was to make me think, “Wow, Superman, huh? What a great story. Why hasn’t anyone been able to make an amazing movie out of this before?”

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Today, courtesy of Nokia (I don’t really know what that means but it says it on the trailer), we have the fifth, and hopefully final trailer for Man of Steel. STOP RELEASING TRAILERS, MAN OF STEEL! I ALREADY SAID I WANT TO SEE YOU! We’ll still have to wait a week, incidentally, as it opens June 14th in the US.

I was sold after the trailer with the Russell Crowe voiceover and the soaring music. It was nice because it was a slow build. It let my anticipation grow organically without throwing a bunch of explosions and crap at my face. Not that this new one is a terrible trailer, but it’s definitely more traditional in the bunch-of-shit-flying-at-your-face department. It’s like they saved all the explosions (and skulls!) for this one. Though I did appreciate Superman liver punching Zod into a planet. That was good times.

Also, I don’t know if I’m reading too much into this, but did I see a Christ pose in there?

God. Dammit. There is no shittier, more played out, half-assed “allusion” than the Jesus reference in your epic action movie. OH, I GET IT, BECAUSE HE IS ALSO A TRAGIC MARTYR. Seriously, if you’re writing a film about a protagonist with special powers who has to save the world and you’re tempted to reference Jesus somehow? Please, just jam the pencil into your eye. That way, your movie won’t have the lame, completely uninsightful Jesus reference that’s been done 12 jillion times already, and it will have been written by a dude in an eyepatch, which is like instant cachet.

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When Kevin Smith took a meeting with Jon Peters about making a Superman movie years ago, according to Smith, Peters had three stipulations: I don’t wanna see him fly, he doesn’t wear that f*cking suit, and he has to fight a giant spider in the third act. Two movies later, the world has a Superman movie that actually looks potentially good. But still the problem persists, what elements of the character do you keep, and which are just too silly? There’s a new featurette online with Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer talking about trying to make Superman “exist in the real world,” and they make the point often that you kind of get sick of it. But the part about how they could make the cape and the S and the boots all work (the S doesn’t stand for “super” anymore, it’s a Kryptonian symbol of hope), but not the red speedo is kind of interesting.

SAVE THE RED UNDERPANTS!

“You look at Superman and the cape has to be there, but you know what, I think the underwear outside of the pants is something maybe that can go.”-Deborah Snyder

“The reason that the underwear is on the outside of his pants is that it’s a leftover from Victorian-era strongmen. I probably looked at hundreds of versions with underwear,  but it fell by the boards because I just couldn’t make it consistent with the world that we were creating.” -Zack Snyder

“We had to create a world where that kind of outfit was commonplace, to make it feel natural.” -Producer Charles Roven

One of my favorite parts of the filmmaking process is how much justification and mental gymnastics they have to go through in order to decide “Underpants on the outside? Eh, a little too gay.”

But it gives me hope that their thought process on this all seems to make sense. As much as I enjoyed The Avengers, I really wish someone would’ve taken Joss Whedon aside and said “Hey, you know the part where you have characters fighting an incoming army with a bow and arrow and a handgun? That’s kinda stupid.”

Because it was, yo. When I watch Iron Man and the Hulk and Thor fight a giant snake that jizzes flying aliens, I want to believe, you know?

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Today brings us the longest trailer yet for Man of Steel, the Zack Snyder-directed, Christopher Nolan-produced Superman movie starring Amy Adams and Henry Cavill, with Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner as Superman’s adopted gay dads. Zack Snyder rightly got a lot of flak after Sucker Punch for his penchant for excessive slow motion and ridiculously over-stylized everything, but now that he’s making a Superman movie and not a weird, thickly-veiled allegory for child rape, all the epic affectations actually seem like they fit. This is… a pretty badass trailer. I kind of want Russell Crowe to narrate my life now. And if Michael Shannon manages to be half as scary as General Zod as he was as that Jew-drowning psychopath on Boardwalk Empire, this is going to be amazing and small children will pee their pants when they see it.

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Chris Nolan writes “GROWLY VOICE” and underlines it three times

The Justice League rumor mill has been working overtime for months now – for years, if you count George Miller’s thankfully-scrapped attempt to bring it to theaters – and with all the problems facing our country and planet, I can think of few things more important than the whens, hows, and whys of Superman broing down with Batman and Mighty Mouse. Last we heard, WB had sh*tcanned Will Beall’s script, which is probably a good thing. A. because it proves that someone actually read it (remember: no one ever reads anything in Hollywood), and B. because Will Beall last wrote Gangster Squad, a film which included the line “I miss that red snatch.”

Which brings us to today. LatinoReview, who have a pretty decent track record breaking comic book scoops, claim that Christopher Nolan, despite saying over and over and over again that producing Man of Steel would be his last involvement in superhero movies, has “taken over the DC Universe at Warner Bros.”

“Chris Nolan has completely taken over the DC Universe at Warner Bros. So anything having to do with these superheroes goes through him now. [...] He’s going to be involved in Godfathering/producing the movie. While Zack Snyder is also going to be producing, and also, possibly, the director.”

And, according to their story, having Nolan involved, with Justice League happening before a Batman reboot, would mean in turn that Christian Bale would be back as Batman.

Latino Review’s sources tell them that Nolan is shaping Justice League as a team-up between Man of Steel star Henry Cavill and Christian Bale, reprising his role as Batman. As Latino Review’s El Mayimbe puts it, Superman will arrive and find Bruce Wayne somewhere in his peaceful retirement, tell him he’s putting a team together, and get all the new action started. [CinemaBlend]

Ooh, the old “I’m puttin’ a team together!” I hope it includes a “gettin’ dressed” montage a la Gordy Gekko in Wall Street 2, where Superman pulls on his big red boots and straightens his codpiece. Anyway, I don’t doubt LatinoReview’s scoop insomuch that I’m sure Warner wants all this to happen, it just seems like there are a lot of ifs and scheduling issues to work out. For one thing, this plan assumes that Man of Steel will be a billion-dollar franchise, which is certainly possible. But it didn’t quite work out that way with Superman Returns, and that came out when Bryan Singer was arguably a lot hotter than Zack Snyder is now. And Chris Nolan just seems too… British… to want to do another comic book movie. But hey, if JJ Abrams can direct both Star Trek and Star Wars, why can’t Chris Nolan handle every non-Marvel superhero movie? Eventually we’re just going to have six directors doing all the blockbusters.

Chris Nolan is certainly talented, and better than 95 percent of the alternatives. but his “gritty” approach to Batman started to annoy me about halfway through TDKR. His style seemed to get grittier even as the story stayed just as silly as any non-Nolan comic book movie. Maybe that effect won’t be as pronounced with him just producing? I don’t know. Look, I’m just excited to see Superman and Batman party down with Antman and Mothra and Silent Bob and the whole Justice League gang down at the Peach Pit. That Skeletor doesn’t stand a chance. Read the rest of this entry »